Windy City Lefty

Two quick observations on the Rumsfeld exit

2006-11-10T20:22:00.000-06:00

Observation number one:
When the president holds a press conference to tell the whole world that you're doing a great (or heckuva) job, your inner voice should hear something that sounds a whole lot like:

Say Don, why don't you drop by my office and stand on this Big Red X?

Observation number 2:
I spend a lot of nights on the road in hotels, and frequently find the TVs in public areas tuned to Fox News. As such, I spend a lot of time watching Sean Hannity in full blown, spittle-flecked rage, asking the "liberal" guest:

Are you calling the President a liar?

Up until now, I have never seen anyone rise to the bait. A lot of Bush's lies are plausibly deniable, simply because he's either out of the loop, or showing rare, Bush-like ignorance. A lot of the lies are denials telling us that Bush wasn't aware of seemingly inescapable facts, and they're a lot easier to deny when most of us feel that what the President doesn't know could just about fill the Grand Canyon. (Yeah, I stole it from Chasing Amy.) A lot of the lies are delivered by surrogates.

(Don't believe me? Tell me you didn't feel a little sorry for Tony Snow when they trotted him out to tell us that the administration had never pushed "Staying the Course?")

So here we go. On November 1st, Rumsfeld was going to stay for the duration of the term. One day after the election, we all watched Bush put the rollers under him. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching Rummy's steely gaze as he was dejobbed, imagining himself in his next career as a scapegoat (Thanks to Tina Fey for that one.)

The president not only lied, but he admitted he did, and he admitted lying for reasons of politics.

So Fox pundits unite. The next time you get to share a studio with Hannity, trot this one out. Sure, it'll get your mike cut, but it's worth it.

And to sweeten the pot, I'm going to go one better than my Reverse Swear Jar.

$100 goes to the war chest of the first candidate to have this dialogue on Fox or the candidate most closely linked to the person who does.

Unless it's Lieberman. Gotta have standards.

Oh, dear!

2006-11-09T21:50:00.000-06:00

From AmericaBlog:

CNN's John King just reported that Ken Mehlman will be leaving as chair of the Republican National Committee (i.e., head of the Republican party) by the end of the year. Apparently Kenny's just tuckered out. According to King, "He's been on the gerbil wheel, as one of his close friends put it, for well in excess of six years now and he's tired."

Unfortunate choice of words here. I think someone's channeling an Arrested Development character here...

Was the 2004 election stolen?

2006-06-01T00:19:00.000-05:00

I honestly don't know. But I do know that we're trusting heavily compromised technology to count our votes. I know that a lot of the companies trusted to count the votes have dubious political ties. I know that the problem isn't going to be resolved until we have a hard copy backup verified by the voter and recounting spot checks. I also know that even if the voting machine manufacturers and those on the election boards had no political interest in the results, we still should have done quality assurance on the results to perfect the machines and work out the bugs for the next time.

Check this out. Finally, a major magazine (Rolling Stone) is publishing a story from a reputable figure (Robert Kennedy, Jr.) documenting the inconsistencies. Most of us have read about this in blogs, but until this gets into print, most readers filter it out as tinfoil hat drivel.

Congratulations, print media! It only took two years to get on this.

Tina Fey on same sex marriage

2006-05-22T16:17:00.000-05:00

"A Senate committee on Thursday approved a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, apparently forgetting that our forefathers wore wigs and satin Capri pants."

The evolution of dance

2006-05-17T16:13:00.000-05:00

Just got back from vacation (Paris and London, more on this later), and this greeted me in my inbox. One of the funniest things I've ever seen! It's comedian Judson Laipply going through the evolution of dance. Check it out!

Get yer popcorn ready...

2006-04-30T22:14:00.000-05:00

Hell, you might want to buy stock in whoever makes Orville Redenbacher if this is true...

Truthout thinks a Rove indictment is coming. Read about it here.

Stephen Colbert at the WH Correspondents' dinner

2006-04-30T21:38:00.000-05:00

Here is Stephen Colbert's speech/roast from the White House Correspondents' dinner. It's been broken up into three parts because of the size of the file.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Watch and enjoy, especially the following gem:

"When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

A worse job than press secretary

2006-04-30T14:47:00.000-05:00

****Warning: Do not read while eating!****

Yes, Virginia, there IS a worse job than press secretary. Some poor soul is going to have to watch Rush Limbaugh piss in a cup on a regular basis. (Via FireDogLake.)

