First Looks category archive

Eugene Robinson on the Washington biosphere:

There aren’t many people in Washington (the state of mind) who spend sleepless nights worrying about sons, daughters or other loved ones serving in Iraq. Even though there are suburbs within 20 miles of the Capitol where illegal immigration is a passionate, hot-button issue, most in Washington think of the problem in academic terms. And just about everyone in state-of-mind Washington has top-notch health insurance; members of Congress enjoy a comprehensive plan that one might be tempted to call “socialized medicine,” since a large portion of the costs are borne by taxpayers.

Well, dammit, I know what is like to worry about a troop. And not to have health insurance.

Frankly, both situations pretty much suck.

And neither is going to be solved as long as Republicans continue to play with our lives so as to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Phony security gone wild:

A couple were banned for life from a shopping centre – because they were taking photos of their beloved grandchildren.

Kim and Trevor Sparshott were ordered to stop taking photos because they were causing a security threat.

They were thrown out of the centre after they took out a camera to snap the look on the youngsters’ faces when they turned up unexpectedly.

(After mounting a complaint campaign, they got the ban lifted.)

This ranks right up there with confiscating toothpaste and shampoo as a pretending to provide security while doing nothing.

Via Geek News Central.

. . . Fact Check dot org always becomes more active. Today’s crop:

Dems:

Obama’s ad touting his health care plan quotes phrases from newspaper articles and an editorial, but makes them sound more laudatory and authoritative than they actually are.

.

Repubs:

The ad Huckabee said he decided not to run has now appeared at least three times in Iowa anyway. It accuses Romney of being “dishonest” but shades the facts in the process.

In another ad Huckabee claims to have signed the most broad-based tax cut in Arkansas history. But as we’ve noted repeatedly, he signed bigger tax increases than cuts.

The gift that keeps on giving. From Fact Check dot org (emphasis added):

Romney says in a TV ad that the U.S. will see more change in the next 10 years “than in the last 10 centuries.” More than since the Dark Ages? More changes than the advent of the printing press, railroads, constitutional democracy, penicillin, electricity, telecommunications and the Internet all put together? We don’t think so.

A Romney spokesman said he didn’t mean what he said as fact, calling the statement “a metaphor.” We call it a ludicrous exaggeration.

Didn’t mean what he said or didn’t know what he was talking about? Inquiring minds want to know. (Oh, all right. Probably the person who wrote the script didn’t know what he or she are talking about, but we’ve already seen what happens when presidents read uncritically from scripts written by others.)

Follow the link to Fact Check dot org for the highlights of the last 1,000 years.

Get FactCheck dot org on your cell phone.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Another empty suit on the empty suit:

But his biggest problem is a failure of imagination. Market research is a snapshot of the past. With his data-set mentality, Romney has chosen to model himself on a version of Republicanism that is receding into memory. As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.

Via Booman.

Digby:

Man, Romney makes me ashamed of my country:

“We’ll try and represent ourselves and our nation well also to our kids because I think, I think kids watch the White House and there have been failures in the past in the White House — if you go back to the Clinton years and recognize that — that I think had an enormous impact on the culture of our country”

Oh, where to start? Well, for starters, I suppose Romney’s saying that the “enormous impact” of Monica’s blowjob “on the culture our country” was responsible for Trent Lott’s racist defense of Strom Thurmond, the substance abuse problems of Jeb Bush’s daughter, the meth-fueled extramarital sex sessions of the former Reverend Ted Haggard, Larry Craig’s widening stance, Bush/Iraq war supporter Brittney Spears’ shaved head, and maybe even Cheney’s inebriated behavior around loaded shotguns. Or maybe Romney has in mind serial adulterers in his own party like Scaife, Gingrich, Hyde, and Giuliani. Who knew a little fellatio was so insidious that it could cause David Addington and Alberto Gonzalez to countenance torture, or Tom Delay to use the Office of Homeland Security to help subvert the legislature of Texas? Or perhaps Romney had in mind the slimy christianist activists who Judge Jones accused of lying to a court of law during Kitzmiller v. Dover. Yes, this is all the Clintons’ fault.

. . . is the Current Federal Administration:

Two years after an explosion tore apart the Sago Mine and killed 12 men, prompting Congress to pass legislation strengthening mine safety standards, many of those standards have yet to be implemented.

Congress overhauled mine safety rules after the January 2006 blast at the Upshur County mine. There were two other high-profile fatal mine accidents that year, and an August collapse in Utah killed nine miners.

But the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has yet to implement some of the standards established by the laws, and the United Mine Workers union, which represents some of the 42,000 miners who work in the nation’s 670 underground coal mines, blames the agency and mine owners for the delays.

The First Awards Show of the Season:

Flock together.

Do your birdwatching here.

A. You can sometimes find something useful in Junk Mail, maybe like a 10 cents off coupon or the like.

. . . er, Honda.

To the Toimes. Excerpt:

I have heard that you have hired the utterly discredited neo-conservative William Kristol to write a weekly column. I am aghast at this decision: Mr. Kristol was one of the loudest voices agitating for war in Iraq, and at every turn he has been proven wrong. He was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction; he was wrong that our troops would be met as liberators; he was wrong about the cost of the war; he was wrong about the length of the war; he was wrong about Iraq’s stability; and he was wrong about Saddam Hussein’s ties to September 11. Thousands of American soldiers are dead and wounded because of Kristol’s errors, and thousands more maimed and psychotic. Why would you hire someone with this record? Wasn’t one Judy Miller enough?

Addendum, The Night Before New Year’s Eve:

Susie.

Media Matters. (Via Eschaton)

In case you are not familiar with the Peter Principle, you can read about it here.

John Cole:

If the Peter Principle were true, George Bush and Bill Kristol would be the street-cleaner and dogcatcher in Crawford, Texas.

FactCheck dot org’s year end round up of the biggest whoppers of the year.

Dems 4, Repubs 6.

Top ten signs your country may be becoming fascist:

Via Phillybits.

Help restore America here.

If you are unsure, read this.

. . . despite what modern marketing may lead us to think.

He and his “Green Mountain Boys” fought for freedom.

Their spirit still lives in their home state:

A group in Brattleboro (Vermont-ed.) is petitioning to put an item on a town-meeting agenda in March that would make Bush and Vice President Cheney subject to arrest and indictment if they visit the southeastern Vermont community.

“This petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence, and it draws on that tradition in claiming a universal jurisdiction when governments fail to do what they’re supposed to do,” said Kurt Daims, 54, a retired machinist leading the drive.

And Republicans cause him to cry.

Andrew Sullivan:

This is actually something like the consensus among most of the GOP candidates:

“Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive.”

It’s a very, very, very long way from “Give me liberty or give me death,”. . . .

The Republican Party, though, has shown that it doesn’t care about liberty.

It cares only about reducing taxes (for the rich, that is); making up wars; and making the rich richer, the poor poorer.

I guess Abraham Lincoln is crying right along with Patrick Henry.

Well, it looks like my son ain’t gettin’ no raise.

Addendum, 12/29/2007:

What digby said.

Good question.

Addendum:

Jesus General.

A long time ago, I wrote a long, wordy, rambling post on securitization and the real estate market.

Now comes Atrios, who summarizes the entire concept in just a few words.