November, 2008 archive
From Blue States to Red States 0
I just got an email including a memo “From Blue States to Red States.”
I haven’t found the original, but I did find a source on the web.
You can read an excerpt below the fold.
Bushonomics 0
Bonddad on the National Debt (follow the link to see the full analysis):
Over the last 8 years we have not made any choices. Instead we have funded, well, everything that has come down the pike. In addition, we cut taxes, further exacerbating the problem of deficit financing. As a result, we have issued mammoth amounts of public and intra-government debt. Here’s a reading of the last 8 years from the Bureau of Public Debt:
09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86The current total is $10,566,146,196,490.58.
My words, not Bonddad’s: Republican Economic Theory is beggaring the nation.
And anyone who understands arithmetic saw it coming.
Stray Thought 2
Now that baseball is over, the Sports Section has lost its allure.
The Party of Thelma and Louise 1
The Republican Party ignores the warning signs and chooses to drive off the cliff.
This is good news.
Kristol Klear 0
Dick Polman is one of my favorite political analysts. He’s perceptive and fact-based, writes well, and has a sense of humor.
His blog post today is a potpourri of comments about the election and its aftermath; it is well worth five minutes.
The best part, though, is this, occuring about 2/3rds of the way down the page:
The neoconservative talking head and columnist is always worth hearing and reading, if only so that we can safely conclude the opposite of whatever he is predicting. For instance, he said during the runup to ’08 that “Fred Thompson knows what he’s doing, and he will be formidable,” which meant, of course, that Thompson didn’t have a clue and was destined to be toast.
This summer, Kristol envisioned a GOP ticket of “McCain-Lieberman” or “McCain-Ridge,” which meant that we could safely conclude that neither guy had a prayer of being picked.
Last year, he predicted that voters would “recoil” from the prospect of electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, thereby alerting us that ’08 would be a good Democratic year.
Last year, he also predicted that George W. Bush would go down in history as a successful president, in part because he would leave behind “a strong economy,” which meant, of course, that Bush would play out his string with the economy in free fall and the conservative deregulation credo in disrepute.
And his sunny 2005 economic prediction – “Last week the Bush Administration’s second-term bear market bottomed out” – was sufficient proof that the worst second-term bear market was still to come.
Obama supporters can only hope that Kristol will soon insist, in his New York Times column, that the new president will prove to be an unmitigated disaster. Such a prediction may well trigger further dancing in the streets.
I wish I could get established as a right-wing pundit; I’d love to be in a line of work where being consistently and persistently wrong just seems to cement job security.
Never happen, though. I’m not a very good liar.
A Dose of Reality 0
From John Cole.
Pop Pyschology 0
Does this help us understand wingnut talk radio hosts?
Election Tidbit 0
Facebook Is a Public Place 2
It doesn’t take an IT certification to know that nothing that passes through the internet is private.
Exhibit one:
“all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse”
Geez, Buck. Even if you actually feel that way — which is sad — why not just keep it to yourself? You know, instead of telling five million people. But he didn’t, and naturally, he is now paying the price; he’s been kicked off the UT football team.
Exhibit two (from across the Big Pond–later in the article, the author explores whether such a firing would be legal in the US):
Legacy 0
From the Guardian:
His remark made me brood about the trials that Obama will face as president and the sad likelihood of disappointed expectations . . . .
Power Blip 0
This morning. Had to turn the one printer back on and reset the clocks on the microwave and the DVD player.
But the UPS’s worked. The servers, the modem, the router, and the hubs stayed up and the internet connection held.
Swift Recoveries 0
A few days ago, Jon Swift wrote one of his usual brilliant, prescient posts, enumerating the many reasons why John McCain was going to win the election.
It is well worth five minutes of your time, even though, well, he sort of, like, you know, blew it. Like, totally, Dude.
But he has recovered quickly, and here explains how the election of a scary black man is a good thing for conservativism and presages its resurgence.
It is worth a read.
Bachman Censure Overdrive 0
Fight the effort to revive McCarthyism and bring shame to the United States of America.
Sign the petition.
Via Phawker.
Make It Happen 0
Let the Republicans all sit together:
From Josh Marshall:
Contact the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee here.
Sign the petition here.
H/T Brendan for the link.
The Culture of Life 0
From Brendan.
Why All the Unfavorable Republican Leaks about Sarah Palin? (Updated) 0
Over the past couple of days, before the McCain campaign has even had a chance to cool, McCain operatives are trashing their vice-presidential nominee. Frankly, my opinion of her got lower and lower as the campaign progressed, and I posted about the things she did and said that caused me the greatest discomporfort, most notably here.
But this orgy of internecine back-stabbing is quite remarkable.
See, for example, here and here.
Whatever one’s opinion of Palin, she did not nominate herself as vice president. Her party’s candidate called her, and she responded.
If she were the wrong choice, that was not her doing. And I predict she’s going to pay a high political price for answering that phone call.
Why are the GOP long-knives out to get her?
Graachus over at the Great Orange Satan has a theory. The language is more harshly stated than I would normally use, but I think the theory is still worth considering. I’ve edited the portion that I quoted below, both to make it more concise and to remove some of the more just flat-out insulting adjectives. If you want to read the original, just follow the link.
(Aside: Even though Sarah Palin may not have the philosophy, background, temperament, nor seasoning to serve as vice president, much less as president, frankly, some of the adjectives in the source were wholly uncalled for; what is important is not what the post suggests about her; it what is suggests about her party. And there I think it is spot on.)
The problem is that the crazies are getting restless, and want to run the party themselves, not just provide the voting muscle. This makes the richies nervous . . . .
(snip)
Palin also scares them, as she’s drawn from the same group (as Huckabee–ed.) . . . And the people who run the party aren’t fools, just dedicated to their own interests: they realize that she’s incredibly ignorant, and probably dangerous beyond a point they’re willing to tolerate.
In short, says the GOP to the Christian right, “Vote for us, but don’t expect us to take you seriously. And if you start to get a power-base in the larger party, we’ll take you down.”
Addendum:
Atrios has more on the scapegoating of Sarah Palin.
Nutcase Roundup 0
Ravings from a parallel universe.
Two, via the Booman Tribune.
Four, via Phillybits.
And ASZ rounds up a whole flock.
Sunrise 0
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a rabid fanboy of the Opera browser.
In addition to Opera’s slick and flawless functionality, I like the eye candy aspects; there are hundreds of Opera skins available.
The Opera “O” takes on a whole new meaning.
You can see the new version below the fold.
(Slightly edited because my memory returned.)
Read more »