Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

Conservatives like to complain about the Obama administration pointing out that they inherited the financial crisis and one of the worst recessions in our history from the Bush administration. Well I would love to see those assholes response to Mary Maitlin claiming that Bush inherited 9/11.

Yeah, personal responsibility and all that. Get the fuck outta here with that bullshit.

Wait, They Are Gonna Do WHAT With The Bible?!

Are some Conservatives really going to try to change the Word of God to fit their own worldview? Seriously?!

That deserves a "C'mon Son"!

Whose Team Are They On?

Evidently Chicago isn't a part of "real America" to conservatives who cheered when the Olympic Committee rejected their bid earlier today just so they could attack President Obama. Hard to claim to be patriotic and that you love your country in that situation, no?

See You At The Mid Terms

Conservatives just can't help themselves, and the Republican Party will suffer electorally because of it.





You know its bad when even Megyn Kelly is pushing back.

They Can't Quit Cheney

Steve Benen has a post up about a new Dan Balz column on Dick Cheney and how GOP operatives aren't exactly happy to have him out there being the face of the Republican party.

Another GOP strategist, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, pointed out the conundrum for Republicans over the former vice president's current role. "Even if he's right, he's absolutely the wrong messenger," this strategist said. His main worry, he added, is that Cheney keeps the public focused on the past, rather than the future. "We want Bush to be a very distant memory in the next election. The more Cheney is on the front burner, the more difficult it's going to be."

It seems like we've had quite a few of these reports lately -- Cheney keeps presenting himself as the official Republican critic of the White House, and Republicans keep asking why the former vice president won't go back to his undisclosed location.

But notice one key detail: none of Cheney's GOP detractors are willing to go on the record. They want him to go away; they think he's hurting their cause; they're sure he's making Democrats happy by becoming the face of the Republican Party, but not one wants to have his or her name associated with a discouraging word.

The party may not like Cheney, but for reasons that aren't altogether clear, the party clearly fears Cheney. Until the GOP's heavy-hitters get over this, the former vice president will continue to make them look bad.

I think I can help clear this up for Mr. Benen. You see while most rational Americans loathe Dick Cheney not all of us do. Specifically there is a group of people in this country who loves Dick Cheney on almost the same level that the rest of us approve of President Obama.

You see the GOP base thinks Dick Cheney is the bees knees. That means that no matter how much he hurts Republican electoral chances they have to if not embrace him, at least tolerate him. I am sure that vexes them to no end. Oh well, sucks for them, great for us!

What's In A Word?

If that word is "empathy" then I guess there's a lot for misguided conservative wingnuts. However, thankfully for them, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick explains what empathy means with respect to choosing a Supreme Court justice. Unfortunately I doubt if they will take her word for it.

Deep Thought

On the one hand wingnuts are saying that the torture techniques weren't really torture and were really no big deal. Just a little standing and a little bit of water they say. On the other hand wingnuts say that these "harsh interrogations" techniques were super duper effective at making detainees give up information to stop terrorist attacks. Both simply can't be true.

Either the interrogation techniques were a piece of cake that only pansies would call torture
OR they inflicted a lot of pain and anquish which led the detainees to finally break and give up the information.


The truth is neither premise is right. Harsh interrogation was torture and it wasn't effecitive at getting real confessions. Still you have to think that the wingnuts are quite confused on whether or not they should argue that torture wasn't so bad at all or that torture was so bad ass that KSM was singing like a bird.

I think I am going to badger a troll with this inconsistency very very soon. I love to see their heads explode.

One Benefit Of CPAC

I have been railing about CPAC for the last few days basically because it exposes the major double standard that the mainstream media has for conservatives as opposed to liberals and progressives. There isn't a chance in hell that you could stage a liberal/progressive version of CPAC without the media trying to tear it down and delegitimize it. They already refer to MoveOn and dailykos as hate groups with no basis whatsoever to back up their claims. But let some of the biggest spewers of hate get on the microphone at CPAC and either the media won't report it or if they do they will act like its no big deal.

But there is a redeeming benefit of CPAC and that is the echo chamber that it creates for most of the Republican Party. They go there and here the same memes over and over again and basically they convince themselves that they are on the right track, election results be damned. You would think that you would hear a lot of "new" ideas coming out of CPAC this year but instead what do you get? A lot of the same talking points trotted out by John McCain's EPIC FAIL of a campaign as if a few months will make them sound a little bit scarier. The fact that they are being cheered on by their conservative following pretty much ensures that they will keep on doing what they have always done and they will get their asses handed to them once again next year.

