If GWB had been a Democrat, these would have been popular mainstream memes, doncha think? Read more…

• Illegitimate presidency, staffed by scandal-ridden incompetents
• Unqualified president allows insane VP to set agenda
• Move over tank-commander Dukakis: Yale cowboy's brush-clearing photo-ops are a national joke!
• Wimpy, terrorist-coddling Democrats fail us on 9/11
• Wimpy, terrorist-coddling Democrats let Bin-Laden escape at Tora Bora
• Corrupt Dems don't know where Iraq cash is going... unless you count their golfing buddies
• $Trillions and 4,500 troops' lives spent on fictitious WMD scare -- fiasco of the millennium!

Go. Just go.

Bolten said another of his goals when he took over was to try to get the country to see the likable boss he and other aides saw in private, convinced that would boost Bush's popularity. "I failed miserably," he conceded. "Maybe in the beginning of the sixth year of a presidency, that's a quixotic task. . . . But everybody who has actual personal exposure to the president, almost everybody, appreciates what a good leader he is, how smart he is and, especially, how humane he is." Read more…

Lambert has alluded to this post a couple of times in passing, but I wanted to make sure it was included in the FITH Watch archive (to which I'll be linking in my next post), as it's one of the classics of the genre: Americablog's "Shameless HiIllary blames all of us for her sick 'assassination' remarks on Friday, which have redefined the Macaca moment."

If you were boss of the world, what would you do to bring peace and justice to the Holy Lands?

See Chris Floyd's blistering take on Israel's attacks in Gaza.

In the midst of it, he avows this:

I hold no brief for Hamas; like the Angry Arab, whose coverage of the conflict has been relentless and penetrating, I don't care for any party based on religious extremism.

Did you see what he did there?

He acknowledged a reality where Hamas isn't a cuddly mascot for our favorite team.

Did he just ruin his case, bending over backwards to support some false equivalency? No, he strengthened his case (one with which you may or may not generally concur), by showing a degree of nuance, firewalling his disapproval for Israel's tactics from any perceived tacit approval of Hamas.

When we fail to do so in this classically polarizing topic, we're undercutting our credibility. If we, say, dismiss the notion of showing Israeli victims as tiresome "recycling," we're doing the same, we're becoming boosters and haranguers instead of honest brokers.

Je répète, if Israel's culpability is as stark as its critics believe, why should lefty bloggers not welcome discussion of how its actions look in the broader context, a context which includes attacks on Israelis by Palestinians. I say that not to make excuses for Israel, but to challenge progressive bloggers to be something better than an echo chamber.

My response to Paul Rosenberg at Open Left:

First if not foremost, Paul, writing a post slamming me after I specifically promised not to read or comment on your future posts seems like an awfully boorish use of the bully pulpit that is Open Left. Read more…

Via Caro:

HONOLULU – President-elect Barack Obama’s Hawaiian vacation was darkened for 11 hours Friday night and early Saturday when a power outage enveloped the island of Oahu…

I’ll bet it was intentionally darkened by Hillary Clinton!

The good news, Tasers helped them handcuff their suspect:

A naked man who was banging on doors and windows at a northside apartment complex died Wednesday after being shocked by Tasers at least three times during a confrontation with Harris County sheriff's deputies, authorities said.... Read more…

Perhaps it's time to consign the phrase "uniquely American solution" to the dustbin of history.

Or perhaps not.

The Rorschach test that is Caroline Kennedy's bid to become the junior senator from New York has a new ink blot: entitlement.

Resistance is emerging among Democratic officials against Caroline Kennedy as she pursues Hillary Rodham Clinton’s seat in the United States Senate, with Gov. David A. Paterson bristling over suggestions that her selection is inevitable, according to his advisers, and other leading Democrats concerned that she is too beholden to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Read more…

Let's hope this doesn't lead to any divisive calls for equality:

SAN FRANCISCO - A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

Jonathan Alter, with all due respect, go fuck yourself.

