One of Freddie Thompson’s former campaign staff is calling for a, “boycott of all shows and products affiliated with martial arts thespian Chuck Norris because of his endorsement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.”
The lamitude* of this snollygoster†, “Darrel Ng, a former traveling press secretary for Thompson” just boggles the mind.
*I know that lamitude is not not a real word.
†But “snollygoster” is a real word.
Just when I think that I’ve become so jaded and cynical that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are incapable of horrifying me, they prove me wrong.
Paul Wolfowitz has been named by the State Department to sit on an arms control panel.
I guess because that whole WMD in Iraq thing worked out so well.
Deal Reached on Tax Rebates for Stimulus – washingtonpost.com
High points:
Low Points:
If the Democrats had any guts, they would have held out for better, but I guess that guts is just ,”not on the table”.
I won’t do the Pelosi pic again.
Roger Stone, who has the distinction of being the youngest of Nixon’s “dirty tricksters”, has founded a 527 organization, Citizens United Not Timid, to oppose Hillary Clinton.
I guess he has to do something when he is not swapping spouses.
Here is their logo, and they are selling a T-shirt:
So very classy.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi, in discussions with Republicansgave up more in food food stamps and an extension to unemployment benefits to get tax rebates for the working poor.
She also gave in on tax breaks for business.
I heard on the radio that 1$ in unemployment benefits generates about $1.60 in economic activity, and $1.70 for the food stamps, while the business tax cuts generate about 25¢ for every dollar.
The unemployment and food stamps also hit the economy in weeks, as opposed to about 6 months for business tax breaks.
Thank you for knuckling under and screwing the economy to give tax breaks to Bush’s buddies.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi, good old Ms.
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
I guess the Democrats are waiting until after the statutes of limitations have expired, because they’ve yet again delayed a contempt vote. It appears that they don’t want to, “Step on their message” regarding economic stimulus.
The reality is that they are reinforcing their message that they are a group of people who cannot be trusted to stand up for the right thing.
Really. I’m serious.
Here is Harry Reid, getting ready to completely capitulate on civil rights protection and telco immunity in the FISA update.
I should note that once again, Chris Dodd is excluded from my approbiation, as he is still threatening a filibuster on telco immunity.
Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything, they fear looking ‘weak.’ To avoid this, they ‘cave’ and surrender and capitulate and stand for nothing. As a result, they are, as here, endlessly described in the media as ‘caving’ and surrendering. As a result, they look (and are) weak. It’s a self-destructive cycle that has no end.
I want my party back.
How about we try voodoo to raise Harry S Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson from the grave, and send them to Congress to bitch slap Reid and Pelosi.
It’s like throwing away an impeachment investigation, even as just a technique to extract documents, because it trumps executive privilege.
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
TMP makes note of an interesting study byThe Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11.
John Edwards is apparently a figure of the voters’ imagination, though it appears that NY Times Ombudsman Public Editor Clark Hoyt shares the public’s delusion.
I could make some sort of pithy statement about corporate media, but instead, I’ll just call the coverage wankeriffic.
Seriously, when the Las Vegas Review Journal gave this endorsement, they knifed Obama and Clinton. They describe him as “hardly” the ideal candidate fro president, but preferable to, “Bill Clinton invited onto a This is Your Life talk show where they’re joined by Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky.”
So, “Obama is, at least, likeable”, and Hillary is “re-run of the horror movie “It Came From Little Rock,” with the sound turned up much too loud.”
The only substantive comment that they make is that, “John Edwards’ anti-capitalist populism is not in this country’s long-term best interests.”
Like Anglo-Saxon hyper capitalism has led to rising living standards.
It’s wankeriffic, but at least it’s well written wanking. It made me laugh.
John Solomon has been appointed executive editor of the Moonie Washington Times.
As to why this is coming home, Talking Points Memo has the definitive word, “Here’s what one former colleague of Solomon’s said last week: ‘I worked [X] years in the same office as Solomon, sometimes with him. The consensus: he’s lazy, and takes hit jobs handed him on a platter by opps research teams (and anyone will do.) And doesn’t do much to clean it up. I also know one of his fave and frequent sources is Barbara Comstock, former DOJ spxwoman and GOP attack dog.'”
