Now that Joe Biden has been tapped as Obama’s running mate, it is time to get down to the very serious business of calling him a pussy, an appeaser, soft on terror. Michael Rubin of the AEI and Iran are the weapon of choice, Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post is just the vehicle. If it helps with the Jewish vote, well, that is just a happy coincidence.
Fucking wankers.
*** Update ***
Yuval Levin chimes in at the NRO. “Damning,” he tells us, without telling us anything at all. The party of Rove knows, instinctively, to attack the opponent where they are strongest, and turn it into a liability.
And when I say it is off with a bang, I hope Howard Dean was offstage shooting whoever planned the first ten minutes. First, an “inter-faith” prayer to start the ceremony, which went something like this:
“We thank you heavenly father for bringing together this diverse group of diverse delegates together to do our sacred duty to diversely represent the diverse people blah blah blah blah.”
It was like a bad SNL skit. It was like the time I went to a church ceremony for Christmas with my parents after years away from church, and found us holding hands, lighting candles, and singing “Oh Tannenbaum” while wondering when the pagans had taken over the Disciples of Christ. If this is the fruit of years of effort to reach values voters, just stop. We might as well say fuck it and go for the satan worshipper vote.
God willing, no one saw this.
Additional highlights included a hesistant announcer who consistantly put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and seemed to not know what she was saying, and the children’s choir, who started ahead of the beat singing the national anthem to the pleasing tones of an electric piano. I have expected to see Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, and Christopher Guest on stage it was that bad.
Meanwhile, CNN is in full ratfuck mode. For balance they had Clinton surrogate James Carville and McCain surrogate and hypocritical moralizing loudmouth Bill Bennett on to explain why Obama sucks, and Bennett dutifully informed us that this is the most liberal Democratic party EVAH and that while most people like Biden, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas don’t (without noting the irony that all three of them were confirmed).
They then broke to the floor, where a 19 year old Clinton delegate was going to explain why he was still going to vote for Clinton. Fortunately, the microphone was broken, and as they went to commercial break, Wolf informed us:
“Well, I hope they fix your microphone, because we want to hear from the delegates. Especially the Clinton delegates who are unhappy.”
Yeah. It is gonna go down like that. Fucking liberal media.
The Bush/Cheney White House has “lost” almost a years worth of e-mail, and aww, gosh-darnit, it just looks like they won’t be able to recover them:
The White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003 and there is little if any likelihood a recovery effort will be completed by the time the Bush administration leaves office, according to an internal White House draft document obtained by The Associated Press.
The nine-page outline of the White House’s e-mail problems invites companies to bid on a project to recover the missing electronic messages.
The work would be carried out through April 19, 2009, according to the Office of Administration request for contractors’ proposals, which was dated June 20.
Last week, the White House declined to comment on the document.
On Wednesday, the White House refused to talk about internal White House contracting procedures, but said the information is “outdated and seriously inaccurate.” It would not elaborate. The White House also declined to say whether it has hired a contractor for the work yet.
Such a terrible loss, and I hope no one tries to make political points out of this. It is just an accident that all these emails from a time when all sorts of extremely sensitive internal discussions were taking place just “disappeared.” Only a real leftard would assume malice.
Yes, there are all sorts of arcane legal arguments being made here (most of which I will openly admit to not understanding), but the gist of this story is that a judge tinkered with a jury in order to get the verdict the state wanted.
The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.
The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.
Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.
Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush’s successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.
Welcome to the police state, bitches. And in case they do decide to go to trial, the judges will be happy to help the jury convict you.
All together now- “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” Our collective wars are killing this country.
Step away from the computer for a bit, and the intertrons blows up with the latest panty-sniffing gossip. At any rate, I see via memeorandum that Edwards has admitted to sleeping with that Rielle Hunter:
John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.
In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
I still really don’t care, as I have mentioned before, and realize this is one of those issues that is just going to be a total pain in the ass for me. For starters, I have never liked Edwards and always thought he was a phony and a fraud, have stated so repeatedly, and every time I do I end up dealing with days of back and forth with his supporters who tell me that I am just showing my inner Rethuglican and that Edwards was at least speaking truth to power. Now that he admits to cheating on his wife, I have some more evidence to back up my long-held feelings, and will more than likely be accused by the same Edwards supporters of piling on.
