I’m really sick and tired of this man:

But Nelson later told reporters that his amendment would not be ready for a vote until after the weekend, postponing a floor showdown over abortion rights.

The defeat of his amendment would be politically significant because Nelson has pledged to vote with Republicans to filibuster the health bill if it did not include the Stupak language.

“I’ve said at the end of the day if it doesn’t have Stupak language on abortion in it I won’t vote to move it off the floor,” Nelson told reporters.

Look, I understand the need for a big tent and all that, but you simply can not have members of your caucus threatening to filibuster a bill that everyone else in your party supports and not suffer repercussions. You just can’t. Maybe he is just grandstanding, and will say this, then very publicly agonize over it, and vote for the bill without the Stupak legislation. I understand the games these guys need to play in states like Nebraska.

But if Nelson does filibuster the health care bill because the Stupak language is voted down by the majority of his party, at the very least he needs to lose his prized chairmanship. At the very least. You simply can not have members of your caucus siding with the minority to filibuster your signature legislation. There is a time when it is better to have someone outside the “Big Tent” pissing in, and if Nelson filibusters, it is his time to be kicked outside.

Are we finally there:

In the strongest employment report since the recession began nearly two years ago, the government said Friday that the nation’s employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in November, taking some of the pressure off of President Obama to come up with a wide-ranging jobs creation program.

The Labor Department reported that the United States economy lost 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October.

The government also significantly revised its September and October job loss estimates. September’s data was adjusted to show a loss of 139,000 jobs instead of 219,000, and in October 111,000 jobs were lost, instead of 190,000. Even allowing for the November loss, the revisions added 148,000 people to the list of those employed in the United States in November.

Though the pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in January, the November number was surprising. Economists had been expecting a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold. The last time the number was so bright was in December 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs.

Only losing 11k jobs is hardly something to cheer about, but considering the past year, it at least warrants a sigh of relief that the end might be near.

Sarah Palin, birther:

Speaking to the conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

“Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?” Humphries persisted.

“I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records—all of that is fair game,” Palin said. “The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”

The modern GOP is just all class.

That is all.

From Bad Horse’s Filly:

Continuing our theme of quick and easy recipes for the holidays, here’s a slow-cooker meal you can set up the night before and have ready at the end of a busy day of holiday events. This is a recipe from a restaurant in Ouray, CO that was in an old bank. They gave it to me 15 years ago on my honeymoon and I make it all the time. This was my first experience at having to change a recipe for 60 into one for 6-8. It’s spicy, so ease up on the cumin and chili powder if needed, you can always add more during the last 30 minutes if needed. On the board tonight:

1) Spicy Black Bean Soup
2) French Bread
3) Red Grape Salad
4) Apple wedges & Cheese

Click on the blue highlight for recipes and shopping lists.

I figure everyone could use a laugh today, so I’m linking to this ridiculous post based on some kind of a right-wing chain-email hoax about a recent AirTran flight that was delayed. The gist of it is that someone’s been sending around an email saying that there was a bunch of Muslims watching porn, screaming into their cellphones, and calling people “infidel dogs” before take-off and that this indicates that the whole thing was a dry run for a terrorist attack. Because that’s what terrorists do: they try to draw attention to themselves when they’re preparing for an attack. Steve M. does a good job of dissecting all the craziness.

The comments are predictably funny in general, but this one stood out:

There’s far too much detail here for this to be a fabrication.

Maybe this is just the Diet Dr. Pepper talking, but I think that phrase may have legs.

My therapist told me to stop reading the Kaplan reporter Q&As. But Flounder pointed me to a real doozy:

Taxes are killing us.: The US at 26.1% pays less tax than any other industrialized country except Japan at 25.8%. Sweden is at 50.2%, the UK at 35.8%, and Spain at 35.5%, for example. BTW each of these three countries had higher growth (average per capita growth 1995 – 2005) than we did. 2.5%, 2.4% and 3.1% resp. compared to our 2.1%. Also Japan’s was 1% growth.

Frank Ahrens: But did you know our corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world? That makes a real difference if you’re a business and you’re thinking about locating in the U.S. or, say, India.

