12.05.2009

Correction of the Year: Washington Post

presented without comment, as it needs none


Hit me....

12.04.2009

Craig Ferguson and bagpipes

This is filthy, but it's really, really funny.

Love haggis....

12.03.2009

Don't give up, don't EVER give up

One of the greatest speeches I've ever heard. The speech was given in 1993, when Jimmy was 47 years old. He died less than 2 months alter. 16 years on, the message resonates. Rest in peace, Jim.

December 2-8, 2009 is Jimmy V week. jimmyv.org

Zombie Reagan raised from grave to lead GOP


Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

12.02.2009

Colbert takes on Beck for latest hysterical attack on Obama

(Huff Post)

Glenn Beck was fired up that Obama would have the audacity to make a decision (on Afghansitan), seemingly calling into question the President's place on the military chain of command. Said Beck: "You do what your military advisers ask for...Who is the President?"

Colbert "echoed" Beck's "logic," pointing out that, "Obama is acting like he is some kind of chief who is commander of the armed forces."

12.01.2009

The contents of Obama's Afghan Speech

Huff Post

A look at the text of the president's speech, as provided by the White House, however, suggests far less neoconservative idealism and thinly-veiled religiosity than what George W. Bush brought to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its place, words were chosen that emphasized foreign policy pragmatism and acknowledgments of shades of gray in times of war.

On Tuesday night, the President said the words:
Democracy: 2 (once to talk about the U.S. Capitol building the other to describe Pakistan)
Freedom: 3 times
Terrorism: 0 times (though three mentions of "terrorist")
Extremism: 4 times

By contrast, the President uttered the words:
Security: 28 times
Allies: 11 times (one mention of alliance)
Responsibility: 7 times
Resources: 6 times
Diplomacy: 3 times
Clear: 16 times
Goal: 6 times.


Click here for a slideshow of the 9 key points of the speech

Limbaugh gets Shat on

I asked the other day why it is that only comedians seem to be asking the probing questions. It turns out I was wrong. We also have method overactors from the final frontier doing the job of the 4th estate.
Huff Post

On an upcoming episode of William Shatner's "Raw Nerve" Shatner grills guest Rush Limbaugh on health care. The conversation is heated, and the setting -- the two men sit on an S shaped love-seat in front of a lit fireplace -- is downright surreal.

"Here's my premise and you agree with it or not," Shatner posited. "If you have money, you are going to get health care. If you don't have money, it's more difficult."

Rush skirted the issue and chose to talk about real estate instead. "If you have money you're gonna get a house on the beach. If you don't have money you're gonna live in a bungalow somewhere."

"Right," Shatner responded, "but we're talking about health care."

"What's the difference?"

Shatner pressed on. "The difference is we're talking about health care, not a house or a bungalow."

The stimulus is working; why the poll numbers are down

via BCGAB

Suck it, Republicans:
Between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were created or saved through September as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

The data, released Monday, say the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic product was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been had the $787 billion stimulus package not passed in February. Also, the stimulus lowered the unemployment by between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points, according to the report.
Yeah, 10.2 percent unemployment is awful and the Democrats need to pass another jobs bill right away or else. But this proves that spending equals growth equals jobs equals recovery. It's the ridiculousness of the corporate press and the Republicans that put this very basic economic notion into doubt, but don't hold your breath waiting for a retraction of all the red-baiting and concern-trolling we endured last February/March.

As Matt Yglesias points out, it shouldn't be surprising that Obama's poll numbers aren't that great. In fact, there's historical evidence for this.
One frustrating aspect of “horse race” coverage of the U.S. political system is that the people who insist on covering important policy debates as a kind of game are also pretty bad at analyzing the game.

Nor should it surprise anyone that 11 months of deteriorating economic conditions have taken a toll on Obama’s popularity.

Look at Ronald Reagan’s approval rating:


At the time there were probably lots of clever stories written about why Reagan was doing better or worse on whichever day. But looking back at things from 20 years later, the moral of the story seems to be pretty simple “recessions and giant scandals make presidents unpopular.” And of course they do!
So the next time you hear Doucheborough talking about how the numbers show Obama is tanking, remember he's looking at snapshots and trying to get you to tune in tomorrow for the political equivalent of "How'd the Celtics do last night?"

I'll also remind you of this post from last week, showing that the only place Obama is down is among Republicans. It used to be that a lot of them hated him. Now even more do.

The Road trailer

Why this is not in wide release (read: in a theater I don't have to drive 2 hours each way to) is beyond me. The book is magnificent.

Biden on health care: Who do you trust?

Olbermann: "Declare victory and get out"

Mr. President, it now falls to you to be both former Republican Senator George Aiken and the man to whom he spoke, Lyndon Johnson. You must declare victory, and get out.

