Mr Furious

"Which wallet is yours, Mr. President?"

2011-05-02T09:23:00.003-05:00

"The one that says BAD MOTHERFUCKER."

UPDATE: Per Bob's request...

Dick of the Week: Make Way For Ducklings Edition

2011-04-26T20:02:00.003-05:00

So what does it take to bring me back to the keyboard and start up the blog again after several months? (Not counting yesterday's post)

It take the actions of a complete asshole right here in my own backyard:

Ann Arbor man accused of running over ducklings faces felony charge
A man accused of running over four ducklings with a Hummer in a McDonald's parking lot in Ann Arbor on Monday night was charged today with a felony.

Dillon Robert Pearce, 19, of Ann Arbor was arraigned this afternoon at the Washtenaw County Jail on a charge of killing an animal.

Ann Arbor police said Pearce deliberately ran over the ducklings in the parking lot of the McDonald's at 2675 Plymouth Road, where he initially stopped to pick up food at 6:15 p.m. Monday.

Police said Pearce stopped at the drive-thru, when one of his friends got out and attempted to pick up a duckling. A duck and at least 8 ducklings had been walking in the lot, police said. Employees at McDonald's yelled at the man to stop, police said.

The man got back into the Hummer, which left the parking lot, pulling into an adjacent lot for about 15 minutes while the men ate their food, police said. Witnesses told police that the Hummer then returned to the lot and ran over four of the ducklings, police said. Police said Pearce drove away without stopping. Officers arrested Pearce at a nearby gas station after interviewing him and the two other men in the Hummer.

At his arraignment this afternoon, Pearce told Magistrate Thomas Truesdell that he planned to hire a private attorney. Truesdell set bond at $5,000 with the right to post 10 percent.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 4. If convicted of the felony charge, Pearce faces up to four years in prison.

This kid has bad seed written all over him. Not only did he run over duckings in his Assholemobile, but he and his soulless cohorts sat across the parking planning this sick little escapade over their fries and shakes. Throw the fucking book at him. In fact, tack on some Federal Migratory Bird Act charges on top, and seize the Hummer for its use in the commission of a felony.

That might get this punk's attention. Obviously, his previous run-in with the cops didn't...

It's a Tradition...

2011-04-25T06:48:00.001-05:00

...that needs to be maintained even if the blog isn't...

It's the day after Easter, and you know what that means...

Some Consolation...

2010-11-05T22:58:00.001-05:00

Well, one Michigan Republican got his ass handed to him this week: Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell.

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2010-11-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

Nate Silver, the polling/election analyst hero of 2008, gives 5 reasons that Democrats might defy predictions and hold on to the House. Of course, he's also the guy predicting a 53-seat GOP gain, with a possibility of 70-80 seats. So, take all of it with a grain of salt.

In short, none of these fucking guys know what the hell they are talking about. We'll know tomorrow how right (or wrong) they all are.

Personally, I think there's no way the polls accurately portray the mood of the country, and that Democrats are likely to outperform expectations. However, I think they still lose the House and hold the Senate with only a few seats to spare.

Specific predictions? Reid barely wins. O'Donnell loses big. Brown and Boxer win. And, finally, Russ Feingold squeaks by.

But get ready for the House Energy Committee chaired by Joe "I'm Sorry, B.P." Barton.

Dumbest. Electorate. Ever.

'Bout Freaking Time

2010-10-20T23:36:00.003-05:00

NPR cans Juan "Not really a liberal but I play one on FOX News" Williams. Not sure why this particular incident was the final straw, but he deserves it nonetheless.

I'm Voting Republican...

2010-10-03T22:56:00.002-05:00

This is excellent.

Dick of the Week: Andrew Shirvell Mike Cox

2010-09-30T22:51:00.006-05:00

Until I just watched this AC360 clip, I'd only read about this story. I had no idea what a freakshow this Shirvell guy is. As a Republican political operative, vocal Christianist and person who testifies in court, I expected a much more articulate firebrand of a bigot—not this jackass. And, as is so often the case with these anti-gay crusaders, it will be no surprise when we discover Andrew Shirvell is a self-loathing homosexual himself.

And because this guy is so clearly deranged, the DOW award has to actually go to the person who appointed him Assistant Attorney General and continues to employ him—State of Michigan Attorney General and All-Around Asshole Mike Cox.

When confronted with the clearly offensive and borderline illegal behavior of his employee Cox tossed out this garbage statement:

"Mr. Shirvell's personal opinions are his and his alone and do not reflect the views of the Michigan Department of Attorney General. But his immaturity and lack of judgment outside the office are clear."

Yeah, yeah..."First Amendment rights...civil servant protections...etc."

Bullshit. Shirvell is walking right up to the line of stalking, harrassment and slander, and this is clearly conduct unbecoming of a state official and cause for dismissal. With his half-hearted slap on the wrist, Cox himself just called Shirvell's judgement and maturity into question, yet this guy is supposed to represent the State of Michigan in court? Are we supposed to believe he can treat all people equally under the law?

This guy might have a First Amendment right to be a dickhead, but he doesn't have a right to a taxpayer-funded job that he clearly cannot perform.

Fire. His. Ass. Yesterday.

Class Warfare: Bring It.

2010-09-29T23:07:00.004-05:00

Last week, the big story I wished I had time to blog about was the parade of wealthy jackasses who took to the Op-Ed pages to whine about how hard a tax increase would be on them. First, there was this douche nobody ever heard of before he made a complete fool of himself for bitching about scraping by on just under half-a-mil. And then everybody's favorite no-talent Hollywood conservative Ben Stein chimed in with "Raising My Taxes Is a Punishment."

I had some ideas floating around about how to tear these guys a new one, but I was never going to come up with anything as good as the salvo unloaded by Bill Maher on Friday:

New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole.

And let's be clear: that's 3.6% only on income above 250 grand -- your first 250, that's still on the house. Now, this week we got some horrible news: that one in seven Americans are now living below the poverty line. But I want to point you to an American who is truly suffering: Ben Stein. You know Ben Stein, the guy who got rich because when he talks it sounds so boring it's actually funny. He had a game show on Comedy Central, does eye drop commercials, doesn't believe in evolution? Yeah, that asshole. I kid Ben -- so, the other day Ben wrote an article about his struggle. His struggle as a wealthy person facing the prospect of a slightly higher marginal tax rate. Specifically, Ben said that when he was finished paying taxes and his agents, he was left with only 35 cents for every dollar he earned. Which is shocking, Ben Stein has an agent? I didn't know Broadway Danny Rose was still working.

Ben whines in his article about how he's worked for every dollar he has -- if by work you mean saying the word "Bueller" in a movie 25 years ago. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest, it's just that at a time when people in America are desperate and you're raking in the bucks promoting some sleazy Free Credit Score dot-com... maybe you shouldn't be asking us for sympathy. Instead, you should be down on your knees thanking God and/or Ronald Reagan that you were lucky enough to be born in a country where a useless schmuck who contributes absolutely nothing to society can somehow manage to find himself in the top marginal tax bracket.

And you're welcome to come on the show anytime.

Now I can hear you out there saying, "Come on Bill, don't be so hard on Ben Stein, he does a lot of voiceover work, and that's hard work." Ok, it's true, Ben is hardly the only rich person these days crying like a baby who's fallen off his bouncy seat. Last week Mayor Bloomberg of New York complained that all his wealthy friends are very upset with mean ol' President Poopy-Pants: He said they all say the same thing: "I knew I was going to have to pay more taxes. But I didn't expect to be vilified." Poor billionaires -- they just can't catch a break.

First off, far from being vilified, we bailed you out -- you mean we were supposed to give you all that money and kiss your ass, too? That's Hollywood you're thinking of. FDR, he knew how to vilify; this guy, not so much. And second, you should have been vilified -- because you're the vill-ains! I'm sure a lot of you are very nice people. And I'm sure a lot of you are jerks. In other words, you're people. But you are the villains. Who do you think outsourced all the jobs, destroyed the unions, and replaced workers with desperate immigrants and teenagers in China. Joe the Plumber?

And right now, while we run trillion dollar deficits, Republicans are holding America hostage to the cause of preserving the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 1% of people, many of them dead. They say that we need to keep taxes on the rich low because they're the job creators. They're not. They're much more likely to save money through mergers and outsourcing and cheap immigrant labor, and pass the unemployment along to you.

Americans think rich people must be brilliant; no -- just ruthless. Meg Whitman is running for Governor out here, and her claim to fame is, she started e-Bay. Yes, Meg tapped into the Zeitgeist, the zeitgeist being the desperate need of millions of Americans to scrape a few dollars together by selling the useless crap in their garage. What is e-Bay but a big cyber lawn sale that you can visit without putting your clothes on?

Another of my favorites, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said, "I don't know where they're going to get all this money, because we're running out of rich people in this country." Actually, we have more billionaires here in the U.S. than all the other countries in the top ten combined, and their wealth grew 27% in the last year. Did yours? Truth is, there are only two things that the United States is not running out of: Rich people and bullshit. Here's the truth: When you raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, it obviously doesn't destroy the economy -- we know this, because we just did it -- remember the '90's? It wasn't that long ago. You were probably listening to grunge music, or dabbling in witchcraft. Clinton moved the top marginal rate from 36 to 39% -- and far from tanking, the economy did so well he had time to get his dick washed.

Even 39% isn't high by historical standards. Under Eisenhower, the top tax rate was 91%. Under Nixon, it was 70%. Obama just wants to kick it back to 39 -- just three more points for the very rich. Not back to 91, or 70. Three points. And they go insane. Steve Forbes said that Obama, quote "believes from his inner core that people... above a certain income have more than they should have and that many probably have gotten it from ill-gotten ways." Which they have. Steve Forbes, of course, came by his fortune honestly: he inherited it from his gay egg-collecting, Elizabeth Taylor fag-hagging father, who inherited it from his father. Of course then they moan about the inheritance tax, how the government took 55% percent when Daddy died -- which means you still got 45% for doing nothing more than starting out life as your father's pecker-snot.

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

h/t: Smitty

UPDATE: Searching for the Ben Stein link unearthed this 2006 New York Times Op-Ed by Stein. Like every loudmouth conservative, looking out for himself means a change of tune:

The real problem is the difference between the rich — including rich oil people, of whom there are not many, but there are enough — and the poor. It is up to the government to redress this extraordinary difference in incomes of the rich and the nonrich, even at the margins.

What Congress can do, and should do, is address the stunning underpayment of military men and women and the staggering budget deficits that will be a burden on our posterity for decades, by raising the taxes on the rich. It's fine that there are rich people. It's even fine that there are superrich people.

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.

This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.

The Last Installment...and why they're wrong

2010-09-15T22:41:00.004-05:00

Today's frame job by the AP:

Poll: Climate for GOP keeps getting better (AP)

AP - Tilted toward the GOP from the start of the year, the political environment has grown even more favorable for Republicans and rockier for President Barack Obama and his Democrats over the long primary season that just ended with a bang.

It's bullshit. Complete bullshit.

While it is true that the numbers appear worse, these polls really don't mean a thing. And as far as the just completed primary season that "ended with a bang?" That "bang" was the GOP shooting itself in the foot. The victories of Tea Party candidates aren't a reflection of anything but a fracture within the Republican party. Is there a single instance where the Tea Party candidate has actually enhanced the GOP's chances in a race? I haven't seen one. Just yesterday, the Tea Party effectively handed Joe Biden's old seat back to the Democrats by nominating a candidate that stands no chance of winning at the expense of a legitimate Republican that would probably have easily won.

The AP story goes on to use only words like "beleaguered," "dreary" and "dispirited" regarding Democrats, and trots out some polls and statistics that don't necessarily lead to the conclusions they draw...

As Illinois kicked off the primary season Feb. 2, there was little talk even among Republicans that power in the House was in reach, much less in the Senate. But the national landscape has only has worsened for Democrats.

[1] The unemployment rate was 9.7 percent; it's 9.6 now.

[2] Half of the country said in January that the country was on the wrong track; 57 percent say that now in the new AP-GfK poll.

[3] About 42 percent of the country disapproved of Obama's job performance; half does now.

[4] Democrats had a 49 percent to 37 percent advantage over Republicans on the party that voters want to see control Congress; the GOP now enjoys a 55-39 lead among likely voters.

[5] Republicans have steadily gained ground on economic issues and now have a slight advantage on handling the economy, the federal deficit and taxes. They improved their standing in the past month even as Obama stepped up his efforts to persuade the public to give Democratic solutions more time to work.

[6] At the same time, 40 percent of likely voters call themselves tea party supporters, and most of them lean toward Republicans while nearly two-thirds have a deeply negative impression of Democrats. That means the GOP could be in strong shape on Nov. 2 if tea party backers turn out and vote Republican. That's what they've been doing so far this year: The grass-roots, antiestablishment movement can claim wins in at least seven GOP Senate races, a handful of Republican gubernatorial contests and dozens of House primary campaigns.

Let's take these apart one by one...

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's an improvement. It still sucks, and is not where it should be... but they act as if the number is in double figures.

2. In their sampling of two dates (Feb 2 and today) they neglect to mention that the poll they refer to actually is a graph that shows the gap closing over the last month and the overall trend for the year is still overall upward.

3. Worthless statistic. I disapprove of Obama's job performance—Congress' too—but I'm sure as shit not voting Republican! These polls are always going to be skewed by capturing Dems critical of their own party—something zombie Republicans don't do, and the media cannot seem to fathom. I hate many of the Democrats in Washington—doesn't mean I want them replaced by Republicans.

4. This is because of the steady drumbeat of coverage like I've shared the last three days. This poll question is self-fulfilling.

5. See above. No one when actually presented with information on the economy during Republican vs Democratic control could ever possibly reach this conclusion. Which is why stories such as this never include that type of useful information.

6. "40 percent of likely voters call themselves tea party supporters" That's fucking impossible. Unless they are asking these poll questions outside a Palin rally. Seriously. No. Fucking. Way.

That's it. the purpose of this AP story is to drive a narrative. Nothing else. there's no there, there.

Today's Installment

2010-09-13T22:20:00.005-05:00

Today's Yahoo tease of an AP story [headline/link followed by the pop-up snip]:

Senate Republicans say they'll block tax increase (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on wealthier people while preserving cuts for everyone else appears increasingly likely to founder before Election Day.

And if you click through to the whole story it's just as bad...

Of course there's the unsurprising bit about old friends Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson and Holy Joe joining the GOP in rhetoric as well as deed, but the rest is just more of the same bullshit non-analysis we read yesterday.

The story wraps with a couple talking points from each side, which of course ends with a misleading statistic presented by the editors to back up a bogus GOP claim, and then last word goes to the Republicans.

