Monthly Archives: April 2010

Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Jon Stewart interviewed Ken Blackwell (The “I coulda been a contenda” odd man out in the RNC Chair election) about Blackwell’s new book. This was even abit painful to watch, but probably because Stewart did not have to do much for Blackwell to just look like he was a Total F*cking Idiot. Did I mention that this guy was in contention for RNC Chair? But this is a good example of the complete rewriting of history these wingnuts need to do in order to make their arguments. And a clear demonstration that the wingnut objection to Barack Obama has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution — because the government and its functions operate as they pretty much always did — but because there is a Democrat exercising power:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Ken Blackwell Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Ken Blackwell Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Ken Blackwell Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The bit about objecting to the last 8 months of BushCo is pretty choice and pretty telling of the depths of hypocrisy that they’ll sink to, I think. And how stupid they really think you are.

Rasmussen Puts Castle Up By 23%

Rasmussen released a new poll for the Delaware U.S. Senate race.

The U.S. Senate race in Delaware is virtually unchanged over the past two months, with Republican Mike Castle continuing to draw strong support from the state’s voters.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Delaware shows Castle picking up 55% support to Democrat Chris Coons’ 32%. Seven percent (7%) of the state’s voters prefer some other candidate, while another seven percent (7%) are undecided.

It’s Rasmussen, so take it with a grain of salt. Rasmussen identifies where Coons needs to work:

Seventy-five percent (75%) of Delaware voters who Strongly Favor repeal give their vote to Castle, while Coons picks up 64% support from those who Strongly Oppose repeal.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Delaware voters correctly identify Republicans as the party criticized by some as the Party of No for their unified opposition to President Obama’s agenda. Thirty-nine percent (39%) see this label as a bad thing these days, while 30% say it’s good thing to be labeled that way. Another 31% are not sure.

So 36% of people who favor health care reform give their vote to Castle despite the fact that Castle has never voted to reform health care.

Also in the poll – Markell has 58% approval.

Shameless

The man who would be Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning. Boehner had quite a few things to say, but a particularly interesting exchange was about the new health care reform bill. Boehner is advocating “repeal and replace” of the bill with Republicans’ “common sense” proposals (ones they never bothered with when they were in charge). During the exchange he tried to take credit for the popular parts of the bill, despite the fact that every single Republican voted against the bill (and tried their best to kill it):

Inskeep asked Boehner if he would also repeal some of the more popular and immediate parts of the bill, like allowing kids under the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ health care plans, or ending the insurance company practice of canceling coverage when someone gets sick.

Boehner said: “Both of those ideas, by the way, came from Republicans and are part of the common sense ideas that we ought to have in the law.”

Of course, Boehner has long criticized the Democrats’ plan for not incorporating any Republican ideas, and as recently as February 25 wrote a statement saying: “Democrats’ job-killing health care proposals do not implement a single major GOP reform that would lower costs for families and small businesses.”

Still not convinced? He also wrote: Look “beneath the newly-minted rhetoric and actually look at the text of their bills, it quickly becomes evident that they haven’t actually incorporated any of the major health care reforms Republicans support.”

Republicans are obviously running on the gigantic hypocrite platform. Boehner’s obviously been talking to Mike Castle.

Friday Open Thread

Welcome to Friday on the last day of April. Can you believe it’s almost May already? It feels like this year is passing really fast. We had a great turnout at Drinking Liberally last night. I hope you all had fun and we’ll see you again at the next one. Why don’t we open up this thread?

Sue Lowden can not make the Chicken Care gaffe go away. She did an interview with a local reporter and still could not come up with a good answer.

She’s become a national joke, and now her Republican rivals are pouncing. Daily Kos also polled the Nevada Senate race and specifically asked about Lowden’s chicken bartering plan. It had the support of 14% of Nevada voters (5% of Democrats, 27% of Republicans and 7% of Independents). Amazingly, 23% of Republicans said Lowden’s barter plan made them more likely to vote for her (with 28% saying it made them less likely to vote for her).

Florida is having trouble outlawing sex with animals.

But, as Barbara Hijek notes, Florida has had difficulty getting the law passed:

The law was passed unanimously by the Senate this week. It would make it a first-degree misdemeanor to have sex with an animal, with a penalty of up to a year in jail.

The Senate had passed a similar bill last year, but it fizzled out before it came before the House. The House bill has a similar measure, but it awaits debate.

What is there to debate?

So, just to recap what you can and can’t do in Florida: Get married if you’re gay? Illegal. Adopt a child if you’re gay? Illegal. Marry your cousin? Legal. Have sex with an animal? Also legal.

Florida has crazy politics!

QOTD

We haven’t had a question of the day in a long time, but commenter anon brought up a good question yesterday:

Why don’t Korn and Matlusky engender the same level of passionate fire that the treasurer’s race is experiencing [in the Auditor’s race primary]?

I turn the floor over to you. Is there passion for the State Auditor’s race? Why has this race flied under the radar?

I haven’t heard yet – have any committee endorsements occurred in this race?

