Archive for February, 2009
Hypocrisy Watch
Think Progress gets all triumphant with regards to this bit from Obama‘s speech: [W]e have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the [...]
Michael’s Steele’s Brilliant Vision For GOP Rebirth
The man is a visionary, thinking way outside the box: On Fox News, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele said he was open to withholding RNC funds from the three GOP Senators who backed President Obama’s stimulus package… Speaking of Senators Arlen Specter, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Steele said that the Senators were likely [...]
Indefinite Detention Without Charges Is Still Alive And Well
So we don’t have secret CIA prisons any more (we don’t, right?), and we are going to close down Guantanamo within a year. But those who know that the U.S. can be kept safe only by holding detainees beyond the reach of U.S. laws — holding them indefinitely, without bringing charges, and without access to [...]
Covering Up For Bush
At some point you just throw up your hands and go: “Who the hell is Barack Obama, and why does he keep taking these weird stands that don’t seem to make any damn sense at all?” It will be interesting, no doubt, to see what the proponents of the Grandmaster-of-Three-Dimensional-Chess theory make of this, though. [...]
Change Is A Many-Splendored Thing
In his prime-time press conference on February 9, Barack Obama made it clear that tax cuts were included in the stimulus bill not just to woo Republican support, but because Obama himself wanted them there. As far as Obama was concerned, we needed tax cuts in addition to spending. Yesterday brought news that Obama also [...]
Richard Shelby’s Unknown Father
There was all that nonsense during the campaign about Barack Obama‘s citizenship. Nonsense that centered around whether or not he has a valid U.S. birth certificate. Nonsense that everybody thought had been pretty much put to rest: According to the Associated Press, state officials in Hawaii checked health department records during the campaign and determined [...]
Depends On The Definition Of “Take Credit”
Michael Falcone is a journalist employed, presumably in good faith, by The New York Times. They should probably send him to a good Remedial English program before they allow him to write any more stories for them. On Thursday, he produced a story with this lede: Republican lawmakers nearly unanimously resisted supporting the president’s $787 [...]
The Devil And Obstructionist Politics
Via The Huffington Post‘s Jason Linkins, here is the most entertaining NYT op-ed you’ll ever read. Needs no comment from me. Jason’s introduction is teaser-trailer enough: But if you haven’t gotten to read Gail Collins‘ wonderful op-ed on the matter, please do. It’s an entertaining rundown of parliamentary dysfunction, from coast-to-coast. It’s got it all: [...]
The Deep Doo-Doo Diagnostic Test
As a public figure, how do you know when you’re in really deep doo-doo? How about when your spokesman decides that he can no longer spin your conduct, and resigns on you in the middle of an ongoing debacle? (To put this in perspective, just think of some of the conduct that spokesmen have gamely [...]
Buttercheeks Invokes Climate Change
Alberto “Buttercheeks” Gonzales, in a startling departure from Bushworld orthodoxy, conceded today that climate change is real. Here he is, speaking to David Weigel of The Washington Independent: I asked him whether he would participate in a “truth commission,” as proposed by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), to look into alleged law-breaking by the Bush administration. [...]