January, 2008 archive

(profanity)

Ralph Nader has formed a presidential exploratory committee, and said in an interview Wednesday that he will launch another presidential bid if he’s convinced he can raise enough money to appear on the vast majority of state ballots this fall.

Via TBogg.

Dick Polman parses the State of the Union Address.

I won’t even try to summarize or excerpt it.

I’ll just recommend it to you. Here.

The long national nightmare may soon be over.

Empty Suit four and a half, McCain one half, the others one each.

From Fact Check dot org. Follow the link for the full analysis:

With a nationwide wave of nominating contests looming next week, Republican presidential candidates held their last scheduled debate against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s retired Air Force One. But we found some of the candidates’ facts just won’t fly.

• Romney complained that McCain used “the wrong data” about job creation to support his assertion that Massachusetts had ranked 47th among the 50 states while Romney was governor. Romney was wrong; McCain was correct.
• Romney said his hundreds of millions of dollars in “fee increases” merely caught up with years of inflation and weren’t tax increases in disguise. Independent budget experts contradict him on that.
• Romney said the over-budget costs of his Massachusetts health care plan were due to changes made by his successor. Authorities on the plan say that’s mostly untrue; costs went up because more people than expected signed up for state-subsidized insurance.
• Romney wrongly claimed McCain’s anti-global-warming bill would boost gasoline prices by up to 50 cents per gallon. Actually, the official estimate is 40 cents for most vehicles, and not until the year 2025.
• McCain and Romney traded oversimplified assertions regarding a “timetable” for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
• Huckabee cited a Heritage Foundation study to back up his assertion that rebates to taxpayers aren’t as good a way to stimulate the economy as the highway construction he favors. In fact, the study does disparage rebates but urges tax cuts instead, not increased spending.
• Ron Paul repeated his claim that defending the U.S. “empire” is costing “a trillion dollars a year.” But the dubious figure includes costs such as the entire Veterans Affairs budget. Paul also claimed “nobody” is talking about cutting spending, even as his rivals did so 14 times during the same debate.

By the way, a thought occurred to me as I read John Cole’s musings, quoted here:

As to Romney, I have thought about this a good deal, and I simply can not narrow down what exactly it is that thoroughly repulses me about him. It isn’t the Mormonism, as I couldn’t care less about people and their religion unless they are chucking it in my face. I think it is equal parts his naked opportunism, who is supporting him (Hugh and company), and the fact that he is the one individual in the race that when I look at him, my inner self says “he is so totally full of shit.” I haven’t been so thoroughly convinced someone was full of it every time they opened their mouth since, well… Bill Clinton. It really is a mystery why I can not stand the man so much- he isn’t as objectionable as Tancredo or some of the others, but I just have had a knee-jerk dislike of the man since the beginning.

Maybe it’s the emptiness in the suit.

Empty Suit is touting his experience as a “management consultant.”

One of the definitions of a “management consultant” is someone who is more than 50 miles away from home, carrying a Blackberry, who charges [mumble] hundreds of dollars an hour to tell the client what the client wants to hear.

Considering how consistently Mitt the Flip has changed his positions in the past year, it seems pretty clear that he can’t figure out what this client–the American electorate–wants to hear.

His business model is crashing about his ears, because he now has to think for himself.

And the OEM “think-for-yourself” equipment seems to have shorted out.

TBogg:

Let’s be perfectly honest here: Mitt Romney is a businessman and, on top of that, he has a Master of the Universe view of himself, and when he spends millions of his own dollars and he still can’t buy a thrill from the electorate, he’s going to be bitter at the fools who refuse to buy what he’s selling . . . .

Under normal circumstances I would say that Romney would be playing for a tie, in this case a brokered convention, where he undoubtedly believes that he could attempt to convince the powers that be (as opposed to the stupid fucking yokels who vote in primaries) that he is the man. But even the powers that be have to see that the more people see of Romney, the less they like him. That’s not the message that every dollar of his campaign has set out to sell, but that’s the one that’s being received.

Josh Marshall:

Or so he thinks:

Even though he forced Congress to change its original bill, Bush’s signature yesterday came with a little-noticed signing statement, claiming that provisions in the law “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” CQ reports on the provisions Bush plans to disregard:

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.

In his “Memorandum of Justification” for the waiver, Bush cited his Nov. 26 “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship” between Iraq and the United States. This agreement has been aggressively opposed by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress as not only unprecedented, but also potentially unconstitutional because it was enacted without the agreement of the legislation branch.

So little Bushie Boy had a temper tantrum because the elected representatives of the people of the United States of America incongruously assembled passed a law he didn’t like.

So he’s just going to ignore the law.

Again.

So take that, people of the United States of America!

Pffffft!

He’s the king. You are forbidden to tell him no.

I didn’t watch the speech, as I promised here.

Reading the post mortems, I can say quite certainly I didn’t miss a thing.

From Fact Check dot org:

Bush pretty much stuck to the facts in his final State of the Union address. But he chose his facts carefully and didn’t always tell the whole story (and this surprises us how?–ed.)

• He correctly noted that the number of jobs has grown steadily for a record 52 straight months. But the number of jobs gained is a fraction of the gains made during Bill Clinton’s years, and wage gains have been eaten up by inflation.
• He claimed his proposal to give tax deductions for those who buy their own health insurance will “put private coverage within reach for millions.” Some say that’s true, but other experts doubt it. And even the most optimistic say his plan would still leave the large majority of the uninsured without any coverage.
• He said “we” foiled a terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners over the Atlantic, but the plot was actually uncovered by the British, as Bush himself said in last year’s State of the Union address.
• He talked tough about pork-barrel spending, saying he’d issue an executive order for agencies to ignore more Congressional “earmarks.” But he delayed the effect until November, rather than making it effective with the current fiscal year.

On other matters, Bush noted that he has begun bringing troops home from Iraq, which is true, though troop levels have been reduced by only a few thousand since the peak of the surge. He said more than 80,000 Iraqis are fighting terrorists, a figure that includes at least 60,000 “concerned local citizens” who are being paid by the U.S. He was mostly correct in describing progress in test scores since his No Child Left Behind Act was passed, but he overlooked some recent backsliding in reading scores and the fact that some test scores were on an upward trend before the new law went into effect.