Something that everyone can agree on...

Is that there must be a special place in hell for Moammar Gadhafi.

Posters for Madison

Some ideas for posters at the Madison demonstrations:

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We're broke. Why?
Tax cuts, war, financial crisis (and more tax cuts).
Thanks, George W! (And Scott Walker.)
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Shared Sacrifice?
The Corporations and the Rich: tax cuts
Everyone Else: benefit, salary, service cuts
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Public employee unions

Joe Klein asks:

Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public?

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/18/wisconsin-the-hemlock-revolution/#ixzz1EcNvAiMb

Answer: against the might and greed of those politicians and millionaires who only want tax cuts and tax breaks, all the time.

Courting Disaster, Indeed

Another Professional Idiot, with a new book with an offensive subtitle:

"Courting Disaster. How the CIA Kept America Safe and how Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack", by Marc Thiessen.

Well, Mr. Thiessen, by politizicing the question of the next attack, you are yourself inviting it.

The "next attack" will probably happen, inevitably, no matter who is the president and no matter who gets tortured or not.

The question, really is (a) whether the torture methods that this book defends are compatible with the democratic nature and moral values of the USA, and (b) whether they, in the long run, invite more terrorism or less.

I wrote the above before reading the excellent review of this book by someone who does know what he's talking about --- a military interrogator.

Read it here: http://www.slate.com/id/2246692

The World Upside-Down

So now the House Republicans are voting against funding US troops.
Furthermore, they are doing this to deny funds to the IMF.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_06/018645.php

Shameless FOX News

Could they be more dishonest?

Quoting the President's speech out of context to make it appear as the opposite of what he actually said:

http://mediamatters.org/research/200906040053

What does this say about the patriotism of the FOX news people involved?

Without a teleprompter

Here is President Obama speaking at a news conference, without a teleprompter.

Compare to George W. Bush.

That entire teleprompter canard, courtesy of Fox and friends, is nothing but another instance of the Karl Rove maxim: attack your enemy's strengths, not his weaknesses.

The man has a talent for projection, that's sure

So Karl Rove, on Fox news, compares the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration to third world dictators:

...what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run [by] colonels in mirrored sunglasses...

Of course, it is the practices being investigated, themselves, that are reminiscent of said dictators. It is Rove himself who has done much to put the United States of American on the road to a Banana Republic.

On this subject, TPM makes an apt Junta analogy here.

More shameless Karl Rove projection

Now Karl Rove accuses President Obama of using straw man argumentation to a "troubling" degree?

WHAT?????????

As this post correctly points out, George W. Bush knew few argumentative devices other than the straw man.

And the examples from Obama that Mr. Rove thinks are "straw men" are actually, you know, accurate.

Horton on the current GOP

Another good summary...

A good summary of Karl Rove's carreer

This struck me as a very accurate summary:

The good news is, Karl Rove no longer works in the White House, so his capacity to do real damage to the country has been vastly reduced. The bad news is, Rove remains a major media figure, including writing columns for the Wall Street Journal, where he continues to annoy.

That this clown helped run the executive branch of government for seven years remains vaguely horrifying. Then again, it also helps explain the mess we're in now.

Rove calls Obama's approach to the stimulus plan "my way or the highway". A CLASSIC case of the projection that they've engaged in for so long. Not to mention the boldface lying.

p.s. In this post, Noam Scheiber dissects a single paragraph of Rove's editorial. He misses one falsehood: Rove calling the Democrats' spending "permanent". The entire point of the stimulus is that it is temporary --- unlike the permanent tax cuts that Bush and Rove fought so much for.

Bush's speechwriter does not understand terrorism

Sigh...

According to this guy, Chief Speechwriter for George W. Bush, the decision of who will be the next President is in the hands of terrorists.

It is true, there has been no terrorist attack in the US since Sept. 11 (let's conveniently ignore the Anthrax attacks for the time being). The article assumes, with no proof, that the only explanation for this is the Bush Administration's policies.

However, do we have any idea how much of this is due to (a) sheer luck? or (b) Al-Qaeda deciding they don't need to have one yet? Or, (c), the terrorists' planning and execution time being longer than 7 years?

This, to mention just a few possible reasons that have nothing to do with anything that the Bush Administration has done, or could possibly do. He just assumes that illegal wiretapping and torture are guaranteed to foil all terrorist plots, from now on in perpetuity.

Update: for more on the matter, see this post at the Washington Monthly.

Here comes the rabid irrational opposition

A hilarious article by Dick Morris, detailing Obama's socialism.

Tax rebate checks from Obama are now called "welfare". Did he use the same term to describe Bush's rebates?

Primadonnas

So yesterday I'm watching CNN with Anderson Cooper, not normally the worst offenders in the insanity (or inanity) that is media in the US, when they start talking about Barack Obama's do-over oath.

Cooper and the correspondent complained that there were no cameras at the event, and make it look like it was some mysterious thing that they uncovered by overhearing a conversation at the White House.

They remarked that the lack of video cameras was "ironic" given the promises of transparency from the new Administration.

Some remarks:

• There is no clash with the transparency promises! There was a press pool at the event, everyone knows what happened at the event, and there was nothing to hide at the event. Just because CNN did not get 1 minute of video to play over and over does not make it some secret conspiracy of some sort.
• Did CNN complain this loudly when the Bush White House denied to release *information* of actual importance? (Examples too numerous to mention here, but let's just start with the atendees to Cheney's Energy Policy meetings.)

Double take

From the New York Times' article on Fox News and the new administration:

The media world will watch carefully to see whether Fox receives the same treatment from an Obama White House that it received from Mr. Bush’s.

Uh? Would they expect to get the same treatment? Why?

It would make more sense the other way around: We should watch carefully and see if the Obama White House receives the same treatment from Fox that the Bush White House received.

Somehow I doubt this will be the case.

Quote of the day

From The New Yorker Online, Todd Snider:

Just from interviews and stuff I see on Radiohead, I get the impression that these guys aren’t in this for the chicks, and that just seems dumb to me.

What can she be thinking? How is she thinking?

I wonder about Sarah Palin's though processes... Never mind the Couric interview (as telling as that might be); there's more pre-meditated problems:

There's her strange choice of quotation in her Republican Convention speech.

And there is her mis-quote of Madeleine Albright's "There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't help other women", from a Starbucks cup. Not only did it not occur to her that the quote was not applicable to the question of voting for a woman, but she did not seem to have the self-awareness to reflect that, perhaps, the quote was referring to women such as herself.

But why?

Can someone please ask Sarah Palin the follow-up question, of why it is "reckless" for Barak Obama to point out the problem of civilian casualties in Afghanistan?

Update: For more on this, see this post.

New update: The McCain-Palin campaign releases an ad on this: the accusation is based on a dishonest interpretation of Obama's comments. Kinda like the "lipstick on a pig."

Here is factcheck.org's debunking.

A little disturbing...

Consider this line from McCain's remarks, Sept. 30:

So, that's how we see this election: Country First or Obama First, and I have a feeling I know which side you're all on

This seems like dishonest rhetoric from the get-go. It would seem that a choice of "McCain First or Obama First" would be more fair and balanced.

Banana Republic update: The Economy

Krugman summarizes nicely.