November 2009
1 post
Spencer Ackerman:
To make a point no one should have to make: earlier this year, a deranged Army sergeant named John Russell opened fire near a combat stress clinic — sound familiar? — at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty and killed five of his fellow soldiers. No one speculated about any religious motivations. No one suggested he was part of an enemy “infiltration,” or suggested that U.S. troops have been...
October 2009
1 post
“Texas justice is essentially sorcery, and there will be people who say that we...”
– Ta-Nahesi Coates
September 2009
1 post
“If Obama agrees to use reconciliation [to pass healthcare reform], he will...”
– David Brooks
Brooks is wrong here. Reconciliation is a procedural manuever thta would allow the bill to pass with a bare majority rather than the 60 votes necessary to stop a filibuster. (Without Ted Kennedy, 50 votes is now a majority.) It’s absurd to insist that a majority of the Senate is the...
August 2009
7 posts
“Big domestic programs (other than tax cuts) are nearly impossible [to pass]. The...”
– DougJ - Balloon Juice
SEC to retreat on tweet ban →
bg5000:
You’re at a South Carolina football game, sitting in the sun at Williams-Brice Stadium. South Carolina scores, and as the fans go wild, you tweet to your buddies, “Touchdown, Gamecocks!”
Oops, there’s a flag on that play. All social networking at games is against SEC rules. Gamecocks can’t tweet.
Or can they? The Southeastern Conference told The Observer on Monday that the conference...
“The insight that people need food has not led us to simply deregulate the...”
– Ezra Klein, responding to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s WSJ op-ed.
On Rationing
Matthew Yglasias:
As John Holbo suggests, one of the odder elements of the health care debate is that conservative appear to have concocted a special one-off meaning of the term “rationing” to apply to government guarantees of basic health insurance coverage. They observe that insofar as the government guarantees basic health insurance coverage to everyone, the government probably can’t...
“Men feel slighted when a woman offers up only her friendship and not her body...”
– Nerdshares: Unfulfilled Promises — on the PA gym shooter.
Health care for profit: sometimes scary
southpol:
Balloon Juice:
And today the Times has a piece on an even more disturbing practice, utilized by drug companies:
Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical...
July 2009
4 posts
“To paraphrase Douglass, a Party is worked on by what they choose to work on....”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates. Zing.
“Set aside the particular facts of this case and the various unknowns still...”
– John Marshall
Where we differ
squashed:
jeffmiller:
You and Squashed think you are being compassionate toward the guy who wants to sell his kidney, but it’s not compassion—it’s cruelty. He has a potential path out of poverty, and you want to block it. If you think it’s an awful path, give him a better one, so that the kidney sale looks less attractive.
Jeff, I assure you, I am trying very hard to give that guy a path...
“I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or communist, but I...”
– Jeff Sessions in 1986. (via methodicechidna)
June 2009
8 posts
Abstinence-Only Driver’s Ed →
“What about seat belts?” you might be saying to yourself. “Don’t seat belts GUARANTEE that I CAN’T POSSIBLY die in a car?” Bzzzt! Wrongo. Every single day in this country, seat belts FAIL. In fact, I know of a study that proves—CONCLUSIVELY proves, people—that seat belts will fail 75 percent of the time.
Who did the study? Government workers.
“The final insult to oppressed people, is always to make them responsible for the...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates
“It all got started during a discussion of George Bush, who McCain acknowledged...”
– Paul Begala Schools Meghan McCain (VIDEO) (via apsies:robot-heart-politics)
“It was only — let’s see — I think seven hours ago or eight...”
– Barack Obama, today. What more do people want him to say?
“No matter how you package it, the free market fairies aren’t a solution to...”
– Atrios
“My working definition of terrorism is pretty simple: Terrorism is the deliberate...”
– Was the Murder of George Tiller Terrorism?
May 2009
5 posts
“But, you know, before I begrudge the success of a not-clearly-qualified young...”
– Matthew Yglesias » Who Is Meghan McCain. Truth. (via jgh)
“I wonder if there isn’t something particularly American in the preference...”
– Malcolm Gladwell, in his conversation with Bill Simmons.
squashed:
Could two states decide to merge? Could Vermont and New Hampshire decide that they’re sick of paying for two governments and that they pretty much agree on most of the important things become New Vermontshire? Or perhaps Indiana could decide to disband and give part of itself to Illinois, part to Ohio, and a chunk to Kentucky? North and South Dakota could say, “Screw this. Let’s just be...