What I really hope is that while they are at CPAC nobody points to this New York Times article. The truth is they would probably all just claim its evidence of the Grey Lady's librul bias anyway but I personally want their echo chamber to resonate from the hills so all of the Republicans in Congress and those contemplating a Presidential race in 2012 will be reassured of the efficacy of their attacks. To quote the article.

Americans identifying themselves as Democrats outnumber those who say they are Republicans by 10 percentage points, the largest gap in party identification in 24 years.

The gap has widened significantly since President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, when it was a mere 3 percentage points. But by the time Mr. Bush left office in January, less than a quarter of Americans approved of his performance.

These days, 38 percent of Americans say they are Democrats, 28 percent call themselves Republicans, and another 29 percent identify as independents, according to an average of national polls conducted last year by The New York Times and CBS News.

Shhhh. Don't tell these fools that they are doing it wrong. Just let them keep talking while the rest of the country passes them by.


(h/t Instaputz)

Self Parody

It's the height of irony that an article in the Washington Post entitled "So Far, Amateur Hour" would so thoroughly expose the author of said article, Kathleen Parker, as being the real amateur. I know for the most part she is used to writing for such right wing echo chambers as townhall and NRO but seriously she might want to step her game up when she writes for the big leagues. Now just to be clear the title is referring to the first 3 weeks of President Obama's administration. But lets delve in some of her article which could accurately be described as on the level of a third grader.

Now take this paragraph.

Absent is maturity -- that grown-up quality of leadership that is palpable when the real deal enters a room. There's a reason why elders are respected. They have something the rest of us don't have -- yet -- because we haven't lived long enough. We haven't made the really tough decisions, the ones that are often unpopular.

So you could surmise that elders should be respected right? But then look back at the paragraph directly preceeding this one.

What's missing from Obama's performance isn't the intelligence that voters acknowledged in electing him. It's the experience they tried to pretend didn't really matter. Experienced politicians, after all, got us into this mess.

So first she acknowledges that it was experienced politicians that got us into the mess but then in the next breath she says elders should be respected. That's pretty fucking confusing and contradictory if you ask me. But wait it gets better.

Obama wants too much to be liked.

Riiiiiiiiiight. Now we are back to the "Bill Clinton syndrome" heh. I defy anyone to scour the rest of the article to find any evidence to back up that statement though. Is just some bullshit pulled out of thin air to make some kind of convoluted point of which i still haven't figured out. Still undeterred she wasn't done.

There was a time last week when Obama looked younger than usual. Not youthful so much as not fully formed. He seemed out of place in his presidential role. In a word, he seemed haunted. Had he been visited by the ghosts of Christmas future?

Or had he looked across the table into the eyes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and realized that he was not among friends? Obama's lack of authority over the stimulus package has underscored the value of political experience and toughness -- and given weakened Republicans the leverage they needed to launch an aggressive attack.

Out of place? HE HAS A 70+ PERCENT APPROVAL RATING BITCH! I would say most folks thought he looked right at home. But check out the veiled racism here. The President who is the most powerful muthafucka on the planet has been some how humbled by the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader, both good white folks. That kinda flies in the face of the facts though. Lets go by the numbers

1. The President told Congress to get something to his desk by President's day. They are well on the way to obeying.

2. When there were disputes about some provisions President Obama told the leaders to yank that shit out. They complied.

3. The President layed out his priorities for the bill. They are all included.

4. The final version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be over $800 billion dollars which is what the President asked for. Again, win.

So if anybody blinked you would be hard pressed to say it was President Obama. But hey why stop Ms Parker when she is on a roll.

Other manifestations of Obama's political greenness include his apology for picking lax taxpayers for prominent positions, his campaign-like tour to Elkhart, Ind., on Monday and his ponderous first news conference later that evening.

Yeah its "green"' to own up to a mistake. Its "green" to go out and campaign for his stimulus plan while Rethuglicans are shitting on it. Its "green" to hold a press conference that was wildly successful in promoting his stimulus plan as well as smacking down Republican talking points as well as showing a depth of understanding about serious issues that was woefully missing the last 8 years. If that's green, you and your party are in for some serious ass trouble when he gets a little experience.

But the line of the entire column was this one in referencing President Obama apologizing on all the major networks for nominating people to his cabinet who had not paid their taxes.

