Shorter WWII

from here

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

That's how I remember it too.

C

Updated

UNCLE JOE: These crazy mother fuckers should have killed me because I decimated the Soviet Army before you invaded.
Don't worry about me. Worry about theit crazy asses.
Oh, and we have a lot of armor.

head fake

While my email buddies were Ooohing and Aaahing over some strange apparatus, here is where the cool kids hung out.

SNAP

Matt has a nice riff,

This generates profits for food retailers and also for food producers. For greedy for profit food retailers and food producers. Indeed, one of the biggest supporters of SNAP are truly evil agribusiness concerns that are sort of destroying the world.

.

All policy in an arch voice.

Passing

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri has passed.

No God could have had a more humane spokesman.

My deepest feeling of unity with those that loved him.
And my deepest respect for the people of Iran's loss.


C

"....and get the fuck off my lawn"

You should read Roy's schtick at V2.

Who expected anything less?

Undersea Volcanoes

from as close as me to you

Update



And here



You all pay for the F-22's. My money is going for Grizzly Bear DNA studies and the ROV Jason.





(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

Smackdown X 2

Battle of wits. Good guys win.
Ezra v. Lane
Doghouse versus Brooks.
Recorded here for posterity.

C

Vaya con Carne

I sure liked me some Gene Barry.



And judging from The Times, I've got good tatse:

In an interview with Nan Jarrett for an Internet fan site in 2000, Mr. Barry recalled that he was appearing in the final season of the television comedy “Our Miss Brooks” when a producer asked him to play Bat Masterson.

“The idea of playing a saddle-type cowboy was repulsive to me,” he said. “Then he told me about the derby hat and cane, and I went by the costume department and saw the outfit that Masterson would wear, and I couldn’t resist.”

Thanks, Gene

C

Classicist

This is some serious shit from Holbo

Frum: Look, if you shave the beard, everything will be … better.

BG: You’re a moonbat.

Frum: It’s all related to … foreign policy and wheelchair access in public school, in ways that … would take a long time to explain.

BG: Get away from me!

Frum: Look. Just shave your beard!

Seinfeld had his Soup Nazi. Frum is sort of a Suit Nazi. (OK, that’s too mean.) A kente cloth-free zone. An advocate of radical (what shall we call it?) sartorauthoritarianism. Society and culture conservatively dictate everyone’s dress code down to a whisker.

And why?

Because otherwise you wouldn’t be (wait for it) FREE!

A Tiny Voice

The rah-rah-rah email from VP Biden was nice.
My response was notably less so; to wit:

Dear Vice President Biden,
I realize that President Obama campaigned on finishing the fight in Afghanistan.
I am also old enough to have lived through LBJ "finishing" JFK's legacy war in S.E. Asia.
I am not sanguine about the possible outcomes.
In addition, DADT and DOMA are a priority for me, just like the FSM and the Anti-war Movement were priorities to my "co-religionists" at UC Berkeley in the 60's.
You and the President's team are just gonna have to deal with that.
My deepest regards,
A Disgruntled Democrat

I guess I read too much of The Hoosier Sage's stuff.

C

Update: I guess it doesn't pay to respond to the e-mails. I got a "No such user" message.
Please don't anyone tell Jill.
Requisite profanity, Fuck.

Flying Cigarettes

Srsly,
how can anything come close to this for awesomeness?

Questions Surround Lou Dobbs’ ‘The Taco-Eaters Shot My Wife’ Story

Instaclassic

C

Well Deserved

AKMuckraker gets a small token of the esteem in which she is held across the Progblogs.

A taste


















My Nana had a quilting frame in the garage.
I am still sleeping under a beautiful quilt that she made more than 30 years ago.

Gotto go now. My face is leaking.

C

Stay Classy, 'Pubes

Post on the RNC website:



Isn't Loving v. Virginia a court case? Shouldn't the imperative verb be "OVERTURN!!!"? You know, like Roe v. Wade?

Should I wonder what the Author/Cretin thinks about Lawrence v. Texas?

Yep, yep, duh and nope

And all of Matthau after that...

Didn't you know?
All mild men are vicious.
They hate themselves for being mild
and the extroverts whose violence...
has a strange attraction for
nice girls who should know better.

And any sentence that ends with Misses Lampert.

In a nutshell

What Dougj said:

It’s natural that some will take refuge in the simplistic pretension of neoconservatism.

Let's say it together:

Fuck

Jay-Rox

I was gonna write a little blurb on this guy



He has been absolutely smokin' on health care. So some props were in order.
But then I remembered Iraq (aye), Surge (aye), illegal surveillance (aye) and
torture immunization.

