Had a nice drive, listened to the new Randy Newman and then Ice Cube’s greatest hits, and the weather is perfect. Sunny, blue skies, and cool. Great day for a trip on the highway. Some random thoughts:
1.) I listened to Limbaugh for about ten minutes, where I learned that Obama is a segregationist and, this is the term I loved, a “racist baiter.” We went to cd’s shortly after that crap.
2.) Move over invisible hand, now it is time for the invisible handout. The Paulson bailout could cost a trillion. Everett Dirksen is looking down from above and is giving us all the finger. At any rate, because the taxpayers are now on the hook for a couple trillion (if they say it is going to cost a trillion, double to triple that), the greedy bastards who got rich screwing us with the “free market” are reacting favorably. This seems as appropriate as ever:
As Atrios notes, the music stops, and you and I got left without a chair.
3.) Every day the travesty of GOP rule becomes more and more obvious. I still believe many of the same things I have always believed, whether it be about abortion, the death penalty, the use of the military, etc., but it just becomes increasingly clear with every day how bankrupt the conservative movement has become. I don’t think the Democrats are that much better, and have repeatedly stated that I came to the party pre-disillusioned, but they are, at least right now, better. That can not be argued. What galls me is the depths that some folks seem willing to sink to in order to keep power for the broken and corrupt “conservative” ideology. It seems to me that simply comparing where we are now as opposed to where we were at the end of the Clinton years really says it all. The GOP has failed, and they richly deserve a few years off.
4.) WVU football is in for a period of steep decline. The last two games give me no reason to think we can win even five games this year. Our offense is flat and predictable, our defense is flat-footed and unreliable (unless you count on them reliably being unable to get the opposing team’s offense off the field), and the play-calling was the worst I remember ever seeing. Our coaching staff is clearly in far over their heads, and I do not see any reason why quality recruits would commit to this mess. If what the past few weeks is any sign, WVU football is headed for a dark period that we have not seen since before pre-Nehlen days.
5.) Please stop calling what that jackass kid did to Sarah Palin’s email acount “hacking.” He didn’t “hack” anything. What he did was good old social engineering, much like how Kevin Mitnick exploited so many systems back in the day (although in this case, it was not even anywhere near as clever as Mitnick’s exploits). All he did was google where Palin met her husband, entered that, and he was in. Hacking, this was not.
6.) It seems that the first dude is refusing to testify in Alaska. That is right, folks. We now stand poised to elect a Republican administration that we know is corrupt, cynical, and has no respect for the law BEFORE they take office. Bravo, voters. If the McCain/Palin ticket is elected, I hope we, as a nation, get what we deserve and get it hard.
7.) Speaking of Todd and Sarah Palin, the lyrics in Randy Newman’s new song, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country made me laugh:
I’d like to say a few words
In defense of our country
Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean
Now the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seenLet’s turn history’s pages, shall we?
Take the Caesars for example
Why within the first few of them
They were sleeping with their sister
Stashing little boys in swimming pools
And burning down the City
And one of ‘em, one of ’em
Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire
That’s like vice president or somethingThat’s not a very good example, is it?
I think that deserves a “heh, indeedy.”
8.) Finally, it appears that nominating an inexperienced religious wingnut and unrepentant liar as your vice-president and then engaging in the “Lies Across America/Putting Lies First” tour has hurt McCain in the polls. Gallup has Obama up by five, RCP has him up by a few, and 538 has Obama in control of the electoral college again. All this can change, but still nice to see things trending in the right direction.
I have a bunch going on and may or may not be back later tonight. If you have some time, take this study, and if you are so inclined, throw Obama a buck or two:
Be cool.
Punchy
Wow, just penned a long comment about what a disappointment Cube’s “greatest” hits CD was, considering that he’s missing a ton of great songs from Lethal Injection and Death Cert…..only to see BJ eat my comments. Damn.
smiley
I heard that too and thought, “Yeah Rush, Obama is baiting you/”
libarbarian
I heard that her password was her zipcode. Was that wrong?
I swear that when I heard that I was like “you got to be fucking kidding me”.
jake
Whoooop! Whoooop! The Permanent Parody/Reality Meld will occur in 5…4…3…
dslak
Copy/paste, people. Use it.
dslak
I believe the mention of the ZIP code came from the fact that your ZIP code is one of the thingsYahoo uses for password retrieval. Of course, this is why my actual ZIP code is not the one I use in Yahoo.
SGEW
Mmm-mmm. Bait those racists!
Like I said yesterday, I believe Obama bringing Mr. Limbaugh* into the mix (either for McCain or against him) may be risky (who knows what weirdness may erupt from the unpredictable duo of Limbaugh and McCain), but potentially a huge win-win.
