Archive for August, 2009
This Wasn’t Me…
…but I couldn’t have said it any better: [Caller to President] I’m getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit. You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match. And I’m just not getting — it’s very [...]
DeLay Puts On Exhibition
Is Tom DeLay doing drugs, or what? He showed up on MSNBC to chat with Chris Matthews yesterday, and put on a most convincing exhibition of incoherence and confusion: After a few minutes of chit chat, Matthews asked DeLay about the far right and its conspiracy theories, including whether President Obama is proposing “Hitlerian health [...]
GOP Attack On CIA
Nine top Senate Republicans are calling the CIA a thoroughly unprofessional and dysfunctional organization, which cannot be trusted to protect the country against future terrorist attacks. Specifically, they think the CIA is likely to deliberately pass up “opportunities to prevent attacks” and “policies to protect the nation”. The Republicans with this dim view of the [...]
Has Grassley Finally Got Through?
It would appear the the White House may — if a largely unsourced NYT article is correct — finally have undergone a drastic surgical procedure to clean out heavy deposits of wax from its ears. After weeks of championing Chuck Grassley as the patron saint of bipartisan healthcare reform, they now seem to be prepared [...]
Ted Olson is Left of Obama on Gay Marriage
Theodore Olson’s Road to Championing Same-Sex Marriage – NYTimes.com (8/19/09): Mr. Olson is preparing for what he believes could be the most important case of his career, the binders stuffed with briefs, case law and notes offer a different take on a man many liberals love to hate. They are filled with arguments Mr. Olson [...]
Too Soon?
Conservative U.S. commentator Novak dies aged 78 – Reuters (8/18/09): Robert Novak, a conservative political columnist known as the “Prince of Darkness” and who unleashed a political firestorm by publishing the name of an undercover CIA operative, died on Tuesday. He was 78. We of course prefer the nickname Jon Stewart gave him, “Douchebag of [...]
Keeping The Homeland Safe
If ham-handed racial profiling can keep us safe from terrorist attacks, then we can all stop worrying. Here’s the latest example of high-profile racial profiling, conducted in the clumsiest possible manner, first when it actually happened, and then again when it came to handling the flak they should have known was going to result: Fans [...]
Moving Inexorably Towards Grand Success
So the public option is now being jettisoned by our earnest and sincere president like so much ballast that was carried this far on the voyage only so that it could be heaved overboard at the right time. At a town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado Saturday, Mr. Obama seemed to downplay the necessity of [...]
The Fine Art Of Insane Protest
Since healthcare reform is so important and everything — it touches all our lives, after all, and those of our grandmothers, too — and fighting healthcare reform is the noblest battle a right-wing warrior can join right now, it wasn’t enough for the as-yet-unidentified 51-year-old man who was detained by deputies outside a town hall [...]
Sweethearts Still
You’ll be glad to know the little bilge-spewing tantrum Chuck Grassley threw on Wednesday isn’t going to come between him and President Obama. Questioned about the incident yesterday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs allowed himself a mild dig at Grassley but made it very clear that Grassley’s comments didn’t jeopardize what the White House is still [...]