[....]

But did you know our corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world?: Dead wrong. Our nominal tax rate of 35% is among the highest, but because of loopholes our real tax rate of 18% is among the lowest real corporate tax rates.

Frank Ahrens: Back atcha.

Back atcha?

And this is an economics reporter at one of the country’s three most important newspapers? You know, I feel bad saying this when I hear about all the reporters getting laid off, but I can’t think of any other profession where someone this inept could rise to near the top. So I say this with all due respect to all the good, smart, tough hard-working reporters out there: we’ll be better off when this whole clown show goes bankrupt.

I’m fairly certain we’ve discussed the Conservative Bible Project before. I guess I’m a little surprised by some of the winger complaints about teh librully biased regular Bible:

For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.

I get why they don’t like “comrade”. But what’s wrong with “laborer”? And aren’t “volunteers” kind of like “community organizers” when you get right down to it?

This is even more mystifying:

identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as “word” in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as “truth”.

[....]

prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

[.....]

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”. The manager was praised for being “resourceful”, which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term “resourceful” in its entire translation of the Bible.

Does shrewd really have more connotations of dishonesty than resourceful? Where do they come up with this stuff?

I found a quote about gay marriage I like at Daily Dish (Sullivan apparently took a break from drooling on himself about TEH CLIMATEGATE):

“The time is never right for civil rights. The economy, wars. The troubles we’ve had here in the senate. It’s never ever the right time. But the paradox is, it’s always the time to be on the right side of history,” – New York state Senator Tom Duane.

To me, that’s the obvious point here: everyone knows that we’re eventually going to have gay marriage, why not just get on the right side of history now? I won’t belabor my points about potential local economic impacts, but it seems to me that the thinking should be (even for people who don’t favor gay marriage) “look, we’re eventually going to have gay marriage everywhere anyway, why not have it before other places and reap the benefits of doing so?”

But, I think, in the end, that’s just not how the conservative mind works. Buckley’s famous aphorism that conservatism “stands athwart history, yelling Stop” says more than it means to. Conservatism yells stop, but it never succeeds in actually stopping history. So what’s the point of all the yelling?

I suppose one point is that it may delay history, but the sad truth is that the real point of the yelling is to gain political advantage, whether it’s with the Civil Rights Act or with gay marriage bills.

Andy McCarthy’s life just got more difficult:

Only been up for a little bit and today is already turning out to be a mess. Really weird weather- about 40-45 degrees, but the wind is just whipping around like it is April, and the sky is gun metal gray. Even Lily said “to hell with this” about ten minutes into the walk.

At any rate, woke up to two automated messages reminding me about Dr’s. aapointments I had forgotten about and have double-scheduled other things to do to today, so don’t expect me back until later this afternoon. I will leave you with this headline via memeorandum:

“Utahns growing tired of Bennett”

The only reason I bring you that is not because I know of a Democrat who could beat Bennett, but because I had no idea that was how you spelled Utahns. Ohioans (F the bengals!), Pennsylvanians, West Virginians- I could spell all of those, but never in a million years if I were on Jeopardy would I have gotten Utahns right. Utahns looks like a name for a German street.

Now you are prepared, and I feel as if I have performed a duty. I will be back later.

Two stories, from two different sources (neither of them explicitly political), about two quite different men who share one thing: They are each very, very angry at the American government for its handling of the Iraqi occupation.

In Vanity Fair, Adam Ciralsky tells us of Erik Prince, “Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy”:

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month…

For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence…

Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”

...Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.”

Then there is John Cook’s story on Gawker about “The Man Who Was Really There”:

Firas Al-Qaisi is an Iraqi attorney who risked his life helping the American forces in Baghdad which led to weeks of torture and dentention by Shiite militias. Now he’s suing the U.S. for $200 million for trying to murder him.