You should survey the dismal array of options in front of you -- even the orders given out last night -- sort them into the unacceptable, the unsuccessful, and the merely un-palatable, and then put your arm down on the table and wipe the entire assortment of them off your desk -- off this nation's desk -- and into the scrap heap of history.

Unless you are utterly convinced -- willing to bet American lives on it -- that the military understands the clock is running, and that the check is not blank, and that the Pentagon will go to sleep when you tell it to, even though the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys desperate to stay up as late as possible by any means necessary -- get out now.

We are, at present, fighting, in no particular order, the Taliban; a series of sleazy political-slash-military adventurers, not the least of whom is this mountebank election-fixer Karzai, and what National Security Advisor Jones estimated in October was around eight dozen al-Qaida in the neighborhood.

But poll after poll, and anecdote after anecdote, of the reality of public opinion inside Afghanistan is that its residents believe we are fighting Afghanistan. That we, Sir, have become an occupying force. Yes: if we leave, Afghanistan certainly will have an occupying force, whether it's from Pakistan, or consisting of foreign fighters who will try to ally themselves with the Taliban.

Can you prevent that? Can you convince the Afghans that you can prevent that? Can you convince Americans that it is the only way to un-do Bush and Cheney policy catastrophes dating back to Cheney's days as Secretary of Defense in the '90s? If not, Mr. President, this way lies Vietnam. If you liked Iraq, you'll love Afghanistan with 35,000 more troops, complete with the new wrinkle, straight from the minder-binder lingo of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22."

President Obama will be presenting an exit strategy for Afghanistan. The exit strategy that begins by entering still further. Lose to win, sink to swim, escalate to disengage. And even this disconnect of fundamental logic is predicated on the assumption that once the extra troops go in, when the President says "okay, time for adult swim, Generals, time to get out of the pool and bring the troops with you," that the Pentagon is just going to say "Yeppers."

The Pentagon, often to our eternal relief, but just as often to our eternal regret is in the War business. You were right, Mr. President, to slow the process down, once a series of exit strategies was offered to you by men whose power and in some case livelihoods are predicated on making sure all exit strategies, everywhere, forever, don't really result in any service-man or woman actually exiting.

These men are still in the belly of what President Eisenhower so rightly, so prophetically, christened the military-industrial complex. Now and later as the civilian gray eminences with "retired" next to their names, formally lobbying the House and Senate and informally lobbying the nation through television and the printed word, to "engage" here, or "serve" there, or "invest" everywhere, they are, in many cases, just glorified hardware salesmen.

It was political and operational brilliance, Sir, to retain Mr. Bush's last Secretary of Defense Mr. Gates. It was transitional and bipartisan insight, Sir, to maintain General Stanley McChrystal as a key leader in the field.

And it was a subtle but powerful reminder to the authoritarian minded War-hawks like John McCain, and the blithering idiots like former Governor Palin, of the Civilian authority of the Constitution it was a picture drawn in crayon for ease of digestion by the Right, to tell our employees at the Pentagon, to take their loaded options and go away and come back with some real ones.

You reminded them, Mr. President, that Mr. Gates works for the people of the United States of America, not the other way around. You reminded them, Mr. President, that General McChrystal is our employee, not our dictator. You've reminded them Mr. President. Now, tonight, remind yourself. Stanley McChrystal.

General McChrystal has doubtless served his country bravely and honorably and at great risk, but to date his lasting legacy will be as the great facilitator of the obscenity that was transmuting the greatest symbol of this nation's true patriotism, of its actual willingness to sacrifice, into a distorted circus fun-house mirror version of such selflessness.

Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Mr. McChrystal killed the truth about Pat Tillman. And that willingness to stand truth on its head on behalf of "selling" a war or the generic idea of America being at war to turn a dead hero into a meaningless recruiting poster, should ring essentially relevant right now.

From the very center of a part of our nation that could lie to the public, could lie to his mother, about what really happened to Pat Tillman, from the very man who was at the operational center of that plan, comes the entire series of plans to help us supposedly find the way out of Afghanistan? We are supposed to believe General McChrystal isn't lying about Afghanistan?

Didn't he blow his credibility by lying, so obviously and so painfully, about Pat Tillman? Why are we believing the McChrystals? Their reasons might sound better than the ones they helped George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricate for Iraq, but surely they are just as transparently oblivious of the forest.

Half of them insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of not repeating Iraq, while the other half, believing Bush failed in Iraq by having too few troops, insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of repeating Iraq. And they are suddenly sounding frighteningly similar to what the Soviet Generals were telling the Soviet Politicos in the 1980s about Afghanistan.

Sure it's not going well, sure we need to get out, we all see that. But first let's make sure it's stabilized and then we get out. The Afghans will be impressed by our commitment and will then take over the cost of policing themselves, even though the cost would be several times their gross national product. Just send in those extra troops, just for awhile. Just 350,000.

