I wonder what the real message is here:

The Rubio link goes to a picture of a pig he was about to barbecue.

Look what our new allies are up to now:

The end-all-regulation, my-health-insurance-company-is-just-fine-thanks crowd in the Tea Party movement have found an unlikely target for their next national effort: Corporate America.

The Tea Party Patriots group is planning a “National Day of Strike” for Jan. 20, one year to the day after President Obama’s inauguration. The goal of the strike, according to the website where it’s being planned, is to “financially cripple” the companies across America the group says are “backing the leftist agenda” and “funding socialism.”

How can you tell which companies are funding socialism? The answer, according to organizers: they advertise on CNN and/or MSNBC, and they donate money to Democratic candidates.

So they are going to cripple socialist businesses by striking for one day? That means they acknowledge their boss and employer is a socialist- why not quit? Striking for one day- don’t they call that a “sick day” or a “hangover” most places in the country? What happens when one of them gets fired? Will that be labeled socialist oppression by Big Hollywood?

Or do they actually mean they are going to boycott these companies? If that is the case, how the hell does a one day boycott work? Will anyone notice?

I’m sure glad some well-meaning progressives have decided to team up with these clowns. Maybe we can combine efforts- we can strike for a day, and during that day we can make incoherent attacks on Joe Lieberman’s wife.

*** Update ***

Via the comments:

Let’s not forget that she is actually out there doing real stuff. She raises a ton of money for progressive causes, and she is more effective than most bloggers at impacting the political dynamic. Anyone who puts themselves out front like that is going to make some mistakes, and she takes the heat like a warrior. She doesn’t whimper and whine—she comes back with a vengeance, witness the way she demolished Jed Lewison today:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/12…..iefreddie/

I’ve got a lot of respect for those who are in the trenches doing the real work. The blogosphere has more than it’s share of couch potatoes hiding behind their laptops while Jane is out there getting her hands dirty.

As for her alliance with Grover Norquist on the alleged misdeeds of Rahm Emmanuel, she will no doubt be happy to reveal that she thinks Norquist is a wacko on most issues— but if an unlikely combination of forces can actually achieve something, then I’m all for it.

The entrenched economic interests remain in control because they have succeeded in dividing the peasantry with hot button social issues like abortion, gun control, gay rights, and the environment. If the poor losers on the Left and the Right ever realize that they are both getting screwed equally by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Halliburton and General Electric, then maybe we can start to turn things around in this country. Jane takes the position that in some instances it is sensible and effective to join forces with those whose values you don’t generally share. For chrissake, Teddy Kennedy and Strom Thurmond worked together on the occasional piece of legislation. It’s called politics.

I can understand that. It is the methodology that is problematic.

Made it home in one piece, and am now watching a couple of Jack Russell Terriers run around with a Bull Mastiff while Lily sits on various laps observing.

Was just wondering how the Progressive jihad was going- have we advanced to suicide bombings and delinking yet? Is Bernie Sanders still a corporate whore? Have No Quarter and Hillary is 44 weighed in yet? Any more push polling and fund-raising?

My favorite Christmas song:

I like to think this was one of the old Scrutator gang.

This preceded the later, better-publicized work that John and others spoke of recently.

Whoever he is, this guy is good.

Charles Johnson quite rightly excoriates Tim Pawlenty for some answers Pawlenty gave about evolution in a recent Newsweek interview:

Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?

I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.

[....]

Where are you personally?

Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution andcreationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.

David Frum replies that “Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism” and goes on to say that Pawlenty will have trouble with the religious right anyway because they don’t view him as a real Jesus person (since he converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism when he got married).

I find stories like this, especially when they’re told by two intelligent conservatives (even if I don’t always agree with them) to be quite chilling: we have here a Republican candidate who is an anti-science loon but still may be too sensible and non-Jesus freaky to satisfy the Khmer Rogue faction that may dominate the Republican primaries.

Nader feels ignored:

“This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations.”

Charming.

Here is a great piece on the history of Christmas celebration at the White House that I think a lot of you will really enjoy. I did.

It is time for the government to punch these guys in the neck:

Mr. Egol, a Princeton graduate, had risen to prominence inside the bank by creating mortgage-related securities, named Abacus, that were at first intended to protect Goldman from investment losses if the housing market collapsed. As the market soured, Goldman created even more of these securities, enabling it to pocket huge profits.

Goldman’s own clients who bought them, however, were less fortunate.

Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.

Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s — and then made financial bets against them, called selling short in Wall Street parlance. Others that created similar securities and then bet they would fail, according to Wall Street traders, include Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia Inc., an investment company whose parent firm was overseen by Lewis A. Sachs, who this year became a special counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Look- this isn’t just some crank writing for Rolling Stones- this is the NY Times. It is common knowledge these guys are crooks, and yet there will still people who defend them here, in the comments, because they were just smarter than other folks and knew how to operate the system. It is a disgrace, and they should have to pay a price.

Christmas cheer fail:

This picture of the spawn of RedKitten cracked me up.

Glenzilla reads Reason so we don’t have to.

Recently got an email from a company based outside the Anglophone sphere of influence:

Finishing does 2009 and we are again thankful for once to deep interest and love of a customer.

It seems to be regret and miss something while feeling that we were always short,
but this year was a year having done that we were thankful for more by faith of a customer and love.

Christmas is full by temporal happiness to have been delivered,
and it is day that chest be in a flutter with a thought only.

We pray for you are glad at a mind of all, and the happy Christmas which love overflow.

We thank sincerely to a supports and cheer sending to our [company] during this year.

We appreciate that.

We [company] promise that we will give you to a make a present to develop more in the next year.

Please enjoy your happy Christmas!

Somehow, this expresses exactly how I incoherently feel about all of you here.

(I tried for a lovely red-and-green font, but FYWP.)

I thought it would be deficit scare-mongering, but it’s actually teh bipartisanship. Gergen (via Digby):

In my judgment it’s a tragedy for the country to have a bill this important, a historic piece of legislation, pass with only one party voting for it.

Broder tomorrow (no link from me):

But even those Republicans who were initially inclined to do that—and there were at least a handful of them—were turned away by the White House and the Senate Democratic leaders, who never lifted their sights much beyond the Democratic ranks.

[...]

It would help a lot if he reached out personally to those few Republicans who might still want to improve the bill rather than sink it. And it would help even more if he shamed the Democrats into rescinding some of the crasser bargains they made to buy votes along the way.

The country would welcome even a few signs that this legislation has bipartisan support.

It makes sense when you think about it: deficit scare-mongering requires a little bit of number crunching or at least a few google searches.

But you can whine about bipartianship and all the Republicans that would have supported the bill if only Obama had sweet-talked them without even mentioning the name of a single Republican Senator. It’s just easier.

And now for something completely different- ten minutes of the greatest running back of the modern era:

For some reason, I remember a run on a Thanksgiving day game being outstanding, but I can not remember the exact run. And really, the only other argument I would accept is Sweetness.

Another thing that really pisses me off about this jihad against Rahm Emanuel is that the message it implicitly sends is that Obama is not calling the shots- he’s just Rahm’s puppet. That is explicitly a Republican frame- that Obama is weak and an empty suit.

Idiots. We’ve got the Democrats so mad at Republican obstructionism that we actually got 58 and two independents to vote for HCR reform, even bipartisanship fetishists like Evan Bayh are spitting mad, and the left wing of the party ant to do whatever they can to destroy Obama because he hasn’t done everything they want in 11 months.

And you can not convince me that a lot of this isn’t just the same old PUMA bullshit. BTW- has Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild vented about the public option yet?