Amuse yourselves

post from Eschaton on 15 August 2007 05:57:00 PM. © Eschaton

I just can't stand refreshing the page and seeing that picture again.

So here's a link to a blog I happen to like.

[Update: Some people have complained that this post doesn't push the picture down far enough, but I'm not linking to them because the post I would link to doesn't have a link for the source of the quotations. Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa.]

[space]

Signed,
Not Atrios

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Dick Morris makes numerous false claims in
purported attempt to "correct[]" Bill Clinton's "syrupy five minute ad for Hillary"

post from Media Matters for America on 15 August 2007 05:51:51 PM. © Media Matters for America

In his August 9 FrontPageMag.com online column, Fox News contributor and nationally syndicated columnist Dick Morris purported to offer "corrections" to former President Bill Clinton's "syrupy five minute ad" for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), a video appearing on hillaryclinton.com. However, in his 951-word column, Morris made no fewer than seven different claims about the video or about Sen. Clinton that contained outright falsehoods or are contradicted by other sources.Morris has an[...]

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Oh the things you learn from Ann Coulter!

post from Crooks and Liars on 15 August 2007 05:50:10 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Yeah I have to admit that my own personal blog is a declared “Coulter-free zone” but since this blog is called “Crooks and LIARS” it would be completely remiss to ban her here. This is classic. Here’s just a few snippets of knowledge that you can learn from the “Scandal” writer, here [...]

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NRSC Recruiting and Democratic Senate Incumbents

post from MyDD on 15 August 2007 05:39:47 PM. © MyDD

No, it's not Sunday. And this isn't the Senate 2008 Guru's Week in the Senate Races. It's been over nine months since Election Day 2006; and it's less than fifteen months until Election Day 2008. In other words, the 2008 election cycle[...]

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Go Speed Limpet, Go.

post from Daily Kos on 15 August 2007 05:31:51 PM. © Daily Kos

Ah, the memorials to Karl Rove are out in force. Now Fred Barnes has one, so let's take a look and... um...

Sigh. You know what? I can't do this. I'm sorry, I just don't have it in me.

So in honor of our new modern economy, I'm going to outsource my remarks in this column to my six year old daughter. In this case, she's doing the job an American -- me -- doesn't want to do. So take it away, Fred Barnes, and I'll put the insights of my young daughter up against yours. She's very creative, it's about time she got a national audience.

Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation. He not only is a breathtakingly smart strategist but also a clever tactician. He knows history, understands the moods of the public, and is a visionary on matters of public policy. But he is not a magician.

I think you and I should invent a burping machine together. Then I could make it burp in your ear.

Political advisers like Rove offer advice, not magic. And Rove's advice has been very good over the years. He got Bush to run as "a different kind of Republican" in 2000--that is, different from Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. And he made sure that as president, Bush (unlike his father) stayed closed to the conservative base of the Republican party.

I can read that sign! It says "Speed Limpet 45". Daddy, what's a Speed Limpet?

Yet the legend of [strategists'] capability to achieve much more simply won't die. Rove has been faulted for the failure of Bush's two major domestic initiatives of his second term, Social Security reform and immigration reform. For sure, Rove strongly favored both policies and expected them to fare better than they did. But is he to blame for near-unanimous Democratic opposition to overhauling Social Security? Of course not. And it was Bush's dip in popularity, not anything Rove did or didn't do, that wiped out any White House influence on immigration.

Oh yeah? Well you smell like a chickenburger. And now I'm invisible, so you can't see me. I'm not under the blanket, that's a ghost. The ghost of a tiger.

If you lift the blanket, the tiger will eat you, so you better not do it.

OK, Hunter taking over again. I suppose that was devolving a little too rapidly into silliness (on both sides.)

Here's the thing. Someday, Karl Rove will die. When that day comes, we will all have to pretend he was something other than a piss-headed man hated by everyone but those he found useful, and as matter of convention we will have to treat him with momentary respect. So let's write his epitaph now, while being as mean to him is still perfectly allowable and much more sporting.

Karl Rove was not a "great political mind". His sole contribution to the nation was getting the worst president in history elected on a campaign of unabashed bullcrap, then proceeding to help guide that president into foreign and domestic policy failures at every opportunity. If that's what passes for Republican brilliance, then it explains... well, pretty much everything, actually. Point taken.