"We could get (tax cuts) done this week, but we're still in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the last 2 to 3 percent" of upper-income taxpayers, Obama said Monday during a backyard town hall in a Northern Virginia suburb. [NOTE: this is optimistic, to say the least, in terms of timetable, but essentially true.]

Gibbs said the middle class should not be used as a political football by Republicans maneuvering to give tax cuts to wealthy taxpayers, who he said don't need the reductions. [NOTE: Also true.] Republicans say paring taxes for the wealthy would encourage them and the businesses they operate to create jobs. [NOTE: Demonstrably false until someone produces actual evidence of successful trickle-down economics.]

Republicans, for their part, say that it's not just the rich who would be hit by Obama's tax hike on upper-income people. Many small businesses — that earn about half of all small business income — would also face the tax hike. [NOTE: There's the whopper.]

That makes it sound as if "many" equals "about half" of small businesses. Wrong. It's a deliberate attempt to conflate the income (dollars) with number of businesses. The truth is the vast majority of small business owners earn far below the threshold, and their personal income is impacted (or not) in any case, NOT the business.’

Just as the top 3% of individuals account for 20% of the nation's wealth, the "many" small business owners that account for "about half" of the small business income is actually a tiny share of the number of businesses. Like two percent tiny.

Thanks, AP!

P.S. Of course, that's skipping past the assertion that Obama is actively raising ANYONE'S taxes. He's not. This is the expiration of the GOP con game from the first Bush term.

Happy Birthday, Professor

2010-09-12T23:35:00.000-05:00

The So-Called Liberal Media

2010-09-12T15:59:00.003-05:00

The above-the-fold tease on the Yahoo home age:

Record gains for US poverty with elections looming (AP)

AP - The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to th...

Who could possibly benefit from that framing?

Reading into the article further, all the reader gets is more negative trend information wrapped up with the typical non-analysis of today's mainstream media [emphasis aded]:

The GOP says voters should fire Democrats because Obama's economic fixes are hindering the sluggish economic recovery. Rightly or wrongly, Republicans could cite a higher poverty rate as evidence.

Democrats almost certainly will argue that they shouldn't be blamed. They're likely to counter that the economic woes — and the poverty increase — began under President George W. Bush with the near-collapse of the financial industry in late 2008.

They say... vs they argue. Awesome. And, seriously? "Rightly or wrongly?" It's not a question, not even rhetorically. Do your fucking jobs, you dicks. I'm glad Fox News gets to lie with impunity, while the rest of you have now assumed the mantle of "We (sort of, but not really) Report, You (are forced to) Decide."

"Restoring America"

2010-08-29T22:35:00.002-05:00

Burning houses of worship? I hope the likes of Beck, Palin and others pushing the fear and hate are proud of what they've wrought. The ignorance and hate in the quotes given straight-faced to the news crew in this story are enough to turn one's stomach.

I'd like to say "I don't recognize this country anymore" but sadly, I do: It looks just like the early 60s when the Klan was firebombing black churches.

Richie Hayward 1946-2010

2010-08-27T01:02:00.000-05:00

Good video of Little Feat in their heyday is hard to come by, and while this compliation of solos doesn't really capture what made Richie one of the most enjoyable drummers EVER to watch and listen to, it's the best I could find. Richie's drumming was not flashy solos, massive kits and technical prowess as much as it was shuffles, off-beat hi-hat work, grooves and rhythym that made him — subtly — the lead instrument that really drove the music of Little Feat.

Everybody knows old masters like Neil Peart, and guys like Matt Cameron and Jimmy Chamberlain certainly have chops, but none of them had the soulful funk of Richie. He was one of a kind and arguably the greatest drummer I ever saw.

Richie was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009 and died of complications while awaiting a transplant.

Shelby GT500

2010-07-27T00:40:00.001-05:00

This one's for you, Bob...

Best. Counterprotest. Ever.

2010-07-23T10:25:00.004-05:00

Fred “GOD HATES FAGS” Phelps and his band of hate-mongering motherfuckers like to show up and “protest” at various public events, funerals of soldiers, etc. seeking publicity for their twisted cause, and ultimately hoping to inflame to the point that someone punches one of them out and they can sue—that's literally the Westboro Baptist Church business model.

Well they had no idea what they were dealing with when they set up shop across from the San Diego ComicCon.

Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego's Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting "WHAT DO WE WANT" "GAY SEX" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT" "NOW!" while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom's finest stood and delivered.

The photos are filled with all kinds of win.

A Bad Idea...

2010-07-20T00:13:00.003-05:00

Last week on the way into work, I heard a pretty in-depth explanation of the procedure that BP was about to try with this integrity test / capping the well. The whole time I kept thinking, “What the fuck are they thinking?”

I'm obviously no geologist, but common sense seems to dictate to me that this procedure seems to bring far too much risk at this stage. By “this stage” I mean we are supposedly a few weeks from a permanent kill via the relief wells, but we are letting BP fuck around with a procedure that has the very real potential to cause a complete blowout of the well that will be virtually unstoppable, or even worse, a fracture or collapse of the sea floor that will basically result in an oil volcano at the bottom of the Gulf.

The most important thing to keep in mind at all times is that BP is not to be trusted. At all.

You want to do an integrity test? Okay. BP should be allowed to have a very narrow window to monitor pressure—but be ready to begin using this new cap to continue pumping oil to the surface. If pressure slips, that means there's additional leaks, so start pumping the fucking oil up pronto!

If pressure builds, write it down, make your calculations, and then start pumping the fucking oil up just the same. IT MAKES NO SENSE TO ME TO LEAVE THIS CAP IN PLACE WITH THE WELL SEALED, AND LETTING THE PRESSURE BUILD.

If this cap can actually stop the flow temporarily, then why not use it as a 100%-capture spigot to continue pumping? Can anyone explain to me what BP's motivation for NOT pumping what they can out of this before they kill it from the bottom could possibly be?

--

Now only a few days later, there are conflicting stories of seepage and leaks from the sea floor that BP insists are incidental and naturally occurring... Yeah. I'm fucking sure.

Don't be surprised if it turns out that this whole process doesn't turn out to be a massive scam operation to get BP off the hook for whatever happens going forward. They've set the government up to be the fall guy regardless of the bad outcome: Pressure blowout? “The government signed off!” If the government makes BP open the cap and start pumping and something happens, “the government made us stop!”

Daily Awesome

2010-06-17T21:05:00.002-05:00

Working on a project at work, and I wanted to confirm using the term "The Old Country" in reference to Europe... Google led me to this.

Viper

2010-06-17T00:08:00.004-05:00

No time for a post, but thought some of you might enjoy some of the long-ago promised auto photography... Shot this on Wednesday.

Daily Awesome

2010-06-08T19:23:00.002-05:00

Jon Stewart on Helen Thomas and South Carolina. Brilliant.

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2010-06-07T21:09:00.004-05:00

The last week or so has been a parade of outrage and bullshit that I've longed to blog about, but simply didn't have time. Here's a few, numbered for your commenting convenience.

1. BP CEO Tony Hayward made a strong DoW bid... I can't believe BP lets this jackass anywhere near a camera at this point. When he's not shamelessly—and transparently—lying, he's saying something unbelievably stupid. Multimillionaire oil executive Hayward stood in front of a camera on a Gulf pier and declared that "nobody wants this over more than me. I want my life back."

--

2. South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts (R-Naturally) played Good Ole Boy.

"We already got one raghead in the White House; we don't need a raghead in the governor's mansion."

He was, of course referring to candidate for S.C. governor Nikki Haley, and inferring she is Muslim for the benefit of the mouth-breathers in that state. Haley is actually of Indian descent, and a Christian. Her parents are Sikh.

[Knotts] says her father walks around Lexington wearing a turban.

“We’re at war over there,” Knotts said.

Asked to clarify, he said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries.”

One of President Palin's "real Americans."

--

3. Well, Arizona isn't gonna stand around and let South Carolina be the most repugnant, racist shithole in the country without a fight: In Prescott, AZ, things reverted back to the days of Billy Jack. A City Councilman with a radio show and a bunch of racist passersby bullied an elementary school into agreeing to "whiten" the faces of a mural depicting diverse faces of ACTUAL FUCKING STUDENTS IN THAT SCHOOL! While that mural was being painted, at times with the help of the kids themselves, they were actually heckled with the n-bomb and other slurs. Can we give that state back to Mexico already? (In the end, the school superintendent overruled the cowardly principal and the mural was unaltered—but this is likely only due to the national attention.)

--

And then there's Israel. But that's a whole other post. Or more.

Daily Awesome

2010-06-05T14:21:00.006-05:00

This rules.

[HuffPo] Prepare to get your ass handed to you. While we're not sure what that actually means, we guarantee you that this guy is certainly capable of it. No description of his ability to rock will do this drummer justice - unless we simply write "amazing" over and over again. So we'll let the skins do the talking.

That clown from Cheap Trick is crying after watching this guy beat him at his own game.

SuperBowl in New York?

2010-05-27T00:49:00.002-05:00

Bring it. I think a cold weather game would be awesome.

UPDATE: What Captain Caveman at KSK said...

UPDATE 2: Even better from a commenter...

The winner of the Super Bowl gets the Lombardi Trophy. A trophy named for a man who said “New York? Too warm. Honey, lets move to Green Fucking Bay.” This motherfucker wouldn’t let his defenders wear gloves during the Ice Bowl for fear they might drop an interception

UPDATE 3: Big Daddy Drew

Heartbreaking

2010-05-26T17:16:00.002-05:00

The Boston Globe’s “The Big Picture” photo website has a gallery of images from the Gulf that just about had me in tears in the office. Steve Benen warned that it was “not for the faint of heart.”

He is right.

Political Strategery

2010-05-25T09:39:00.002-05:00

[straight from kos himself at GOS]

Political pop quiz: You are the Connecticut Republican Party, the nation's richest state and a solid Democratic stronghold. Your Democratic opponent has been busted (fairly or not) for lying or exaggerating his military service during the Vietnam War. Do you:

Nominate a decorated Vietnam War vet, retired Colonel, and winner of two Bronze Stars, with a proven track record of winning elections in tough political terrain

Nominate the teabagger co-founder of the WWE

If you were smart, you'd pick option number one. But the rules said you had to be a Republican...

I think this is goods news for someone, and it's NOT John McCain. Richard Blumenthal should weather this fake-ass controversy and when reality comes into play for voters, he will stomp Linda McMahon. This is another case of the Teabag Wing pulling the GOP too far to the right.

I know voters in Connecticut have proven themselves to be as fucking stupid as any other state last time they chose a Senator, but at the end of the day, I have to think a popular and effective public servant that had astronomical approval numbers should prevail.

Note to Rand Paul...

2010-05-20T23:41:00.005-05:00

The choice to carry a gun is in no way equivalent to a condition beyond an individual’s control such as being born with brown skin or legs that don’t work. Therefore, your diversion about protecting “the right” of a paranoid asshole to wear his sidearm into McDonald’s doesn’t belong in a conversation on the societal benefits of the Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Nice try, asshole.

Dog Whistle or Tuning Fork?

2010-05-20T22:32:00.002-05:00

Or simply ideological blindness?

As you may have heard, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul made a complete ass of himself last night on The Rachel Maddow Show.

I enjoy Rachel Maddow and think she is brilliant. But I often find Maddow's show annoying in the sense that she is too deferential to her guests in the moment—even when she's being aggressive—and too often relies on follow-up after the fact. As in the next show. Correcting the record or declaring "Gotcha!" too late is usually exactly that: Too late. No matter how thorough or clever.

But this segment does such a good job cutting past the “he said” or race card bullshit and dealing directly with the real world ramifications of actual policy vs. hypothetical ideology and tying it all together that I think it's worth everyone's time.

(You could watch the entire Paul appearance if you like, but it's twenty stomach-churning minutes of Paul running from giving a straight answer on whether he supports the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The key moments are excerpted in this brilliant follow-up:)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's over.

2010-05-19T20:53:00.005-05:00

Gotta give props to Lee Dewyze and Simon Cowell for last night's American Idol. Cowell chose “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen (Jeff Buckley-style) for Dewyze to sing in the biggest moment of the competition. It's not a song I would have thought suited his more gruff / less pretty vocals—shows what I know. His performance was awesome. I wish the arrangement was kept simpler (ditch the horns, tone down the backing vocals in favor of Lee and his guitar along with the strings), but I think this just won him the competition. Check it out:

Not too shabby. I think a better arrangement would come as close as anyone to could to Buckley’s rendition—which I think is one of the finest vocal performances ever recorded.

UPDATE: k.d. lang's got some pipes too...

Quote of the Day

2010-05-19T00:15:00.001-05:00

“The main difference between the far right and far left
is that the left locates the golden age in the future.”
--John Judis

Self-Proclaimed “City of Tomorrow”

2010-05-18T21:51:00.011-05:00

My current place of (temporary) residence is Troy, Michigan. While our permanent housing arrangements in Ann Arbor shake out, I am staying with Mrs. F's family in one of Detroit's upscale suburbs...

One of the reasons we are so excited to be relocating from North Carolina back to Michigan is the emphasis placed on education and services such as public libraries. This is true not only in our city of choice, Ann Arbor, but throughout much of Southeast Michigan (this is absolutely NOT the case in Asheville).

Here is some trivia on Troy:

$108,033 - median income for a family according to a 2008 estimate. Median income for a household in the city was $88,766.
#22 - Ranking in 2008 CNN/Money Best Places to Live: “With some of the highest-ranked schools in Michigan, moderately priced homes, safe streets and low property taxes, Troy is a great place for families.”
$8,443 - Amount spent on vacations (domestic and foreign, household avg. per year)
10th - The Troy Public Library's ranking among Best Library in the United States for 2009.

Sounds pretty good, right? Who wouldn't want to move here? Open a business here?

Anybody with a fucking brain it turns out.

Earlier this year voters in Troy rejected a five-year 1.9 millage proposal that would have continued funding for quality-of-life services such as the public library. Starting this July the hours and services at the library will be slashed to minimum certification standards, and next July (2011) the library will close its doors permanently.

Some more trivia:

$37.81 - Average increase in City of Troy portion of property taxes per residential home.
$392.78 (or 9.4%) - Average DECREASE in all other areas of the average Troy homeowner's property tax bill for 2010 due to decrease in assessed values.
29% - The phony-ass “tax increase” thrown out to scare people by the local Republican Party, local Teabaggers, talk radio asshats and other bullshit-filled opposition groups.
5 - Number of years before the millage sunsets. Yes, it was fucking temporary.
30 - Ranking among the 30 full-service cities in Oakland County of Troy’s tax rate. That’s right: Troy residents pay the lowest city taxes in the area. Passing the millage would have moved them up two spots to 28.

