From Pine View Farm

May, 2009 archive

Empathy 0

Auth

Follow the link for more Auth.

Share

666 0

The Anti-Christ revealed.

Via ASZ.

Share

The Republican Base 0

is a frightening and hate-full thing.

It is, indeed, base.

Share

Sotomayor 0

The odious Southern strategy lives on.

Appealing to bigotry:

It’s second nature to them now,
like breathing out and breathing in.

Indeed, a lot of folks don’t seem to realize that Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

Josh Marshall:

As I said this morning, it’s painfully revealing how conservatives simply cannot helping going hard on the race front with Sotomayor or, as David Kurtz just put it, can’t help imagining that everyone else is as racist as many of them are.

Video link via Atrios.

Share

Ozzie and Harriet 0

Before the television show, there was the band:

Share

Stray Thought 0

Remind me to add Dijon Mustard to my shopping list.

Share

Say NO to Torture Day 0

From Phawker via Brendan.

Share

Thought Police 0

At Liberty (sic) University, firings will continue until thought improves.

Oh.

Wait.

Kevin Roose writes at the Guardian:

When I arrived at Liberty for my semester “abroad”, I expected to find a campus full of ballot-punching Republicans. I found those, but I also met Christian feminists, Christian civil libertarians, Christians opposed to the war in Iraq, Christian gay-rights activists and other Liberty students who challenged the norms of their parents’ generation.

As evidenced by the 32% of evangelicals between the ages of 18-29 who voted for Barack Obama last November, “Christian” and “Republican” are no longer synonymous in America, and Liberty’s pathetic attempt to maintain a unified political stance by silencing dissent shows how out of touch the university is with its own student body.

Share

Feckless Driving 0

He should have pulled into the emergency parking pull-off.

Details here.

Share

Twits on Twitter 0

El Reg:

Speaking to Radio 4’s Front Row programme, (Hugh ) Laurie described himself as “bothered by the social cost of every tweet”, explaining: “As I look around my friends’ tweets I see banality on all sides. I don’t understand the purpose of it.

He added: “I think if people were able to take these 140 characters and develop a poetic Western form – a haiku of our own in which all human existence could be compressed into those 140 characters – that would be a satisfying thing, but that’s not what I see when I read them.”

Share

California Dreamin’ 0

In a move with only one modern-day precedent, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration and members of Congress for federal loan guarantees to help California out of a multibillion-dollar jam.

The story goes on to cite the Federal bailout of New York City as a comparison.

This situation illustrates the internal contradictions (as Marx would have said) of Republican Economic Theory. Republicans have rendered raising taxes almost impossible in Cali. At the same time, they rendered cutting services almost impossible. For a long time, thanks to Republicanism, Californians have been thinking they can get something for nothing–more expensive government services (it’s called the Price Index) without paying for them.

Before you scream welfare queens, consider that schools and corrections are almost half of the total.

(Note that I am not arguing for any particular tax policy. Far be it from me to offer any solutions.)

I am merely pointing out another example that the Republican theory that cutting taxes is the economic 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is just so much hooey. It is the camouflage for the Party’s mission of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Everything has a price.

Taxes are the price of living in a civilized society.

Share

Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0

Running out of persons to lay off:

A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment insurance dropped by 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 623,000 in the week ended May 23, falling for a second straight week.

However, the number of people staying on benefit rolls after drawing an initial week of aid increased 110,000 to a higher-than-forecast 6.79 million in the week ended May 16.

On a possibly brighter note, the same story reports that April durable goods orders were up slightly.

I say “possibly” because these preliminary figures, including the unemployment figures, are often revised a month later–usually in the wrong direction. Follow the link to see what happened to the March durable goods estimate.

Share

The Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq 0

Updates here.

Share

William O. Douglas She’s Not 0

Frankly, Douglas should be the model for a Supreme Court justice.

Douglas was strongly libertarian in his opinions, distrustful of establishments of all types, and considered himself a voice for the voiceless and powerless. Along with Justice Hugo Black, he was an absolutist on the Bill of Rights. He was well versed in corporate law (including antitrust) matters, which was his specialty as a law professor. He wrote his opinions quickly, which sometimes meant they were poorly crafted.

But Sotomayor seems to be a decent sort.

It’s kind of fun watching the righties make stuff up.

An “activist judge,” in wingnut parlance, is ipso facto any judge that does not agree with wingnuts.

Scott Lemieux writes at the Guardian:

. . . I hope that President Obama and Democrats in the Senate will use the confirmation process to push back against the fallacious received wisdom that progressive judges engage in “judicial activism” while conservative justices believe in “judicial restraint” and are more likely to defer to the elected branches.

Deborah White discusses the Republicans’ bigoted reactions here.

And Mad Kane immortalizes the whole shebang in poetry here.

Share

Leonard Cohen 1

Share

What Noz Said 0

This has been the first edition of What Noz Said.

Share

The Great Game 0

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Andrew Sullivan on the Sotomayor nomination:

He (Obama) is doing to the GOP collectively what he did to Clinton and McCain and Cheney: he is aiding and abetting their self-destruction.

The more they recede into fantastickal thinking, the less influence they have.

The less influence they have, the more they recede into fanstastickal thinking.

And so on.

Watch the fantasies demolished:

Share

Twits on Twitter 0

Phishers invade Twitter. Like most phishing schemes, this one relies on the failure of persons to pay attention to what they are doing.

From the Toimes:

The scheme appears to have begun Thursday with the creation of bogus Twitter accounts, which the scammers used to “follow” other users, says Rik Ferguson, a senior security advisor at security-software maker Trend Micro. If these users checked out the profiles of their new followers and clicked on the Web addresses there, they were redirected to a fake Twitter site where they were prompted to hand over their passwords. In a smooth move, the site’s address was tvviter.com (notice the double “v” and single “t”), likely an effort to reassure anyone who glanced at the address bar.

Share

Simple Answers to Simple Questions 0

The Question, from Dick Polman:

Will the GOP, prodded by its conservative base, dare to assail a woman of color who rose from humble beginnings on sheer merit; who was formally tapped for the federal district bench by a Republican president (George H. W. Bush); and who was confirmed in 1998 for a federals appeals court seat by a Republican Senate, voting 67-29? (By the way, those 67 Yes votes included 25 Republican senators…seven of whom are still serving.)

The Answer:

Damed straight!

Share

Twits on Twitter 0

Geekazine elucidates.

Share