By Hanlon, on June 30th, 2009 at 09:02 PM
 Wow, that was a hell of a ride, wasn’t it?
Who would have guessed in 2004, when the “permanent Republican majority” was looking to be cemented and we couldn’t even beat George W Bush when it felt like the entire world was against him, that the pendulum would swing so far in the other direction? A scant two years ago just regaining the majority seemed like a pipe dream, let alone taking control of every branch.
Yet here we are. A Democrat in the White House, a Supreme Court that’s in the process of being re-shaped, a huge majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate that doesn’t even need Lieberman (if you count Specter). The Democratic Party is, for all intents and purposes, bulletproof. If you guys wanted to just trample all over the Republicans and pretend like they aren’t there, you could. There is nothing, at least nothing of substance, to stop you from finally getting all those reforms and policies pushed through.
So let me just say: don’t fuck it up.
Read More ->
Wow, that was a hell of a ride, wasn’t it?
Who would have guessed in 2004, when the “permanent Republican majority” was looking to be cemented and we couldn’t even beat George W Bush when it felt like the entire world was against him, that the pendulum would swing so far in the other direction? A scant two years ago just regaining the majority seemed like a pipe dream, let alone taking control of every branch.
Yet here we are. A Democrat in the White House, a Supreme Court that’s in the process of being re-shaped, a huge majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate that doesn’t even need Lieberman (if you count Specter). The Democratic Party is, for all intents and purposes, bulletproof. If you guys wanted to just trample all over the Republicans and pretend like they aren’t there, you could. There is nothing, at least nothing of substance, to stop you from finally getting all those reforms and policies pushed through.
So let me just say: don’t fuck it up.
Read More ->
By Hanlon, on June 30th, 2009 at 06:47 PM
By Hanlon, on June 29th, 2009 at 08:13 PM
 …except it’s to celebrate the fact that we’re leaving.
Iraqi soldiers paraded through the streets in their American-made vehicles draped with Iraqi flags and flowers, chanting, dancing and calling the pullout a “victory.”
One drove a motorcycle with party streamers on it; another, a Humvee with a garland of plastic roses on the grill.
…
“The American forces’ withdrawal is something awaited by every Iraqi: male, female, young and old. I consider June 30 to be like a wedding,” said Ahmed Hameed, 38, near an ice cream bar in Baghdad’s upmarket Karrada district.
Crucial quote here:
“It is a big joy to see them leaving,” said Abu Hassan, 60, a shop owner. “There might be some more attacks because of struggles between the different parties, but Iraqis are controlling security now. It’s up to our forces now.”
Even if attacks go up a tad, Iraqis themselves are happy because they themselves are the ones in charge of securing it. They’d rather some more violence than another day of American occupation.
I think what’s comically… curious about the above statement is that we have an Iraqi shop owner better embodying Ben Franklin’s famous statement than the American conservative movement. Remember this one? “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The Iraqis are eager to live by this motto, living a life that’s not quite so secure but one run by their own, and over here we still have politicians squealing about bombing half the country and placing surveillance on every bit of data in the name of “security”.
We’re at a point where we can draw inspiration from the Iraqis and Iranians, folks.
By Hanlon, on June 29th, 2009 at 06:18 PM
 The right-wing persecution complex rather comfortably nestles into the scientific sphere. Any hackneyed “study” that supposedly shatters a point made by mean old liberal scientists was obviously “suppressed” because there’s no other reason to fathom why scientists don’t accept a theory that God magically created life or that homosexuality is just a lifestyle choice that can be changed with the help of Jesus.
This time it’s that an anti-global-warming study was silenced just to pass the Cap and Trade legislation.
The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama’s willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of “consensus.” In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health “endangerment finding” covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin’s study didn’t fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn’t make the cut.
Notice the presumption that the reason Carlin’s study was rejected was because of an attempt at agenda control. It couldn’t possibly be because the study itself was flawed. No no no. See, that theory doesn’t fit the blame-liberals-for-everything narrative, so it doesn’t make the conservative cut.
The following quote was plucked out as proof of said conspiracy.
“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”
The wack-a-doodle interpretation is that this is proof that the Obama administration is shutting out any contrary voices. The more reasonable way to look at it would be that they’d already spent a while deciding whether or not global warming is a problem and now the time was what to do about it. Then in comes Carlin with his big stack of papers saying “no wait it’s all crap!” Does the Administration stop everything and go back to square one?
Just like Intelligent Design and gay therapy, right-wingers want to shove junk science down our throats and if it doesn’t work they bitch and cry about “discrimination”.
By Hanlon, on June 29th, 2009 at 12:07 AM
 This may come as a shock, but the avalanche of Republican sex scandals is not something I particularly like seeing. Really, no one should. Watching someone’s personal life laid bare for the world to mock and tear apart, plus the havoc it wreaks on their generally innocent family members, is not that much fun.