Congratulations. It worked. Wealthy Republicans in this town decided “they got theirs, so fuck you” and whipped the sheeple in this town into a lather about receiving a slightly smaller tax reduction, and now there will be no public library system.

Good luck resuscitating Troy's legacy as “Innovation Alley” and here’s to a bright future as a destination for new business and residents.

Quote of the Day

2010-05-06T11:16:00.004-05:00

“Some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns,” said Graham, darkly. “I don’t think banning handguns makes me safer.

[link] Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) trying desperately to rationalize why terror suspects should be put on No-Fly lists and denied Miranda rights, but still be able to purchase whatever fucking guns they like.

With the exception of part of the 2nd Amendment, the U.S. Constitution is officially null and void to these fucking GOP assholes.

Obama's Mistake

2010-05-02T21:39:00.004-05:00

I have to agree pretty wholeheartedly with this email sent to Digby:

The NY Times thinks that President Obama has not responded aggressively enough to this spill. Let's be clear:

No way is this oil spill Barack Obama's fault.

The fault lies with the ideology and mores of the Republican party and its theory of government. Their solution to this country's energy's future is to drill anywhere and everywhere. In their theory of government, government has no right to control who, what, where and how the natural resources of this country or this planet are exploited or not exploited, resources that are needed by us all and are needed to protect us all. Like my friend Jim Gilliam said in a private email, government is supposed regulate corporate behavior not just be their willing partner/follower. This is a lesson that we all need to keep in mind and that includes the president.

In the Republican theory of government, government regulation is inherently evil or at least counterproductive. So under George Bush et al, the only regulation in the Gulf has been self regulation. This oil spill is the fault of Republican ideology.

And the Times is wrong again in saying that if BP lied to Barack Obama and misled him that is not his fault. The spill itself and even, at the moment, the seemingly futile attempts to stop the spill is the result of Republicans, down to using Halliburton's technology over another technology that is more successfully employed in Europe.

However, I think this is Barack Obama's burden and ultimately the Democratic party's burden. A month ago, Barack Obama embraced (or he thought he cleverly "co-opted") Republican ideas for how to solve our energy future. Most progressives bemoaned this, especially because he had seemed to learn the lesson of health care. He is wrong on the merits. And on the merits I think there is little disagreement. It was supposed to be another clever way to disarm right wing arguments. But it has boomeranged back into the President's face and the face of the Democratic party.

This is now the recurring riff of this presidency. And I hate to say it, but it is political malpractice.

Once again the president embraced Republican ideas to be/look bipartisan and open minded. But being Republican ideas, they have all the weaknesses of Republican ideas - just like with the health care bill being a system built on Republican ideas of the health care system - a LOOSELY REGULATED PRIVATE SYSTEM. Now the president has endorsed offshore drilling, which he still had the opportunity to repudiate clearly yesterday...but he merely temporized with an appeal to a temporary moratorium until "safe" ways are found.

Are there any safe ways? If this takes even 90 days to cap, that is 18 million gallons of oil filling the Gulf of Mexico. (I can't do the math but does that fill the Gulf ---what is the visual of that from space???)

Barack Obama is not just the President of the US, he is also the head of the Democratic Party. I hesitate to be political, especially since this is potentially an ecological disaster of vast proportions, but a Gulf full of oil through the summer, a Gulf that voters would have seen endlessly on their TV screens, would have been enough to beat the Republicans back (as well as over the head) in the midterm elections. They would have been crucified on their oil rigs.

But now is that possible? I don't think so. The Democrats running in the midterms are now hobbled in their ability to trash the Republicans, because they have to tiptoe around their own President's position. He has handcuffed them, he has almost forced them to zip their mouths shut on the issue. Indeed the inchoate anger will wrongly accrue to him, and the only thing the Democrats running may be able to do is either defend him or run away from him.

He is redefining the positions of the Democratic party in ways that many of us progressives are unhappy with on the merits. But in this case he is also losing the political benefits of being on the right side for all of us.

The comments quickly devolve into a "Obama is the same/no better/worse than Bush, which is horseshit, but the point in this essay that he is too quick to embrace or validate GOP positions is well-taken. He does. It is brutal irony that he went out on a limb only a month ago and endorsed a drilling plan that in the current light might as well be something George W Bush left in the Oval Office desk drawer.

Environmental Catastrophuck

2010-05-01T14:55:00.006-05:00

EXCELLENT POINT
TIME Magazine:

It may be time to stop referring to the Deepwater Horizon rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico as an oil spill. A spill sounds like something temporary, a glass of milk overturned, which empties and then can be cleaned up. But what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the sensitive shorelines of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, isn't a spill. It's an unchecked gush of crude oil from beneath the bottom of the ocean into the water — and no one can say for sure when it will finally stop.

---

WE’RE STILL IN THE FRYING PAN
As bad as this situation in the Gulf is, it has the potential to become exponentially worse...

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000 barrels -- or more than 6 million gallons per day -- based on government data showing daily production at another deepwater Gulf well.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week.

Um, Holy shit?
---

IS THERE ANYTHING HALLIBURTON CAN'T FUCK UP?
WSJ via HuffPo:

Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.

Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.

The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week.

How can one company have its fingers in so many shit pies? At this point, I wouldn't be shocked if the volcano in Iceland is probably somehow their fault.
---

OBAMA’S KATRINA
Such comparisons are ridiculous—this is an industrial accident of never-before-seen proportions, not a natural event with days of warning for preparation that were ignored, and then responded to by incompetent lackies. Nevertheless, this will become the right-wing meme, and soon enough the conventional wisdom with the supine media. It's a raw deal.

But I will say this: Obama attending the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight has all the makings of becoming his "George Bush with the birthday cake while New Orleans sinks" moment.

The event should be cancelled. Who's going to be upset by that? The media? Fuck them. If he attends, they will be the ones stabbing him in the back on Monday for yukking it up while oil inundates the Gulf shore.

Serious Question...

2010-05-01T13:09:00.002-05:00

Is there a reason why we can't just construct a big-ass concrete dome to lower to the gulf floor and cover this broken rig?

Can You Do ANYTHING While Black?

2010-04-26T21:23:00.005-05:00

Digby has the latest taser horror story. It starts out like this...police see a black man riding a bicycle without a headlight.

It ends with a DOA at the hospital.

Digby sums up perfectly:

I think tasers are unconstitutional, authoritarian torture weapons that have no place in a civilized society. No government should have the power to electrocute citizens and cause them great pain -- even briefly -- in order to make them comply on nothing more than a policeman's whim.

(I haven't had the chance to weigh in on the bullshit new law in Arizona, but this is very likely to be the type of unintended consequence that could result in unnecessary, aggressive policing of the populace there.)

Peak Wingnut, cont.

2010-04-26T17:20:00.004-05:00

I think this piece by Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin's chance of running and her prospects should she do so, is worth reading. He accuses the media of being far too complacent on the topic of Palin and the de-evolution of politics—but in classic Sully style, he counters by being in my opinion, too alarmist. I think the truth lies somewhere in between: she's too dangerous to ignore, but too extreme to emerge victorious.

For now.

Reading Assignments

2010-04-21T20:28:00.004-05:00

REVISIONIST HISTORY: PART 1
I picked up the new issue of GQ during lunch today (having a newsstand in the office is a nice perk), and read several well-written pieces on a variety of subjects. But the Editor's Letter by Jim Nelson is one of the best things I've read about the destruction of education and history unfolding in Texas. It cuts right to the bone, and cops just the right attitude. Read the whole thing.

HEADS UP, HE NEVER HAD ANY...
Daniel Larison rips the Band-Aid off the tire-swinging media types lamenting the departure of John McCain's Integrity. It breaks down perfectly how McCain thrived so many years by fooling some of the people, some of the time. And now when his transparent policy shifts should be fooling NO ONE, the morons in the media are waxing nostalgic.

REVISIONIST HISTORY: PART 2
Today's big, bad, brave bullying Teabaggers would shit their pants and die on the spot if they actually encountered real communism, facism or tyranny. An interesting post by a historian on the fallacies spread by these ignorant jackasses, and why it's a mistake not to confront it.

Peak Wingnut

2010-04-21T19:53:00.005-05:00

Get ready. It's coming...

1. This person might be the next Senator from Nevada...

Via Yglesias. This comment in the thread nails it.

Sure, barter can work. It worked well before industrialization. But the idea that you go to your GP, and pay him a sack of potatoes, but you need x rays, and the x ray guy wants the GI Joe with the kung fu grip for his kid, so you find someone who has that and trade him potatoes, but then the blood test guy wants neither, so you give him literally the shirt off your back, and then you promise the specialist that you’ll mow his lawn for two years…

2. The new Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, will be a tax cheat/imbezzler under investigation by the IRS for ripping his own party off. In Arizona, McCain has to fight off one of Abramoff's cronies, J.D. Hayworth—an acknowledged windbag who guest hosts for Laura Ingraham.

That's three certifiable teabagging maniacs with a good chance of joining the already crazy ranks of the GOP caucus. They aren't going to be pulling them in the proper direction.

And if those candidates, and others like them, win races, it will only embolden the rest of the freakshow.

UPDATE: Booman does a nice breakdown of two of these races...

Who Ya Got: SNL Alum Political Throwdown

2010-04-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

Tina Fey tries to maintain a certain degree of neutrality, but it's pretty obvious which side of the ballot she wakes up on. Plus, she bolstered a career on lampooning Athena of the Right Wing. So I count her for the liberals.

On the Teabagger side, who was one of the featured “celebrities” onstage at today's big Tax DayTea Party in D.C.? None other than completely forgotten, one-dimensional, no-range-beyond-bimbo ex-SNLer Victoria Jackson.

This ridiculous appearence completely obliterates her only worthwhile contribution to life on earth, when she played Eydie Gormé on “The Sinatra Group.”

R.I.P. NPR

2010-04-15T22:43:00.005-05:00

When I left Michigan for North Carolina nearly two years ago, I also said goodbye to NPR. The lack of decent public radio in Asheville, as well as having only a five-minute commute meant my daily briefings in the car to and from work were a thing of the past.

Since moving back to Michigan, and having an hour commute as well, I've had a chance to get reacquainted with NPR and Michigan Radio.

I wasn't missing much.

The bullshit I heard on the radio today was infuriating. The show was “Here & Now” (from Boston's WBUR), and since today is April 15, they had a segment on taxes...and I quote, “When the money magically disappears from our checks, what happens to it?” I was immediately wary of what was to come, but the host introduced some guest from a “non-partisan tax research group” to break it down.

This host was already beginning to channel her inner-Sarah Palin, and the assclown she brought in as an expert guest might as well have been Glenn Beck or Grover Norquist. She asked him "how does the government spend that tax dollar?" And the first thing out of his ~~mouth~~ ass, is:

“Most of the money is transferred to...uh...other people.”

Now first of all, everyone knows the number one expenditure is defense. To reach his conclusion, this guy rounds defense spending down from the actual 23% to 20%, and then he lists social security (note: 20%) and medicare & medicaid (note: 19%) together, and somehow comes up with 56¢ (!) of that tax dollar going to “what the federal government calls entitlements.” And why explain that the spending on SS is mandatory and covered by its own dedicated stream, and goes to people that have already paid for it.

Even if there is somehow a case to be made for his math, his framing is pretty damn obvious—hard-working Americans are paying for lazy (and probably brown) people.

He also manages to get a dig in on how much government employees are paid. Nice.

Over the next few minutes, as he addresses other minutiae, he repeatedly beats on the welfare horse.

“[defense] is the next biggest chunk after that big 56% entitlement chunk...”

“...the vast fiscal flows out in entitlements...”

Then he proceeds to lament the deficit and points his finger Obama as the source of all of those problems.

He also references the Bush tax cuts a couple times (in a good way) and neglects to mention Obama has lowered taxes, and trots out the bogeyman of rates returning to Clinton-era rates if Obama lets the Bush cuts expire.

When the discussion turns to state taxes, it's more of the same, as he laments the progressive policies of some states who tax households above $200K more.

All the way through this the host nods along, occasionally parroting a point or two, and that's it.

Fuck that shit. That’s the kind of garbage I’d expect to see on Lou Dobbs.

And when I went to the npr.org site to find the link to this piece, I saw on the front page a bogus “he said/she said” regurgitation about whether the word “bailout” is fair to describe the Democrats finance reform. (Its not.) No analysis, no facts, no actual reference to the substance of the legislation. Just five or six quotes—the first batch all seem to be right from Frank Luntz's clubhouse.

Anyway. That's just a snip from today. I did hear an interesting discussion on the Supreme Court with Nina Totenberg later, but on balance, I am finding myself outraged at NPR far more than feeling informed.

Back From the Grave...

2010-04-12T21:24:00.008-05:00

...and not quite ready to party.

Bringing everybody up to speed...I am now relocated to Michigan sans the rest of the Family Furious. Mrs F and the Kids are remaining in N.C. to finish out the school year and hopefully sell the house in a timely manner. While one might have expected my "free" evenings to allow for massive quantities of blogging, it hasn't quite worked out the way.

My arrival here was hectic: for the first two weeks I was adjusting to a new job in the day, while helping my old job complete projects in progress in the evening. Then, last week Mrs F and the girls came to visit, and I wasn't going to waste any of their limited time here on the computer.

Oh, and my new job (and seating location) eliminates any blogging and surfing during the day.

Next thing you know it’s been nearly a month and I've barely blogged at all. The surprise, to me, has been how little I miss it. I've amped up the Facebook a bit, but that's not really a substitute for reading, writing or commenting on a normal blog. I just haven’t felt compelled to post about much of late.

So here’s what I expect going forward...

Things will probably be more sporadic, and when I DO post, it’ll be more stuff about the cars I’m driving and photographing...I’ll probably pull an Atrios and rely on posting links and quotes a bit more...embed video if we’re lucky. And if something really pisses me off, maybe it’ll result in a long-format tirade like the good ole days.

Sticking with the automotive theme...

PHOTOSHOP FAIL
“Who were the ad wizards that came up with THIS one?”

--

BATTERIES INCLUDED
Ass-kicking Canadian Nissan Sentra ad. (NOTE: Blogger is cropping like a third of the picture off, so you might want to click through to YouTube.)

[h/t Jalopnik. Also, making-of video here]

--

RECENT SHOOT:

More here.

He's Coming!

2010-04-05T00:41:00.001-05:00

It's the day after Easter, and you know what that means...