He appeared weak.

See for all of her criticism of Sarah Palin, Kathleen Parker is still a wingnut at heart. And in their world everything is upside down. They think when you are trying to put a square peg in a round hole instead of looking for a different peg or a different hole you should just pound a lot harder. Republicans these days exhibit a fundamental break from most of America's reality. After 8 years of an asshole claiming he never did anything wrong, most Americans have concluded that its nice to have someone who is willing to take responsibility for their actions. It is in point of fact a sign of strength, integrity and honor that most people cherish from their leaders.

But therein lies the rub. People keep saying to me that I am wrong about the Republicans being in the abyss instead of the wilderness. That political parties always make a comeback. But never has a political party went so blindly ideological that they lose all appearance of being reasonable. Even with the majority of Americans pointing out that they support President Obama's approach to the stimulus plan, instead of changing their message what are the Republicans still pushing? TAX CUTS TAX CUTS TAX CUTS. And Kathleen Parker's article is just another example of what the Republican Party has become. Please go and see the over 600 comments already pilloring Parker for being out of touch with reality. Now I know some will feel like she wrote the article for attention but the truth is you shouldn't be surprised that this is what she believes. Thats how Republicans/Conservatives think. If you don't do it their way you are a failure. If people actually like you that means you're doing it wrong. Up is down, left is right, and dry is wet. Yes I have a headache after reading her column but its still a helluva lot of fun destroying it bit by bit.

Now lets take a more realistic look at the first three weeks of President Obama's administrations.

Signed an Executive Order banning torture.

Signed an Executive Order repealing the Mexico City doctrine on family planning funding.

Signed an Executive Order to close GITMO in a years time.

Signed an expansion of SCHIP into law insuring more than 11 million additional kids in this country.

Signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Act guaranteeing pay equality for women.

Put the kibosh on the Bush midnight orders opening up coastal waters for offshore drilling.

Is set to sign into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which has passed both chambers of Congress and just has to be reconciled now.

Thats pretty damned good for the first three weeks if you ask me.

More Of The Same

What's that you say? Conservatives caught lying again? Say it ain't so.

What A Dick

DICK Armey showing yet again that Republicans are the most sexist idiots in the world. Funny how whenever a conservative is challenged by an intelligent woman and they can't defend their bullshit they always show their true colors and sink to the gutter. Big ups to Joan Walsh for busting his dumb ass in the mouth with the rethug kryptonite, LOGIC.




P.S. Will somebody tell Tweety to step his damn game up!

Electing Barack Obama Did NOT Solve Racism

The Voting Rights Act was a significant step forward to black people in this country who had been disenfranchised after slavery by Jim Crow laws and other institutional shenanigans that all but ensured we were not allowed to vote for the people who were governing us. I have personal experience with this as my grandfather who grew up and lived his whole life in Mississippi died without ever being allowed to cast a vote. Well now we see in the Washington Post that there is a Challenge before the Supreme Court looking to strike the VRA down in part because our country electing Barack Obama to the Presidency shows that federal mandates and oversight are no longer needed.

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and "consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence."

"It has the potential to be the most important election-law case this court has heard," said Richard L. Hasen, an elections expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, adding that it raises the possibility that "the remedy that was once constitutional is now unconstitutional."
The case comes to a court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., that has become increasingly skeptical of race-based remedies.

So in 40 years supposedly our country has changed in such a major way that the provisions of the act are no longer warrented and are outdated? Well let's see the reason for the act in the first place.

The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, at a time when literacy tests and other schemes were routinely used, especially in parts of the deep South, to intimidate and exclude black voters. Its Section 5 "pre-clearance" requirements, which compel the Justice Department or a court to sign off on any changes to voting procedures, were intended to last for five years.

Instead, the law was expanded to include other minorities, and its duration was extended four times, most recently in 2006 by overwhelming congressional majorities.

So this act is intended to ensure that all eligible citizens are allowed to vote and that they will not be subjected to any arbitrary measures which can be used to exclude them from voting as it has in the past. Sounds like a good idea to me. With charges of voter disenfranchisement still being thrown around in almost every election cycle including many just last year I would think it a no brainer to keep these measures in place. Now the curious thing about the case in my opinion and the premise that the nation has changed are the actual states that were originally named in the VRA.

The pre-clearance requirements apply to nine states -- Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia -- as well as counties and towns in seven others. Fifteen jurisdictions in Virginia, including the city of Fairfax, have been allowed to "bail out" of the requirement with the agreement of the federal government.