Did anyone read Limbaugh’s editorial today in the WSJ (of all places)? It’s a keeper.
Shorter Limbaugh:
(this post was saved using the miracle of copy & paste, which John McCain invented along with the Blackberry)
*I shall no longer use his first name, in order to placate the various (and vociferous) fans of a certain Canadian power trio rock band.
dslak
It’s poetic justice to see Rush Limbaugh complaining about being taken out of context.
cleek
Triumph roXXoRz!
Mary
libarbarian, it’s not that her password was her zipcode, it’s that Yahoo!’s “I forgot my password” prompt system was dead easy to bypass. To set a new password if you’ve forgotten your old one, you have to do something like fill in your birth date, fill in your zip code, and supply the answer you previously entered for one of several obscure questions like “Where did you meet your spouse”. The /b/tard took a few tries until “Wasilla high” worked, and then he was in.
Fat Mort Jellyroll
I gotta say that I too was disappointed by the Greatest hits album. The second verse of “I Wanna Kill Sam” has the funkiest beat ever used in the hardcore gangsta rap genre.
Demdude
Just watched Michael Isikoff & Tucker Carlson on Hardball discussing the Palin “Troopergate” deal.
Of course, Tucker Carlson is a F()&*ing idiot. He just said that because the Trooper was a “bad guy”, the Governor had very right to get rid of him. This is just the epitome of the entire last eight years.
Don’t need no stinkin 4th amendment, my buddies say he’s guilty, there you go. I can fire someone legally (the safety commisioner), so there’s nothing wrong there. The people in power don’t want him there, start throwing crap.
The Trooper sounds like a creep, but you take the word of the ex-wives families and everything is they say is true? This doesn’t even pass a minimal smell test and that is why they invented civil service.
Another thing, is Mike Barnacle an idiot also? I’ve seen him on Scarborough and don’t think I heard him make anything close to an intelligent statement yet.
Sorry for the rant, too much caffine.
Keith
I’m still in somewhat denial that a private citizen can just say “I decree that your investigation is illegitimate, so I don’t have to do what you say.” Closest to a rational I’ve heard so far is “spousal privilege”, which is somewhat flimsy given that this is not a criminal investigation AFAIK. I guess the endgame is that regardless of the penalty, the Gov. is going to pardon her husband after he’s cited with contempt in January, which is the absolute height of political cynicism.
What it tends to remind me of is the argument of those who refuse to pay income taxes: “I say the income tax is unconstitutional, so I won’t pay it.”
montysano
The right wing echo chamber has exploded with the Raines/Johnson meme, as well as McCain’s valorous attempt, alone and ignored to avert the financial crisis through the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.
What’s the Democratic pushback on this? Or did our side blow it on this one?
This is probably nothing but a distraction issue (at the end of the day, Fannie & Freddie were/are a small part of the problem), but still I’d like to be able to argue it coherently if needed. The Web is now so glutted with right wing crap that any research has become difficult.
Rick Taylor
Do you really mean this seriously? The Democrats aren’t that much better than the Republicans? After 9/11, after Iraq, after Katrina, after our current economic meltdown, you wouldn’t say that the last eight years would be that much better under a Democratic administration, or that an Obama administration wouldn’t be that much better than a McCain one? You can’t possibly mean that, can you? I’ll admit I’m not that thrilled with the Democratic party, especially given the challenges we are facing approaching the limits of growth in the twenty first century, but the Democrats are a hell of a lot better than the Republicans. It’s like the difference between a professional boxer who’s just ok versus, well, you or me.
A few years off? Again I disagree. With a few years off, if we’re lucky we’ll have just enough time for the Democrats to fix things up enough so they can trash them again. I guess you’re not as disillusioned as I thought. Maybe after four years of a McCain administration (God forbid) you’ll be at the point the rest of us are now.
PeterJ
Q: What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney?
A: A dress.
mellowjohn
“invisible hand?”
i think the invisible hand is giving us the finger.
Groove
Be true to the game, JC.
John Cole
Sure, they are better, but far too centrist to reset the overton window to where it should be. Obama is no radical lefty, he is a centrist.
Christ on a crutch, we just spent a few years debating torture. SO yes, the Democrats are better, but really, the GOP set the bar pretty low.
mellowjohn
sorry. should have read all of #2 before jumping to the post.
mellowjohn
p.s. is it possible that rich rodriquez made both teams worse by leaving for ann arbor?
zuzu's petals
Hey, I want to repeat something I posted awhile back.
