Today's installment: People in Obama's administration got mortgages.
I'm beginning to think they took John McCain's defeat way too personally.
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It is amusing and amazing to watch the right-wingers acting like the stock market meltdown and horrifying loss of jobs is somehow Obama's fault even though he has been in office for less than seven weeks. ("Left wing" MSNBC had a chart of the Dow's decline since election day yesterday as though that was somehow a meaningful measure of time.) These are the same people who insisted on blaming 9/11 on Clinton because Bush had been in office a mere eight months.
Speaking of Bush, isn't it extraordinary to what degree the right has written him out of history already? A man that won virtually universal plaudits from them until the 2008 election season is treated as a non-entity, an apostate, or worse, a liberal. At the recent CPAC Conference it was as if Bush never existed. Strangely enough, though, I remember the acclaim, indeed the worship he was afforded by the righty blogs, some of which went so far as to proclaim him a "genius." (I just threw up in my mouth.)
I am reminded again of the Leninist nature of the right. All I could think of is a wonderfully described scene in Milan Kundera's "Book of Laughter and Forgetting:"
In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square. That was a great turning point in the history of Bohemia. A fateful moment of the kind that occurs only once or twice a millennium.
Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald's head.
The propaganda section made hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on the balcony where Gottwald, in a fur hat and surrounded by his comrades, spoke to the people. On that balcony the history of Communist Bohemia began. Every child knew that photograph, from seeing it on posters and in schoolbooks and museums.
Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald's head.
Bush is the proverbial fur hat - but we're not going to let anyone forget that he was here - and that he did untold damage.
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The tyranny of a short-term majority: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/03/tyranny-of-short-term-majority.html
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A two-line summary of the US occupation of Iraq (well minus all the bodies)
President Barack Obama, February 27, 2009: "To the Iraqi people, let me be clear about America's intentions — the United States pursues no claim on your territory or your resources."
After, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, having exhausted all alternatives.
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PETA: This year's list of worst-dressed.
Madonna and 60 chinchillas, after they were electrocuted and skinned
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If it could only happen here in our so-called "democracy":
The former president of one of the largest banks in the Dominican Republic was sentenced friday to 10 years in prison for fraud and ordered to pay damages. - ap
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company says radioactive dirt good for gardens. - the chief of EnergySolutions Inc. says the radioactive waste in his Utah dump is so mild that it could be used as garden dirt. - ap
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How to turn a severe recession into a depression
Freeze federal spending in response to a huge spike in unemployment.
No, seriously, House Republican leader John Boehner is now proposing a federal spending freeze. Like Josh Marshall says,
I'm not even sure it's fair to say that this is a replay of the disastrous decisions the magnified the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933. It's more a parody of it. When the crisis is a rapid and catastrophic drop off in demand, you handcuff the one force that can create demand (i.e., the federal government) in the throes of the contraction. That's insane. Levels of stimulus are a decent question. Intensifying the contraction is just insane and frankly a joke.
Paul Rosenberg has some good comments and a Rachel Maddow clip on this topic.
Republicans have long advocated dumb ideas on economic policy, like Congressman Steve King's proposal to boost investment by eliminating capital gains taxes. To state the obvious, investors are not staying away from stocks because they're worried about paying taxes on huge capital gains. On the contrary, investors fear that they will lose money because the market has not hit bottom yet and the recession will bring down more companies.
Similarly, fear of taxes on corporate profits has little to do with why businesses are not investing in production now. Business owners are not worried about finding money to pay taxes on profits. They are worried about losing money because skyrocketing unemployment reduces consumer demand for the goods or services that businesses sell.
In fairness, if we followed bad Republican advice on cutting corporate and capital gains taxes, we'd only be giving wealthy Americans tax breaks with a very small economic stimulus "bang for the buck" (see this data compiled by the chief economist for Moody's). If we followed Boehner's "new and improved" Republican advice to freeze federal spending, we would send the economy into a meltdown.
I have to wonder whether Republicans even believe in their own talking points. A spending freeze, really? That's not what George W. Bush and the Republican majority in Congress did during the previous recession.
I think they may be beating the drum on spending to scare some Democrats out of supporting Obama's budget proposal. What worries me is the scenario outlined by Open Left user Master Jack:
1. Obama submits a budget with the spending necessary to avoid a depression.2. Blue Dogs bitch and bleat and whine.
3. Obama caves to the blue dogs and waters down his budget.
4. Depression ensues.
5. Democrats get clobbered in 2010.
6. Liberals get blamed.
This is what the Republicans are trying to make happen. And it wouldn't stand a prayer of working of not for their blue dog enablers.
Democrats from President Obama on down need to push back hard against the Republicans' idiotic new line.
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Nasty story from Oklahoma - liberal hunters need not apply.
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Earmarks: http://alterx.blogspot.com/2009/03/earmarks.html
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George Bush the First American Dictator: http://brucemulkey.com/2009/03/05/george-w-bush-the-first-american-dictator/
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Another heretik found!
Yes, another heretic Republican has been located by the enterprising investigators at World Nut Daily ("we're batshit crazy and so are you if you read us!"). This heretical RINO (Republican In Name Only) is Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.,who has referred constituents raising concerns over President Obama's eligibility to occupy the Oval Office to Snopes.com's debunking of the Obama Birth-Certificate-Gate conspiracy theory.
But of course, for sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrome, mere evidence is something to be waved off as incidental, and World Nut Daily swiftly does so, noting that Snopes.com "relies for its answer partly on information from the Obama campaign", which of course renders the answer invalid, nevermind the birth announcement from a Hawaii newspaper or the statements by Hawaii state government officials or the statements by others who have directly handled the birth certificate! And nevermind that Sen. Kyl is ranked as one of the most conservative members of the Senate and is a personal friend of John McCain who both endorsed McCain and has been floated by McCain as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and thus would have every reason to pump up Certificate-gate if there were any truth to the matter. He is diverging from Republican heterodoxy, and thus must be punished.
I applaud the efforts of World Nut Daily and other nutty birthers. They make the Republican Party look batshit crazy, and given how much Republican rule of the US ruined things over the past 8 years, the loonier the Republicans look, the better for the nation. So go ahead, World Nut Daily! Pump out the conspiracy theories and give us more nuttiness!
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Interesting new survey: less religulous.
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You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired - President Obama - to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.
Keep reading: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-republicans-are-arsonists-who.html
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On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bil."
I'm guessing Rush is back on the sauce — I don't understand at all what he is trying to say about healthcare or Kennedy, but his words are designed to ignite harsh reactions. I think that this is probably too much even for allegedly sane GOPers to bear.
Oops. The GOP remains silent. Looks like I was wrong.
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Co-author of the torture memos can't find a job
The NYT reports today on top Cheney aide David Addington:
David S. Addington, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was a forceful voice in internal legal debates, is also said to still be looking for work. The former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II had been nominated by Mr. Bush for an appeals court judgeship, but was blocked because of his role in detention policies.
The Times suggests that the inability of Addington and other Bush lawyers to find work is a "likely consequence" of the fact that they "blessed conduct that most mainstream legal scholars contend was, in fact, illegal."
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Improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Afghanistan "killed three times as many coalition troops in the first two months of 2009 compared with the same period last year. The increase points to a strengthening insurgency and potentially more violence as warmer weather arrives along with intensified fighting." During the same period, "96 troops were wounded, a 146% increase from the 39 early last year."
Good thing we'll be adding more troops.
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