In the Washington Post announcement of this move, he currently works for the Post, Mr. Solomon, ever the complete tool, says, “It’s going to be about being fair and balanced“. Straight out of Fox News.
BTW, if you want a rundown on a few of his misdeeds, Think Progress has the scoop.
If you have a strong stomache, read his his entry in the Huffington Post.
I understand the calls of various people for Edwards to drop out so as to benefit a particular candidate. That’s politics, but the reasons he gives are stupid, and insulting to Barack Obama, John Edwards, and the whole south.
If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.
Jane Smiley replied on HuffPo. It’s titled, Shut Up, Larry. Word up, Jane.
Joe Conason has a good if to my mind too gentle on what happened with the press in New Hampshire:
The angry Clinton haters in the press corps suffer from the same flat learning curve as Wile E. Coyote. They don’t understand why their Acme arsenal never quite does the job, and instead often leaves them with grimy faces and aching heads.
The problem is that these guys behave as if they are a high school clique, and the journalistic community has very little concern about accuracy.
Well, the votes are not all in, and Joe Trippi is already shooting his mouth off.
“It’s really a repudiation…of the Clinton campaign,” Trippi just said on MSNBC, interpreting tonight’s results.
Shut your damn mouth, asshole.
Yes, Jay Carney intends it to be a joke, but he ‘s really dead serious.
It really is all about them, at for them, so they love McCain because he is accessible, and because he gave them lots of free booze in 2000.
Another reason to dislike the caucuses: we can’t spend the whole day of the vote calling and emailing and texting each other to find out the latest (deeply flawed) exit poll numbers. Instead, we have to sit around and wait until Iowans finish their dinners and trudge to their local church basement or middle school gymnasium, where, after milling around for a while, they’ll declare their presidential preference. We won’t have any results until something like 9 pm EST for the Republicans, 10 or 11 pm for the Democrats. And then the results we do get will be accurate! I mean, where’s the fun in that?
The thing is, he thinks that he’s making a funny, but this is what they really think.
Yep, the “Dean” who has been calling liberals dirty f%$#ing hippies since the 1970s at least, is now saying that Iowa does not really mean anything.
I agree with Matthew Yglesias’s assesment, the media is trying to make Iowa irrelevant because they don’t want Edwards to win.
This time, he appears to be going after Gore and Kerry.
In a speech this afternoon in central Iowa, Barack Obama seems to have widened his criticism of the politics of the past to encompass not only Hillary Clinton but John Kerry and Nobel Laureate Al Gore. Making an argument for his electability, Obama said, “I don’t want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats — we’ve done that in 2004, 2000,” according to a person at the event.
The first comment to the post says it very well, “His arrogance and sense of entitlement are not just inaccurate, his remarks are insulting and stupid.”(emphasis mine)
I would add that Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, and the problem with both campaigns is that they were unwilling to call out George W. Bush specifically, and the Republicans generally for their incompetence and corruption.
You also have Barack Obama going after Labor Unions political involvement:
And top union officials who support Obama’s rivals are in turn accusing the Illinois Democrat, who once sought their endorsements, of trying to damage labor’s political role. “I’m taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent,” Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s behalf, said, referring to the television host’s high-profile support for Obama. “It’s sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make.”
It appears that there is no Democratic constituency that he is unwilling to “Sistah Soljah”.
Yes, once again, Barack Obama is doing his best to validate Republican talking points. This time, he’s going after Edwards for being a “trial lawyer” while he did community activism.
There is a lot of talk about how Hillary mightt be a problem for people running for lower office, but having a presidential candidate who is running on Republican talking points is far, far worse.
Obama is the wanker of the day.
Edwards response is this tape from one of his clients, the mother of the little girl whose guts were literally sucked out by a faulty wading pool drain.
Not only is he going after a lawyer who has done heroic things, he is going after the whole concept of people protecting themselve from greedy corporations with these heroic lawyers.
Barak Obama can kiss my shiny metal ass.