For my most recent B-J Act Blue contribution, I set up an “express account” and found out that:
1. I could specify that the Act Blue “tip” can be counted separately from my Obama contribution. Meaning not counted toward my maximum contribution limit.
2. I guess that means the “tips” I’d been leaving with my prior Obama contributions are being counted toward my maximum contribution limit.
Something to be aware of going in.
Dreggas
[King Roland has given in to Dark Helmet’s threats, and is telling him the combination to the “air shield”]
Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.
Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.
Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.
Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.
Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is… one, two, three, four, five? That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
[ a few minutes later ]
President Skroob: [enters after the interrogation of King Roland] Well? Did it work? Where’s the king?
Dark Helmet: It worked, sir. We have the combination.
President Skroob: Great. Now we can take every last breath of fresh air from planet Druidia. What’s the combination?
Dark Helmet: 1 2 3 4 5.
President Skroob: 1 2 3 4 5? That’s amazing! I’ve got the same combination on my luggage! Prepare Spaceball 1 for immediate departure!
Dark Helmet: Yes, sir!
President Skroob: And change the combination on my luggage!
zuzu's petals
I just got Allen Raymon’s How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative.
Pretty sure I’ll get pissed off all over again (he notes in the foreword they “pretty much stole the presidency” in 2000). And no doubt I’ll be surprised too.
Raymond, by the way, is the GOP operative who ended up going to prison for his part in the phone jamming scheme during the 2002 NH elections.
BH-Buck
LOL! You believe that? They are never “off”, John. Remember the Clinton years? The Clinton years wasn’t about Clinton. They were about how awful the GOP thought Bill Clinton was. You do remember that hateful impeachment thing that went on and on and on, right?
Will be no different under an Obama WH. You thought you saw crap back then? Just wait until after January. Rush Limbaugh has a bigger ass than ever. The shit will be flying left and right. And NOTHING will get done.
I guaran-damn-tee it.
PS: That business about Democrats being “nearly as bad” is pretty insulting. There may be a few Democrats that are craptastically similar to the way most Republicans are. But most Democrats aren’t… including your’s truly.
Bubblegum Tate
That would be “Dominoes” by Donald Byrd. Great tune in its own right.
BH-Buck
John Cole, apologies… Did not see your reply to Rick Taylor.
gil mann
I’ve been through my fair share of aging rites—back problems, bladderstones, what have you—but I never thought “Jesus Christ, I’m old” until I saw the ad for “Are We There Yet?” starring Ice Cube.
Bubblegum Tate
Oh, and it’s also got that opening synth line from “Rock Creek Park” by the Blackbyrds, also a quality tune.
I’ll stop dorking out about records and samples now.
Xenos
My favorite line from that Randy Newman song:
jenniebee
I like it that your problem with Democrats is that they’re too far to the right for your tastes. You’re a true apostate, and I salute you for it.
dslak
My problem with the Democrats is that there’s maybe two pairs of metaphorical testicles among the whole lot of them.
Soylent Green
Baby steps. The change the nation needs to go through to survive this century is not going to be completed in a presidential term or two.
A centrist who leads and manages well — as we believe Obama has the chops to do — is the right person for the first phase. A doctrinaire lefty would never get any traction with the right wing.
dslak
This is in fact the best we’re ever going to do, at the national level, for the forseeable future. When you have two parties that aren’t that different ideologically, they mostly compete on competence. Those kinds of elections however tend to result in depressed turnout.
As it turns out, not even that many people even give a shit about competence anymore, so the chances of getting them to vote for a liberal/left ticket intentionally are slim-to-none, and the Democrats are no good at fielding stalking horses.
Limniade
I wouldn’t say that the Republicans have failed, at all. I would, in fact, say that they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Susan Kitchens
Q: Why is abortion wrong?
A: Because we need to keep populating this country with precious
babiespeoplesuckers who’ll grow up and become be tax-payers. We need more warm bodies to help pay for all the mistakes made by those “market forces” Republicans.Matt D
5.) Please stop calling what that jackass kid did to Sarah Palin’s email acount “hacking.” He didn’t “hack” anything. What he did was good old social engineering, much like how Kevin Mitnick exploited so many systems back in the day (although in this case, it was not even anywhere near as clever as Mitnick’s exploits). All he did was google where Palin met her husband, entered that, and he was in. Hacking, this was not.
What’s interesting is the overlap between all those internet surveys that spread like memes and the “security questions” you answer during your password recovery process with a lot of sites. You know, like, maybe the former are actually seeded w/ the latter and spread around by nasty folks looking to break into your accounts. I’ve never done that personally, mind you, but I did once hijack some yahoo/livejournal/aim/whatever accounts using info from surveys other people had written.