Thanks Senator, for the work you have done for the people of West Virginia and
America as a whole.

Maybe you could spend a sec thinking about a little brown baby blown up in Haditha
or a newlywed couple incenerated on their wedding night (with fourty or fifty of their closest friends and family).

Fuck

Archived

Aravosis Obama racist symbology recap

Somethings old and somethings new.

Thanks John, for swimming through that sewer, so I don't have to.

C

The best gun post I have ever read.
Especially this,

McArdle would rather not dwell on that ugly fact of guns. They are not toys. They are not megaphones. They do not utter cute or funny or pointed commentary on the state of American polity today. They dispatch useful weights of metal at high speeds across considerable spaces with an accuracy restricted by the quality of the machine and the skill of its operator. Reality matters.

I don't give a shit one way or the other about McMegan. It is only that her shit is so typical of the right/libertarian stream of offal that SMACKDOWN is so appealing.
Reality matters (to some -ed.).

C

bwo curv3ball

Exception

What Daniel Larison said

The difference between eastern and western European reactions to the Bush administration and its foreign policy decisions could never be found among the actual voters in either part of the continent. What was different in France, Germany and (later on) Spain was that their governments sooner or later represented public discontent with U.S. policies, while the governments of so-called “New Europe” sided with Mr. Bush against their own peoples.

This guy makes me respect the small-c conservative view.
His work is a thing of beauty.

C

When America Sneezes...

the world catches a cold.

Since the company was floated on the stock exchange in 1997 and then recapitalised by the state for €9bn in 2004, the company has been restructuring on a massive scale and has reassigned many jobs, leading to employees having to change jobs overnight or suddenly move to a new workplace, hundreds of kilometres away. Very difficult when you are in your late 40s and have been doing the same job within the company for 20 or 30 years. According to the unions, some employees have seen their job reassigned 20 times since 2004. Since 1997, the company has shed 60,000 jobs and reassigned 70,000 in a company that today boasts a workforce of 100,000 employees.

We have been moving public utilities to the private sector long enough to know that it is not a more efficient model to follow. See Montana Power.

aimai MOAR

Pretty fucking much.

I agree with the article one hundred percent--rare for me when it comes to the WaPo. That's because I'm one of the activists and fundraisers who worked for Obama and because this is exactly what I didn't vote for. I didn't vote for him and his to f*** around once they got into power. I didn't vote for President Snowe, or President McCain, or President Grassley or President Baucus. I voted for Obama because he was the only viable choice and he was running as a serious Democrat. If he wasn't serious about being a Dem and pushing Dem causes--which to me are synonymous with liberal and progressive causes--he shoudln't have, for example, run on the "public option". We bought him, we own him.

Glad I clicked Read More. Thanks John, and a tip of the old chapeau.

The Unbroken Circle

Torture, illegal detention, unconstitutional surveillance,
and now this.

Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data-gathering was "a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation".

I wonder if we detained any twins.

Consolidation

As Mrs. Greenspan frames it for Jane,

Mitchell: Civil war?

Hamsher: I think that there's going to be a problem. I think that the White House did not factor in that members of the House would have a very difficult time in their heavily leaning Democratic districts taking a bad vote and there are enough of them that could keep this thing from passing without Obama stepping in and committing to get the public plan that he campaigned on.

What Atrios says.

Would be more than happy to lose Rahm's Kids in Congress, and hope we do.

Now I am no Nate Silver, but 20 less house seats means 237 for the D's, and if every loss is a gain for the R's (which is rediculous considering that they are as popular as roach spray) then they end with 198. Stull a 39 seat advantage.

Vaya con dios, Mother Fuckers!

C

Birfers, Deathers etc. ad nauseum

What Atrios said.

O-mentum

I don't renember where I first saw it; probably Haaretz.
But this is big. Abdullah plan big.

I know. Very linky!


C

Steady

Nice post

This is nothing compared to the S&L crisis. There were 28 weeks during the S&L crisis when regulators closed 10 or more banks, and the peak was April 20, 1989 with 60 bank closures (there were 7 separate weeks with more than 30 closures in the late '80s and early '90s).

Socialism

So one goes to the Denmark gov website.

Here is one of the 2 rotating stories

I am so fucking there.

C

Dude

My favorite political barometer for Iran is His Honorable Eminence Hosein-Ali Montazeri. I have already done the fanboy thing here and here .

I think this elderly cleric might have a problem with the direction the political elites have decided to take the Islamic Republic.

