Noemi Emery:

After Bill Clinton was impeached for lies under oath (and terminal tackiness)...

I guess you could say he came into Washington and trashed the place with his tackiness, ehh, Noemi?

Atrios catches a real winner from Mary Matalin today on CNN:

We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history. And President Bush dealt with it. And within a year of his presidency at this comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent. And we were creating jobs.

It’s an outright lie and not just because they didn’t “inherit” 9/11—unemployment was actually 5.7% December 2001, as compared with 4.2% when Bush took office, and it rose to 6.3% by 2003. Obviously, no one called Matalin on it, the same way no one in the media will call Joe Klein’s friend Pete Hoekstra on any of his craziness.

The main thing I’ve learned since I began blogging and following national media closely the last year is that Republicans are simply not held to the same standards that Democrats are. There’s so many examples but compare “it was standard practice not to pay for things” to the constant—and often nonsensical—budget-scolding that we see now. I don’t know why this is. Maybe it’s that conservatives will always follow their old men wherever they want to go while liberals prefer to call their leaders sell-outs and phonies. Maybe it really is that reporters are liberals who regard Republicans as redneck retards who should be lauded for not fucking things up even worse than they do.

None of this is necessarily good for Republicans in a larger sense. They’d be better off if they felt pressure to come up with their own alternative health care plan, their own climate change proposals, realistic economic policies, and so on. Sometimes I think they’ve gotten so good at working the refs that they don’t even bother to play the game anymore.

Oh noes:

A passenger onboard the same Northwest Airlines flight that was attacked on Christmas Day was taken into custody in Detroit on Sunday after becoming verbally disruptive upon landing, officials said.

A law enforcement official said the man was Nigerian and had locked himself in the airliner’s bathroom. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Officials told NBC News the passenger refused to come out and may have had “stomach problems” that prevented him from leaving. The passenger became abusive when flight attendants opened the door and dragged him out, NBC News reported.

Let’s see. A man in his seat tried to ignite an underwear bomb, and they decided to ban electronics and require everyone to stay in their seat. Now that someone was caught dropping a “bomb” in the bathroom and became disruptive, I predict they will ban toothbrushes, women named Ruth, and all passengers will have to remove their left lens from their corrective eyewear.

If this is true, there will be serious rioting:

Before I begin, let me just state that TSA has yet to confirm any of this on its website, so the details aren’t entirely clear at the moment. That said, there are several indications that orders have been issued to cease the use of electronics during international flights. Yes, that means no laptops, no iPods, no Kindles, no CD players, no portable DVD players, no Nintendo DSes — nothing that requires any sort of power on these flights. If this is true, it’s absolutely awful news.

Obviously, this is all in reaction to the Nigerian man who attempted to bring down a plane coming into the U.S. And the TSA is going to do whatever it thinks is necessary to prevent further attacks of a similar nature. But the simple fact is that if the TSA was really this seriously worried about electronic devices, they could have banned them anytime since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Instead, they’re doing it more than 8 years later after a man apparently lit some sort of mixture of powder and liquid in his lap. How that relates to electronics, I’m not sure. This just reeks of a “well, we have to do something” move.

Some nut blows up his nuts with an explosive sewn into his knickers, and the TSA might ban electronics devices. I’m kind of hoping it happens, so the public can see how how hysterical we as a nation have become.

Go Steelers!

This is beyond laughable:

It’s Christmas day, and the only thing that stopped 12/25 from feeling a lot like 9/11 was a failed detonator and a guy named Jasper Schuringa. Weather now seems like a quaint travel threat – like a cold does compared to the Bubonic Plague.

It’s December 26, and the last of my guests arrive keenly aware of what happened over the skies of Detroit. Across America, everybody’s gut tightens and old fears and old wounds re-open.

Meanwhile, the president continues his vacation.

America lucked out this holiday season. It’s as simple as that. Something terrible could have happened and It was the bravery of passengers, and the ineptitude of a would-be terrorist, that prevented it.

***

Yes, the president deserves a vacation. Especially this president, who I believe has worked so hard on issues he cares about to the best of his ability; who is attacked and stalled by enemies for every attempt to fix every ill he inherited over the last eight years.

This is a man who needs a break.

But that vacation should have been over moments after the plane landed at noon on Christmas day, and everybody was starting to do the math that once again, al Qaeda tried to strike at this country.

Yes. Obama should immediately have rushed to a microphone and said everything is going to be ok, and spoken reassuringly so pantswetting morans like Steve Marmel would be comfortable. He probably should have worn a flight suit and ordered an invasion of the Netherlands to make everyone really feel safe.

Someone burp this whiner and hand him a wetnap.

(via)

This sounds pretty funny (via Josh Green at the Washington Monthly):

Not long afterward, a McCain staffer named Martin Eisenstadt came forward to take responsibility for leaking the Africa stuff. At first blush, Eisenstadt seemed exactly the sort you’d expect to cruelly betray his candidate: a vaguely familiar, middle-tier neocon hack affiliated with an outfit called the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy—a guy whose natural place in the universe is on the third block of Hardball, his command of the latest GOP talking points and lapel-pin flag both obnoxiously on display. That was enough for MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, and a host of other media outlets to run with the story that the culprit had been found.