Rove's oft-touted "genius" is nothing more than single-minded amorality. In campaigns and in the administration, he was and is unapologetically amoral in service to his own cause or that of his client: his "genius" is that he has consistently been willing to go farther, be meaner, and invent more astonishing lies than would be done by anyone in politics with a thin remaining threads of a conscience. From smearing John McCain's children with race-baiting taunts to attacking the careers and wives of critics to helping corrupt the most basic and foundational premises of the the United States Department of Justice, nothing has ever been considered "out of bounds". If a malevolent action is not taken -- such as ratcheting up the already venomous Republican rhetoric against immigrants -- it is done only in service to calculated poll numbers, never as a nod to basic morality or patriotism or human decency.

Under Rove, White House policies have revolved around manufacturing false frames for the press, and punishing reporters who stray too far from those frames. Terrorism, war, social security, the economy, government oversight: the defining characteristic of each administration campaign was an almost (but not quite) comical divorce of the asserted statements and the actual facts. Rove's "genius" was that he could plan and launch a campaign announcing that the sky was green, and the mechanisms of the entire executive branch, from press flunkies to cabinet secretaries to low-level political appointees, would spring into action as coordinated effort to assert the fiction as fact. Government reports would be rewritten to reflect the assertion, and government scientists and experts who objected could either pipe down or get out. Faxes would go out to the media, and Fox News would start calling the sky green. Fred Barnes would pen columns devoted to its brilliant emerald hue. Rush Limbaugh would assert it as transparently obvious, and rail against the seventy percent of America that dared look out their window. The President would travel from town to town, meeting with hand-chosen groups of Americans willing to sign statements that they did, in fact, believe in the new Healthy Green Skies initiative. And if you, American citizen, were left out of the fun, who the hell cares? You are not part of the fifty-one percent of Americans that matter in the complex spreadsheet that masqueraded as the only consistent White House apparatus of national policy, these last six years. Half the country matters: the other half is obstacle.

Rove's "genius" has been that he has, in campaigns and government, been entirely unencumbered by morality or shame. Rove's "genius" has been a complete inability to even distinguish between campaigning and government. Rove's only contribution to politics has been to bemusedly mock the very notion of a government existing to serve the people, instead harnessing it at every opportunity to act in mere service of politics for politics' sake. He at no point has shown interest in guiding his president in service to his nation: his strategies of constant national division, most often appearing as meanspirited campaigns of prejudice and fearmongering, were constant reminders that this White House had absolutely no intention of governing all the people, and the politicization of even the most essential tasks of government made sure that they did not do so even as accident.

A great political mind? Hardly. He could carve up constituencies with the best of them, and divide the country as easily as columns on a spreadsheet -- and with no more thought -- but Karl Rove was no more a political genius than Jeffrey Dahmer was a brilliant culinary artist. Being the most unapologetically unethical person in the room does not make you avant-garde. Time and time again, though, it's been proven to make you famous.

Having said all that, this is hardly a fitting epitaph, because it's not like Rove's going to be going anywhere. Let's see, can we fathom any possible reason why a lifelong political operative would leave a lame-duck White House for a private career in the very months when the next presidential election cycle is finally starting to simmer?

Hmm. That's a tough one. Yes, it must be because he wants to spend more time with his family.

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CNN Reports 500 people were killed in newest Iraq
bombings

post from Crooks and Liars on 15 August 2007 05:21:03 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Breaking: CNN has upped the total to 500—although the AP had it at 250 earlier. Horrible. The Cablese and the military are conveniently labeling it an al-Qaeda attack, (which is quite possible) but Juan Cole thinks:…these bombings are not just an attempt to spread fear and intimidation, but are actually part of a struggle for control of [...]

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Wednesday night open thread - another top 10

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 15 August 2007 05:13:00 PM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

You all have been enjoying the open theme threads the last couple of days, so here's another.

Name your top 10 Hall of Fame professional political right-wing or fundamentalist gasbags.

You can have two lists of ten -- the religious ones and the political ones (Coulter, O'Reilly, etc.).

I'll just toss out a few fundies for starters: Daddy Dobson, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Lou Sheldon and Andrea Lafferty (Lou's daughter and partner in crime at the Traditional Values Coalition), American Family Association heads, Don and Tim Wildmon, "Bishop" Harry Jackson, Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality's Peter LaBarbera, the professional ex-gays at Exodus, Ken Hutcherson, Bob Knight, Gary Bauer, all the "concerned men" at Concerned Women for America, Ohio Talibangelist Rod Parsley of the Patriot Pastor movement, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue disgraced former Alabama chief justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, Alan Keyes (who kicked his lesbian daughter out of the family home)...oh, I could go on all night.

Fred Phelps is disqualified because we need a baseline sanity level.