Second, I know that I have to at least mention this, lest I be accused by right wing trolls of avoiding the issue. Consider it officially mentioned.
Third, I generally am of the opinion that this sort of thing really isn’t anyone’s business, and the only reason it ever is anyone’s business is when the hypocrisy of the family values crowd comes in to play. Maybe I have a double standard- when most people cheat, I think “What a jackass” and I feel bad for their spouse. When Republicans who spew their family values bullshit and sanctity of marriage crap, I go to town. This just seemed like a case of the former to me, but having said that, it is pretty clear that Edwards lied to the media, and from what I can tell, appears to still be lying or spinning or whatever you want to call it, so I guess that does raise the bar.
One really salient point that the commenters at ObWi covered, however, is how exceedingly reckless this was on the part of Edwards and, for that matter, his wife (as she allegedly knew about the affair when he was running). Can you imagine what would be happening right now if he had won the nomination? Democrats everywhere should be pretty pissed off at John Edwards for that bit of behavior.
An affair is one thing, and it’s bad enough. But to have an affair while your wife is battling cancer (yeah, cancer in remission, whatever)? It’s so Republican. I supported Edwards throughout his campaign. Now he just makes me ill.
Edwards denied paying any money to Hunter to keep her from going public but said it was possible some of his friends or supporters may have made payments without telling him.
This just strikes me as a stupid idea, and one that will fail quite miserably, and rightly so:
Led by Tom Matzzie, a liberal political operative who has been involved with some prominent left-wing efforts in recent years, the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.
“We want to stop the Swift Boating before it gets off the ground,” said Mr. Matzzie, who described his effort as “going for the jugular.”
The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.
A couple of quick thoughts. First, the notion that they way to fight swiftboat attacks is to, well, swiftboat the swiftboaters, strikes me as the sort of illogic the right wing has labored under for the past few years- the best way to fight the immoral and and evil behavior of terrorists is to… torture and indefinitely detain while bombing indiscriminately. You can see shades of this idiocy still today, as wingers yesterday lamented that the Hamdan sentence showed we are not “tough enough” to win the war on terror and that they are laughing at us because we are so soft. In short, the best way to stop behaviors you do not like are not to emulate and legitimize those behaviors.
Second, the real problem with the swiftboaters is not the swiftboaters themselves, but the fact that in this one case, the media gave them a whole ton of attention. There are plethora of books, websites and e-zines out there right now saying all sorts of horrible stuff about John McCain, much of it along the lines of the kind of crap that was spewed about Kerry. I am not going to link the jackasses (and don’t put that crap in the comments of this post, please), but you can do your own web search including the words John + McCain + canary and get a quick idea of the stuff out there. The difference is that the media is paying no attention- and that is the crucial difference.
Third, I just generally find threats like this distasteful, and right now the Democratic party needs as many folks like me in their wing as possible. I am not a Democrat because I am some sort of crazy liberal who believes in all sorts of left-wing causes. I am a Democrat because in a two-party system, when one party is abso-damn-lutely corrupt, immoral, incompetent, and, well, evil, you have to do what you can to support the other party. Long story short- there are a lot of folks like me out there who are enthusiastically supporting lots of left-wing candidates as a way to return some balance and order to the system, but who are not going to take kindly to the Democratic party embracing the worst aspects of the right-wing. This sort of nonsense just doesn’t strike me as right, even if you think your cause is just.
And finally, I just hate bullying, and that is what this smacks of to me. Give to the cause we don’t approve of or that says things we don’t like, and we smear your name all over the internet and give you a counter-top inspection. Sound familiar?
Frankly, I’ve always doubted the power of Jew-baiting as a method of scaring up votes in any black community outside of the tri-state area Gotham. That’s not because blacks aren’t antisemetic, it’s because—in the words of the great Jimmy Baldwin—they’re antiwhite. Jew-baiting against a white Jewish guy in a majority black district, is like attempting a 360 dunk. Why go through all that when the the plain-old race-baiting layup will suffice?
Prince George’s County authorities did not have a “no-knock” warrant when they burst into the home of a mayor July 29, shooting and killing his two dogs—contrary to what police said after the incident.