Jennifer
Okay, I’m a relative newcomer and lurker around these parts, but discovering you are also a fellow Mountaineer made my evening. Much more than the actual Mountaineers did last night, for certain. Gonna be one long season. Suddenly, my tickets to the Auburn game feel incredibly heavy.
catatonia
Randy Newman helped me negotiate a miserable adolescence, endure a bum rush of a young adulthood, and is now a palliative to the blank and bleak middle age that steals away each day before the sun has even set.
The first song of Randy Newman’s I heard was “Sail Away” and, even though the song was about a slave trader trying to trick Africans into crossing the “mighty ocean into Charleston bay” for a better life – a topic with no personal relevance to me or my antecedents – it had an extraordinary resonance. An egregious slavetrader’s inducement put to one of the most moving musical arrangements I’ve ever heard – I’ve always wondered why that song would have made such an impression on a 15 year old. Maybe that’s why version 4.0 of that gawky teenager turned out so insistently average and nonessential. I was a self-aware sap. I’d imagine most self-aware saps like Randy Newman’s music.
For a time, I was stuck rootless and at hazard down in South Carolina, trying to get a poke from the southern bells that randomly crossed my path. My sensibility informed by repeatedly listening to “Rednecks.” No poke, nothing even close, but maybe because none of ‘em were named “Marie.”
There are few better retorts to a wingnut drunk on monotheism than Newman’s “God’s Song”:
And the Lord said/I burn down your cities-how blind you must be/I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we/You all must be crazy to put your faith in me/That’s why I love mankind/You really need me/That’s why I love mankind
jcricket
I think the invisible hand is prepping to fist us up the ass with no lube.
And yes, we’re about to go from 8 years of basically Republican rule to blaming the Democrats for everything that’s fucked up and being the adults doing the fixing.
And when the Democrats fix stuff (get taxes to Clintonian levels, reinstate all the regulations Republicans eliminated) and stuff gets stable, I fully expect Republicans to convince people they can “have their cake and eat it to” and the cycle will repeat.
The thing Democrats are the worst at is convincing people of their own competency and success. Republicans take all the credit for the good stuff, none of the blame for the bad stuff, and insist their failed ideas will work if we just give it another shot. They’re like 10-second-Tom in that movie 50 first dates.
jbarntt
John Cole said:
Every day the travesty of GOP rule becomes more and more obvious. I still believe many of the same things I have always believed, whether it be about abortion, the death penalty, the use of the military, etc., but it just becomes increasingly clear with every day how bankrupt the conservative movement has become. I don’t think the Democrats are that much better, and have repeatedly stated that I came to the party pre-disillusioned, but they are, at least right now, better. That can not be argued.
Really ? If it cannot be argued, then why is there an argument ?
Obama and McCain are close, somebody out there prefers McCain. Your statement is false. If you think the Democrats are right, I hope you are enjoying Pelosi and Reid and the great things they’ve done in congress.
Do tell me about all the great things the Democratic congress has done: Getting out of Iraq by cutting off the funding, the fannie mae deal where Dodd and Obama saw it coming and joined with Mccain a few years ago to reform government oversite of these companies. LOL
You are truly nothing more than a party hack.
John Spragge
Now that the latest Wall Street mess has started to smell like a fish left in the noonday sun for too long, the government has an idea: package up the whole stinking mess, put a US treasury seal on it, and sell it to the Chinese! The Chinese central bank will buy anything with a US treasury seal on it, even a mess as ripe as this one.
Unless they don’t, in which case the US treasury can’t borrow, in which case you have to pay as you go, in which case your economy has to contract by 5%, and your (federal) taxes have to go up by 50%.
OK…. this looks like a gamble by an insolvent administration to kick the can a few months or a few years, or if you get really really lucky a few administrations down the road. Except that if you don’t change the underlying pattern, one of these times the world community will refuse to buy your bond offerings, and they will cut up your credit cards.
The next month should prove very interesting.
Nikolita
Sorry JC, didn’t know that it wasn’t hacking. I stand corrected.
I tried to donate to Obama last night or this morning, but saw that I had to be a US citizen. :( Otherwise I’d give him a few bucks.
Chuck Butcher
Since I started rock and rolling in the early 60s I can think of a bit of a shit load of anti-authoritarian tunes. Oddly enough greed and power seemed to predominate the themes, and war.