The saving grace is that these pious folks and tools of the GOP have had to try and explain an epic amount of "problems" in their world -- Ted Haggard, Mary Cheney procreating, any number of social conservative pols caught with their pants down - plus a Republican 2008 field full of adulterers and wrecked marriages. Too delicious.

And I cannot forget one of my favorites, the incredible embarrassment to the ex-gay movement, "therapist" Richard Cohen:

video details and more

Have fun.

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Bill O'Reilly Defamed Me

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 15 August 2007 05:06:28 PM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

Me! I'm not anybody at all, and still the [insert derogatory term of your choosing here] managed to defame me.

video details and more

Exactly and perfectly wrong. Perhaps even worse, intentionally and knowingly wrong. Flip on over to see why.

Note- not front-paged because who wants O'Reilly's mug on the front of their blog?

The quote comes from a diary I wrote back in February, Holocaust Denial, Anti-Semitism, and other Daily Kos HATE Meta.

Ever since the 2006 Lebanon war, anti-Semitism became a significant topic, particularly in the I/P debates. People on one side of the debate cried "anti-Semitism," and people on the other side (in my personal opinion far more) inserted prophylactic demands "don't call me an anti-Semite but ...." It got so heated that I decided to write a diary, ultimately several of them, to distinguish between criticism of Israel, even criticism with which I vehemently disagreed, and actual anti-Semitism. This particular diary was a response to claims that people were too quick to make the anti-Semitism accusation, and that there really wasn't any on Daily Kos. Rather, the theory went, there was just legitimate criticism of Israel, and Israel's supporters were trying to shut it down with false accusations.
Okay, let's go straight to the money quote, shall we?

If Jews love the US so much- how come their #'s in the US military are dismal? Instead of selling ones soul to be diamond brokers, investment bankers

Did I write that? Nope. Actually, that was one of the hateful quotes I was criticizing. It is, of course, also worth noting that it was troll-rating into oblivion, 0 to 15. The whole quote was:

JEWS TOO GOOD FOR US MILITARY (0+ / 15-)
If Jews love the US so much- how come their #'s in the US military are dismal? Instead of selling ones soul to be diamond brokers, investment bankers, doctors, and entertainment smucks (on borrowed grants/loans for tuition) perhaps the US should be like Israel and require some military service. Now this goes for every spoiled Northeast brat as well. Daily Kos bitching would be a little more germane if the bitches could fire an M-16 or take an order ot two. Everyone is a chief in Kos with no good answers.
by PEARSAYS on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:26:30 PM PST

and my response was:

Was there some kind of contest to see how many stereotypes could fit in one paragraph?

Now it is important to note that I post under my own name, not a pseudonym. I think it is probably also worth noting that I am a litigator, and licensed to practice law in three states and many federal jurisdictions, including Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Not only is the O'Reilly broadcast defamatory, but I actually have the skills and wherewithal to do something about it. Whether I will or not is a different story, and one worth thinking about it.

This whole folderol has me wondering, rather guiltily, whether O'Reilly's whole attack meme against us comes from my diaries decrying anti-Semitism on Daily Kos. Don't get me wrong- I'm not apologizing. In a tiny and mostly troll-blasted minority, it actually exists here. And there are a couple of posters who have somehow retained posting privileges. Further, the diaries I wrote were warning this would come to pass. But the really weird thing is, if O'Reilly's producers were relying on Holocaust Denial, Anti-Semitism, and other Daily Kos HATE Meta, Black Men Got Lynched Because They ..., or Dog Whistles: An Anti-Semitism Primer, or my cartoon:

they would have seen that I was NOT anti-Semitic, but in fact the opposite.

I have, as you might have expected, already requested a retraction. I'm not holding my breath. The next demand will go out on letterhead.

So what do you think? Do I blog about this and then let it slide? Do I cough up the filing fee to bring an action? Even worse, what do I do if O'Reilly invites me on, since my own writings demonstrate the existence of a few anti-Semites on Daily Kos (his own theme), but I am quite clearly a defender of the site and not a supporter of his lies? Given a chance, I would clearly state that these are aberrations, trolled into oblivion whenever they pop up.

What would you do?

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If At First You Dont Succeed

(Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983 via the National Security Archive.)Because nothing says success like repeating the same old failed and dangerous[...]

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Gibson declares ‘the war on Gibson is
real.’

Yesterday, Media Matters noted that Fox News host John Gibson had rudely mocked Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s emotional post-9/11 comments on his radio show. Later in the day, Gibson addressed Media Matters’ criticism, saying “the war on Gibson is real. It is pursued every day.” While Gibson did admit it was “mean” to mock Stewart, he and his producer “Angry Rich” proceeded to personally attack Media Matters CEO David Brock.

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