Old School

2010-04-02T11:47:00.006-05:00

Normally I only read newspapers on vacation: when they are dropped outside my hotel door, or left lying in an airport terminal. And I always relish the opportunity.

These days, between my new digs at Mrs F's grandmother, and my new job, there are multiple papers at my disposal...New York Times, WSJ, USA Today and the Detroit paper. In fact, I'm getting more of my news and information the old-fashioned way than I am online.

There's still something satisfying about reading an actual paper. And I definitely read more stories than I do online...they're sitting right there ready to be read, not off to the side requiring some incentive to click a link.

As usual, the Sunday New York Times has the most meat on its bones...

There was a good Frank Rich column on the fomenting of rage from the right... A very good Magazine article on what Obama's Wall Street regulatory plan should look like...(Krugman briefly weighs in on this today).

Even the generally annoying Mustache of Wisdom had a decent column—someone I would NEVER click a link to without being directed to—particularly one with a title as opaque as “Hobby or Necessity?”

And some stories just wouldn't work onscreen as well as it does in print. Like this frightening illustration-based story hypothesizing about an Israeli attack on Iran and what might ensue in today's version of The Six-Day War.

Friedman’s column was certainly bolstered by having read the big graphic story first, and the combination reaffirmed my stance on U.S.-Israeli relations, which boils down to this: I generally fall on the side opposing whatever Israel is up to at any particular moment. I think the United States pays far too much deference to Israeli interests, and that the relationship is extremely one-sided in who benefits from it.

The ascension of hard-liners in Israeli politics has made much of this more obvious (or less thinly-veiled), and there is a lot to be added into the equation from Freidman's column about the attitudes at play, too. But even The Mustache is giving Israel too much leeway by implying that Israeli interest in Middle East peace has diminished primarily because of economics and a lack of focus. Those certainly factor in the politics of everyday citizens (in Israel and elsewhere), and I think explains how Israeli politicians that behave like a Dick Cheney fantasy team could come to dominate the government, but it leaves aside what I believe is a very deliberate process of dismantling any movement towards Arab-Israeli peace agreements.

I finished reading that timeline of an attack on Iran, and wondered “what does the Israeli regime have to lose by doing something like this?”

Then I refreshed myself on the Six Day War, the events leading to it, and the fact that so many of the same players—then young military leaders, now high government officials—are involved, and I wonder, “When will Israel go ahead with this crazy shit, and is there anything Obama can do to stop it or react differently?”

P.S. This really started as a light-hearted post on the nostalgia of reading newspapers...

Crazytown

2010-03-29T23:06:00.003-05:00

What is with Michigan and the fucking militias? Seriously.

Where would you think the higher concentration of whacked out gun zealots plotting against the government would be? The mountain wilderness of Appalachia (where I just moved from)? Or a high-brow city containing "The Harvard of the Midwest" (where I just moved to)?

These aren't even guys out in the fucking boonies. This is all right here.

"Wow."

2010-03-20T00:55:00.004-05:00

Took the Nissan GT-R test car home Thursday night. Wow.

Really. Just..."Wow."

That's about all one can say about a 485 horsepower car that get to 60 mph in under 4 seconds.

I guess "Holy shit!" is appropriate as well.

[more photos]

My Cubist Period

2010-03-15T22:08:00.004-05:00

Behold the Nissan Cube.

I joked to my former coworkers that the new guy doesn't get the BMW, and that "I'm sure I'll be driving the Nissan Cube..."

Lo and behold, those were the keys dropped on my desk. It might be the most ridiculous car since the VW Thing, but it's already grown on me.

Links

2010-03-15T20:59:00.006-05:00

"DONT TALK ABOUT GRAYSON"
That's what will be written on Sarah Palin's palm after this.

GAME SHOW POLITICS
This has been around for a little while, but I haven't. It's excellent: Democrats are playing "Jeopardy," while Republicans play "Family Feud."

BEATING THE DRUM
Kevin Drum rants about Republican mendacity—in this case, from Lindsay Graham—and at the end wonders, "Who do these guys think they're kidding?"

That's easy, Kevin: The guy sitting across the desk. And it's working.

TOM TOLES IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

[h/t Ezra]

Dick of the Week: Dennis Kucinich

2010-03-10T14:47:00.006-05:00

Leaning No: Will Kucinich Become
The Ralph Nader Of Health Care Reform?

[TPM link] But one of the House's leading progressives says he's unlikely to be swayed. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) voted against the House health care bill. And his office confirmed to me today that he remains opposed to the Senate bill.

Last week, there were some signs that Kucinich might be persuadable. At a White House meeting Thursday, President Obama apprised Kucinich of a measure in the Senate health care bill--authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)--that allow individual states to create single payer systems several years down the line. Kucinich was said to be interested in the provision.

Apparently not interested enough.

[...] But there is some chance, however small, that Kucinich will cast the deciding vote. And for the time being, he's saying he'd rather be the Ralph Nader of reform, instead of its kingmaker.

Patron Saint of the Firebaggers. Assholes on the left insisting on purity from the party are as bad as the extreme wingers on the GOP side.

It's this or nothing, Dennis, you prick. Shut the fuck up, vote "Yes" and work to improve things. But then, I suppose Nadering the bill now will help burnish your creds with the idiots who support your next Quixotic Presidential run.

Update

2010-03-04T10:30:00.004-05:00

As any of you who also follow Mrs Furious' blog already know, things are crazy and about to get crazier. I have accepted a job back in Ann Arbor, MI. I leave in 10 days while Mrs F and the kids stay behind to sell the house and finish school (whichever comes first).

So that has meant (and will mean) a ~~flurry~~ blizzard of activity around the house; finishing projects, cleaning, packing, repeatedly shitting our pants, and then cleaning our pants. At work I have a million loose ends to tie up, and once I leave I will be settling into a new job, trying to finish some ongoing work from my current job all while living with Mrs F's grandmother—which could be serious sitcom material in itself.

Needless to say, blogging is likely to fall by the wayside for a while. Even now I have several things flying around that I'd love to touch on, but don't really have time. Maybe I'll throw together a Link Bonanza or something.

That's all for now.

Of course he's a bad guy...

2010-03-01T14:46:00.003-05:00

Just look at him!...

When Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić (now on trial in The Hague) wasn't ethnically cleansing Muslims during the Bosnian Civil War he was denying Southtown a white Christmas...

The guy's pure evil.

That Day Has Arrived...

2010-02-25T13:20:00.010-05:00

So, I went over to MSNBC to see if I could catch up on the HCR summit being televised today, but I was diverted by the group of stories I saw over next to the picture of Obama...

"Woman's Mauling By Chimp Haunts Police Officer" Hell, it haunted me for a bit...
"Video: Orca shook trainer violently witnesses say" $50 someone uses the words "rag doll."
"Orcas have history of killing humans" I know. I saw the movie. He sure killed the hell out of Richard Harris...
"Shark-filled aquarium springs leak" All part of the plan...

The best part of the whole thing is at the end of the video in the third link, the reporter informs Matt Lauer that video footage from Sea World cameras or a tourist "could be critical for investigators to determine what went wrong here and insure it never happens again."

Let me guess what that video will show: Tilikum, the killer whale, grabbing his trainer dragging her underwater and swimming around with her until she drowned. The only determination of "why it happened" will come from a Spock mind-meld with the whale. And as far as making sure "it never happens again?" Exactly how? Aside from not creating entertainment based on intimate interaction with 15,000 pound apex predators in an environment that starts out potentially fatal to humans, what exactly will this investigation propose?

Maybe the investigators can get together and enjoy a showing of "Grizzly Man" while they await footage from Sea World.

UPDATE: Mrs F thought I was perhaps a bit too cynical with this post...Yeah. I guess so. I do feel that it sucks that the trainer was killed. In all likelihood she was a marine biologist-type who had dedicated her life to the study of the animal that took her life. That's awful.

My issue is with the situation that created the event and the absolutely preposterous coverage of this event as if it was some cross between a premeditated homicide and a preventable job hazard.

That whale was doing what it was evolved and born to do—grab prey and drag it to it's death.

There is no question that marine mammals are anthropomorphised more than any other wild animal due to their intelligence. Would anyone do this show with a great white shark? Or a crocodile? Or even a lion with a history of killing trainers? Of course not. "But these animals are so intelligent!" Yes. But the fact remains that they are wild animals—and in this case, not just a carnivore, but one at the absolute top of the food chain. In fact, is there a predator on earth with a higher spot than an orca?

This is a whale that already killed a trainer, and was sold by it's original owner (captor) in British Columbia to Sea World with the understanding that it would NOT be a performing animal. That's a fucking problem. I'm sure these new trainers honestly believed they could train and control him, so eventually he found his way into the arena.

This event isn't a tragedy. It's a matter of time. It's a matter of luck running out.

These are wild animals used to patrolling a range that probably covers hundreds of square mile stuck in a pool. It's an intensely social animal that lives it's whole life in a pod. Instead he is forced to interact with another species that has him do unnatural things. He wasn't a rescued animal or bred, he was captured in the ocean and placed in captivity. Tilikum survived in captivity for at least eight years (that's time between the killings), and that's DOUBLE the average captive lifespan of four years. In the wild, they live over 35 years.

He was in that show because humans, in their infinite arrogance, thought they could master him. And in a display of man's infinite greed, Sea World knew they could make a bundle off him.

So, yeah, it really sucks about that trainer. But if he's as intelligent as given credit for, it sucks more for the whale.

Cage Match

2010-02-25T10:12:00.000-05:00

This is pretty good...

Bullseye

2010-02-10T23:42:00.001-05:00

John Cole breaks down the Tea Party Movement pretty perfectly:

Personally, I see a number of elements to the tea party:

1.) Republican operatives bankrolled by the usual suspects, with the sole intent of using the tea party to advance the GOP and corporate agendas and to regain political power (FreedomWorks, DeMint, Palin, etc.)

2.) Cynical operators like media operations, talk show hosts and glibertarians and snake oil salesman who see a way to raise their profile and raise a buck (Fox news, PJTV, Breitbart, Glenn Beck, Reason, all the little for profit hucksters starting their own tea party funds). To a lesser extent, I would throw in the hundreds of cynical “new media consultants” the GOP seems to burp up on a daily basis.

3.) Straight up Birchers, birthers, flat-earthers, racists, militiamen, Patriot movement members, and that motley crew of scumbags and lunatics.

4.) A very small group of folks who honestly are very upset about government spending, but manage to never care when the GOP is the one doing it. They probably make up the smallest chunk, but you can pick them out quite easily- they are the somewhat sane looking people that the folks from the three previous groups try to hide behind every time the cameras are on.

At any rate, the fact that the Tea Parties have gotten this far with their incoherent and often times hypocritical message (to say nothing of the lunatics and racists and militia types) is a sign to me there is no amount of bullshit our media won’t swallow. The fact that it is allegedly a “populist” movement that was inspired by a tantrum from millionaire tv financial personality and a Brooks Brothers mafia on the Chicago trading floor, upset over meager plans to help troubled mortgage holders in the wake of a near trillion dollar bailout of the the wealthy elite who pay Rick Santelli’s salary, just ups the humor value in this theatre of the absurd. Nothing cracks me up like an angry peasant mob screaming for the repeal of the estate tax and ending the capital gains tax.

A sad state of affairs.

Drink Up: Harry Reid

2010-02-03T00:15:00.004-05:00

Of all the times for Harry Reid to try and sack up it's for stupid shit like this?

At a town hall in New Hampshire this afternoon, President Obama tried to give a little friendly recession spending advice, telling people they shouldn't "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas" when comparing the federal budget to a family budget.

"This isn't how responsible families do their budgets. When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. And it's time your government did the same," he said.

He may not have expected just how quickly Nevada politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, would react.

Reid (D-NV) shot off a statement telling Obama to "lay off" Las Vegas.

"I just spoke to the White House and told them that while the President is correct that people saving for college need to be fiscally responsible, the President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said.

Good. Fucking. Grief.

If you're going to get your ass handed to you in November anyway, can we move onto the next Majority Leader already?

Burned Out

2010-02-02T00:56:00.005-05:00

I am coming off a deadline at work and heading right back into two more, so action will be sporadic at best 'round here.

But, I have to be honest...I'm pretty fucking despondent about politics right now, and have zero interest in documenting the daily dismantling of what's left of our democracy.

For the record, today it was Chris Dodd's strangling financial reform in the crib.

[h/t John Cole]

SOTU

2010-01-28T01:21:00.003-05:00

I'm on deadline, and in the office working, so I have the speech going on on my desktop as I work, but there'll be no live-blog or even comprehensive reaction from me this time 'round.

Quickly? I thought it was a pretty good speech. Filled with some of the usual SOTU boilerplate, but his strongest speech since taking office.

Highlights:

Fuck the bankstas
Calling the Democrats pussies, grow a pair and get some shit done.
Calling the Republicans obstructionist assholes, and to get serious or GTFOTW.
Calling out the Supreme Court right to their face.
DADT repeal

Lowlights:

Not telling Congress how to finish health care reform—Pass the Damn Bill, etc.
Stupid freeze. Though, the release was clearly a red herring, as this wasn't really the meat of the speech, imo.

That's all for now, Seacrest out!

Not Digging It

2010-01-26T01:04:00.007-05:00

If you thought the news was bad last week, the front page of Digby's Hullabaloo is enough to make stick your head in the oven.

First, the media is officially turning on Obama:

In case you were wondering, the consensus on all the Sunday gasbag shows is that Obama is an abject failure because of his radical leftist ideology and that his only hope of even maintaining the presidency, much less winning a second term is to take a sharp turn to the right and enact the Republican agenda. Several commentators, including such luminaries as political cross dresser Matthew Dowd on ABC, insisted that the first thing the president has to do is pick a huge fight with the Democrats to show the country that he isn't one of them. Cokie said he should have asked John McCain from the beginning what he was allowed to do.

The historians and expert political observers on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show all agreed that Obama is no Reagan, a president who never governed ideologically and always worked across party lines. Oh, and he needs to be a president or a prime minister, but nobody could agree on exactly what that means except that he should try to be more like Scott Brown, the white Barack Obama, except without all the liberalism.

That was to be expected, of course, these worthless idiots have spotted their own chum in the water and are gearing up for the feeding frenzy.

What is more disappointing is that Obama is preparing to add his own blood to the mix and in very visible and culpable ways:

Talking Deficits:

But evidently, the president does want to politically tie his hands securely behind his back by putting the deficit at the top of the agenda and making sure that the nation sees it as bigger threat to its well-being than the fact that we have 10% unemployment, a moribund real estate market and an economically crushing health care system. [...]