The case of Al-Qaisi v. The American Military Forces in Iraq is a terrible window into just a few of the millions of lives our stupid and cruel adventure has wrecked in that country. We came across the lawsuit, which Al-Qaisi filed in October in a federal court in Virginia, randomly while searching the electronic docket system for another case. It is a quixotic, conspiratorial, and hopeless narrative, filed without the aid of lawyers by a man whose mind appears to have been ruined by the violence unleashed by the Shiite thugs that we handed his country to after turning it into shit. But Al-Qaisi’s Kafka-esque odyssey, told in a humane and engaging voice, also offers a memorable glimpse of the brutal nightmare we conjured in his homeland…

A lawyer by training, he was a proud collaborator with the Americans he thought were capable of returning the rule of law to his country. He ran the risk of retribution from religious fanatics in his Baghdad neighborhood for wearing a western suit to work each day. U.S. forces saved his life after he was abducted by a Shiite faction of Iraq’s American-backed Interior Ministry in 2007, and he was evacuated to the U.S. along with his pregnant wife and brother on a flight ordered by none other than Gen. David Petraeus two years ago, because staying in Iraq meant certain death. He landed in Northern Virginia, homeless, unable to speak English, living on charity. A September 2007 U.S. News & World Report story on his successful effort to seek asylum confirms some of these details. Two years later, the passage of time seems to have embittered him. His ordeal, he now believes, was an American-hatched plan to have him killed.

Both articles are well worth reading in their entirety. I actually looked on YouTube for a clip of Maddy Prior singing “Dives and Lazarus”, but embedding one here would be… unserious. As a DFH, I am required to notice that Mr. Prince rates a glossy magazine spread complete with glamour photography, but I still find Mr. Cook’s writing more compelling:

Anyway, this is how stupid wars end these days. With pathetic and desperate lawsuits from the good men whose lives we destroyed. On to Afghanistan.

It was disappointing—but not surprising—that the New York State Senate rejected the gay marriage bill today. It was especially disappointing that there was almost no support for the bill among Upstate New York Senators.

I don’t understand the politics of the issue up here that well. Neither of my local State Senators (both Republicans) voted for it. Once is allegedly a closeted gay man, the other works hard at cultivating gay support (including sending out extremely gay-friendly mailers). So I doubt that either has some kind of “moral” opposition to gay marriage, whatever what would mean.

My guess is that the issue isn’t a big deal one way or the other upstate politically. There are probably plenty of one-foot-in-the-grave Catholics who are very opposed to it (there are almost no evangelicals and Mormons in New York State), but I doubt their votes are very much in play to begin with. It’s possible that some upstate Republicans would get teabagged if they voted for gay marriage, but, if anything, the vote would probably help some of them in a general election. In the exact district that I live in, State Senator Joe Robach would almost certainly be in a better shape in a general election if he voted for gay marriage.

What pisses me off most is that this is something that clearly would have been good for upstate New York economically. We need enterprising gay couples running bed-and-breakfasts and organic goat cheese farms and the like up here. We need gay tourists coming here to get married and spending their money while they’re in town. (I apologize if I’ve offended with any stereotypes here.) We need to be thought of as some kind of a cool hippie paradise people would want to visit, the way that Vermont and western Massachusetts are.

When they took down the confederate flag in South Carolina, one of the big factors was that they would lose convention business because of various boycotts. To me, even if you’re some kind of confederate-loving whackjob, that kind of decision just makes good business sense. Gay marriage in New York State makes the same kind of sense, even if you’re some kind of crotchety old Catholic. It makes me mad that my representatives don’t see it that way.

Update. You hear so much boo-hoo around here from people about how their kids have to leave because there are no jobs. (I don’t mean to belittle that, no one wants their kids to leave and there are a lot of great things about the area.) So which is more important, doing something that would help the economy and maybe make it so your kids could stay here or not having to see two dudes get married?

This sucks to watch:

I can understand both sides of this- there is a lot on Obama’s plate, but how can you deny that Savage and the gay community has every right to be pissed? With a few exceptions, it has been a really bad year for gay rights, with another stab in the back today in New York. And the thing to remember is that we are getting to the point that it will be a year soon. Not the first couple of months, but a whole year. It gets harder and harder to defend the inaction.

(via Americablog)

There was shaking, barking, whining, yelping and streaking. It was almost like being an undergrad again, but with less booze:

Consider this your open thread for the evening.