The only trouble was that Martin Eisenstadt was not a McCain adviser or even a real person. He was a hoax perpetrated by two filmmakers, Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin (who played Eisenstadt on television). The Harding Institute didn’t exist, nor did the Eisenstadt Group political consulting firm, though phony evidence of both can be found online. It was all an elaborate ruse that worked to perfection. The media made the obligatory hiccup of remorse and hurried on. But the hoax was worth savoring because it was funny on so many levels. Not only did it embarrass a facile media—which is not, let’s be honest, like putting a man on the moon—but it slyly mocked American political culture in a way that barely registered. The joke was not that an imposter could infiltrate cable news for as long as Martin Eisenstadt did. It was that our entire system of politics has become so mindlessly rote, and campaigns such stage-managed shams, that it didn’t really matter whether the guy spouting talking points on Hardball was the real deal or a fraud. Both said exactly the same thing.

[....]

I Am Martin Eisenstadt is an odd mixture of high and low comedy that, on balance, is pitched at about the level of a Judd Apatow movie. If you don’t find the idea of Dennis Hastert oil-wrestling the Turkish foreign minister to be inherently funny, this probably isn’t your book. On the other hand, the authors know Washington so well that if you’re a creature of the Beltway you can’t help but admire their curator’s appreciation for the tiniest details. Anyone can milk humor from the idea that Republicans are greedy and corrupt. Only connoisseurs of conservative excess would think to parody the warped machismo of the Reagan years that led members of the preppy youth group Young Americans for Freedom (including Grover Norquist) to visit Angola on behalf of the UNITA rebels and style themselves “freedom fighters,” which mainly seems to have entailed being photographed with an AK-47. Martin Eisenstadt’s machine-gun-brandishing picture appears on page 15.

They also did a multi-part YouTube documentary about the guy.

Have at it.

We talked about the best RB of the modern era the other day (I chose Barry Sanders, but I could easily put Sweetness there and Barry #2), but here is my favorite running back of all time:

I loved that twinkle-toed fat man. Oh yes. I love that fat man and I am unashamed.

In the Detroit Free Press piece about Hoekstra’s reaction to yesterday’s airplane incident, Hoekstra was identified as a “Holland Republican” since he is from the town of Holland, Michigan.

The first comment from the Colonel Mustard post John wrote about:

What is a “Holland” Republican? Did they mean to say “Dutch”? Are they implying that he is a tool for Holland? Fearing that readers might miss the Dutch-Holland connection if they used “Dutch”, did they also fear that they would miss the subliminal implication?

Can someone please explain what Col. Mustard is talking about:

The fear that conservatives would point out the obvious about this terrorist attack seemed to be a common first reaction:

“[The attack] means Greater Wingnuttia is going to get the very special happy Christmas they most desire, because what they like best of all is to wet their pants in an ecstasy of hysterical screeching …. “

John Cole of Balloon-Juice immediately lined up his preemptive attack:

I’m not going to speculate about what happened because the reports are all over the place, and I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it, but I will state that I think we all know the kind of media freak-out we are about to have over this event.

How was it an attempt to “politicize” terrorism for Hoeksta to point out the obvious? Al-Qaeda activities in Yemen are a problem, and this incident may prove that those activities have the ability to reach our shores as in the Fort Hood shooting.

I’m honestly baffled. Does anyone not think there is going to be a media freak-out over this? Has he not turned on the tv? Is he saying that it would be irresponsible for me to not speculate? Is he claiming I’m trying to downplay the event despite including the statement “I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it?” What is he “obviously” trying to point out- that people still want to attack the United States? I never even mentioned Hoekstra. What is he talking about?

And in order for me to launch a pre-emptive attack, wouldn’t I have to have written the post before someone tried to blow up a plane?

Conservatives are just weird. I swear to God half the trackbacks I get from wingnuts look like they just went through memorandum and linked to people randomly, no matter what they have said, and try to make it fit their post. All of the conservative blogosphere reads like a Palin tweet these days.

I made an attempt:

The cute is definitely counterbalanced by the sad face.

James Joyner reacts to the new TSA “security” efforts:

We’re simply going to make people miserable for no apparent reason. There have been precisely three attempts over the last eight years to commit acts of terrorism aboard commercial aircraft. All of them clownishly inept and easily thwarted by the passengers. How many tens of thousands of flights have been incident free? And, yet, we’re going to make hundreds of thousands of people endure transcontinental flights without reading materials or the ability to use the restroom?

Pretty much. What we are dealing with is a country who has been force-fed a steady diet of fear-mongering regarding terrorism for years and a highly charged political climate. It doesn’t matter if the new security efforts do anything, what matters is that it looks like something is being done. No one wants to be accused of having done nothing when someone finally is successful.

What makes me laugh is that we are now going to do all sorts of new stuff to people here in the states, when the flight originated overseas.

This is a weird reaction from law enforcement:

In a ritual nearly as familiar as Santa Claus and crowded stores, police agencies again have stepped up enforcement of drunken-driving laws this holiday season, setting up sobriety checkpoints that studies show reduce alcohol-related crashes because drivers who’ve been drinking stay off the road, fearing arrest.

But some public-safety officials say those efforts are now being thwarted by technology, with drivers now using text messaging, Twitter and other tools to keep each other informed about the location of sobriety checkpoints.

I’m not sure how this is that big of a deal, because around here the police publish where the DUI checkpoints will be ahead of time in the newspaper. Do they not do that everywhere else?

(via Kevin Drum)

I heard this the other day and thought it was really funny:

Christmas isn’t a national holiday in Japan but many Japanese celebrate the 25th with a special meal: fried chicken – specifically, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Colonel Sander’s chicken is considered a Christmas tradition there. The fast-food chain is so popular long lines form outside Japanese stores.

You can listen to the whole piece at the link- apparently KFC dinners are so popular in Japan that they take reservations for months ahead of time.