David Sirota...

Has anyone bothered to explain how giving a gay basher a national platform is a decision made in the name of ending division? I'm really confused - there are lots of clergypeople in America who haven't gay bashed. And remember - it's not just that Rick Warren is against gay marriage, it's that he's very publicly attacked gay people with the worst kinds of slander. Read more…

Throughout the weekend, I read countless posts on Democratic Underground that praised the brilliance of Obama's decision to feature an atheist-women-and-especially-gay-bashing bigot at his historically historic inauguration. Read more…

Now here I am, back out on the streets, for the crime of having nowhere to go.



Welcome to the ownership society:
 Read more…

No one could have anticipated:

It's understandable, given his background as a community organizer (not to mention someone who pitches "the audacity of hope"), that Obama believes you can reach out a hand to movement conservatives and build such bridges. Indeed, he's made it clear all along that's the kind of guy he is.

I just hope that when he finally gets that hand back after reaching it out and discovers it has been chewed clean down to the bone by a thousand vicious cuts that he has a little awakening about the nature of the nasty little beast the American Right has become in the past couple of decades. Such gestures for them are mere signs of weakness, nothing but opportunities to advance themselves and their agendas and to destroy liberals.

Bill Clinton had similar naivete early in his presidency, and it cost him dearly.

Well, Obama's not listening to us anyway. We're the now-marginalized dirty hippies he gets praised for slapping. Whatever.

Correntewire, December 4, 2007: Read more…

I ventured one more post at DU, to frame how an Obama skeptic might look forward to / at the new presidency:

Why this Obama skeptic is mildly optimistic Read more…

FYI, I'm "LWCON" on Democratic Underground.

If you have a DU account, please "K&R" this thread. It currently has 25 R's (recommendations), and each K (kick -- i.e., reply) jumps it back to the top of active threads.

So far, this has been one of the most constructive threads I've seen on DU for some time. Any tips, links, etc. that will help influence DUers to get active on this will help draw attention to this critical issue, so please join in!

If you don't have an existing DU account, you can get one and can post replies, though you need to be active for a while before you're allowed to recommend threads. Read more…

Obama's healing gesture of helping sanctimonious bigot Rick Warren build his oppressive and profitable brand jogged the recollection that Warren uttered the most depressing thing I can imagine:

All of the great questions of the 21st century will be religious questions.

As I wrote at the time: "Fuck, another century down the drain."

Glenn cannily opines about something we've been talking about for the last year or so: meet the new new politics, same as the old new politics.

I do disagree with Glenn on one thing, which is his presentation of several either/ors — such as closing Guantanamo or not, repealing DOMA or not — as proper tests of Obama's progressive fealty. Read more…

No one could have anticipated that a candidate who signaled — since before his campaign officially started — that he was going to cater to the Rick Warrens of the world would give a God-exploiting bigot like, say, Rick Warren a bully pulpit from day one of his presidency! Read more…

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and  Read more…

How do you compare and contrast Hillary Clinton's initial candidacy for senator for NY with Caroline Kennedy's?

Obvious comparisons are that both have famous-family star power, neither had held elected office before, and both doubled-down on X chromosomes.

Is the widespread razzing of Caroline's aptness for the role fair (by dint of her low public profile), but what Hillary encountered wasn't fair (by dint of her healthcare czar work, writing and other First Lady-related experiences, and the CDS that fueled many of the insults)?

Is the fact that Kennedy's making her move for a Governor's pick rather than an election germane to assessing her fitness for the job? Read more…

In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely (whose current blog post might strike a chord with us economic-equity types) states:

"If you accept the premise that market forces and free markets will not always regulate the market for the best, then you may find yourself among those who believe that the government (we hope a reasonable and thoughtful government) must play a larger role in regulating some market activities, even if this limits free enterprise."

I thought that sounded reasonable enough, but when I searched the quote online, I mostly found references that mocked Read more…