Centrists. Well, Cole would be wrong if we were talking about my youth, they’d be THE MAN – the Fucks. Today McPOW can call Obama a leftist and get away with it. Jayzus Pete, other than gun banner authoritarians masquerading as liberals this place is damn near bereft of any lefties. Cole is headed that way, dragging his ideological heels as he goes with help from a couple. The fuck all of it is where feel good rhetoric seems left to some of you. But then I’d have to ask how many of you have been working your asses off for the past 25 years and getting fucked right along. Not keyboard/desk/paper cut lately, right the fuck along. I’ve spent 25 years watching the American Worker go from being an honorable estate worth compensation to a goddam monkey wanting extra banannas.
I’ve watched good companies go from forward thinking innovators to MBA greed holes. The first sign of disaster is when an MBA runs engineering – that outfit is done. When there’s no relationship between CEO, etc pay and worker pay, the place is done. The fucking “capitalists” don’t get that when the worker can’t buy products without going in the hole, the show is over. As recently proved the hole isn’t bottomless.
The next Republican pol or greed head that says something about personal responsibility deserves to have a gun stuck in his face and get some. The bitch about this rant is that I ain’t + anything except outrage. I do not want to think where I’d go with that given about 2 years of Palin/McPOW Admin.
The end insult is that this fat pussified country couldn’t put together a real oppostition or revolution if the shit completely hits the fan. The 101st Keyboard Kommandoes are skeert of anything that doesn’t come in bytes and the liberals are terrified somebody will think they’re mean. And hell the left is so disqualified and ignored that it might as well not exist. The fucking MSM went on and on about the left dominated Democratic Convention – the what dominated??? Left dominated, so where was the out and out demand for single payer health care? That isn’t even more than barely left.
Somebody on this comment list is a tax analyst – explain to these people what actual wealth does with it and how much tax is actually paid on real wealth… Maybe some liberals will recognize in a half assed way just how screwed over they are – and be able to reason backwards from there to the Workers. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
OK, did anybody else read the story over at calculatedrisk about Ben going to Congress and making them soil their drawers in fear and immediately think:
the same people that voted in the Patriot Act without bothering to read it are going to be asked to write a trillion dollar check out to somebody on Wall St., and never mind the details because we don’t have time to haggle.
Laws and sausages, folks, laws and saugages.
And on a related note, Ameribank, Inc., Northfork, West Virginia just took a taxi ride to Chinatown with the FDIC. This is the likely fate of hundreds, more likely thousands of small regional banks all over the US.
John, if you can spare the time a WV perspective on this would be interesting – is it a big deal locally or not? How are people in those parts reacting to this?
jcricket
I hate that phrase. What does it even mean?
I want you to take “personal responsibility for your health”. Sounds great, conjures images of not giving free gastric bypass to obese people. But in practice means, “I want you to be faced with bankruptcy if your healthcare costs get to high because you inherit Huntington’s disease or your kid has Cystic Fibrosis” Oh, and that personal responsibility extends to you having to trace the source of everything, every time you eat to make sure there isn’t melamine in your milk or BSE in your meat.
Again, Republicans are experts at using phrases we can all agree with in some nebulous way, but they translate into, “You’re on your own buddy” – glibertarianism at its finest.
jcricket
Uh yeah – These are the same people that think government could never run a nationwide healthcare system (even though it does, and does so more efficiently now) and that the education system should be handed over to privately run schools. But we should hand the Bush administration unlimited warrantless wiretapping powers, suspend habeus corpus for anyone the government says is a terrorist, and so on.
The cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling.
Rick Taylor
Well there I certainly do agree with you. It’s only because the Republicans have set the bar low that I think the Democrats are so much better, it’s not because I think the Democratic party is wonderful. But to tell the truth, I think a party that did begin to really impress me could not possibly win a national election in this country.
r€nato
didn’t a president get impeached over something like that?
RULE OF LAW! RULE OF LAW!*
*does not apply to Republicans
r€nato
amen brother. It’s social darwinism in moderate clothing.
Personal Designation
roflcopter
Sorry, that phrase to me encapsulates the income tax system. And while its cousin "specious" is close behind in just about every democrat quip against the republicans, it makes me think all the more about democracy. Democracy, where two wolves and a chicken decide what is for lunch.
Just where is the rule of law from We The People are concerned? Why I can just hear the word "specious" rolling off the tongue of a whining student at Starbucks right now (in the recesses of my mind) with their delusion of free money grants andobligatoryloans. This country was created in the minds of men don’t ya know. An artificial political entity "named" the United States has two classes of people. We The People who make the rules and US citizens who follow the rules. And cognitive dissonance wins yet another round with the total misunderstanding of the 13th and 14th amendments of the vast majority of people inhabiting this geographical region once conquered and subjugated by King George III.