It goes without saying that actually delivering anything of value to the country is now off the table but I'm sure that between a fierce concentration on budget balancing and sounding really annoyed at bankers, the voters will be perfectly satisfied, so that's good

And, of course, part and parcel with the media turning is the revocation of all excuses and history—they no longer want to hear about Bush—it's all on Obama now, and only other Democrats are fair game...

Bush Who?

The Republicans have run against Jimmy Carter for the past 28 years. In fact, they're still running against him.Republicans understand two simple things. You must name your enemy and you must imbue that enemy with the characteristics people hate about themselves. The Democrats used to do it quite well themselves, but after Carter they lost their nerve. (I think the Villagers joining the Republicans with their utter disdain for anything that smacks of liberal idealism completely spooked them and they have never recovered.) If the party cannot run against the catastrophic failure of Bush governance, much less against the catastrophic failure of Republican ideology, then they literally have nothing to run on but empty slogans. And that doesn't cut it once you're in office and you haven't delivered. They need to name the culprits --- if they don't, they'll become the enemy themselves, by default.

2010 fucking sucks.

Just An Excuse

2010-01-24T09:20:00.004-05:00

Ygelsias—How Close Were We Really?:

[emphasis added] Now that’s not to deny that they were, in fact, close. In fact we’re still close and the door is still very open, logistically, to moving forward with essentially the deal that folks were working toward pre-Coakley. But I think the speed with which Coakley’s loss was seized upon as a reason not to walk through that door underscores how fundamentally uncomfortable with the framework so many people were. Say Coakley had turned back the tide and beaten Brown 51-49. Couldn’t some members have looked at that and said that Coakley’s very weak showing in the true-blue Bay State showed the unpopularity and infeasibility of Provision X and thrown a wrench in the works? It feels to me that a lot of members were looking for an excuse not to do it, and now they’ve seized upon one. But the underlying impulse to seek excuses and shift blame was long there.

This. Which is why I thought Coakley being a mortally wounded candidate at the finish line made the victory or loss not exactly irrelevant, but in the case of HCR, almost a wash. There were already far too many politicians—particularly in the House—who were ready to jump ship on the legislation. They would have pointed to a Coakley one-point WIN and learned the exact same fear-driven and incorrect lesson—the public doesn't want health care reform, the left is overreaching, and it's time to move to the right.

Had she won, Congress would only be hearing from the teabaggers and firebaggers that want to kill the package. The media would still be pronouncing the same Democrats are doomed, public rejection meme. The weak members would still be running to the hills. Those still centrally involved in the process would continue to weaken and erode the reforms and still end up with an unlikely-to-pass package out of a long, drawn-out and politically damaging conference process.

I look at the landscape now and absolutely believe that Coakley's loss might be the only thing that saves the reform and the Democrats from themselves.

Voice of Reason

2010-01-21T23:58:00.004-05:00

I took a stroll over to Daniel Larison's site this evening. I am glad I did.

For most of the past year, Larison's focus has been on matters of foreign policy—something I find mostly uninteresting. But tonight his front page is centered mainly on the events of this week, and he put together the most calm, rational and, in my estimation the most accurate assessment of the situation going into the special election, the aftermath, and what can/should happen next.

The best part? Remember my complaint about no one is discussing the fact that Massachusetts already has universal health care, or connecting it to the vote? Larison does. Repeatedly.

Yes, Larison is small-"c" conservative. But he's no idealogue. And he is also, in my opinion, one of the sharpest political observers around, and maintains an impressive degree of neutrality to party and politics that, in this day and age, is pretty fucking amazing. His posts are sprinkled with his opinion on matters, not partisan talking points, but what he believes. Some highlights [emphasis and snark, mine]:

On Hardball: Chris Matthews vs Howard Dean:

The damning thing about this segment for Matthews is that he did not even attempt to consider the evidence being presented [a shocker, I know. —Mr. F]. All that he needed to know was that Brown won, Brown opposes this particular health care bill, and therefore it is obviously an endorsement of policy views on the national level that even Scott Brown doesn’t hold. The conventional wisdom has already become entrenched that Massachusetts independent voters recoiled from “statism” or “big government,” when the survey data indicate that the independent voters who backed both Obama and Brown expected much more from Obama than the shabby corporatist compromise in the Senate, and they were angry enough about his underwhelming performance to go so far as to elect a Republican to demonstrate the depth of their dissatisfaction. As Matthews’ and Bevan’s reactions show, their protest message is one that virtually no one is going to hear or understand.

We’ve Got Ours, You Can’t Have Yours

As I suggested yesterday, Brown’s opposition to the current Senate health care bill is a product of “I’ve got mine” sentiment: Massachusetts has its own health care plan, so there’s no need to tamper with it at the federal level. Chait poses a reasonable question when he asks, “So why should the rest of the country feel bound to heed this decision?” The answer many Republicans prefer to give is that the voters have spoken and it has been “proven” that health care legislation is unpopular and politically toxic, but this claim doesn’t actually hold up very well. [Democrats, please pay attention, here] If Massachusetts voters’ disapproval of federal health care legislation is driven in large part by satisfaction with MassCare, which is what Brown’s win would suggest, this is obviously an argument in favor of passing a health care bill in order to win the kind of popularity that MassCare already has. The very “parochial” defense Brown has mounted drives home that most Massachusetts voters apparently like universal or near-universal health insurance coverage mandated by government, which is not really a “wake-up call” telling Democrats that the public will destroy them if they pass a health care bill. The experience of at least the last forty-five years tells us that the public tends to like specific government programs and never wants to reduce or eliminate them [...]

Whether this federal health care legislation or MassCare is good public policy is a different question. Obviously, I think they aren’t because they are unsustainable and unaffordable, but that isn’t my point here. The core of the Republican argument right now is that most people don’t like the health care bill, Brown’s election shows this, and therefore Democrats should give up. [...] It is understandable why they would say this, because we all know that the measures instituted by federal health care legislation will rapidly become popular and politically untouchable.

The disillusioned among us would do well to digest that post (and the comments) in its entirety. And I wish every chickenshit Democrat in Congress whould have it read to them repeatedly as they sleep. Those two posts go a long way to shift some of my blame and anger towards the voters in Massachusetts to the feckless pussies in the state party and D.C.

Learning The Wrong Lessons

Tedisco [NY-20], Hoffman [NY-23] and Coakley have something important in common: all of them had every advantage in terms of party registration, funding and and voting patterns, and they squandered all of these. As a result, two solidly Republican districts are now represented by Democrats (Owens and Murphy) and one of the most politically liberal states in the country will have a Republican Senator. There is a pattern, but it is not one that fits self-congratulatory narratives from either party. Parties and candidates that exhibit feelings of entitlement and/or disdain for the voters, the places they live and the issues that actually matter to them will be voted down regardless of how those electorates voted in the past.

Caught in the Loop

Democrats have convinced themselves for years that the public overwhelmingly favors “health care reform,” which they pretty readily identify with their own ideas on what that reform should be, and now Republicans have convinced themselves that the public will not stand for passage of a health care bill. My guess is that both have been wrong in different ways, but the GOP is probably misreading the situation even worse than the Democrats. Republicans are betting heavily that a bill that is passed this year but which will not take effect for several more years is going to precipitate a massive public backlash in their favor. Democrats are assuming that the voters who handed them 14 Senate and 50+ House seats over the last two elections are not going to throw them out of power for doing more or less what they said they would do. Whose bet seems smarter? [Note: This was written before the election results were known]

It appears Larison may turn out wrong at the end there, because—smart bet or not—the Democrats are about to take their straight flush and fold because the GOP is bluffing with a pair of fives. But his logic is impeccable. I should also point out that 'graph is like the toy surprise inside a post that's otherwise a vivisection of David Brooks. Good times.

That's all for now. If you're like me, that is a refreshing and bracing read. I would feel completely rejuvenated if I could have hope Larison's predictions would come true—I think he's right from top to bottom. If more Democrats and voters could think like this we'd be home free. Unfortunately, we legislate with the worthless Democrats we have, not the Democrats we WISH we had.

Democracy Sure Was Fun While It Lasted

2010-01-21T11:33:00.004-05:00

This country is well and truly fucked.

[TPM] In a ruling that has major implications for how elections are funded, the Supreme Court has struck down a key campaign-finance restriction that bars corporations and unions from pouring money into political ads.

The long-awaited 5-4 ruling, in the Citizens United v. FEC case, presents advocates of regulation with a major challenge in limiting the flow of corporate money into campaigns, and potentially opens the door for unrestricted amounts of corporate money to flow into American politics.

From the decision:

By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

As TPM points out, "At the heart of the ruling, now available here (pdf), is a judgment by the Court that the law cannot distinguish between corporations and individuals in prohibiting speech - so free speech rights that apply to the latter must also apply to the former."

(Supposed liberal) Justice Kennedy actually referred to corporations as a "disadvantaged class" and that they were being denied the rights of the individual?

Fuck that, sideways. If corporations are to be granted all the rights of the individual citizen, then in turn, corporations will now be taxed as individuals in the highest bracket now, right?

Right?

Plenty of excerpts from the majority opinion and the dissent, here.

Dick of the Week: Massachusetts

2010-01-21T10:14:00.003-05:00

Yeah. Seems obvious, right? Here's the thing: I hated Coakley as a candidate and the way the party handled this whole affair. I can easily rationalize the loss away as a wake-up call, a moment of clarity on a path to passing the reform (see previous post), or a punishment for Coakley and her inept, arrogent campaign.

There's the obvious parallel to the voters to the south stupidly reelecting Joe Lieberman, but this was worse. the stakes so much clearer, but that stuff is beating a dead horse. The thing that's not getting enough play for my taste is the fact that Massachusetts HAS FUCKING UNIVERSAL(ish) HEALTH CARE!

The media likes to pretend that this election was a rejection of health care reform—which is wasn't—because clearly polls and past voting and the fact that they fucking gave it to themselves as a state indicate other wise.

But what is burning me up the most, and that I will have the hardest time getting past is the big, giant "Fuck you, I got mine!" these Massholes gave the rest of the country.

No one is talking about that. No one.

Mr Furious Heartily Endorses...

2010-01-20T23:32:00.002-05:00

FOX's "Human Target." Pretty good show.

That is all.

What Happens Now

2010-01-20T00:33:00.013-05:00

I had a big post breaking down the potential ramifications of the Senate race in Massachusetts for either result almost ready to go when I had to put it down for a couple hours. Now the results are in and you might think that was all wasted.

Wrong.

Most of my conclusions ended up in the same place whether Coakley or Brown won.

In my desperate attempt to find a silver lining in what seemed likely, I ended up comfortable with the feeling that Coakley losing might actually be a good thing. No. I'm not going all FDL and becoming a "kill the bill" fanatic—I want the bill passed, and I'm starting to think the Republican upset might help that process.

Here are the things I think were an inevitable result of this election, no matter who won:

1. Bragging Rights -- The GOP declares the election a referendum on the Democrats at large and Obama in particular. The GOP smells blood in the water and is emboldened in their obstructionism and nihilism and ratchet up the rhetoric. Brown winning also makes their framing an easier sell, but even a narrow Coakley win would have been treated the same way.

2. "This is excellent news for John McCain." -- The media follows the GOP on No. 1. Since Brown pulled it out, they have a collective weeks-long orgasm. That is the result they wanted. It sets up the narrative for the year and the midterms, and makes their lives easy. These underdog and rebellion stories write themselves. But make no mistake: even a Coakley win would've been framed as a loss and a rejection of Obama, because it wasn't a blowout.

3. Massive Diaper Change -- Blue Dog and conservative Democrats shit their pants and run for the fucking hills on EVERYTHING. Funny how that works: A Republican loses? Then they weren't conservative enough, the party hunkers down and moves to the right. A Democrat loses? They weren't conservative enough, the Democrats abandon everything and run to the right like a goddamn bear is chasing them. This effect holds simply because it was close. Doesn't matter who won.

So what does all of that tell you? If Coakley had won 51-49 none of that would have changed. The only difference now is 59 Democrats instead of 60.

And. That. Shouldn't. Fucking. Matter.

This isn't the Republican party. The "60-vote super-majority" never was a given, and never would be. You don't think Evan Bayh isn't drooling at the chance to be the new Joe Lieberman? He just passed his first audition tonight by being the first Dem in front of a camera, scolding the party for drifting too far left.

--

For the sake of Argument, let's pretend for a moment Coakley had won:

The first order of business is Health Care Reform. Coakley's win sends the process right back into the quagmire of gutlessness and stupidity that has taken a a year to get us to this point—which is: still without a pasable bill. So, the existing Senate and House bills would go to conference, and there's no guarantee that what emerged would be as good as either current bill or that it would pass. In general, the longer it takes, the less likely it would pass, but in this climate, do you think after watching the bloodbath in Massachusetts the fence-sitters in the party are going to man-up or dither? The intra-party finger-pointing and second-guessing would be paralyzing in a conference.

And it would only get worse from there. Enough candy-asses are going to run to the right after a race this close, that 60 might be unattainable on any given legislation.

But, since Coakley lost, the mirage of a super-majority is exposed and the pursuit of 60 more futile, it might actually change both the tactics and the strategy from the Democrats. On HCR, the only way to pass the package now is to avoid the conference committee by eliminating the need to combine two bills.

Send the Senate bill as-is to the House, promise House progressives their concerns (mostly budgetary) will be handled in 50+1 reconciliation and have Pelosi gather 218 votes. It then goes straight to Obama's pen.

Failure to pass health care reform is not acceptable and the current scenario actually makes the process of enacting the legislation easier. Yes, it's a ballsier move, but by skipping the conference, the Senate vote has already happened—it negates Brown's 41st vote, or Lieberman's eventual stab in the back, etc.

If Reid, Pelosi and Obama are unable or unwilling to go that route and prevail, then I honestly believe they would not have gotten it done with Coakley's vote either.

"Get a Brain Moran!"

2010-01-19T10:46:00.002-05:00

"[link] The half of my family who voted for Obama are for Brown," said Dennis Sheehan, an electrical technician from Lowell, who cheered the Senate candidate outside a Boston Bruins game. "They felt sold out. He said he'd bring the whole country together. I've never seen the country so divided in my life, and I grew up in the '60s, with Vietnam."

Yeah. And that's Obama's fault. And this will help.

This election is turning into The Darwin Awards.

Ugly

2010-01-19T00:37:00.003-05:00

It doesn't look good for Coakley. Nate Silver:

Right now, our trusty little model of Massachusetts gives Martha Coakley just a 25 percent chance of prevailing tomorrow. Intrade also puts her odds at about 1 in 4. My subjective assessment might be a little better than that, but not much.

