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W. calling out Rush for being a douche?
For all the snarkiness I throw President Bush’s way its always good to remember that he is a gentleman and, in the end, truly presidential.
Of course I expect Mr. Levin et al to now patiently explain to me why Rush isn’t a Real Conservative™.
Jamie posted this at 6:58 PM HKT on Monday, January 18th, 2010 as George Bush Rules!
This is why I never trust people in my business:
Jamie posted this at 5:24 PM HKT on Monday, January 18th, 2010 as Pop Culture Is Filth
Yeah, pretty much.
Jamie posted this at 2:59 PM HKT on Monday, January 18th, 2010 as Health Care
To read He Who Shall Not Be Linked or to watch certain mainstream news commentators, one gets the impression that John Yoo is some sort of fire-breathing fascist neo-con warmonger.
In light of his recent beatdown of Jon Stewart:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Daily Show: Exclusive – John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
|
||||
I’m very much looking forward to this weeks Uncommon Knowledge. To be honest my libertarian leanings have forced me to view Professor Yoo in much the same way as Sullivan and Stewart, but based on this first video I am hoping that my initial beliefs are in error.
It is clear that there is room for a robust discussion on the nature of the executive in our Constitutional Republic, and Professor Yoo is making a very good case for a powerful and flexible executive. I only wish he had been allowed to make this case during the Bush Administration, he is clearly more than capable of doing so. Instead we got the sneering Cheneyism that ignored critics rather than engaging them.
I will be picking up his book this weekend and look forward to reading it.
Jamie posted this at 11:36 AM HKT on Monday, January 18th, 2010 as Politics, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution
Dammit, Julie Andrews, you were in the Sound of Music.
At least your previous crapfests had one redeeming virtue.
Jamie posted this at 10:54 AM HKT on Monday, January 18th, 2010 as Pop Culture Is Filth
I think this is true:
I also don’t know who’s listening to [Robertson]; in my entire life, I’ve never met anyone, in church or elsewhere, who didn’t roll their eyes when his name was mentioned.
But why, then, is he still around? Robertson is the crazy uncle of right-wing Christianity: he says the damnedest things, and these are taken as just “who he is.” And like any crazy uncle, I’m not sure if he could say anything bad enough to prevent him from being invited to the family reunion.
Allow me, for a moment, to stand out from the crowd. I will now say something nice about Pat Robertson: he puts on a good tv show. I say this unironically, and not as a backhanded compliment. Around here it airs during daytime hours when crappy judge shows and soap operas are the only alternative on broadcast tv. The 700 Club has good human interest stories, approaches news stories from a conservative Christian angle – which, literally, you can get nowhere else on television – without being overly biased, and provides competent discussions of most of its subject matter.
On the few episodes I’ve watched, Robertson was inoffensive and came across as surprisingly knowledgeable. I watched one episode where he gave a competent lecture (complete with whiteboard drawings) of the chemistry underlying ozone depletion. For the life of me I can’t remember in what context he gave that lecture, but I remember looking up and seeing a marker in his hand and the phrase “free radicals” escaping his lips. He talked about it fairly indepth for about ten minutes, didn’t say anything that contradicted what I knew to be true, and said several things I wasn’t aware of. All on broadcast tv, during daytime hours, on a show geared toward conservative Christians.
I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for people saying stupid crap, but Robertson occasionally exceeds that tolerance. Still, I’d no more kick him out of the family than I would vote for him for president.
Apollo posted this at 3:53 AM HKT on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 as Kulturkampf, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!
The Rush video is long so I’ll quote the relevant passage here:
….Yes, I think in the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen — in the words of Rahm Emanuel — we have another crisis simply too good to waste. This will play right into Obama’s hands. He’s humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, “credibility” with the black community — in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It’s made-to-order for them. That’s why he couldn’t wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.
This, ladies and gentlemen – is why we don’t deserve to lead.
*edit*
In my haste earlier I posted the wrong Limbaugh video. Here is the one I meant
Jamie posted this at 10:39 AM HKT on Friday, January 15th, 2010 as Possession by the Coultergeist
Jonah posts an email that raises one of my favorite subjects that never gets raised. I posted a few years ago that for all the Democrats may bitch about Republicans gaining an advantage in the senate and electoral college from the disproportionate power of small states, the Democrats get at least their fair share. Now I’ve got an excuse to count things again!
Back then, in the 109th Congress (2005-07), for both the ten most populous states and the ten least populous states, there were 11 Democrat senators and 9 Republicans, with Republicans getting their large majority from the 30 states in the middle.
Now for the 111th Congress, which has 60 Democrat senators and 40 Republicans, I’ll review the ten most and ten least populous states. The ten least populous:
That’s 15Ds, 5Rs. That’s a somewhat higher proportion (75%) than the overall number of Democrats in the Senate (60%). How about the ten most populous states?
That’s 13Ds, 7Rs, a somewhat more Republican ratio (35%) than in the ten least populous states, but still more Democratic than the Senate at large (Note: In 2006, New Jersey was the 10th most populous state, and it had and has 2Ds; North Carolina has moved up).