Which leads me to the point I wanted to bring up — all of this is contingent on Rush actually completing the full term of supervision. He’ll likely have to check in with a probation supervisor in a regular basis, where he will have to pee in a cup in front of said supervisor for drug testing and monitoring at every check-in. (Just like every other criminal in the probation waiting room. If they make other provisions for him, then in my book it’s special treatment.) The reason you have to do the piss test in front of someone else is to prevent the testee from substituting someone else’s urine for their tainted sample. (Yes, it does happen. Ewww.) He’ll also have to submit to random testing — meaning his supervisory officer can randomly show up at his place of work, at his house, whatever, and make him pee in a cup.

Sorry about the mental image. Here's some puppy therapy if you need it...

Allow me to channel Spicoli for a moment.

2006-04-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

Whack! Whack! Whack!
Hear that, dude? It's my skull! I'm soooo wasted!

I went to my fair share of frat parties in college, but I can't imagine my congress critter ever showing up at any of them. I'll let you determine if Rep. Sweeney (R-NY) is as shitfaced as he looks in the photos...

...And you thought he was only screwing the CIA

2006-04-29T09:16:00.000-05:00

Check out TPM Muckraker. No evidence has been posted on this yet, but it's all going to get very interesting very quickly, especially when all of this is aired during the Duke Cunningham investigation. Get your popcorn!

Caption of the month

2006-04-29T08:58:00.000-05:00

...over at Dependable Renegade

Only 997 days to go

2006-04-29T08:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a countdown for the remainder of the Bush presidency. And while I'm not one to recommend alcohol, the President might know that toasting with water is deemed to be bad luck. Apparently, it puts your approval rating underwater.

It is a tradition in the United States Navy that a toast never be made with water, this being said to indicate that the person so honored will be doomed to a watery grave. Toasting with water in general is believed to be bad luck.

Oliver Willis on why Dubya's ratings are in the low 30's

2006-04-29T08:37:00.000-05:00

Changing the press secretary fixes none of the core problems.

The Bush mistake is a product not of meaningless staffing, but of policy failure. The war of choice that has kiled over 2,400 of our people and let a terrorist killer of 3,000 run free, the negligent response to a natural disaster that killed 1,200, the decision to privatize one of the strongest and most worthwhile social programs our nation has, cutting taxes for oil tycoons who bring home millions while the rest of the unwashed masses pays through the nose at the pump while the next generation is given massive deficits to pay.

I'd add that the staffing does have a lot to it, and it reminds me of the Daily Show after Andrew Card announced his resignation. No exact quote, but Jon Stewart pointed out that Bush was getting rid of someone most Americans hadn't heard of, but he was keeping the guy who screwed up on getting the body armor for the troops and the guy who shot a man in the face.

Who is Georgia10?

2006-04-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

For those of us who are Daily Kos junkies, one of the contributors always stands out. She's Georgia10, and her DailyKos Diary is here. Chances are you've read her writing. If not, check it out.

I hadassumed that she was from Ohio, because of her knowledge about election law following the last presidential election, but it turns out she's actually a law student here in Chicago. This week's Chicago Reader has an excellent profile, and it's always really cool to hear about the personalities behind the blogs.

Jeezy Creezy, Utah! What's it gonna take?

2006-04-26T19:43:00.000-05:00

Once again, Radical Russ has posted his Bush approval map, and it's covered in blue.

Of course, once again, it shows that the administration could put scorpions in Nebraska's boots, borrow Idaho's car and return it empty, set Wyoming up with Tucker Carlson and screw Utah's sister without any ill effects.

Watch for a lot of photo-ops in those states... Things aren't going well for the right when Oklahoma's a toss-up...

Warning: Metaphor alert

2006-04-26T19:07:00.000-05:00

...Isn't becoming the press secretary of the Bush administration at this point in the game kind of like buying a ticket for the Titanic right after it hit the iceberg?

But now that Tony's gone, there's been some improvement. Take this headline off of the Fox News page:

See! They're half right, and that's a new record!

(And if you have some time, The Whirlpool has a different, funnier take on why Scottie is leaving.)