Judges in Maryland can grant police the right to enter a building and serve a search warrant without knocking if the judge finds there is reasonable suspicion to think evidence might be destroyed or the officers’ safety might be endangered in announcing themselves.
A Prince George’s police spokesman said last week that a Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers were operating under such a warrant when they broke down the door of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, shooting and killing his black Labrador retrievers.
But a review of the warrant indicates that police neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking. Northrup found probable cause to suspect that drugs might be in the house and granted police a standard search warrant.
In other news on the war on your neighbor, a California man who was selling medical marijuana with the blessings of local officials and under the legal protection of California state law was convicted by the feds. Take it away, Radley:
Maybe some right-winger can explain to me the wisdom of having a bullying, overbearing federal government forcing the states to deny sick people the medication that gives them relief. I’d also like someone on the right to explain to me why federalism should prevail when it comes to allowing the states to arrest gay people, ban dildoes, or to trample all over civil rights, but when it comes to letting sick people use marijuana to keep their medication down, we ought to genuflect before the power of the federal government.
There are crimes being committed in this country on a daily basis, and they are not being committed by the citizenry. For all the general hysteria about the loss of civil liberties due to the war on terror, the war on drugs is the original mac daddy of abusive government and erosion of civil rights. Our policy regarding drugs is irrational, counter-productive, and dangerous to the actual concept of America, and the rot is thorough. Whether it be the militarization of the police force, no-knock raids, the devastation of the Constitution, asset-forfeiture, or the prison-industrial complex, all of this finds its genesis in the war on drugs. It needs to be stopped. It needs to be fought. It is an outrage, and this is one of those cases where you can honestly say that the Democrats have been almost as bad as the Republicans.
The status quo is obscene, offensive, immoral, and unjust.
At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives’ retirement benefits and pay.
In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives’ supplemental benefits and compensation.
The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver, besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers. It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to fail. Now, with the current bear market in stocks weakening many pension plans, this practice could put more in jeopardy.
I am sure Red State or Hot Air can convince us this is an act of patriotism. After all, defrauding your workers in order to get tax breaks that you can pass on to your executives just sounds patriotic, doesn’t it? And then when the shit fails, you can just pass it on to the taxpayers. I mean, it is a win all the way around, right?
As someone said to me when I im’d him this link, “That is so evil I almost have to admire it.”
John McCain told CNN Thursday it is fair for his campaign manager to claim Barack Obama is playing ‘the race card.’
“I’m sorry to say that it is. It’s legitimate,” McCain told CNN’s John King. “And there’s no place in this campaign for that. There’s no place for it and we shouldn’t be doing it.”
Earlier Thursday, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis lashed out at the Democratic presidential candidate over his comments that Republicans are making an issue of his race.
“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,” Davis said in a statement sent to reporters.
And the media will let them get away with it. Again, it is just impressive. They have no shame, the media has no clue, and we are going to have to deal with this crap for the next few months.
If there is anyone who, regardless of the outcome of this election, has made sure that he will never work again in Democratic politics at any meaningful level, it is this jackass:
ABC News’ Jennifer Parker reports: A longtime friend of Sen. Hillary Clinton said it’s “incomprehensible” that Sen. Barack Obama would choose another woman to be his vice-presidential candidate over Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“The selection of either one of those instead of Sen. Clinton I would find completely incomprehensible,” said Lanny Davis of rumored Obama vice-presidential contenders Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Can we please just send this babbling, ignorant, tendentious fool to Gitmo? That is where the worst of the worst are housed, right?
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is set to challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for her California congressional seat.
After filing papers for the seat in April, Sheehan told The National Press Club Thursday she’s going through with her campaign plans.
Sheehan, a California resident without a party affiliation, accused Pelosi of “signing blank checks” funding the Bush administration and being their “accomplice.”
Sheehan last year cited a feeling of betrayal from the Democratic leadership for not ending the war in Iraq.
“I’m doing it to encourage other people to run against Congress members who aren’t doing their jobs, who are beholden to special interests,” Sheehan said in 2007.
I really, really want to mock this, but she kind of has a god damned point.