Oh You Fools

7:50 pm EST January 30th, 2009 | Republicans | 86 Comments

Townhall.com’s Amanda Carpenter tries to fit a thought in her head and comes to a conclusion as to why there’s already research out on Michael Steele.

Steele clearly got the Dems scared.

Here’s the thing: There was a chance the RNC would elect a new chairman who is competent and had a vision to lead the party into the future. In other words, a figure like Howard Dean who took the Democratic party out of the wilderness and took us back onto the path where we now have the House, Senate, and most importantly, the White House. Instead they chose Michael Steele. Michael Steele is best known for never being elected to an office on his own, losing by double digits in a race that should have been much closer, and in that race smiling at an endorsement by a convicted rapist and pretending to be a member of the Democratic party (going so far as to distribute leaflets with that misinformation and distributing lawn signs with same).

Steele just ran 3 years ago, so there’s a lot of opposition research out there. Why wouldn’t we put it back out there? I for one can’t wait to go back to Steele’s lies about oreos being thrown at him.

The GOP could have halted their slide, instead they picked a guy who is good on tv but has no vision likely to bring them back from being a mostly white male regional party (I’m sure they think Steele being black will attract black voters – this would be laughable in the past, but in the era of President Obama it is a howler).

Topic: Amanda Carpenter, Michael Steele, Townhall.com

Salmonella Peanuts Had Metal Fragments In Them. Yep, We Should Totally Let The Free Market Handle It.

5:02 pm EST January 30th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Jeez Louise.

The government acknowledged Friday that a shipment of peanuts from the plant linked to a salmonella outbreak contained a “filthy, putrid or decomposed substance” later identified as metal fragments. The shipment was returned to the U.S. in April, months earlier than reflected in a federal tracking database.

The rejected shipment — coming across a bridge between New York and Canada — was logged by the Food and Drug Administration but never tested by federal inspectors, according to government records. The computer records show a mid-September date, just weeks before the earliest signs of the outbreak.

…

“The FDA failing to follow up after this incident, does that mean that products that are not good enough for a foreign country are still good enough for the USA?” asked Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “That’s a double standard that has deadly consequences for our citizens.”

Topic: FDA, Food, Health Care

Republicans Choose Failed Pol, Friend Of Rapists Michael Steele To Be Chairman

4:05 pm EST January 30th, 2009 | Republicans | 34 Comments

I point.
I point, and I laugh.

HAHA.

As Pam Spaulding said a few weeks ago, GOP envy led to “hey, let’s get a black guy too”.

MORE: 5 Facts About The New RNC Chairman

Topic: Michael Steele

Nationalizing Banking?

10:58 am EST January 30th, 2009 | News | 46 Comments

It seems to me one of the major problems we’ve got is credit drying up. So we bail out the banks, yet they still don’t extend credit. They seem to think expensive trash cans for CEOs are a bigger priority. Perhaps we need banking – in some way – to become a federal concern. That way you extend credit and have the federal government absorb and back the risk. Of course the downside is you add federal bloat to the process, and while you might want to make it temporary, that sort of thing has a tendency to become permanent when the feds get involved.

Its not an idea I’m wild about, but so far the solutions seem to be lacking otherwise. I certainly don’t trust the banks to come around, they were one of the engines that drove us into this ditch to begin with.

Topic: Bank, Economy

The Real Duckies

10:42 am EST January 30th, 2009 | News | 13 Comments

I’ll get the conservative argument out of the way: “Class warfare!” Blah, blah, blah. Ok, now the actuality.

The income of the 400 wealthiest Americans swelled in 2006, soaring nearly 23 percent from the previous year, to an average of $263 million, according to data released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service. Since 1996, this group has nearly doubled its share of all income earned in the United States.

The top 400 paid just more than $18 billion in federal income taxes in 2006, or an average of $45 million, on a record $105 billion in total income — the lowest effective tax rate in the 15 years since the agency began releasing such data.

And, of course, the Republican pseudo-alternative to the bailout bill was to give these people even more tax cuts. It hasn’t ever worked, but they’ve got a base to serve.

Topic: Economy, Tax

Aggregate This

1:37 am EST January 30th, 2009 | Media | 4 Comments

This here is my latest experiment in link aggregation. Please check it out. (currently aiding me is Mr. Jeremy Bispo)

Batman Arkham Asylum Joker’s Trap Trailer

10:22 pm EST January 29th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Don’t know about the game, but its kind of weird how the voice sounds like Heath Ledger’s Joker. Is that now the definitive version of him?

Batman: Arkham Asylum 'Joker's Trap' trailer

Topic: Batman, Video Games

Rush’s Party

5:36 pm EST January 29th, 2009 | Republicans | 41 Comments

Hey, conservatives, how does it feel to have a clown like Rush Limbaugh as the head of your movement? Nevermind, you guys love him.

MORE: CNBC’s Mark Haines is one of the few media figures who pushed back at the absurd Limbaugh a little bit. He certainly shows more backbone than RNC members of congress.

Topic: Conservative, Rush Limbaugh

Another Thing

2:04 am EST January 29th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 113 Comments

We keep getting reminded in the comments left here by conservatives and by cons in general that the Democrats now “own it”. In light of the fact that we run the White House, Senate, and House, we’re responsible.

DUH

That goes to the very heart of the difference between the left and the right. The right likes to campaign, and when they are successful they govern by the same simple slogans they campaign with. Then they’re totally shocked when praying to Tax Cut Jesus, weakening our infrastructure, and following the foreign policy instincts of the insane leads to a mess.

By nature, liberals are wonks. We like governing. And while that traditionally has led to campaigns where we put brains ahead of heart, it also leads to people running the government with a vested interest in its performance for the citizenry.

On the right, that’s called radicalism.

Topic: Liberal

Oh Memories

2:00 am EST January 29th, 2009 | News | 1 Comment

Republican response to the Democratic president’s budget proposal.

Now, Republicans and some Democrats in Congress heard the message you sent us last November. You wanted us to cut spending first — and we had a plan to do just that. It was a good plan. We tried to eliminate the President’s requested tax increases. We tried to make real cuts in Government spending. But, unfortunately, the President and the liberal Democrats in Congress defeated all of these proposals.

The third question you should ask is, does the President’s plan help put Americans back to work? And the answer is, no — N.O. — No.

That was the Republican response… in 1993. The bill later passed without any Republican support, just like how President Obama’s economic stimulus passed without Republican support in the House (my guess is a few Senate Republicans might peel off, though we’ve got the votes for passage anyhow).

Under President Clinton we had one of the largest and longest peacetime expansions of the U.S. economy in history. So, theres that precedent.

I don’t have a crystal ball to say where the economy will be, though I think under President Obama’s leadership we’ll find our way out of the hole dug by the previous occupant, but one thing I know for sure is that the right is peddling the same bull they’re always peddling.