People are acting, however, as though 25 percent is the same as zero percent. And -- as disappointing as it might be to be in this position -- obviously it is not. This is not some basketball game where the score suddenly became Brown 75, Coakley 25; a 25 percent chance of winning means, quite literally, 25 percent.

Sorry, Nate. One-in-four, quite literally, is fucking screwed. Way to botch this up Democrats. And I honestly think parachuting Obama in to campaign on the eve of the election was a mistake. No voters like being told what to do by outsiders, and I think it played right into Brown's fake-ass regular guy versus machine politician.

MLK

2010-01-18T23:51:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this this morning...

Martin Luthor King Day always makes me recall this clip from the "Kid Logic" episode of This American Life...

FYI

2010-01-18T21:37:00.002-05:00

Charlie Pierce has a regular blog in the sports section of the Boston Globe. No more sifting through Eric Alterman's posts for Slacker Friday.

• In support of the Jets. I can get behind this.

• Tim Tebow's a douche. I can get behind this, too.

UPDATE: Okay. Slacker Friday's still worth looking up, because he won't be writing anything like this in the Globe:

I have enormous respect for The Landlord [Alterman], so I will moderate my commentary on the Drudge 'n Grudge book written by his pal and the execrable Mark Halperin, who is to political journalism what E. coli is to steakhouses. The sourcing is laughable. The anecdotes petty, where they are not trivial, and indecent, where they are not petty and trivial. It exists, apparently, to dish dirt about the Clinton and Edwards marriages, thereby providing Andrea Mitchell with her quadrennial orgasm. It reeks of access-whoring of the $5-blowjob-under-the-overpass sort, where it does not reek of cheap, frat-boy sexism, and I include the Palin passages in this. (Hey, Steve Schmidt. You're done, pal. She's still famous and you're still a hack. Get over it.) There is not a single, solitary ounce of substance anywhere in these 200-odd pages. Go ahead. Look up "health-care" in the Index.

Dick of the Week: KKK Horserace Edition

2010-01-17T11:58:00.004-05:00

Glenn Beck: I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. He couldn’t react rapidly on Ft. Hood. He couldn’t react rapidly on our own airplanes with an underwear bomber…it doesn’t make sense. [...] Three different events and Haiti is the only one. I think personally that it deepens the divide to see him react this rapidly to Haiti.

Limbaugh: "[the Obama Administration] will use this to burnish its credibility with the black community—both the light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.

It's made to order for him. Made to order. That's why he couldn't WAIT to get out there."

Any GOP pols with the sack to call these soulless assholes out? [/crickets]

I don't enjoy the fact that the first post I write about this tragedy ends up being partisan raging, but what was I going to say that wasn't already apparent to any normal human being? How anyone can react to what is unfolding in a country in our frontyard without their heart wrenching for the current situation, and outrage and/or disgust at the situation in Haiti that preceded the earthquake and only compounds the tragedy is beyond me.

Movies

2010-01-17T01:52:00.007-05:00

The local DVD shop on the corner is running a drawing: Put down your Top 10 Movies of the 2000s and they will draw a winner—and you'll win copies of those movies. So, in order to enter, I had to sit down and compile the list...

Now the Top 10 Movies I'd actually like to own/win may vary slightly from the ten movies I thought were the best—so here's what I think were the ten best movies (in no particular order):

There Will Be Blood -- I'm actually not even finished watching it (1:51 into it) and I can write it down with absolute certainty. Mrs F and I will continue it tomorrow night. A tour de force for Daniel Day Lewis and P.T. Anderson.

Gangs of New York -- It is over the top, cringingly violent and possibly the most tension-filled movie I've seen in years. Daniel Day Lewis had me shitting my pants every time he appeared onscreen.

Casino Royale -- Best Bond movie ever—don't try to argue otherwise. In fact calling it a "Bond movie" sells it very short—it is the only one that is actually a great film. I need to make Mrs F watch this.

Amelie -- Great story, and one of the most visually beautiful movies I've ever seen.

Memento -- His first, and possibly best film. Christopher Nolan hasn't made a bad movie yet.

Pride and Prejudice -- What?? Yes. Thoroughly charming and engrossing. It's on our DVR and I can sit and get sucked in every time. Keira Knightley delivers some of the best dialogue of any film on this list.

Gladiator -- I just wanted to test the surround sound late one night after setting up the speakers...even though it was like 2:00 a.m. and I've seen it many times, and own the DVD, I sat and watched the whole damn movie. Again. Should go down as one of the great epic movies ever.

Lord of the Rings -- I'm counting them all as one spot to save space for other movies. Return of the King is the best of the trilogy if you make me pick.

The Dark Knight -- Heath Ledger's Joker is one of the best performances I've ever seen. He carries what is already the best superhero film to the next level.

Pan's Labyrinth -- Fantasy? Fairy Tale? Fable? Nightmare? All of the above and thrilling and scary too.

Honorable Mentions: Mystic River, Children of Men, O Brother Where Art Thou, Adaptation, Capote, No Country for Old Men, You Can Count on Me

The DVDs I'd want to win? Realistically, the only people in this house that watch the DVDs we own are the kids, so I should just write down the PIXAR catalog, but that's not the point of this exercise. So, accounting for Mrs F's tastes, and taking some of the above list out because we already have them, and those don't call for repeated, casual viewing (too much Daniel Day Lewis is bad for my blood pressure) allows me to add a few other favorites...

The Fellowhip of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King (pretty sure I need to separate them for this list)
The Dark Knight
Casino Royale
Pride and Prejudice (TiVo won't suffice, need a hard copy)
Memento (only saw it in the theater, and wold love to be able to dissect it)
O Brother
Star Trek
Amelie (We had the DVD, but I lent it out to everyone at my old job, and it's gone.)

Movies on everyone else's lists I have yet to see?
The Departed, Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine, City of God, Hurt Locker, Monster, Almost Famous, 25th Hour

Worthless

2010-01-15T13:05:00.005-05:00

Sullivan:

...if the Dems can't hold Teddy's seat, what use are they? What you see here is the fathomless awfulness of the Democrats. Too fractured and listless to get a solid health insurance bill through both Houses in anything like the time they wanted, too disorganized to make a strong and coherent case for their proposal, led by charisma-free walking corpses like Harry "your dog is fat" Reid and Speaker Pelosi whose political skills do not extend to persuading anyone of anything, they really are the reason so many of us cannot apply that partisan label to ourselves, even when we believe Obama is the best thing this country has going for it politically right now.

But losing Kennedy's seat is a near-epic failure. If health reform fails, it will be because of a fatal combination of Democratic hubris and Democratic weakness. They just won the presidency and both Houses. And this is what they manage? Really, who wants to belong or support a party this goddamn useless?

I think he's too hard on Pelosi—because she's a woman, and he's Andrew Sullivan—but, yeah, that's pretty much how I'll feel if they lose that seat and everything falls apart.

Proof We Elected the Right Guy

2010-01-12T17:12:00.002-05:00

Thanks to 60 Minutes and Mark Halperin's new 352-page gossip column, by now you've all heard that:

• Harry Reid used the word "Negro" and he should resign. (1)

• Bill Clinton told Ted Kennedy that Obama is a coffee-slave. (2)

• Sarah Palin is a pathological liar and dumber than a box of Todd's snowmobile parts (3)

• Poor John Edwards is the totally innocent filling in the Oreo cookie of his nasty, harpy wife and seductive mistress. (4)

• Cindy McCain was busted making out with someone other than her husband. (5)

So how does that prove Obama was the right candidate to become President? As Balloon Juice commenter JenJen astutely points out:

You know, one important point completely missed by our Awesome Liberal Media as they thumb through the index of Mark Halperin’s shitty book is this: There are literally ZERO revelations about the President, or his campaign staff, in this book. Nada. Goose Eggs. Nothing. And that says a lot about our President, and his campaign staff, who apparently were far too aware to give Halperin even one toss-off quote.

(1) Reid made a clumsily-worded but entirely valid and accurate statement on racism in America. Much as I hate Reid, this isn't the reason he should lose his job.

(2) According to the hearsay from an unnamed source regarding a second-hand conversation with a now-deceased person.

(3) 100% true.

(4) Because between chemo treatments, terminal cancer patients should be watching their husband's backs and keeping their dicks zipped for them.

(5) "This is excellent news for John McCain."

Panic in Detroit

2010-01-12T13:49:00.000-05:00

In my previous post I mentioned an an excellent post by Fareed Zakaria. In it he points out the sheer stupidity and counter-productivity of having a nationwide shit-fit over this failed terror attack—or any terrorism, actually.

In responding to the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, Sen. Dianne Feinstein voiced the feelings of many when she said that to prevent such situations, "I'd rather overreact than underreact." This appears to be the consensus view in Washington, but it is quite wrong. The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well.

The attempted bombing says more about al-Qaeda's weakened state than its strength. In the eight years before Sept. 11, al-Qaeda was able to launch large-scale terrorist attacks on several continents. It targeted important symbols of American power -- embassies in Africa; a naval destroyer, the USS Cole; and, of course, the World Trade Center. The operations were complex -- a simultaneous bombing of two embassies in different countries -- and involved dozens of people of different nationalities who trained around the world, moved significant sums of money and coordinated their efforts over months, sometimes years.

On Christmas an al-Qaeda affiliate launched an operation using one person, with no special target, and a failed technique tried eight years ago by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The plot seems to have been an opportunity that the group seized rather than the result of a well-considered strategic plan. A Nigerian fanatic with (what appeared to be) a clean background volunteered for service; he was wired up with a makeshift explosive and put on a plane. His mission failed entirely, killing not a single person. The suicide bomber was not even able to commit suicide. But al-Qaeda succeeded in its real aim, which was to throw the American system into turmoil. That's why the terror group proudly boasted about the success of its mission.

[h/t Eric at ObWi]

Take Two

2010-01-12T12:57:00.003-05:00

It appears Andrew Sullivan has at last changed his diaper and has started walking back his comments made during his panic/tantrum over the failed underwear bomb attack.

Spamalot

2010-01-12T09:51:00.002-05:00

Sorry, folks. The crazy-ass Viagra/fertility/Asian who-the-hell-knows-what spam is getting annoying and that means turning the word verification on for a week or two...

Quote of the Day

2010-01-12T02:32:00.002-05:00

Michael Steele says there's no such thing as black dialect, in his blog "What Up?"

Roger Ebert on Twitter

A Parent's Sacrifice

2010-01-11T21:18:00.003-05:00

Many of the people screaming about the (Obama) government's failure to connect the dots regarding the Underpants Bomber love to use, as Exhibit A, the fact that the bomber's father reported his son to U.S. authorities as a radical and potential threat.

"How does that not get a guy on a No-Fly List" they wail, while sitting in their soggy diapers that leak.

What they are missing and no one else seems to be pointing out is what Adam Serwer at TAPPED makes clear:

I doubt many parents would come forward with concerns that their children are being radicalized if they think the United States is going to stick them in a secret prison somewhere and waterboard them. On the contrary, the realistic fear that people apprehended by American authorities might be tortured could help create the kind of toxic relationship with counterterrorism units that we see between urban communities and the police in the U.S., which would contribute to radicalization, rather than mitigate it.

Yeah, that Nigerian father made a selfless and brave decision and turned his son in to the authorities—but how difficult has the Cheney Torture Regime made that decision for parents, families, neighbors or any other informant in a position to share intelliginece? How many people have kept silent because we have now become a known torturer?

Eric at Obsidian Wings expands:

Intelligence and law enforcement are the most effective means of countererrorism, and in connection therewith, cooperation from the underlying population is invaluable.

However, in order to maximize on that cooperation, the United States must maintain the moral high ground, and stick to its principles. It must warrant sympathy, and command respect if it wants to convince citizens to turn-in would be criminals in their midst - an uncomfortable deed under any circumstances. But a United States that tortures, abandons due process, profiles Muslims indiscriminately and pursues a wildly belligerent foreign policy will have the opposite effect.

Another reason why torture fails to gather intelligence or keep anyone safe.

UPDATE: Fareed Zakaria has an excellent post up on reacting to terrorism and also mentions this detrimental effect of torture.

Dick of the Week: Brit Hume

2010-01-07T16:06:00.000-05:00

Wow. Where to start? The fact that Hume is so brazenly proselytizing on what is supposedly a news panel? Or the utter condescension towards the faith of hundreds of millions as some sort of novelty religion?

When Bill Freaking Kristol* tries to walk your comments back for you, you know you're a dick—the Dick of the Week.

I'll let the professionals handle the rest of this...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Temple of Hume

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

*UPDATE: I started this post the other day, and I can't find the video where Kristol tries to dig Hume out.

Asleep at the Switch–With One Eye Open

2010-01-07T11:50:00.003-05:00

Since I'm already antagonizing Toast today... Let me excerpt and link to an excellent column by Matt Taibbi that highlights the fundamental flaws in the financial system and its supposed overseers:

For what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

That's just about the most perfect capsulization of our recent history that I've seen anywhere. But he expands from there, getting into the failures of the regulatory agencies the media and both parties, and why we're really not in a position to make anything much better anytime soon.

Fannie, Freddie, and the New Red and Blue

Go read the whole thing.

Taking One for the Team

2010-01-07T00:31:00.008-05:00

Dodd isn’t pure—none of ‘em are—but he was a pretty good, pretty liberal Senator for a very long time. I’ve lost touch with the details of politics in CT since I left for college a long-ass time ago, but Dodd, to me, gave CT plenty of reasons to be proud: He's got a pretty long list of accomplishments to his credit, including authoring the Family and Medical Leave Act.

As for his downfall—as I said, I don’t follow CT too closely—all this talk in liberal blog-circles of his seat being a lost cause and he better get out, etc, had me flummoxed. I knew about the mortgage fiasco, but Dodd was cleared of any wrongdoing, and it was really pretty weak shit. All of the dirt being thrown on his political casket had me assuming another, much heavier shoe had dropped to finish him as a viable politician, especially for a previously popular 5-term incumbent.

It really seems like a pretty stand-up guy (again, for a Senator) was undone by a media hyperfocus on an overblown scandal. That’s a shame, because much shittier senators have survived far worse.

And the real kick in the pants with this? Dodd backing out now means Blumenthal runs in 2010 instead of against Lieberman in 2012. It always seems to work out for that miserable p.o.s.

UPDATE: I don't mean to absolve Dodd completely like some kind of brain-dead GOP bootlicker. He was completely cleared of any wrongdoing, but I don't think that equals innocence. I think much of what went down with him at the end was symptomatic of being too close to the people he should have maintained a clear distance from. Did he get better-than-average mortgage terms? Sure. SO DID I. It’s called good credit, high income and being a longtime customer.