April 2009
6 posts
Tortured Trilogies
squashed:
complicatedshoes, who is glad we tortured people (or perhaps doesn’t consider waterboarding somebody 180 times in a month torture), writes,
When Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, did Luke say, “Oh well. Jabba the Hutt is a bad guy but it would be wrong to use deadly force to get my friend back. I’d rather be known as the kindler, gentler Jedi”?
No. Because Luke Skywalker was not...
Georgia Senate threatens dismantling of USA →
This and the whole Texas thing make me so fucking furious. Not even a hundred days in and we’re already hearing people talk about secession and dismantling the union. As Dave Weigel put it ”Despite eight years of ‘Bush derangement syndrome,’ I can’t recall a Democratic governor who hinted that his state might secede.” What a bunch of hypocritical cry-babies....
Ezra Klein (with emphisis mine):
I like the first sentence of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities annual “Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?” report. “The federal government collects taxes in order to finance various public services.” That’s it. That’s what taxes are. They’re not “money the government takes from you,” but money the...
“And I think that this whole thing is fairly stupid.”
– Newt Gingrich on the hype over the Obama puppy. Of course, he’s right, in the sense that a puppy isn’t really important political news. That’s sort of the point. There’s enough bad news recently that adorable girls get adorable puppy makes a reasonable counterpoint. And it’s fun watching Obama’s...
“Bigotry, in all forms, requires a shocking arrogance, a belief that other...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates (via offnotesnotes)
Hmm. I would have thought that whole being elected...
alexbalk:
“Watching Obama is a psychiatrist’s delight. Here we have a middle-aged man with no real-world accomplishments, but with truly astonishing grandiosity and a rock-star following that confirms his Jesus Christ Complex at every opportunity.”
I guess that’s why you’re not an American Thinker.
March 2009
6 posts
“But let’s try another way of looking at this. Why don’t we turn around the...”
– Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics: Trusting Feedback
“What Jon Stewart has done by exposing CNBC’s inversion of its fundamental...”
– A. Serwer, TAPPED
The Promise of Fairness
jeffmiller:
Squashed, Obama promised us fairness. On October 13, 2008:
We can restore a sense of fairness and balance that will give ever American a fair shot at the American dream. And above all, we can restore confidence - confidence in America, confidence in our economy, and confidence in ourselves.
I could cite tons of other times he promised fairness too. If he promised fairness, it’s...
"The Government" vs. "Us" →
Over the past few days i’ve started a number of replies to Jeff regarding his views on government and redistributionof wealth, but i was never very happy with them so i tossed them aside. Luckily southpol came along and pretty much said everything i wanted to say, prolly a lot better than i would’ve said it.
“There’s a certain beginner’s level of this. Here, when progressive tax policy...”
– Matthew Yglesias
February 2009
21 posts
“I’ve written before that I think part of the problem that...”
– Atrios. Does this mean we can expect a GOP Crisis On Infinite Earths sometime in the future?
“What sent Santelli, CNBC’s hot-air, oops, “On-Air Editor,” over the edge? The...”
– CNBC Editor: The People Are Revolting! : CJR (via shorterexcerpts)
Greenspan backs bank nationalisation →
unburyingthelead:
”It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” he said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.”
This maybe be crazier than that Jonah Goldberg quote that was floating around the other day.
Promises Broken
jeffmiller:
1. No lobbyists in the White House. Broken.
2. Five days to review legislation before he’d sign it. Broken. Repeatedly.
We’re less than one month in.
Of course here’s nine promises kept, and twenty one others currently in the works. I’m all for holding Obama to his word, and i think the first one is bullshit, too, but lets try and be realistic here.
(On a side...
staff:
Regarding questions we’ve received about five accounts that were suspended yesterday:
These accounts were suspended by our moderators, reflecting internal discussions about our community guidelines.
I’m sorry for not clarifying these changes earlier. But after serious consideration, we recently decided that accounts with the explicit purpose of reblogging content in a derogatory way...
jeffmiller:
“Respectfully, I wanted to say to them, I live on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. I am on the winning side of capitalism. I work for HBO, corporate America. The Man has been good to me. You, on the other hand, are driving a truck that says, “Obama is a socialist idiot,” and you’re in a much lower tax bracket than most of the people in Manhattan that are voting for Obama. So the times I...
A novel idea
Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress went after the members of the Bush administration that lied to them with as much gusto as they do the baseball players?
“If you’re taking the taxpayer’s money, it’s because your bank...”
– Ezra Klein, making a pretty great point on the CEO pay-cap proposal.