"those who have lost, religiously and reasonably, the credibility for serving the public, are automatically dismissed, and the continuation of their work has no legitimacy."

(grain o' salt recomended for ingestion of CBS translations of Farsi).

Expiation I) Better feel for the source material including dating and context.

Matt calls it

Bullshit

Dear John, Katrina*

Well, thanks for nothing Mother Fucker!
Since either you did a half-assed job of vetting,
Or your unique political calculus rendered this, into an enduring American blight,
I give you the Adios

I will probably not make the point in genteel society, but Katrina and Palin are part of your political legacy.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

That's the penultimate stanza of the Rime

C

*I am not referencing the B-day cake one here, but just the cupcake variety here.

Natalie

All I can say is Fuck Me!

Tainted Tab

For edification's sake this is the same tab I was using to study the non-verbal gestures of one of our Supremes.
Ewwwww

Whatever.
From the littlest of acorns....

what Glenn said at Firedog Lake

The rage caused by the realization of limits to American power mixed dangerously with (mostly) white male resentment over civil rights and feminism. It created a monster cultural volcano full of violent, scapegoating hatred and self-doubt. Over the next few years we were further demoralized by Watergate, the first Arab oil embargo, and our own suddenly obvious lack of nerve. Covered in ash, we slouched on. And called it Disco.

I think Glenn's writeup is the absolute best endorsement for Gram Parsons to be in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.

No offense meant to Natalie or Townes.

c

Clerics

In an earlier post I mentioned Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
He's back at the top of the charts.

The key move for the next few days revolves around Grand Ayatollah Husayn Montazeri's call for three days of mourning for the dead, from Wednesday to Friday. The progressive view in Tehran - and among the exiled Iranian intelligentsia - is that this is a very sophisticated, back to 1979, civil disobedience code, suggesting citizens should go indefinitely on strike.

and Pepe Escobar knoweth his shit. Check out the whole thing.

Lettermangate

What Roy said.

This would be a good place to add a disclaimer decrying child rape etc., but I'm done engaging the Star Trek chess bullshit maneuvers of these freaks. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Dots? What dots?

Of what Tienanmen can tell us about Iran.

From Farley

While there's some mystery as to the fate of Tank Man, I don't doubt that the CCP found Tank Commander and put a bullet in the back of his head at the first opportunity.

snip...

I think, however, that the center of gravity of the state remains with Tank Commander. To the extent that the United States, other Western regimes, non-governmental organizations, and pretty much anyone else want to affect the course of events in Iran, the key is to convince Tank Commander not to shoot.

And this from Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri

A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God."

Let us hope that this unrest will end with the minimum of bloodshed and horror.
The good news is that this could truly lead to a more open political space in Iran, for movement both domestically and internationally.
The bad news is that interventionist dumbasses could still scotch the deal. The US should express keen interest in, and appropriate support for, the free expression of political dissent. It must also leave the rest to Iranian actors.

C

note: I am specifically referencing Frank Gaffney with my interventionist dumbasses remark. There are many others. They get no link and neither does Dumbass.

Coding

What HTML said:

The Iranian elections are the perfect bait for the multitude of sociopaths in greater wingnuttia, and particularly in its neocon division. Obama’s Cairo speech already got them hyperventilating; some are already apoplectic. There is always a danger, considering Obama’s “bi-partisan” fetish, of a rightwing push influencing his policies which, in this case, would make things worse for the Iranian dissenters. So the stakes are high, and we have to push back, by showing these sick-fuck wingnuts for what they are.

Excused

The rest here.


NOTE THIS IMAGE IS THE PROPERTY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.
NOTE THIS IMAGE IS THE PROPERTY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.
NOTE THIS IMAGE IS THE PROPERTY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

Comes Through

Paul Miller, the GM of the Uptown Park McCormick and Schmick's (46) is today's recipient of fondest wishes.

A riddle, if you please;

How can these seats be among the worst seats in the park?



When you fucking drop the opener to the cubs 7-1.

C

photo) Pudge's first trip to the mound to try to settle Moehler. It didn't work.

Policy

What D. Aristophanes said.

How long did the inmates run the asylum of our national dialogue? A long fucking time, and it blew goats so profoundly that it’s no wonder many of us have been unwilling to pronounce that the nightmare is over. If only for fear that, like black mold in your bathroom, the crazy would come back in full bloom if we didn’t keep scrubbing and worrying at it as if it was still a powerful force.

When I see a parody site (no offense HTML) do better meta than the wonkospere, I am aggrieved.

