First Looks category archive

Tuesday, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Center City, Philadelphia.

Just a block from South Street.

I’m still waiting for Brendan to explain the gift exchange thingee to me.

Despite a couple of missteps in the latest Iowa debate (more about that tomorrow):

After nearly a full day spent on the Senate floor, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) defeated an attempt to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform legislation that would grant immunity to telecommunications companies who cooperated with the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program. Dodd objected to the motion to proceed to the bill early this morning and remained on the floor for almost ten hours, taking a stand for the rule of law and the Constitution with his statements throughout the day. At approximately 7:30 P.M. Majority Leader Reid announced the FISA reform bill would be pulled from the Senate calendar and reconsidered in January.

At last, a Democrat who stands up for, golly gosh gee, Batman, democracy.

(Taken with no flash and no lamps on in the room and with the camera set on speed priority, so the lights would stand out, then run through Paintshop Pro’s One Step Photo Fix.)

Sorry, that should have been Kellogg and Brown Rutting.

Jon Swift.

I’m not going to rewrite this.

Just please go read the post. And wonder what the heck goes on in some persons’ heads.

As the first commentor said, “Intolerant AND stupid…what a magical combination.”

If the video acts up, you can watch it here.

Via Phillybits.

Only worse. At least Nixon got some things right.

Phillybits.

So these bozos learn how to do homework. From Fact Check dot Org:

The Republican presidential candidates met Sunday evening in Florida for a forum hosted by the Spanish-language media company Univision Communications. We found a few missteps in what the candidates had to say to Spanish-speaking voters:

• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made some incorrect and questionable claims about Americans who don’t have health insurance, hypothesizing that a third don’t have coverage because “the think they’re healthy and invincible” – a claim for which we find no support – and that another third are self-insured – which is the definition of all people who don’t have health insurance and must pay their own bills. He also understated the number who can’t afford insurance.
• Mitt Romney said the Massachusetts universal health care plan he signed into law as governor didn’t include an “employer mandate,” but the plan includes a number of employer “requirements” with penalties for noncompliance. He also claimed subsidies for low-income individuals were completely financed by a state fund for care of the uninsured. It’s not clear if that will be the case just yet.
• New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani falsely stated that the performance of K-12 students, including Hispanics, in the country has declined. Actually, it has improved.

And, of course, I have a personal opinion on Huckabee’s lies about health insurance. As I have described before, I am uninsured.

Not because I think I’m invincible. When you take three blood pressure medicines a day, you really don’t consider yourself invincible.

I’m uninsured because I am self-employed and have so far been unable to find an insurance company willing to issue me insurance. (The church secretary was shocked to know that an applicant could be turned down.)

Here’s a neat little article I found that explains how health insurance (fails to) work.

But I have a meeting to attend.

I assure you, I would really rather be at DL than at this meeting.

Once a day and twice on Sunday.

So, please, pick up the slack. Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p. m. until Brendan can’t take it anymore.

Remember Willie Horton?

Only, this time, it seems that the Governor actually had something to do with it.

It should be fun to watch this one play out, what with family values and all.

Of course the last time I checked up on it, serial rape was not considered a “family value.”

Addendum, 12/7/2007:

Horton the Elephant never forgets: Huckabee swings back. And misses.

You see, the problem is, facts have this stubborn habit of not going away. They may go into hiding for a while. But they seldom go away (unless, of course, they are CIA videotapes of CIA torture, but that’s another story).

Courtesy Harry Shearer:

(Full disclosure: I’ve got the NPR Democratic Debate on my mp3 player, but I don’t know that I’ll listen to it, given my low opinions of candidate debates. Now, if they were real, actual debates, rather than soundbite circuses, that might be something else . . . .)

From FactCheck dot Org:

At the first all-radio debate of this election cycle, there were several factual faux pas by the Democrats at the table. Two candidates, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, were primarily responsible.

• Biden linked an $18-per-barrel increase in the price of oil to the Senate resolution declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization – even though it took two months to achieve that hike, and it’s a leap of logic to connect the two events.
• Biden also said, erroneously, that Spanish-speakers didn’t account for the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. It’s been a long time since that’s been true.
• Clinton, in blaming Bush for having “de-fanged” the Consumer Product Safety Commission, ignored the fact that the agency has been losing workers for years – even during her husband’s administration.
• And Clinton said the Chinese didn’t want her to come to a UN conference on women in 1995. They may not have liked what she said, but they knew her presence would help perceptions of the conference they were hosting.

Poor Joe. He’s a good Senator and an honorable man, but he does have a bad case of “open mouth, insert foot.”

From Mithras:

President Bush, commenting on the hostage crisis at Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire office, says a real leader would handle it the way he handled 9/11. Taking his advice to heart, the SWAT team is preparing to storm the office down the block and kill everyone inside.

And, given the climate around here, it might be the last. Every few years, we get two feet in a day. Other years, we get hardly any.

I’ve mentioned before that Hillary Clinton gives me the willies.

Steve has more.

And they haven’t made any mistakes with my account:

Most of us know what it’s like to receive one of those “your account is £X overdrawn and unless we get the cash by noon tomorrow we’re going to sell your kids for scientific experiments and break your mother’s arms and legs” letters, so spare a thought for Joe Martins of Cobb County, Georgia, who was rather surprised to learn that he owed Wachovia Bank a cool $211 trillion – 70 times the entire US federal budget.

Martins had apparently closed an account with Wachovia and “made good on an outstanding check”, as Atlanta’s WSBTV explains. However, a swift letter from the bank insisted the closing balance was $211,010,028,257,303 in the red – with “no cents”, as Wachovia kindly pointed out.

Follow the link for the full story.

Let us talk about moral bankruptcy.

I cannot put it any more succintly than John Cole:

As a side note, what does it say about your party when people are deemed unelectable because they oppose torture?

I’m not there.

I have a cold.

But you can still get there before the fun comes to an end.

Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia.

But ABC says my three best matches are Kucinich, Gravel, and Biden.

Via Balloon Juice.

With apologies to Captain Beefheart.

So, I’m driving home from the cooling tower place, with high winds trying to blow me off the road, when I passed an exit sign. The US 13 shield was Blowin’ in the Wind, halfway off the sign.

They don’t paint the signs any more.

They just stick them up.