The Jed Report has posted comments on a Think Progress analysis of McCain campaign claims about health care. I was going to write something about comments about this report, but then I got around to reading it.
Gah. Everybody should read it.
McCain’s health care “proposal” is vague at best. But in the absence of anything solid, this looks like a reasonable analysis to me. However, the more I thought about it, the more I figured a flow chart would be better.
I’m pretty impressed. A while back I made a few political lolz, but there was only so much time in the day and I stopped. Now I find there’s a GIANT SITE of progressive political lolz. I’m going to be there for weeks catching up. These are even better than lolcats if you’re left-leaning.
It looks like the disgraced former Attorney General is having a bit of trouble finding work in the legal profession. The Presidents former hatchet boy has been reduced to giving speeches for universities that pay lip service to freedom of expression by bringing in the occasional lightning rod neocon crackpot speaker. Not that it’s a bad living, but it’s a major step down from being in line to be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.
Times are tough all over. But nobody will touch him. Between the fact that he’s under investigation—and undoubtedly will continue to be under investigation when the regime change happens—and the fact that his excuse for his apparent lies seems to be memory loss—again, not a characteristic valued in lawyers, no reputable law firm that cares about its reputation will touch him. And as a wag put it, he isn’t even good enough at lying to work on Wall Street.
There’s just something unreal about the situation, since his reputation is so bad that any firm that hires him is going to look like they’re just doing it as a sleazy favor to repay him for his loyalty, ie, his willingness to break the law for the President.
You know, I like Bill Clinton and all—he’s basically a very likeable guy—but it turns out that the blame for the subprime mortgage lending crisis falls squarely in his lap, like an intern in a blue satin dress. He considered signing the laws that made this possible to be a crowning achievement of his administration. Story
Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there.
Bush: I’ve been planning that myself.
Ok, let’s get serious here. Do we really think that Bush would put himself above the law and the Constitution and pull an end-run play into a full dictatorship?
Um…don’t answer that. Let’s try a different question. Do we think that Bush thinks he deserves to be President-for-life, like such luminaries as Idi Amin?
Yup. I’m sure he thinks he is the best qualified person to be president in the country. And since he’s clearly indicated in the past that there is no law that can stop him from whatever he wishes to do… Would he do that?
Maybe he’s just being his asinine self, the one who can’t crack a joke without sounding like a deadly serious mentally-ill moron. Maybe what he really meant is that now that he’s solved all the problems of this country, he’s going to move on and solve the problems of Russia, too. He is, after all, god’s gift to humanity. Just ask him and he’ll tell you how he spreads good will wherever he travels around the world.
But in case he does decide to continue in the Presidency, I’ve got my CafePress t-shirt all planned. It will say, “Off with his head…of state.”
Should I call it “extrajudicial”? I know the prez thinks that everything and everything he chooses to do - that other people could and would be arrested and convicted for - is extrajudicial, outside of the jurisdiction of any court on earth.
But seriously. I’m on so many email lists. Write to Congress, send money to this cause, call your Senator, sign this petition. It gets pretty boring, because by now it’s clear that our representation is just going to make a little fuss for show, then roll over and give the prez all he wants and more, much MUCH more. The judiciary is no longer independent, and I’m sure that the prez would say that is how it should be, that they should be hired or fired on how well they support the partisan goals of the administration that dug them out from under a log at Regent Law School and propped them up in return for favors and unquestioning support.
So this post is not about what Democrats should do to scrap the program. Clearly they are powerless, they have no will to fight the fascist juggernaut.
But you know, it looks like that’s ok. The Keystone Cops we have in the FBI have taken care of it themselves.
They forgot to pay the phone bill for the wiretapping, and the phone companies pulled the plug on the operation. Free market forces at work. Even the government has to pay their phone bill. MORE
In an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Mitt Romney responds to a question about whether he would appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration…
The point I make in enumerating these efforts to contribute to US national interests is that Americans of the Islamic faith – even when they have no formal role in government – are committed to helping our nation defend its interests. And we have done so. Why, then, should we be excluded from holding positions that carry the highest levels of responsibility?
I really think that the author of the article is kind of missing the two most important points here. First, there is no way in hell that Romney is going to hire anybody for any sort of a high-level post—and probably not a lower level one, either—who is not Christian, except for the possibility that he can get away with a token Mormon or two.
Remember, on the one hand he’s pandering to right wingnut crackpot religious litmus-testers, who don’t feel that anybody but narrow-definition Christians are qualified to be in office. But he’s also trying to please the public at large, which is largely generic Christian in orientation, and also feels that while broad-definition Christians are acceptable, there should be no religious minorities in elected office.
So he’s decided to limit his Cabinet and other major appointees to Christians, and he’s using demographics as an excuse. Was there ever really any question?
O’Reilly unleashes Fox lawyers in attempt to sink critic’s career
How low can you go? But that’s not the question, is it? The question is, how low can Bill O’Reilly go…er…successfully, that is.
Poor baby. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it. Imagine, being intellectually bested by Mike Stark, a law student, writer of the blog Calling All Wingnuts, and regular commenter at the Daily Kos. In O’Reilly’s fantasy world, leftists are flyweights, and right wing nuts have the right, yea, the duty to fabricate whatever newstoids they need to to win arguments. So they can’t win, can they?
But Mike has proved that he can use some of the same tools as O’Reilly and Faux News, the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. He’s also got persistence, intelligence, and facts, none of which seem to be factors in the production of The O’Reilly Factor.
Oh, NOEZ! It’s not fair! Better sic the lawyers on him. He’s making me look like an idiot…
Times are tough all over. But nobody will touch him. Between the fact that he’s under investigation—and undoubtedly will continue to be under investigation when the regime change happens—and the fact that his excuse for his apparent lies seems to be memory loss—again, not a characteristic valued in lawyers, no reputable law firm that cares about its reputation will touch him. And as a wag put it, he isn’t even good enough at lying to work on Wall Street.