As I did for the 109th Congress, I’ll break down states into groups of ten and list their partisan representation in the Senate:
So, as in the 109th Congress, the Republicans do better in states 21-40. But what’s interesting this time is that the most lopsided group is the Democrats’ control of senate seats from the ten least populous states. I said this in 2006, and I’ll say it in 2009, and I’ll almost certainly say it for any future years I compile such numbers: “Remarkably enough, senate apportionment seems to most benefit the party that wins elections.”
While I’m doing numbers, I’ll also break down the 2008 presidential election as I did the 2004 presidential election, showing how many states from each group were won by each party. Overall, Obama carried 28 out of 50 states (56%):
So McCain won a majority of the 30 smallest states. But considering that he only got 32% of the electoral vote, it’s hard to say that Republicans really benefited from their wins in the small states. Obama carried a huge electoral majority because he won 15 of the 20 largest states. That is as it should be. The Constitution works again: he who wins the votes of the American people wins the votes of the American people. Hallelujah, amen.
Apollo posted this at 4:16 AM HKT on Friday, January 15th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Journalism, Politics
Here’s video evidence that Obama is dead. Coakley could have gotten a more vigorous endorsement from Teddy himself.
George Bush was in his final year or two, dealing with an opposition Congress, before he looked anywhere near this tired. For all the press accolades that Obama has gotten for being in shape and playing lots of basketball, he looks like hell these days. Considering that he’s the only thing separating Joe Biden from real power, I hope he starts taking better care of himself.
Apollo posted this at 11:29 PM HKT on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, Wicked Crazy Massachusetts
You know the classic image of the mustache-twirling villain tying a white maiden to train tracks? Well, if the maiden were blue, and if it cost $200m to make, you’d have Avatar.
Tom posted this at 10:32 PM HKT on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 as Film Rants
Union guys (note the purple SEIU vests) knock over a reporter trying to get a picture of Martha Coakley, candidate for the open Massachusetts Senate seat
The boys at Hillbuzz have a great deal of fun making Despair.com style posters about the incident.
Hubbard posted this at 10:15 PM HKT on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 as Wicked Crazy Massachusetts
So perhaps this is normal around here, but a few minutes ago I heard a series of strange noises and went outside to investigate. My neighbor has driven her car up on the grass and is, um, washing it, I guess, using only a water hose and a broom. She sprays the car with water, then awkwardly scrubs it with the bristley end of the broom, then sprays some more, scrubs some more, etc. The sound I heard is coming from a very pudgy child who is stomping empty soda cans a few feet away from her. By the looks of things, he had emptied one 30-gallon bag of soda cans and had two more bags to go.
I’ll be glad when school starts back up so I will once again be ignorant of my neighbors’ excentricities.
Apollo posted this at 2:07 PM HKT on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 as Vignettes
I can’t say as I too much care what the Telegraph says in its list of 100 most influential conservatives and liberal, but this paragraph about the insuffable and decidedly unfunny Wanda Sykes make me squirm only because it’s completely true:
Took her chance at the White House Correspondents Dinner to accuse conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh of treason and said she hoped his kidneys failed – prompting laughter among many liberals and a grin from Obama. That performance catapulted her into getting her own show on Fox TV.
I’m sure there are others, both conservative and liberal, who made their way onto the list through unsavory means, but that is a uniquely unflattering paragraph. Unflattering to Sykes, unflattering to Obama, unflattering to Fox. Unflattering to America.
Apollo posted this at 2:27 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 as Pop Culture Is Filth
Except for the Democrat-controlled 103rd Congress (1993-95), I think it’s safe to say that the Republican-controlled 109th Congress (2005-07) is, at best, the worst failure of all Congresses in the last 60 years in terms of maintaining its majority. If one considers how little the 109th got accomplished (deficit spending; forcing a federal judge to affirm a Florida court’s decision to allow Scott Schiavo to pull his wife’s plug; almost passing amnesty; letting the president’s judicial nominees be filibustered by a party with 45 senate seats), it might well be the worst Congress of the last century.*
With that in mind, I’m pleased to observe that of the 55 Republicans who composed the majority in the 109th Congress, no more than 32 of them will be in office when the 112th Congress is sworn in next January (see here, and here). That number will be 31 if my state’s senior senator stays true to her pledge to resign in the spring.
Considering that 6 of those Republicans were elected for the first time in 2004, there will be less than half of the 51 Republicans who comprised the Senate majority in the 108th Congress. That’s a lot of turnover.
*I’m trying to be objective here. If I were being subjective, I can’t think of a Congress that accomplished more evil than the 94th (1975-77), which turned its back on our Vietnamese allies, doomed tens (hundreds?) of millions to live their lives under the heel of Communist tyrants, and neutered American foreign policy for a generation. The yellow finks of that Congress left a shadow that we still haven’t escaped. But, speaking objectively, at least that Congress accomplished something, even if that something was, objectively, evil.
Apollo posted this at 1:37 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 as Politics
I tried to think of an analogy for Oliver Stone complaining that Americans don’t understand history well enough, but considering that he’s the creator of the greatest disinformation film since Birth of a Nation, I’m not sure there’s an analogy that covers it. Perhaps it’s like the Marlboro Man complaining about the quality of high school PE classes? I’m drawing a blank here.
But shame on Showtime for agreeing to air Stone’s dribble.
Apollo posted this at 1:40 AM HKT on Monday, January 11th, 2010 as Commie Recrudescence, Pop Culture Is Filth