C

ps Ohwhatthefuck

if you really take a good look around, you’ll find that kooks like Pam and Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck and Dick Cheney have finally been fully outed as the freakshow monstrosities that they always were

If you can't find the noun, it's monstrosities.

Sooo

just got back from the bay with some fresh wooden coaster pr0n for ya'.
It looked way cool from the bay side with a tight parabolica at the water's edge.
Too sad, rainy and camera out of reach.




and what watertiger said:

{I} have to admit that the novelty of saying "I told you so" wore off a long time ago.

unlike watertiger I am gonna hoot an' holler till we run every last one of them from office.

Way I was raised,

C

The Road to Damascus

I have converted to Sggzidrixianism.

I know it is not traditional to get your Supreme Deity from a blog post. Nor is it proper cricket to accept a spiritual overlord just to poke fun at the beliefs of those who practice what Doghouse Reily aptly tags "our abiding respect for all forms of bronze age superstition".
That said, I have made my decision to render unto my imaginary LORD all I am or ever will be!!!

Excuse me,
I gotta email Roy to find out how my gracious new OHFF* prefers his sacrifices.

C

*Only Holy Friend Forevah

These pills

Doghouse

the best thing we can do for the Right, and its Multiple Identity Crises, and for the religious one-issue agitators who can't seem to grasp, let alone engage, the legal issues involved, is to begin demanding they answer the hard questions about their own positions, and stop giving them space to throw the same old shit at everyone else. You know what the man said about the Borgias, the Swiss, the Renaissance, and the cuckoo clock.

Yup,


C

Topography of Bedwetting

We in Left Blogistan are blessed by a diversity of voices.
Marcy's timelines, Glenzilla's prosecutorial kleig light,
and Digby's narrative

We didn't know what happened on the inside at the time, but it was clear they were losing it from the very first moments. Having Bush race all over the country on the first day, the bellicose stupidity of their rhetoric and the absurd reaction to the anthrax attacks showed that our leadership was anything but calm, cool and collected. The media jumped in immediately with breathless, uncritical hero worship of Rumsfeld's lunacy and Bush's cowboy rhetoric, turning the instantaneous, opportunistic pivot to Iraq into an inevitability.

Pretty much.

No fuck?

Thers is on fire.

Oh good. Lanny Davis has an opinion on how Democrats should respond to political smears. This always works out well.

First: anybody who actually read the speech knows that Sotomayor did not misspeak. She made a good, legitimate point, one that nobody gave any shit to conservative justices for when they were going through confirmation.

Second: who cares about Hannity and Limbaugh? They're clowns, and everyone knows it, except their moron disciples.

Third: Lanny Davis? Really? You're fishing for crap from Lanny Davis? Hilarious. That's like fishing for brown trout in the Gowanus Canal. What's next, you're going to quote somebody like Chris Lehane, who isn't even an effective weasel? Hahahahahaha!

Oh. Wait.

And the obligatory GBV video.

Headie Scratch

Owls aren't as cute as parrots.



No offense.

Flashback

Not really, I was a Diesel and Dust convert.

Tres Amigos

It is bad enough when I read or hear one or two of these description. All three together is very jarring.

"There are also threats from neo-Nazis, ultra-nationalists and Christian fundamentalists that they will beat us if we appear on the streets."

Racists, Nativists and Zealots, OH MY.

How long we gotta watch these three thugs riding around in the same car to figure out they might have something in common?

Fuck

C

X-posted to Break Glass

And it does work. Quite regularly.

Spackerman over at the Lake

Nor, after more Americans died from terrorism under Bush's watch than under any other presidency, did Gore press a partisan attack. Because that would have proved he was a small man during a big moment. Strange how that works.

More please

splng

Me too

I hate these people so very much.

ZOMG, Greenwald Stoned

A douche called Glenzilla out and was righteously crushed.

Which led me back to Izzy. Here is one of the things he wrote:

To be a pariah is to be left alone to see things your own way, as truthfully as you can. Not because you're brighter than anybody else is -- or your own truth so valuable. But because, like a painter or a writer or an artist, all you have to contribute is the purification of your own vision, and add that to the sum total of other visions. To be regarded as nonrespectable, to be a pariah, to be an outsider, this is really the way to do it. To sit in your tub and not want anything. As soon as you want something, they've got you!

That works for me,

C

Even Antonin?

O wither, Norm? O wherefore, Norm?

This is also why Billmon* thinks the US Supremes won't dare touch this sucker. Scalia tried to keep Bush v. Gore from being used as a precedent precisely to avoid the threat to Republican separate-and-unequal election facilities nationwide.