But if you are the Chair of the Banking Committee, you don't get any leeway to plead ignorance or uncertainty in matters financial—you keep your shit square and way above board. Failing to do that—or worse, failing to realize what you are doing looks wrong even if technically okay—means you've lost perspective, and it's time to step aside.

Good News For From John McCain

2010-01-05T18:57:00.005-05:00

As part of a move long overdue, John McCain emerges as a force for good—combining with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to introduce legislation that should have come along with the bailout:

The anger at the nation’s financial behemoths is taking shape in a variety of ways, most notably in a bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who are targeting big financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

The bipartisan duo’s bill would reinstate the Depression-era law that built a wall between commercial banking and the riskier activities of investment banking. The separation — originally set up in the Glass-Steagall Act — was repealed in 1999.

[...] “The American people want us to do something about the fact that capital is [not] flowing down to them. It is flowing in a direction that is making Wall Street huge profits. Nothing wrong with making profit, but this consolidation has squeezed the American public out of needed capital. And I think that capital could be going to investment in technology, to new business start-ups, to things that are about the ingenuity of America, not the ingenuity of toxic assets,” Cantwell said on MSNBC.

Damn fucking straight. A key reason for the bailout was to help balance the books, but that was to free up capital for banks to lend money. Instead they simply kept it all and lent to each other. CRedit is still extremely tough to come by.

And Cantwell-McCain aren't the only ones getting in on the act:

Rep. Paul Kanjorksi (D-Pa.), who is generally seen as a rather pro-business moderate on the House Financial Services Committee, pushed language that would empower federal regulators to pre-emptively break up large financial institutions that posed a risk to the economy, even if they were currently healthy...

In the Senate, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act,” which would require the Treasury secretary to break apart any financial institution deemed too big to fail. The Vermont independent has become a populist hero on the left and the right of the political spectrum for his crusade against Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a mission also rooted in his belief that the American people want a change in the way Wall Street functions, and Bernanke and the Fed he runs represent the status quo, Sanders says.

Of course, much of this will die the death of a thousand amendments and compromises, but it's a clear move in the right direction.

Until it needs the approval of President Lieberman.

Stupidest Blog Post of 2010, Already?

2010-01-05T00:28:00.003-05:00

Who else but Ann Althouse? Scroll down and read a few random comments for the full effect.

This stupidity kicked off by Glenn Reynolds.

A Bad Note

2009-12-31T01:43:00.005-05:00

Andrew Sullivan has a bad habit of making his blog unreadable. This happens for a variety of reasons, among them: an obsession with Sarah/Bristol Palin's baby...the mistaken impression that he personally is a key player in the Iranian Green Revolution...and a knee-jerk reflex towards authoritarianism in the face of anything remotely frightening.

For all of those reasons this has been a bad week at The Dish. But it is his PTSD flashback-to-9/11 reaction to the Underpants Bomber that has him at his worst.

We all remember the "fifth column" reference in 2001, and the bootlicking of Bush and Cheney in the wake of the attack. Sullivan burned a LOT of bridges with that behavior. But he has come a long way since then. Andrew now properly recognizes Bush as the utter, contemptible failure that he was, and Cheney as the monster that he is...but throw the slightest dash of botched death by undergarments into the mix and it's full-blown bed-wetting panic and craven grasping for the worst behavior of the Bush Era.

It's fucking pathetic, and shows that despite all his seeming rehabilitation, Sullivan remains a toadie at heart.

Let's start with his unrelenting and preposterous call for Janet Napolitano's head on a platter, as if she is somehow responsible or accountible for what happened. To wit:

One of the federal government's core responsibilities is public order.

They've had eight years to figure this out and they are still clueless. Sure, Bush was president for much of that time and bears the bulk of the responsibility, but Obama is now president. When officials screwed up under Bush, they were defended, backed up, told they were doing great, etc etc. [...]
Obama needs to prove he is not Bush. Hold a thorough investigation and fire everyone in the chain of command who let the Jihadist onto a plane. Every single one. But before then, fire Napolitano. The buck stops with her.

First, let's point out that public order seems to be doing just fucking fine, Andrew. The only people I see or hear who's diapers need changing are Republicans looking to score cheap terror points and you. Everyone else is going about their business as usual. You know, an actual hallmark of British resolve. One that held during WWII, the IRA and the subway bombings.

And as for Napolitano? How about actually figuring out what the hell happened first before scapegoating someone to make it look like you've done something about the problem in absence of real action—like Bush would have done. And as for "everyone in the chain of command who let a jihadist onto a plane," I'm not sure what Obama can do to fire airport screeners in Nigeria and Amsterdam. John Cole's got this covered.

Then there's this:

Should We Israelify Airports?
A question worth asking.

Okay, Andrew. You asked so, I'll answer. No. I don't particularly want to model ANY behavior on Israel's. And it wouldn't work anyway. Israel is the size of New Jersey, has one major international airport, a population subject to mandatory military service, no problem racially profiling and discriminating against the majority of it's population and a statistical need to maintain that level of vigilance. None of that applies here.

What's most maddening about this is the fact that Sullivan is capable of extremely good, thought-provoking writing, and at the moment a lot of interesting year-end retrospectives. But needing to filter through this garbage just makes you question why you ever clicked over there.

A Wonderful Idea

2009-12-30T18:37:00.004-05:00

I can get behind that plan. We currently have accounts with Wachovia (Wells Fargo) and SunTrust...not the biggest banks, but hardly local. One of the reasons for picking these banks was availability of branches (both have branches walking distance from or house and my office). And ATMs. Well, we hardly, if ever use ATMs so that's not really a factor. We don't even use debit/check cards anymore either...

Annoyingly, I still get paid via a check that needs to be deposited, but I'd be happy to walk a block to get to the Bank of Asheville if they have the online bill-pay capabilities Mrs F requires.

I'll be looking into it.

A Random, But Alphabetical, Trip Through the iTunes of Mr Furious

2009-12-30T00:04:00.011-05:00

In case you're wondering where I've been the last week or two (come on, humor me), aside from the holidays, I'm coming off double-barreled deadlines. While that's meant time away from the blog, it still had me tethered to the computer. And for some reason the pressure of deadline time means I need the comfort of music to get me through the day (and night).

The other night I was alone in the office and had the speakers cranking. I, unintentionally at first, listened to the complete Rush catalog as I worked until the break of dawn. The albums were presented alphabetically, though coincidentally that was somewhat chronological as well. Anyway, I enjoyed the experience immensely.

I usually listen to my iTunes on shuffle or "iTunes DJ" as they call it these days. And while the variety can be nice and I enjoy the odd "haven't heard THIS in long time." moment, there is something lost when listening outside the context of the full album. Nothing made that more clear than the concept albums of circa '70s Geddy, Neil and Alex.

So I've decided to make a concerted effort to listen to my music more often, and to do it in traditional fashion—one album at a time.

This week, Mrs. F and he kids are out of town, and that sets me up for a week of painting and other household chores, and with that, and opportunity to crank music in the house while I work. First up is the kitchen, which is close enough to my computer that I have access to my full library—all 19,515 songs worth. That's 56 days worth of music, and I'll probably barely hit 56 hours, but here goes...

THE A's:
Now, I'm not going to just start at the beginning and let it go, I'll barely reach the C's if I do that...so skipping right past ABBA, and even AC-DC and Aerosmith I settle on...

Alice in Chains -- A very solid band. Thinking man's grunge. I still remember a coworker who declared Jerry Cantrell was "the modern-day Mozart." Um, not quite. Though I can think of no band that can dominate in both acoustic/unplugged mode and full-on metal as effortlessly as AIC. After listening to all of the material, I'll say this: The EP "Sap" is probably the best effort from these guys—four acoustic tunes that are just about perfect, with Chris Cornell's backing vocals making "Right Turn" my favorite track of the bunch. Up next...

Alicia Keys -- A jarring transition to say the least. Skip to—

The Allman Brothers Band -- I settle on the "Dreams" boxed set. One of my earliest "big" CD purchases, this one would last me through the whole afternoon. Highlights: "Morning Dew", "God Rest His Soul" (a moving MKL tribute), "It's Not My Cross to Bear."

Art Garfunkle • Breakaway -- Yes, I have solo Garfunkle. Two albums worth as a matter of fact. Yeah, I know Paul Simon is supposed to be the genius of the pair, and Art had to become a teacher to make ends meet, I'll say this: this is a good album, and Art Garfunkle has one of the best voices in music. I will not argue this—it is a fact. UPDATE: That was written during "I Believe." The first song. "Rag Doll" is cheesy as hell. And "Breakaway" isn't much better. "My Little Town" gets back to the Simon & Garfunkle roots and could be right off "Bridge Over Troubled Water"... but, no, I'm not going to make it through the whole album. Sorry, Art.

Asia -- the prototype and high-water mark for "superbands." I'll not sully the memory of this fantastic band by listening to anything but the eponymous first album. An awesome flashback. More cowbell, Carl.

A Terrorist's Best Friend

2009-12-26T20:50:00.004-05:00

Is a GOP wingnut.

Don't these moron right-wing clowns like Hoekstra (R-MI) it is they themselves who are "aiding and abetting" the terrorists by taking a botched failure of an incident and hyping it up for maximum fear and terror.

The stupid. It burns. Like a powdery substance in my pants that I am desperately trying to ignite.

Ugh...

2009-12-26T14:38:00.004-05:00

Nothing beats dropping your wife and two young children off for a plane flight to Detroit today.

Let me ask a question here: If you have to sit in the terminal—with or without kids—for an hour waiting to take off, would you prefer to watch an endless loop of stupid-ass CNN "analysis" of the botched terror attack on a plane, or might the airport think of switching the feed to TNT and an endless loop of "A Christmas Story." Or fucking marathon of "Cake Boss." I don't much care.

Assholes.

Sucked In...

2009-12-21T20:33:00.003-05:00

Yes, Mr Furious watches "The Sing-Off." What of it?

After careful consideration last week, I have switched allegiances and am hoping for Voices of Lee.

Yeah. That's right. The gospel group from Tennessee.

UPDATE: Without the competition factor, this show is pretty weak.

Behold...

2009-12-19T07:57:00.003-05:00

15 inches of snow measured in West Asheville
ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES — Friday’s winter snow storm dumped a whopping 15 inches of snow on West Asheville, according to the National Weather Service.

About 11.5 inches of snow was measured on the ground 6 miles north northwest of Asheville through about 7:45 p.m., the NWS reports. Waynesville recorded 13.8 inches of snow.

Snow totals for other locations in WNC through Friday evening:
- Linville: 12 inches
- Fletcher: 10.5 inches
- Woodlawn (McDowell County): 13 inches
- Little Switzerland: 9.3 inches
- Burnsville: 4.5 inches

Little Switzerland can kiss my ass!

Despite the fact that we have no power at home (since last night around 10:00), this is pretty awesome. We haven't had real snow since we moved from Michigan.

Let this be an offical "Mr Furious Heartily Endorses..." endorsement: All-Wheel-Drive Subarus rock. Last night on the way home I plowed through I don't know how many inches of snow on snow-filled streets, passing dozens of abandoned cars on the highway in a few short miles.

This morning on the way into town in search of gas, some groceries, firewood and ATM cash, the only thing that slowed me down at all, was our totally unplowed street because the snow between the tire tracks was high-centering the car—it was ten inches high! But the lean, mean aquamarine machine persevered—bad front tires and all.

I'm in the office to grab my extra camera batteries, post this, and I'm off to complete my mission. Unfortunately, my card reader is back at home, so pics will come later.

Person of the Year

2009-12-16T09:39:00.004-05:00

DougJ summed this up just about perfectly:

I have nothing special against Bernanke. I think he probably deserves credit for averting financial catastrophe.

But this is a pretty strong signal that elite media still worships the architects of our awesome financial system. Some things never change.

Though, ...given the alternative...

Glimmer of Hope? Or, Massive Tease?

2009-12-15T09:43:00.004-05:00

Read this post by Ezra Klein (who in my opinion has this HCR shit down better than just about anyone) and explain to me why the Senate can't pass something now that meets President Lieberman's vendetta-based objections, and have Obama sign it into law. The day after that happens, they start the reconciliation process and take a Public Option and shove it right down the collective throat of Lieberman, Ben Fucking Nelson, President Snowe and every other "Centrist" asshole that's made this process a nightmare.

Did I forget to mention the GOP? No. They are irrelevant.

--

The only way for Reid and even Obama to regain standing with me after this fiasco is if that is the endgame. If not, then I find it impossible to believe any of them had serious intentions about real reform.

No excuses.

Dick of the Week: BOGO Edition

2009-12-14T01:23:00.011-05:00

As obvious a choice as Joe Lieberman is, giving him D.O.W. is almost akin to blaming the scorpion for stinging the frog—it's his nature. So it's a "Buy One Get One" sale on Dicks this week: Joe Lieberman, and his fucking caddy, Harry Reid. Because the fact that Joe Lieberman is able to torpedo the Health Care Bill—again—and walk away intact, is all on Reid.

Health Bill in Peril After Lieberman Pulls Support for Senate Deal [link]
In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it's stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare.

"Stunned" leadership? Why? Smart bloggers saw this shit coming a mile (or thirteen months) away.

If Harry Reid or anyone else was actually "stunned" by what Lieberman is doing they're as fucking stupid as they are weak, and twice as incompetent.

Reid and Obama fucked this up last year when they blinked and let Lieberman keep his Committee chair and seniority. They thought they could put a leash on him... It was one of a long line of stupid, weak moves by Reid, and a surprisingly boneheaded play by Obama.

Lieberman wasn’t needed to give the Dems 51 and the majority, and all that came with that (which would have been worth it), he was simply padding the lead short of 60.

For them to think he would reliably vote with Dems in exactly this type of situation is the height of naivety. If anything should be clear after his campaigning for McCain, it’s that he doesn’t give a shit about the Democratic party or agenda, only himself and jockeying for whatever comes after this term, because he sealed his fate with the voters a long time ago.

His move towards McCain was a calculated and transparent play towards a position in that Cabinet. He gambled and lost and should have been castrated for it. Instead, Reid's steely spine, Obama's Vulcan mind, and Rahm's gigantic balls got together and decided to let Holy Joe keep his chair, committees and seniority—making a guy who by all rights should be a pariah of both parties and sitting by himself in a Senate cloakroom into President Joe Lieberman with a special preemptive veto power.