Challengers say the Section 5 designations are an outrageous "badge of shame" on jurisdictions that have never discriminated, at a time when minorities have been elected to public office in record numbers.

"The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965," wrote Gregory S. Coleman, a former Texas solicitor general who brought the suit on behalf of a tiny utilities district in Austin that is covered by the law.

So out of the original nine states named in the act all of one actually went for Barack Obama. Now mind you I am not necessarily assigning racist motives to every voter in the states that did not vote for Obama, after all everyone has the prerogative to vote for whomever they want to. I just find it ironic that the folks who brought this challenge actually invoked the name of Barack Obama as being part of a justification for their position when just one of the states on that list even voted for him. Hell I seriously doubt the guy who made the comment voted for President Elect Barack Obama. And there is also no doubt in my mind that race DID play a factor on at least some of the voters in those states. Do I really need to give a run down of the "Southern Strategy"?

Now let me say this, I personally think that the act SHOULD be reviewed. But not in the way the conservatives want. The reason why it needs to be reviewed in my honest opinion is not because there has been less racism over the last 40 years, I don't necessarily know that there has. But because the places in this nation where blacks and minorities might have been disenfranchised since 1965 has spread since the implementation of the act. So if any thing I think the act should be broadened to include reviews of the policies and practices of all 50 states and then reevaluate which ones still need the pre-clearance and which ones on the original list might not.

It occurs to me that this is just another form of deregulation for Republicans. But having seen the problems with the voting in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 I just don't see how anybody could think its a good idea to deregulate voting rights at this point. It is an unfortunate but apparent truth that in this country it is not wise for us to leave it up to individuals to simply do the right thing when it comes to situations where personal and or political biases may come into play.

Now in all likely hood this challenge will get no where because of the politics of the situation. Whether people want to admit it or not the Supreme Court does have a political component to it and the truth is this. If the Conservative led Supreme Court strikes down the law that gave black people the right to vote in this country the very few minorities who support the Republican party will dwindle to almost nothing. And that is why its untenable for them to do so no matter what John Roberts thinks. But just the fact that the challenge was brought in the first place is irritating as hell to me. I wonder if next they will try to challenge the Emancipation Proclamation because hey there aren't slaves any more in this the "rebellious states"*, are they?





*Thats excepting the real and serious problem this country has with the sex slave trade.

Bu Bu But Wait, I Thought They Said The Cabinet Was Center-Right

I was wondering how long the Conservatives would keep trying to sell Obama as a Ronald Reagan figure with a center right cabinet. I know it just about killed them to try to paint Obama as sorta kinda one of them. Well I guess with the inauguration fast approaching and with it Obama's progressive agenda, the facade is over and the gloves, predictibly are coming off.

From the Washington Post:

To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates.

Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies, including a few whom conservative Republicans fought hard to keep out of power in the Clinton administration. They include Roberta Achtenberg, a gay activist whose confirmation as an assistant housing secretary was famously held up by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.), and Bill Lann Lee, who was hotly opposed by foes of affirmative action and temporarily blocked from the government's top civil rights job.

Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.

"It is disturbing," said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee's appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he'll be given when it comes time to make appointments."

snip

Another nomination battle arose in 1997, when Clinton proposed Lee, a Chinese American civil rights lawyer, to be the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for civil rights. Conservative opponents blocked Lee, a supporter of affirmative action, for a year. Lee, who is now a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco, served in the job as a presidential recess appointment and later won confirmation.

Clegg said he has some fears about a return to racial quotas, in part because Lee and Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, serve on the Obama transition team reviewing civil rights.

But Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor who was blocked for the same job before Lee's nomination, said she thinks the complaints of an ultra-left takeover by Obama advisers and nominees are manufactured hyperbole.

"The Bush administration people were often fighting against the very mission of the agencies they were supposed to be running," she said. "And their advocates were masters at name-calling and finger-pointing. No one involved in this work really thinks Bill Lee is on the radical fringe."

Imagine that, a Democrat who actually appoints liberals to serve in his administration. Who woulda thunk it? LOL Honestly I was surprised that the whole center-right cabinent meme was pushed by the other side for this long. Its actually refreshing to see them taking off their "bipartisan" masks and revealing that they are who we thought they were. Now hopefully can go about the business of building consensus where needed but punching people in the mouth when it isn't.