Dirty Energy Isn’t Cheap

Yesterday we learned that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was five times worse than first thought. The oil is spilling at a rate of 210,000 gallons of oil per day. That oil is now hitting the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Unlike what we were told, offshore drilling is not so technologically advanced that they can prevent oil spills. The failsafe mechansims meant to prevent the disaster did not work and drilling companies did not have experience with spills in the deep part of the ocean. The robots could not turn off the valves. The capture domes do not exist yet (BP is working on one, which may be available in 2 weeks). People are trying everything they can think of to contain the spill:

While BP prepared to drill a relief well and finished up the design and fabrication of a pollution dome system to capture the oil flow at it source, the company also began investigating lowering coiled tubing to douse the three oil leaks with chemical dispersants.

The leaks are in the rig’s mangled riser, a pipe that once connected the well on the ocean floor to surface equipment. Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said engineers believe the chemical might dissolve the oil and keep it from rising to the surface.

More than 100,000 gallons of the chemicals have been applied to the surface slick since the accident to help break up the spill. And on Wednesday, the Coast Guard conducted controlled burns to consume some of the oil on the Gulf’s surface.

The federal government has now declared the spill a “spill of national significance,” which means the navy and other federal resources will become available to help combat the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf.

There is also a human cost. The explosion of the drilling rig killed 11 people. Just yesterday we learned that 2 coal miners were killed in a coal mine collapse in Kentucky, of course from a mine with numerous safety violations. These deaths are in addition to the 29 miners killed in West Virginia earlier in the month. That makes the recent energy death toll 42 people, just in one month.

The spill has perhaps halted plans (at least temporarily) to expand offshore drilling. Even the dirty hippies that read the Wall Street Journal now believe offshore drilling shouldn’t be expanded, by a 2:1 ratio.

I no longer care if conservatives believe in the science of global warming anymore. Switching to a clean energy economy is in the nation’s best interest. It will create jobs, since it will take research and investment to learn how to harness solar, wind and geothermal energy. Becoming our own producer of energy will also mean that we’re no longer dependent on unstable countries and regions to provide us with energy. Yes, it will take money to switch our economy but our current system is not free.

Arizona Is Reverting To The Wild, Wild West

Permits?  We don’t need no stinkin’ permits.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1108 into law Friday afternoon. It eliminates the requirement for a concealed-carry weapons permit, but does require gun owners to accurately answer if an officer asks them if they are carrying weapon concealed. It also allows officers to temporarily confiscate a weapon while they are talking to an individual, including during a traffic stop.

Bet law enforcement is sleeping easier.  And, if you chose not to get a permit then you’re no longer required to attend classes.  I’m seeing a problem here, and it looks like I’m not alone.

Retired Mesa police officer Dan Furbee runs a business teaching permit and other gun safety classes. He said if most people choose not to get a permit, it will put several hundred Arizona firearms instructors out of business.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said.

But he said what really concerns him is that the new law will allow people who have had no education about Arizona’s laws and no training on the shooting range to carry a concealed gun. The eight-hour class currently required to get a permit includes information on state law and gun safety, as well as requires students to be able to hit a target 14 out of 20 times. Furbee said his class at Mesa-based Ultimate Accessories costs $79, plus $60 for the five-year permit.

“I fully agree that we have a right to keep and bear arms,” Furbee said. “But if you are not responsible enough to take a class and learn the laws, you are worse than part of the problem.”

“If you are going to carry a concealed weapon, you should have some kind of training and show that you are at least competent to know how the gun works and be able to hit a target,” he said. “You owe the people around you a measure of responsibility.” [emphasis mine]

There’s also this:

Brewer last week did sign a separate law that exempts guns made and kept in Arizona from federal regulation, including background checks.

How do you determine who will “keep” their gun in Arizona?  Is it some sort of pinkie-pledge?

It gets even better…

During her first year in office, Brewer signed a bill allowing loaded guns in bars and restaurants, as well as another that prohibits property owners from banning guns from parking areas, so long as the weapons are kept locked in vehicles.

What could possibly go wrong with mixing loaded guns and alcohol?

“Bringing It!” to Capitol Hill

There is a man that transcends politics. A man that can take Patrick Muprhy (D-PA) and Aaron Schuck (R-IL) and push them to past their limits, a place where each man screams, “No more, no more. Please make me do more.” That man is Tony Horton, late-night pitchman for his P90X fitness training. Horton was recently in DC to do some work outs on Capitol Hill with many of this fans. Horton’s 12 DVD set, that runs for just over $100, is not for the feint of heart — it tells you up front that it is an extreme fitness routine, but it’s a fitness routine that has many converts, more that 2 million copies sold.

As Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) said, “It’s awful. It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, it still makes you cry.”

Admittedly, I am a convert of P90X. I’m on Week 4 of the thirteen week program and I love it. I love the aches and pains, I like trying to push myself along with the videos. In one cardio DVD that focuses on pylometrics, Horton has a man with a prosthetic leg doing the exercises along with him. You think, if he can do it, so can I. I’ve become so hooked on this exercise routine, that for the first time in my life, I checked that the hotel I’m staying at has a gym so I won’t miss a day. I love trying to eat right, feeling fit and losing weight. All you need for P90X is a pull-up bar, some dumbbells, a mat and the willingness to push yourself.