Last year, I didn't want Lieberman banished simply for satisfaction—though that was high on the list—it was because I KNEW he was a self-interested traitor they couldn't control. Certainly not Reid. And not even Obama.

He was going to screw them. Hard. And at the time and place of HIS choosing. That this would happen was inevitable, and entirely predictible. Yet it wasn't exactly preventable...

The math dictates that Lieberman would be able to position himself as the 60/40 fence-sitter whenever he wants to, but the fact that he can do that at will and retain all of the benefits of a four-term Democrat is what's outrageous.

Lieberman's relevance stems from only two things:
1. That he can camp out on the 60/40 line.
2. He holds Chairmanship of the Oversight Committee.

Number one ensures Lieberman can piss on the Democrats any time he wants, and number two immunizes him from discipline: Reid cannot simply yank Joe’s seat between Senate sessions without a vote—meaning Lieberman gets another year to find the Oversight Keys he lost during the Bush Administration and use his Committee to run all over Obama or actively scuttle any investigations of the prior Administration.

Punishing him at that point will have the optics of a cover-up and/or protecting Obama.

That's the critical thing they fucked up thirteen months ago. Lieberman would still be a self-important asshole, and still be the GOP’s 41st vote—but he’d be neutered otherwise.

UPDATE: Rahm Emmanuel and the White House told Reid to "give Lieberman whatever he wants," which Reid quickly did, so the public option is out, and so is Medicare Buy-In, triggers or anything else. All to secure the vote that Lieberman will withhold for some other reason next week. Well-played you dumbasses. The 55-64 vote ought to turn out in droves for you guys next year.

UPDATE 2: Booman reminds us that Reid was fucking this up more recently as well...

Harry Reid empowered [Lieberman] when he decided to put the public option in the base bill (and why did Reid feel that was necessary?). Lieberman was freed to oppose anything in the bill he doesn't like without actually being responsible for killing health care reform. Had Reid just used the Snowe-trigger, the bill would have passed rather easily, and Lieberman wouldn't be able to fight for changes in the Conference Report because there are no amendments allowed to a Conference Report. Now you know why I argued against going for a public option in the Senate's base bill.

Miscellany

2009-12-13T20:37:00.006-05:00

I STILL WANT HIM ON MY TEAM
Half the lefty blogosphere, including our good friend, Toast, have their panties in a bunch over Matt Taibbi's latest Obama-beatdown in Rolling Stone. It's not Taibbi's best article—and I say that because I was unable to get through it—and he seems to have botched and/or stretched some things to make a point, but count me with John Cole and Kevin Drum, and then John Cole on Drum—Taibbi's larger point handily outweighs any flaws in the article, and focusing only on Taibbi's scatological writing style or the disputed "facts" is really missing the forest. As for Tim Fernholz's "takedown" of Taibbi, I'm not so impressed, and I counter with Felix Salmon, or Taibbi himself.

Let me repeat something I said at Toast's (again):

I have a high tolerance/threshold for Taibbi's style and his conclusions and implications—even if speculative and ultimately proven wrong.

Why?

Because he and NPR's This American Life seem to be the only two entities in the whole of the fucking media that care enough to look into this stuff at all.

And he is one of the very few columnists with a national outlet (RS) that is attacking the Administration from the left.

Does Taibbi drive too fast and have his eyes closed some of the time? Sure. But he's a useful balance to the rest of the fucking establishment media that won't even take the car out of the garage.

--

POTY > POTUS
August J Pollak thinks TIME is going to name Sarah Palin its "Person of the Year." Much as that thought makes me want to retch, he makes a good case. Losing works out nicely for Palin, I suppose—fame, $$$ and attention without actually having to do anything or have responsibilities...

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WORTHLESS
The House passed a "sweeping financial regulation" the other day, though, several Democrats jumped ship to scrap a key component designed to help ordinary citizens—the "cram-down" provision:

Republicans were successful in killing an amendment sought by housing advocates that would have given bankruptcy judges the ability to rewrite terms of mortgages so borrowers could remain in their homes. Judges can do this for second or vacation homes, luxury yachts and other areas where consumer debt is involved, but current laws prohibit reworking the terms of first mortgages.

Numerous Democrats joined GOP lawmakers in defeating this amendment — sometimes referred to as a cram-down provision, since judges could impose terms on banks — on the grounds that it could weaken bank finances and represented too steep a change from current practice.

And they did it without a Lieberman of their own... Since banks getting slowly paid off on a mortgage at a lower rate is less short-term profitable than foreclosing on people now, it had to go.* Even though in the long run it would probably be better for everyone—banks included—and would actually, you know, allow people remain in their homes? Pathetic. Especially since this has already cleared the House before.

*What was Matt Taibbi thinking—there's no banking conspiracy...

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RICKEY LIVES
I was about to take the slackers at ATK to task for the paucity of posts over there—even with the big free agent signing of Mr. Henderson, when I decided to check Rickey's previously moribund site—lo and behold—Rickey's back from the grave and ready to party.

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UNGOVERNABLE
Matt Yglesias explains the current state of the union... Pretty tough to disagree.

Oh. Fuck. Me.

2009-12-10T00:53:00.002-05:00

The Yankees just got Tigers centerfielder, leadoff man, certified fucking stud player and all-around good guy Curtis Granderson for a bag of crumbled Yankee Stadium concrete and Joe Girardi's old catching gear.

Meanwhile the Sox (according to Gammons) are trying to deal Mike Lowell and decide how many of FAs Jason Bay, Matt Holliday and Adrian Beltre they should sign.

Bay's been a nice player, but he's about to get waaaay overpaid. Holliday's got NL-star/AL-bust written all over him. Pass. Beltre? If he's healthy and a bargain, fine. But those 48 HRs were a lonnnng time ago, and in the other league. Plus, Boras is his agent.

2010 is going to blow.

Ignorance Is Bliss. Or, Is It?

2009-12-06T11:22:00.003-05:00

Mrs. F. is currently reading The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. It's a non-fiction book written by an NPR foreign correspondent that explores the origins of happiness and where it is found.

She just read aloud a passage that was interesting—and both surprising and predictible at once...

[p. 14] Extroverts are happier than introverts: optimists are happier than pessimists; married people are happier than singles, thought people with children are no happier than singles; Republicans are happier than Democrats; people who attend religious services are happier than those who do not; people with college degreesa re happier than those without, though people with advanced degrees are less happy than those with just a BA; people with and active sex life are happier than those without; women and men are equally happy, though women have a wider emotional range; having an affair will make you happy, but will not compensate for the massive loss of happiness you will incur when your spouse finds out and leaves you; people are least happy when they're commuting to work; busy people are happier than those with little to do; wealthy people are happier than poor ones, but only slightly.

Discuss...

Stay Classy, Sarah!

2009-12-04T12:27:00.004-05:00

Speaking to the conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

“Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?” Humphries persisted.

“I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records—all of that is fair game,” Palin said. “The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”

Not to get all Andrew Sullivan on you...but if she wants to see a birth certificate for Obama, she make an even exchange for Trig's.

There are honestly more questions surrounding the proof of the birth of her last child than there are about Obama's. Even Glenn Beck isn't sailing on the U.S.S. Birther.

[h/t Balloon Juice]

Frying Pan...Fire...and Now, Gasoline?

2009-12-01T09:44:00.005-05:00

I've spent exactly zero time seriously considering options in Afghanistan. Plenty of people have spent countless days, weeks, months and even years contemplating strategy for the current U.S. scenario and beyond. There seem to be no good options, and its likely there never were. The best thing that could have happened would have been for Bush/Cheney to stay on task, kick Taliban and AQ ass and come back with Osama Bin Laden in the first six months there and pulled out.

That never happened obviously, and now our time there is approaching a decade and it is only worse, messier and more complicated, and somehow the stakes are raised exponentially. Obama campaigned on finishing that job by focusing on Afghanistan and winding down in Iraq. I don't think there is a plausible way to do either, and he is truly fucked politically and strategically as far as I can tell.

He's supposed to unveil the results of his long deliberation tonight, and I fear the pressure to double down on Afghanistan will win out and we will only dig ourselves in deeper.

It's a very difficult situation, and, after Bush's grotesque mismanagement, no options are anything but varieties of awful. But everything I hear sounds like conventional drift to me - Bush's policy with a much more interesting and intelligent discussion beforehand. So instead of staying in neo-colonial occupation against an insurgency that now feeds off US intervention with no real strategy, we will stay in neo-colonial occupation against an insurgency that now feeds off US intervention with lots of super-smart defenses of the indefensible. Great.

That's Andrew Sullivan, who also accurately laid out the political fallout from that (and any, really) scenario yesterday:

As Obama appears to be intensifying the lost war in Afghanistan, with the same benchmark rubric that meant next-to-nothing in the end in Iraq, he does not seem to understand that he will either have to withdraw US troops from Iraq as it slides into new chaos, or he will have to keep the troops there for ever, as the neocons always intended. Or he will have to finance and run two hot wars simultaneously. If he ramps up Afghanistan and delays Iraq withdrawal, he will lose his base. If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton. Obama's middle way, I fear, is deeper and deeper into a trap, and the abandonment of a historic opportunity to get out.

[...] I fear Bush's wars will destroy Obama as they destroyed Bush. Because they are unwinnable; and because the US is bankrupt; and because neither Iraq nor Afghanistan will ever be normal functioning societies in our lifetimes.

You want empire? Then say so and get on with it - with far more forces, and massive cuts in domestic spending to rebuild thankless Muslim population centers thousands of miles from home for decades into the future.

You do not want empire? Then leave.

Those are the presidential level choices.

And neither Bush nor, it seems, Obama has the strength to make them.

That sounds extreme, but I think it's more or less accurate.

At Obsidian Wings, I've been scrolling past Eric Martin's writings on Afghanistan for months, if not longer—solely because I haven't cared enough to bother reading it. I just stopped and read his post from yesterday, and I think it's the most cogent argument for getting the fuck out one could make. Here's a bit:

As discussed on this site on numerous occasions, one of the oddest arguments for escalating/perpetuating our military presence in Afghanistan is the stated fear that our withdrawal would destabilize Pakistan. Implicit in this formulation is the presumption that our ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan (and concomitant military/political activity in Pakistan) is having a stabilizing effect in Pakistan itself. This nostrum about the therapeutic value of large numbers of US forces pursuing US interests through force, like many of the widely accepted foreign policy myths, lacks supporting empirical evidence.

In fact, the empirical evidence is all pointing in the opposite direction. Pakistan today is far less stable than it was when we first invaded: there are raging clashes between the government and militant forces causing refugee crises numbering in the millions, there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of domestic terrorist attacks, the Pakistani population is increasingly anti-American and increasingly radicalized, there is a crisis in leadership - with the current President, Asif Zardari nursing approval ratings in the sub-Cheney realm, etc.

[...] The fault lines along which Pakistan is being rended are in large part the result of Pakistan's own dysfunctional political culture and national security obsession with India. The latter has led to a hypermilitarization of society, a weak dedication to democratic rule, a warped economy made to serve the military class, skewed government spending objectives, a too-powerful intelligence apparatus and an unhealthy willingness to cultivate religious extremists as putatively useful proxies (in this, the US and Pakistan shared common cause in Afghanistan in the 1980s).

Eventually, Pakistan will have to reckon with these pathologies and find ways to normalize its own political culture. However, while the United States did not create these problems, by forcing Pakistan to accede to our agenda, against its own perceived interests and over the objections of a distrustful population, we are making it more likely that these flash points erupt rather than unwind according to a slower, more natural process.

Read the whole thing. And pray that Obama (or someone close to him) did too.

Messed Up

2009-11-30T01:16:00.006-05:00

I've penned many-a cop-bashing post in my time here—but the truth is: in my personal experience cops have been by-and-large helpful, business-like, and in some cases absolutely invaluable. There is certainly a higher than average dick-ratio among police as compared to other professions, but they are doing a difficult job than most people would never dream of.

With the exception of in my rear-view mirror, when I see a police officer I still have an initially positive reaction and a default position of respect. So, when something like this shooting in Washington goes down, I think it is seriously fucked up.

Now that that's clear, a couple of tangents based on yesterday's events:

1. The following paragraph should doom Mike Huckabee's chances of becoming President:

Man sought in deadly ambush had prison sentence commuted
Lakewood, Washington (CNN) -- The man wanted for questioning in the fatal shooting of four police officers had his 95-year prison sentence commuted by then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, authorities said late Sunday.

I know the rules are different for Republicans, but come on...it should be pretty difficult for GOP voters to square that one.

2. Where is the right-wing NRA-asshat pundit claiming more guns in the diner would have stopped this? All four victims were armed, trained, and probably wearing vests.

3. Despite my practical opposition to the death penalty because of the horrendous flaws in our criminal justice system, this is a perfect example of why I think the idea of a death penalty is valid. Not that a cop, or anyone else's life is intrinsically more valuable than anyone else's, but there should be a societal deterrent against killing a cop. Don't give me any shit about the d.p. not being an effective deterrent—everyone should understand that if you kill a cop, you should expect the chair. Period.

UPDATE: A lone Seattle police officer was confronted by Clemmons, who was armed with a gun he took from of of the slain officers, and shot him dead.

Gone Fishin'

2009-11-25T19:24:00.000-05:00

The Family Furious is off the grid for the week. Back on the 30th.

Shaikhing in Their Boots

2009-11-15T09:07:00.003-05:00

It can be difficult to keep up with the right-wing's Obama Outrage of the Day (yesterday: Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan!), but I have a feeling this fit is going to last awhile—the plan to have trials for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others connected to the 9/11 attacks in federal court in New York is suddenly the greatest threat to civilization since the Black Plague and shows Obama is a pussy who can't keep us safe.

When, as Glenn Greenwald brilliantly explains, the opposite is true:

[T]he Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." [emphasis added] It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

The Right has been the biggest bedwetters of all when it comes to terrorism—and terrorists themselves, in particular. This particular flavor of fear-pandering has been used for years to justify a whole host of the Bush Administrations illegal and extra-legal behavior, but has found new popularity as a tool to oppose any decision by Obama to change that Unconstitutional status quo.

Whether that's habeas corpus, closing Gitmo, or trials for the accused. They act as if KSM is the equivalent of Magneto, and bringing him to U.S. soil will allow him to summon his mutant powers and escape from any prison man could possibly build [video here] and wreak havoc on the country—as if such a being couldn't do the exact same thing from Guantanamo.

At this point I'm not even sure if this is actual genuine fright on the part of the right, thinly veiled fear-mongering of their even more pathetic and Pavlovian base, or simply an involuntary partisan reaction. But i t doesn't matter. The only thing more pathetic than this display is the fact that it works on a sizable portion of the population.