However, it should serve to remind us that the “common wisdom” in American politics that Republicans stand for strong, stout moral values while Democrats stand for hedonism is an artificial categorization with nothing in reality to prop it up.
Affairs happen, people are imperfect. As George Carlin once said, “you’re all diseased.” It’s an absolute shame and represents a downright terrible failure of judgment, but it does happen and fairly often. I do not believe there is one person that saw of these stories who was not closely affected by infidelity in some manner, be it their own relationship or that of a relative or close friend.
Read More ->
This may come as a shock, but the avalanche of Republican sex scandals is not something I particularly like seeing. Really, no one should. Watching someone’s personal life laid bare for the world to mock and tear apart, plus the havoc it wreaks on their generally innocent family members, is not that much fun.
However, it should serve to remind us that the “common wisdom” in American politics that Republicans stand for strong, stout moral values while Democrats stand for hedonism is an artificial categorization with nothing in reality to prop it up.
Affairs happen, people are imperfect. As George Carlin once said, “you’re all diseased.” It’s an absolute shame and represents a downright terrible failure of judgment, but it does happen and fairly often. I do not believe there is one person that saw of these stories who was not closely affected by infidelity in some manner, be it their own relationship or that of a relative or close friend.
Read More ->
By Hanlon, on June 28th, 2009 at 07:39 PM
Is it just me or did things go absolutely bananas recently?
The Honduran president got overthrown in a coup and the whole country’s in chaos.
A bunch of UK Embassy workers in Tehran got arrested.
North Korea says they can enrich uranium for making nuclear bombs, now.
And Billy Mays died. What the hell is going on?
By Hanlon, on June 28th, 2009 at 07:33 PM
Yeesh.
“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.
Starting to feel normal again. Posting to resume tomorrow.
By Hanlon, on June 26th, 2009 at 09:22 PM
Putting a price on carbon emissions? Fantastic. But I’ll want to read the full thing before passing judgment.
But then if T Boone Pickens is happy, then I’m happy.
By Hanlon, on June 26th, 2009 at 01:58 PM
 I’m going to start off by doing something I don’t do very often: return to a prediction I made a while ago. I can’t find the post off hand (if you can, you win a cookie), but my basic premise was that in the Obama era, FOX’s ratings would boost like crazy.
See, the rise of the right-wing media has not been a function of its integrity, its ability to break stories, or the depth of its reporting. Rather, the FOX/Rush/Coulter axis came about thanks to antagonism. All of the aforementioned, all of them, hit their break into the limelight during the Clinton years. Rush led the charge to get the Democrats out in 1994, FOX broke out in 1996, it was Coulter’s book High Crimes and Misdemeanors that catapulted her to stardom.
That’s why it strikes me as peculiar that Reuters would headline an article about FOX’s ratings by saying that they’re aiming for their “best year yet, despite Obama”. After acknowledging the above (and mentioning The Daily Show), Reuters goes off the deep end.
…it’s important to note that when Fox News took the ratings lead during the Bush era, some pundits declared that the network was winning only because a Republican was in charge. Those at the network get weary of outsiders assuming their success must be due to some fortunate external factor rather than their own day-to-day work.
Again, FOX broke out in 1996 and we’re not half a year into the Obama reign. It’s not like they’ve been around since the Carter administration or, like CNN, started in 1980. Two-thirds of FOX’s existence has been the Bush era, it would be downright bizarre if they didn’t peak during then. Not to mention if we’re talking antagonism, what defined the second half of Bush’s term? Democrat terrorists who want America to fail.
It’s a phenomenon of the left as well. What got Olbermann his ratings? His “Special Comments” during the Bush era. The Daily Show and Colbert saw their ratings grow in proportion to anti-Bush sentiment. However, that’s not to say all media is devoid of substance. Where FOX deviates is in their almost obscene pride in being the anti-Democrat force in news, having declared themselves the “voice of opposition” in this new presidency. Meanwhile, all the Democrats saw the Obama victory and then went back to watching American Idol.
Glenn Beck was a mid-level CNN anchor before FOX let him cry on air about liberals destroying America. There’s a reason Hannity was the star of Hannity & Colmes and not his partner. O’Reilly isn’t known for his respectful and diplomatic interviews. To claim that FOX’s “day-to-day work” isn’t centered around finding reasons for their viewers to be outraged is some serious intellectual dishonesty.
It’s important to realize ratings != quality. Paul Blart was #1 at the box office, more people read Twilight than any other books last year, the National Enquirer has more readers than The Economist. Compare the ratings of So You Think You Can Dance to, oh, anything else. FOX’s ratings are just proof that they can show people something titillating, not informative. If hard news meant high ratings, C-SPAN and NPR would be the most popular stations in the country.
By Hanlon, on June 26th, 2009 at 12:50 PM
Sen Rockefeller (D-WV):
We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys versus the bad guys. I know it is not political for me to say that. But do you want to be non-partisan and get nothing? Or do you want to be partisan and end up with a good health- care plan? That is the choice.
Has he been reading my posts?
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