I'm sorry, did I say 350,000? I meant 35,000. Must be a coffee stain on the paper. Mr. President, last fall, you were elected. Not General McChrystal, not Secretary Gates, not another Bushian Drone of a politician. You. On the Change Ticket. On the pitch that all politicians are not created equal.

And upon arrival you were greeted by a Three Mile Island of an economy, so bad that in the most paranoid recesses of the mind one could wonder if the Republicans didn't plan it that way, to leave you in the position of having to prove the ultimate negative, that you staved off worldwide financial collapse, that if you had not done what you so swiftly did, that this "economic cloudy day" would have otherwise been the "biblical flood of finance."

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton's hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

Jon Stewart, meet Party Crashers

11.30.2009

Because one is not a Christian, that's why.

From the Inbox in Time Magazine, December 7, 2009, regarding the Fort Hood shootings:
I found it interesting that your cover photo of Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed in the name of God, labels him a possible terrorist [Nov. 23]. In Verbatim, Scott Roeder, who also killed in the name of God, is called the "accused shooter". What's the difference between them again? I am less concerned about the thousand or so radical Muslims, who are highly monitored, than I am about the million or so unguarded radical "Christians" whose hatred is fanned daily by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

David Berry, Raton, N.M.
Brilliant.

Which was worse?

I take CrasherGate very seriously. This was a major screwup that could have had a tragic outcome. Thankfully it didn't, but mechanisms have to be put in place to ensure this can't ever happen again.

That having been said, the politicization of this event by the right is a) unsurprising, given they have no moral center anymore and b) unwarranted. Let me remind you of this breach:


Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw shoes.

And by the way, if it had been Howard Dean that commuted the sentence of a multiple-cop-killing, chronically repetitive offender like Maurice Clemmons, you can sure as hell bet that the right would go stunningly ape-shit over it. But since it was Mike Huckabee, well....

The Obama Disaster

Yeah, it's been a total clusterfuck.
Steve Benen

The success of his first year will be largely dependent on the outcome of the health care debate, but Obama may soon be able to point to his first 12 months in office and say he rescued the economy from a depression, passed the health care reform bill Americans have been waiting decades for, approved most progressive budget bill in a generation, got a Supreme Court nominee confirmed, lifted the ban on stem-cell research, passed a national service bill, passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed new regulations of the credit card industry, passed new regulation of the tobacco industry, achieved some key counter-terrorism successes, and helped improve the nation's standing on the world stage.

Even getting what they want, the GOP will NEVER support the President

Andrew Sullivan

If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton.

Bob Cesca

The Republicans will undermine, criticize, blast, refute, contradict, smear, lie about and generally hurl their own poop at this president -- no matter what and on all fronts. What we heard for eight years about not undermining the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm's way? No longer applicable. The Republicans and wingnuts have no regard for their own contradictions and platitudes. Looking ridiculous and inconsistent is irrelevant to them.

That said, any attempt to find a way to make them happy is a pointless exercise. They can't even be swayed by their own words. How is anyone supposed to top that?

U.K. envoy: U.S. was 'hell bent' on Iraq war

(AP)

The United States was "hell bent" on a 2003 military invasion of Iraq and actively undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the war, a former British diplomat told an inquiry Friday.

Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, said that President George W. Bush had no real interest in attempts to agree on a U.N. resolution to provide explicit backing for the conflict.

The ex-diplomat, who served as Britain's envoy in Iraq after the invasion, said serious preparations for the war had begun in early 2002 and took on an unstoppable momentum.

As diplomats frantically attempted in early 2003 to agree upon a U.N. resolution approving a military offensive, Bush's key aides grew impatient — criticizing the process as an unnecessary distraction, he said.

Grumbling from Washington "included noises about 'this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what's going to have to be done anyway — and deal with this with the use of force,'" Greenstock testified before the inquiry into the Iraq war.

Several nations had hoped to stall the invasion of Iraq to allow U.N. weapons inspectors more time to search for evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the key justification for the war. No such weapons were ever found.

Yet Bush's inner circle cared little about what international allies thought and refused to halt plans to invade in March 2003, Greenstock said. He said even Blair was unable to persuade Bush, winning only a brief hiatus of two weeks.

"The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter," Greenstock said in a written statement to the inquiry, provided alongside his live testimony.
In the Loop indeed:


But it's not funny. George W. Bush and his advisors are responsible for deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Try to justify that to your God.

Senate report: Bin Laden was ‘within our grasp’

(AP)

Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.

The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
The best comment on this comes from Rainn Wilson via Twitter:


And the typical reaction is, well, typical. These 2 Tweets tell you about all you need to know. When confronted with truth, the right wing yells 'shut up!". Or "you lie".


Side note: Whether it's Wilson or Stewart or Colbert, why is it that the only real commentary on today's issues is coming from comedians? Why is the Serious Media playing every issue as if it's not a matter of fact, but opinion?