*It is so profitable to society generally and me in particular that Billmom has decided to keep his hand in.

bwo Phoenix Woman

A Conservative

Larison at his blog Eunomia

I have started doubting whether people who are openly pro-torture or engaged in the sophistry of Manzi’s post are part of the same moral universe as I am, and I have wondered whether there is even a point in contesting such torture apologia as if they were reasonable arguments deserving of real consideration. Such fundamental assumptions at the core of our civilization should not have to be re-stated or justified anew, and the fact that they have to be is evidence of how deeply corrupted our political life has become, but if such basic norms are not reinforced it seems clear that they will be leeched away over time.

bwo John Cole, of course

Reconciliation

And now we get healthcare.

I'm with Krugman.

Can't wait to see the exploding heads over this one.

C

Texas, Treason and Trevino

I have been meaning to post on this since the kerfuffle irrupted.

Josh Trevino (no tilde and no fucking link) tries to paint a simple assertion as a corruption of history (that would be the accepted history according to the cant and prattle of the Nativists).

Erik Loomis Ph.D went all liberal-biased fact on Josh's ass.

Kinda glad I hesitated to pull the trigger. The shit storm continues.

Dr. Loomis has continued his analysis of a modern secessionist Texas.

But of course, Texas committed treason in defense of slavery twice.

The historical narrative pains me even more than when I had my "Come to Jesus" moment about "Uncle Billy".

Oh, and Rick Perry (R-Tool), thanks a ton for unpacking this suitcase of dirty laundry (the whites) in the public square. Douchebag.


C

Added) this wicked slapdown in media res.

The next time

someone asserts that the sub-prime market killed the economy, point them here.

A taste:

There were negatively amortizing loans everywhere: Option ARMs for homeowners, toggle PIKs for corporations, and of course interest reserves for Construction & Development loans (always common, but are blowing up on lenders).

C

bwo Atrios

Family

A nice video of some of my Step-son's relatives.



Dosen't look like a gang fight to me.
It looks more like a session of the U.S. House.

Fly away

To a simpler time

Well produced.

C

Boooooring

The one thing I would add to Prof. Krugman's statement that

Instead, however, finance turned into the monster that ate the world economy

is the word again.

C

Hey Paul Krugman your country needs ya', Man!

C

Cri de Coeur

I respect someone who does this;

I left academia for a variety of reasons, but one of them was the fact that more people read my shitty blog in about the first 3 weeks than would ever read any of my academic papers. And a related reason was that I thought the culture of the profession, at least in this country, worked against outspoken liberals. In my experience (this is anecdote, not survey), the majority of economists I knew were Democrats, if not especially liberal ones, but still they were generally more comfortable with economist public intellectuals who were right wing cranks than they were with left wing public intellectuals. Paul Krugman is shrill and whatnot.


Anyway, the point is... The Left needs more "respectable" economists who are willing to put themselves out there in public discourse space. You know, blogging, op-ed pieces, radio, teevee, etc. I was asked recently to list them and I didn't come up with many. Stand up and be heard!*

Odds are he will be ignored.

C

*I copied the entire post.

Arch and Oblique

Being a regular reader of both his blog and his work at the Village Voice, I am always impressed and often stunned by Roy's facility in pop culture (among many other topics). In comments, perhaps less guarded, he is the man that puts fish hooks into your brain.

Starting with a classic Sadly No! post by Gavin he sparingly riffs. If you don't know Capra or the running faux-controversy of Barry's birth certirficate or the beautiful music reference that I can't pin down it may not seem so amazing. But for fuck's sake, I only get two out of three and it is art.

Jazz is to music what this is to writing.

Nadržený!

C

Best wishes for Justice Ginsburg

Justice Ginsburg has had an operation to remove a pancreatic lesion.
I wish her a speedy recovery and continuing good health.

C

WTF? The Station Chief???

This oughta win us some of them there hearts and minds

The CIA's top officer in Algeria has been returned to Washington amid allegations that he drugged and raped two women at his Algiers residence, an accusation that presents the Obama administration's new intelligence team with an unexpected legal and diplomatic crisis even before it officially takes office.

All fucking around aside, this is bad juju.

C

Prvni

From the GREAT ORANGE SATAN (beta)

Take That!!!!

There will undoubtably be negative responses to




If so, I would remind one that I would prefer



updated for sintax

Wherefore Clinton

What Digby said:

Basically, it's conservative economics, Democrat style. I bought into it when Bill Clinton ran on it, thinking that it was worth a try. Now that I've seen what happens when Democrats act like second string Republicans, I'm not much impressed with such "new" ideas.