John Scalzi, in his blog post, Why We’re All Going to Hell, Part 54,302, makes the point that should be made: When the press covers someone giving away billions of dollars to the hungry, sick, and infirm, and the big story for the media is, “What does this mean for his narcissistic no-talent grand daughter?*“, we are all going to hell, particularly the wankers in the media who have decided to cover it this .
I might further argue that we are already in hell.
*Early in the brief 7 ½ month history of this blog, I made a promise not to mention She Who Must Not Be Named, which was expanded a while back to They Who Must Not Be Named. Therefore, I will not mention her name, or their names, unless they run for office.
In the New York times book section, Robert Dallek* has a tremendously lame review of Elizabeth Bumiller’s book, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, which also appears to be tremendously lame, at least based on the following excerpt:
Ms. Bumiller says that if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations.
The classic rejoinder is the Yiddish, “Az der bubbe vot gehat baytzim vot zie geven mein zayde.” (If my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.)
Mr. Dallek however appears to take this meaningless exercise as some sort of depth:
What distinguishes Ms. Bumiller’s book from other initial studies of the Bush administration and its principal actors is its absence of finger pointing or polemics. Ms. Bumiller’s biography is scrupulously fair and most notable for its above-the-battle tone. In Ms. Bumiller’s rendering Ms. Rice is neither hero nor villain but an ambitious woman whose achievements and shortcomings speak for themselves.
So Bumiller’s book is nothing. An active aggressive nothing. The sort of nothing that makes the TV show Seinfeld feel like it was about something.
No analysis, no thought, just stenography.
His further quote of Bumiller is instructive:
“It was obvious from Rice’s many metamorphoses that her real ideology was not idealism or realism or defending the citadels of freedom, although she displayed elements of all of them,” Ms. Bumiller writes. “Her real ideology was succeeding.”
If this means that she thinks that Condi Rice is primarily interested in advancing Condi Rice, then it’s an interesting point far too obliquely made, and if If she means that Condi cares about getting things right, I don’t think so, or as a commenter on another blog says:
Wow. Doesn’t tripe that insipid belong on the op-ed page under a David Brooks byline? I recognize that book reviews aren’t exactly news reporting, but this is ridiculous.
Robert Johnston | 12.27.07 – 9:04 pm | #
Condoleeza Rice has been egregiously and adamantly wrong about everything, but she has continued to fail upward.
*The doctor is right. Never trust a Dallek.
Mr. Pogue is wringing his hands about how those meddling kids today don’t respect IP.
He relates how he wrote an article about PyMusic, a piece of software that strips the DRM out of iMusic downloads, and how he received a sh#@ when he said, “To me, it’s obvious that PyMusique is designed to facilitate illegal song-swapping online, nd therefore, it’s wrong to use it.”
He gets a bunch of nasty emails from readers (one of those things, it seems that upsets NY Times and WaPo writers) explaining how there are a myriad of legitimate uses for this, such as backup, using some other sort of MP3 player, etc.
So, he claims to get it, and recently he went before a young audience, and gave a number of examples, and asked if they were wrong.
The final one, and the one that shocked him, was when he only got 1 or 2 hands for, “You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it,” and he gets 2 hands out of 500.
He’s shocked, but he is shocked because people understand the issue, Patent and Copyright Law is at its Core Public Interest Law.
IP meaning intellectual product, not intellectual property, is not and was never intended to be property as we understand it.
Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the constitution, has the power to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
This is not property. After all, when I say, “Take my wife….please,” Henny Youngman still has the joke.*
IP is an infringement on a very natural state of creativity. Patents and copyright are not much more than 300 years old, but we have the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Christian Scriptures, and some really kick ass cave paintings, among thousands of other items.
These young students have looked at the world around them, and determined, for example, that record distributors steal from the artists and give them no money, so that their money does not “Promote … the useful arts”.†
David Pogue does not understand the underlying principles of the current IP regime, and these wet-behind-the-ears kids in his audience do.
*Of course his being dead for decades makes his being able to tell it academic.
†Of course looking at modern pop music, there is a question as to whether any of the stuff in the top 40 rotation qualifies as, “useful arts”, but that is a metaphysical question, not a legal one.