As a professor from George Washington University said about P90X, “… [it] is very high-intensity exercises that you’re doing for an hour a day. That’s a lot of freaking exercise. If you do any high-enough-intensity workout and couple it with a [healthy] diet, you’re probably going to get pretty much the same results.” But as the professor admits, P90X fans are doing it. As Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) joked, “It’s probably the most bipartisan thing we do in this place.”

Republicans Rely On Lies

One of the most frustrating things about being a blogger is the constant smacking down of mistatements, rumors and outright lies coming out of the rightwing. J.L. Bell at Salon noticed a constant stream of rumors being examined by the Snopes.com website and did a count to see what was happening.

After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.

Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

I delved down to the stories that the site designates as a mixture of truth and falsehood. For Obama, in many cases the truth is innocuous while the lie reflects poorly on the President, particularly photographs that are misrepresented or show behavior that produced no complaints when his predecessors did the same. In contrast, in this mixture of truth and falsehood about George W. Bush praying with an injured soldier, the lie reflected well on that President from the perspective of the religious person spreading it.

I think this story makes things a bit clearer. It’s the telephone game version of Fox News and apparently the dominance of Fox News is not enough to keep conservatives from spreading these rumors through other means.

Personally I find some of the so-called reasonable conservatives as the most dishonest of the bunch. These are the people that will say things like “I believe Obama was born in the U.S. but if he’d just show his birth certificate it would all go away.” They are reinforcing the crazies and just because they’re not carrying Obama = Hitler signs that doesn’t mean that they’re not equally responsible for spreading the falsehoods.

Thursday Open Thread

Welcome to Thursday! We have beautiful weather today and tonight is Drinking Liberally! We’ll be gathering at Iron Hill Brewery in Wilmington starting at 7 PM. Hope to see you there!

The oil spill off the shore of Louisiana is much worse than first thought. It’s leaking 5 times faster than they thought and it’s mulitple leaks, not just one. Nothing they’ve done so far has helped to stop the leak.

The oil spill from last week’s deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has increased to 5,000 barrels a day — five times more than the original estimate, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry.

A third underwater oil leak has been located in the pipeline that connected the rig to the oil well, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP.

…

CEO Tony Hayward told CNN’s Brian Todd in an exclusive interview that Transocean’s “blowout preventer” failed to operate before the explosion. A blowout preventer is a large valve at the top of a well, and activating it will stop the flow of oil. The valve may be closed during drilling if underground pressure drives up oil or natural gas, threatening the rig.

“That is the ultimate fail-safe mechanism,” Hayward said. “And for whatever reason — and we don’t understand that yet, but we clearly will as a consequence of both our investigation and federal investigations — it failed to operate.

The oil slick is now the size of the state of Delaware. Right now officials are doing a “controlled burn” of the spill. Grill, baby grill!

In the blogosphere, the left still rules:

In this paper, we revisit these findings by comparing the practices of discursive production and participation among top U.S. political blogs on the left, right, and center during Summer, 2008. Based on qualitative coding of the top 155 political blogs, our results reveal significant cross-ideological variations along several important dimensions. Notably, we find evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation across political blogs. Sites on the left adopt more participatory technical platforms; are comprised of significantly fewer sole-authored sites; include user blogs; maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content; include longer narrative and discussion posts; and (among the top half of the blogs in our sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization as well as discursive production.

The difference between left-right in solo-authored blogs vs. multiple-author blogs seems very stark.

Special bonus link for allergy sufferers.

I’m Glad I’m Raising A Buffy And Not A Bella

Given the Twilight series rage I purchased the books for my preteen daughter.  I mean, everyone was reading them.  Everyone was raving.  But…

My daughter doesn’t like Twilight.  She likes the Vampire Diaries and the Vampire Academy, so it isn’t the genre… It’s Twilight specifically.  Which I found perplexing, since the back covers all read pretty much the same to me.  So, what was it about Twilight?

“Bella never drives her own car.  Whatever guy she’s with sits behind the steering wheel of her car.”

That was my daughter’s first point.

“Bella is always being rescued.  She never saves anyone.”

Second point.

The third point is a doozy.

Edward is drawn to Bella because of her blood (which he describes as his own personal heroin), not her personality or her brain.

And her fourth point makes me proud.

“Edward is a stalker.  Bella is always waking up and finding him in her bedroom watching her.  It’s creepy.”

It is creepy.  And it seems my daughter is not alone in her thoughts.  The video below is priceless.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM[/youtube]

Drinking Liberally TONIGHT!

Last call!  Be there, or be square.

UPDATED:  Here’s your reminder!

Spring is here, and Geek and I finally got our act together and planned a Drinking Liberally!

Please join us next Thursday, April 29th at the Iron Hill Brewery on the Wilmington Riverfront.  We will be meeting on the second floor at 7:00p.m., and if the weather is nice enough will venture out onto the deck.

Can’t wait to see everyone!