Everyone should take a minute and go read this excellent Jon Chait piece in the TNR from a little over a year ago, The Feast of the Wingnuts.
When finished, go read Bill Kristol.
Enjoy.
by John Cole| 35 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Everyone should take a minute and go read this excellent Jon Chait piece in the TNR from a little over a year ago, The Feast of the Wingnuts.
When finished, go read Bill Kristol.
Enjoy.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Assholes
So now we are bailing out Citigroup:
Federal regulators approved a radical plan to stabilize Citigroup in an arrangement in which the government could soak up billions of dollars in losses at the struggling bank, the government announced late Sunday night.
So now the jackasses who extend credit to people who should not have it, charge 29 percent interest rates, intentionally process payments late so they can charge late fees and over-limit fees and who spent all their time and energy lobbying to change the bankruptcy laws several years ago are sucking at the public teat.
Can’t tell you how awesome that is. These guys get money from us, there should be some changes to their shitty business practices. Feingold, Sanders, anyone? You out there? Go get it done.
This post is in: General Stupidity
Linked by Drudge – no surprise there – a story about Obama’s new presidential limousine:
The Obamobile being prepared for the president-elect is said to be a monster gas-guzzler made by General Motors, the troubled car giant. It will look like a black Cadillac but is built like a tank. A spy photographer who tracks down future car models for magazines snatched pictures of the heavily disguised first-car-in-waiting when it was being road-tested last summer.
The armour-plated car, which has a raised roof, windows up to 5in thick, extra-strength tyres and a body made of steel, aluminium, titanium and ceramics, is thought to be based on a GMC 2500 truck that gets less than 10 miles to the gallon. Three cars are believed to be in production so that two can serve as decoys.
The thing is that Obama has little to no say in anything involving his security. In fact, I would be surprised he even knows anything about this. Perhaps if America didn’t have to deal with some of the crazies (you know, like the nuts you regularly saw at Sarah Palin rallies) the president – no matter what his or her party affiliation – could still cruise through the streets of Dallas in an open air limo. The fact is, Obama can’t do that – and he has no say in it.
If the Secret Service determines that Obama is going to do “x” for his safety, Obama does “x” whether he wants to or not. I suspect security for Obama will be unprecedented. There are nuts out there – enabled on by crackpots on the right – who neither want “the most liberal, most socialist president in history” nor “an African American President” in the White House.
So, Obama will be carted around in a limo built like a tank that gets 10 miles to the gallon precicely because he has no other choice, and to use this as a jab to say that he’s not as green as he promised he would be is plain stupid.
ZOMG – Obama’s Getting a Very Secure Limo!Post + Comments (69)
by John Cole| 90 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
As much as I liked California, the flight home was epic suck. For whatever reason, despite reserving an aisle seat and confirming an aisle seat as I checked in, I was nonetheless given a ticket that, when I boarded the plane, put me squarely crammed into a window seat. At 6’1″ and having lost my girlish figure long ago, wedging my copious ass into a window seat for 5 hours is teh awesome. Even better, I managed to draw the seat in which the window is not really there, but I got half of the window in front of me and half of the one behind, which means- a huge ass hunk of airframe in my shoulder for 5 hours.
To make the flight more fun, I got seated next to a young college couple who went through various displays of public affection for the duration of the flight. She was fidgety- I never realized that the little air nozzle on airplanes that control individual airflow required direct and active supervision for the entire flight until sitting next to her. He was uninterested, instead choosing to spend his time reading the Fountainhead.
That, in and of itself was disconcerting. He looked like a young preppy frat boy, probably 20-21, so I had the classic dilemma. Did I raise a scene and rip it out of his hands and replace it with the copy of the Bacevich book in my carry-on bag, or maybe the latest Vanity Fair, thereby saving the world of another glibertarian intent on ruining the online world with more inane Tech Central Daily posts? Or did I run the odds and hope that there would be no long-term damage done to his young mind? Youth recover quickly, and there is a solid chance that he might outgrow the harm at least by age thirty.
I never came to a decision about what to do. I just put the headphones on and watch the inflight movie, which was Wall-E. The young co-ed loved that- alternately squealing, giggling, and damping at moist eyes during the “poignant” parts. I just tried to concentrate on the movie, rather than throttling the 5 year old kicking the back of my seat or telling his mother to cover her damned mouth when she coughed. I will have to watch it again some time, and it may turn out that if I watch it when I am not plotting the murder of fellow passengers, I will enjoy it more.
I think over Iowa, I contemplated suicide for the first time in my life, but the TSA folks had made sure I had no sharp objects. I think if I am ever told I am going to die in a month, I will immediately board a plane- that will make the thirty days seem like forever.
Oh yeah. They lost my god damned luggage, too. Allegedly, that will be delivered tomorrow.
*** Update ***
Shouldn’t they have to give me the 15 bucks back for checking my luggage, since they lost it? And why are they still charging me anyway, now that prices for fuel are back to normal and they are still running smaller jam packed planes with not so much as one empty seat and a skeleton crew of aggravated flight attendants? Bastards.
And here is Lewis CK telling me to shut up and to stop being such a whiner:
by Tim F| 83 Comments
This post is in: Torture
Even if you support prosecuting the entire damned Bush administration for torture and any of ten thousand other crimes, a 9/11-style commission is clearly the right thing to do. A decision this consequential could make the country practically ungovernable if the administration imposes it on the nation from the top down. Actually, let me correct myself. A well-meaning administration might lose control if it tried indicting half of the previous one without giving the public a full accounting. With enough fear and made-up war powers Obama might pull it off but, fortunately, America has had enough of that.
Shortly after the Senate handled Alberto Gonzales with relatively mild gloves John Yoo declared that “…the debate is over. The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.” That was a lie. For all that it knew about torture at the time that Gonzales spoke the public could as well hold a referendum on the mating habits of an extinct species of penguin. Alberto Gonzales was confirmed on February 4, 2005; at that time the argument that a few misguided privates freelanced the abuses at abu Ghraib still sounded minimally plausible.
Setting aside his nonsense argument, note that even John Yoo, the guy who argued that war gives a president the power to imprison the Senate Majority leader without charges, crush children’s testicles and make the sun rise out of a second floor sink in suburban Atlanta, acknowledged that the president’s legitimacy depends in part on informed consent from the public. It means something that the eternal sunshine machine failed to wipe all 85 Federalist Papers from John Yoo’s eager mind.
Just one time I will say that Yoo is right. A democratic nation should never make a decision like torture or, say, mass prosecutions for committing torture without weighing the decision publicly. Mass pardons, if they happen, will at least give us a supply of well-placed officials who cannot plead the fifth.
This post is in: Religion
Turns out, societies that have more non-believers murder and rape each other on a much lower level than we here in America:
In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don’t go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don’t believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they’re nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.
Denmark and Sweden aren’t exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.
So, this is a puzzle. If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well—better, in many ways, than devout ones.
****
The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.
Unsurprising, and worthy of a discussion.
by John Cole| 94 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Read this.
Then read Jim Henley’s point about the recent Palin/turkey silliness. The barbaric “execution” and “assassination” of those turkeys is the model for how these animals should be raised for food.
And since we are talking about turkeys, this Daniel Larsion takedown of assorted foolishness is not to be missed.