Republicans Push For More Abortions

7:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 4 Comments

While at the same time whipping up fear about — I kid you not — “sex based cults”. Yet another perversion of our Food and Drug Administration.

Al Gore’s Quest

7:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 52 Comments

From the new Wired

Al Gore? Five and a half years after leaving the political stage, only the fourth man in US history to win the popular vote for president without being inaugurated, Gore has deftly remade himself from an object of pity into a fearless environmental crusader. The new Gore is bent on fixing what he calls the “climate crisis” through a combination of public awareness, federal action, and good old-fashioned capitalism. He’s traveling the globe, delivering a slide show that, by his own estimate, he’s given more than a thousand times over the years. His one-man campaign is chronicled in a new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which made Gore the unlikely darling of the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and will be released on May 26 by Paramount Classics. He has also written a forthcoming companion volume of the same name, his first book on the subject since the 1992 campaign tome Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

Along the way, Gore has become a neo-green entrepreneur, taking his messianic faith in the power of technology to stop global warming and applying it to an ecofriendly investment firm. The company, Generation Investment Management, which he cofounded nearly two years ago, puts money into businesses that are positioned to capitalize on the carbon-constrained economy Gore and his partners see coming in the near future.

Well That Settles It

6:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

A clear justification for improved US-China relations.

Topic: Humor

TNR Really Doesn’t Get It

5:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 35 Comments

Jason Zengerle, one of The New Republic’s bloggers and the magazine’s “senior editor”, writes this unfortunate reply to my post from yesterday

I understand that Atrios and Willis are angry at TNR simply for the fact that we chose to run a piece by Ponnuru, but that, to me at least, *is* crazy.

I agree that the title of Ponnuru’s new book is regrettable, but unless the book (which I haven’t yet read) is a complete departure from his previous work, I seriously doubt it will bear any resemblance to something by Coulter.

Mattwilshire is right (at least I hope he’s right) that we wouldn’t run a piece by Coulter, but Ponnuru’s no Coulter. He is a serious guy, and the article we ran by him was a serious piece. What’s more, his article was an explicit critique of TNR’s own line on Roe and Republicans. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons we ran it.

I realize that sort of thing–affording space to an ideological opponent to make his case–is an alien concept to some of these bloggers, but that’s part of the problem I have with them.

Way to be clueless. It isn’t that I’m upset that TNR is running something from an idealogical opponent in their publication, in fact I’m all in favor of contrarianism in order to make your argument stronger. The issue at hand here is that TNR didn’t just pick a conservative to write a column in their publication. They’ve picked Ponnuru, who explicitly labels the Democratic Party as “The Party Of Death”. He says “too many of today s Democrats have become part of a ‘party of death’”. The blurb from Regnery on the book talks about “How the party of death a coalition of special interests ranging from Planned Parenthood to Hollywood came to own the Democratic Party”, “How liberals use animal rights to displace human rights”, “Ponnuru s shocking exposé shows just how extreme the Party of Death has become as they seek to destroy every inconvenient life, demand fealty to their radical agenda, and punish anyone who defies them.”

That isn’t reasoned political discourse. It isn’t contrarian political thought. It’s an out and out smear of the Democratic Party, it’s members, and its ideals. A publication like The New Republic out to be hanging this kind of thinking out to dry.

Instead, they gave him a column.

Zengerle also wonders why so much attention is put on TNR for a publication bleeding subscribers. Well, I personally get much more policy and idealogical insight from The Prospect, but its writers just don’t seem to get as much push in the establishment media as representative of liberalism as TNR does (see FAIR’s study of TNR’s outsized influence).

(Perhaps not surprisingly, Zengerle has written about the challenge to Joe Lieberman. The article’s title? “Lamonsters”.)

Mehlman Runs Away From “Iraq”

5:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 4 Comments

Also, Democrats coming to take your baby if the dingoes don’t get there first.

Some Things Never Change

4:04 pm EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 8 Comments

No matter what, you can always rely on George W. Bush to make the worst possible decision.

Well, That Depends On What Your Approval Rating Is…

10:04 am EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 67 Comments

George Bush, September 2000, discussing President Clinton diverting oil supply from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve:

Today my opponent, in response to public outcry, proposed that our nation tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That’s bad public policy.

The Strategic Reserve is an insurance policy meant for a sudden disruption of our energy supply or for war. Strategic Reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election. It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security.

Today

President Bush has decided to temporarily halt deposits to the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve to make more oil available for consumer needs and relieve pressure on pump prices, a senior administration official said Tuesday

Cold Hearted Snake

3:04 am EST April 25th, 2006 | Politics | 13 Comments

Charles Taylor is most commonly associated with a crazy bloodthirsty dictator, but the Republican congressman who shares his name in Pennsylvania adds another notch of infamy to that name.

For emotional wallop, there are few rivals to the windswept, grassy field outside of Shanksville, Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

But for three years, that field has made do with a makeshift monument while one member of Congress, Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), has blocked a $10 million request to buy the land for a permanent memorial to the 40 passengers and crew members who overpowered hijackers bent on crashing their jet into the Capitol or the White House.

What an ass. Heath Shuler, the former UT and (barely Redskins QB is challenging Taylor this fall.

Right Wing Continues With Their Hate Of Hispanics

3:04 am EST April 25th, 2006 | News | 13 Comments

First Senator Salazar, now CA Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa…

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, both Hispanic Democrats, have received death threats amid a national debate over immigration policy, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday.

Schwarzenegger told reporters about the threats against Villaraigosa and Bustamante during a news conference in his office Monday.

Other elected officials of Mexican heritage have also received threats, Schwarzenegger said, but he did not name them.

Bustamante spokesman Steve Green said the lieutenant governor appeared at some immigration rallies with Villaraigosa in March and received “nasty e-mails” afterward. The death threat – “The only good Mexican is a dead Mexican” – came about three weeks ago on a postcard, he said.

Topic: Racism

Maintenance

12:04 am EST April 25th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

As you may have noticed recently things have been going haywire on the backend. I’m going to be doing some fiddling under the hood, and attempt to keep all my posts (1,583) and the 31,837 comments (mostly Frank) I’ve had since I switched to WordPress intact. Pray.

Update: Everything appears to have gone okay, amazingly.

Topic: Site Stuff