More of this, please

2006-04-25T15:02:00.000-05:00

Nancy Pelosi on Dubya's lip service on high gas prices:

If you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies. We have two oilmen in the white house. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. Tt is a cause and effect. A cause and effect. How dare the president of the United States make a speech today in April, many, many, many months after the american people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil. A woman told me she almost fainted when she received her home heating bill over this Winter. And when so many people making the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in eight years, which has a very low purchasing power have to go out and buy gasoline at these prices? Where have you been, Wr. president? The middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is affected by the price of energy and of oil and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of Washington, see the fact that the public is outraged about this, come home and make a speech, let's see that matched in your budget, let's see that matched in your policy, let's see that matched in and you're separating yourselves yourself from your patron, big oil, cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down, instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the american people.

And yeah, I am glad that Bush is canceling $2 billion in subsidies for the oil industry and at least paying lip service to the possibility of gouging. But to applaud him on this is to ignore the elephant in the room; the main cause is a war in the middle east best described as gratuitous.

In other news, Dubya is down one point to 32%, and I'm probably not alone imagining a room of 100 people containing one Hummer driver throwing a tantrum.

Kevin Drum on gas prices

2006-04-23T22:40:00.000-05:00

Really interesting. Kevin calculates that the average American household is spending between 6 percent and 10 percent of their income on gasoline (the 6 percent figure is at $2/gallon, and the 10 percent is at $3.)

That said, I'm one of the anomalies in this, because I don't own a car. I've made that decision simply because when I add up the time spent parking, parking tickets and gas, it's a lot less hassle and cost for me to deal with public transportation. Add tolls and lease payments, and I can see why people are so pissed. I also can't see why suburbanites aren't demanding better public transportation to reduce their commute into the city...

Bush at 33

2006-04-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

...And this one's a Fox News poll. Over the last few weeks, most of the polls have had him trending around 35-38 percent. OK, I'm sure that, as these are trending polls, we're looking at a small, statistically insignificant sample. But Fox had him at 39 percent just a month ago.

What I can't understand is why it dropped recently, and what finally got through to those 6 percent. We're talking diehards here. They didn't abandon their guy in the face of Cheney shooting a guy in the face, Jeff Gannon or the Plame leak. They stuck with him after lies about our reasons for going to Iraq. Through Enron, Scooter Libby and nuclear saber-rattling from Iran and North Korea. They weren't concerned with torture at Guantanemo, wiretapping of Americans or a relentless effort to unbalance the system of checks and balances.

So what did it? I've tried to look at it, and I've got nothing. Somehow, I can't see them crying over the departures of Scottie and Andrew Card or the demotion of Karl Rove. The only thing I can see is that Bush has been on TV a lot in the last few weeks. I've watched his canned town meetings, the circular logic in his defense of Rumsfeld and red-herring arguments in favor of the war in Iraq. Every time he appears on TV, he's losing ground.

So I've got a prescription for the President. Get thee to Crawford post haste! Clear some brush. Play some golf and learn to play that guitar with the presidential seal on it. Your place in history depends on it!

I KNEW those looked familiar

2006-04-18T21:55:00.000-05:00

I knew that the cartoons in place at Pandagon and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo looked familiar, but I didn't connect the dots until I saw this.

Just another reminder of what a national treasure XQUZYPHYR and Overboard is...

Any resemblance to Montgomery Burns is, of course, unintentional

2006-04-11T15:57:00.000-05:00

Need a good laugh? Check out Crooks and Liars' footage (complete with boos) of the Veep throwing out the first pitch, and insert your own "Good think he didn't get him in the face" joke here.

Talking point akido

2006-04-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

Check this out. It's a rebuttal of a whole bunch of anti-immigrant talking points, and it's, well, FREAKING AWESOME!

How far can he drop?

2006-04-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

The lowest approval in the ABC poll, and 60 percent disapproval.

...Or maybe she left you because you're a douchebag.

2006-04-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

From the LA Times:

"I don't believe in abortion. It's just an excuse to get wild," said Daniel Perea, 28. "Guys think, 'Oh well, if you end up pregnant, all we have to do is come up with $300 and we can go across the state and get an abortion.' It's very dangerous to let people choose that."

Perea said he spoke from experience: He helped three former girlfriends obtain abortions. He believes God punished him with a childless marriage and his recent divorce; he wants to make sure other couples don't make the same mistake. "We have to put our foot down," he said.

...Just another reason I'm glad to live in a bright blue city in a very blue state. There's just so much to analyze here. The whole reformed whore thing. The sheer solipsism of blaming God for fucking up your marriage. The idea that a relationship that ended in divorce would have been better for everyone if there had been a child to share in the misery.

But it does explain a lot.

Opening day!!

2006-04-07T10:59:00.000-05:00

w00t!