78 freaking percent?!?!

In normal times, you couldn't get 78% of the public to agree that Canada is that country to the north of the USA.

Wow.

A Fox News poll released Friday found that 78 percent of voters favor establishing term limits for Congress. ThatÂ’s nearly five times as many as oppose limiting the number of terms members can serve (16 percent).

Large majorities of Republicans (84 percent), Democrats (74 percent) and independents (74 percent) favor the idea...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:51 PM | Comments (182)
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*sigh*

Another ONT, IÂ’m sorry to say...

OK, then. Drunken Kitteh sez “Oh hai! We can gitz teh party beginsuz!”

Various atrocities and sundry outrages below the foldÂ…

more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:15 PM | Comments (894)
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A movie which explicitly advocates for racial violence.

But remember, it's racist and dangerous to say Obama is a socialist.

Director Rodriguez attempts to disguise his toxic and racist message as something more accessible, the simple fight against DeNiroÂ’s corrupt pol, his slimy aide (Jeff Fahey), and Steven SeagalÂ’s Mexican drug kingpin. But this disguise doesnÂ’t work. SHEÂ’ is not a figure representing the fight for justice against injustice but rather of a coming and necessary revolution against America. Furthermore, when the Alba character stands on the hood of a car to kick off the filmÂ’s incredibly un-exciting and poorly choreographed race war climax, the war she calls for is not to stop violent racists but against an America (or Texas) that, in her delusional mind, is keeping people off land that is rightfully theirs (remember, the border crossed us).

And yet, never once does the movie bother to explain exactly what it is that makes America so special and attractive to those willing to risk their lives to get here. Can’t have that. Nor does anyone suggest that maybe the best place to wage revolution would be, I don’t know, that “personal hell” called Mexico. Can’t have that, either. Not when your protagonists are driven only by seething radical resentments, a misplaced sense of entitlement, and that warm, smug feeling of superiority that comes with assuming the role of the victim. But not victims of their own country, mind you, victims of America.

Hey, no one said hate had to make sense.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (381)
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I can't wait to see how Obama tries to blame this on the previous administration.

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama.

Just add it to the list of "If Bush had done it...."

Addition by lauraw: On Twitter, the Obama Rug Quotes thread.

My favorites so far, from Nathan Wurtzel:

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Senator Edward Kennedy #ObamaRugQuotes

"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentations of their women." - Mohandas Gandhi #ObamaRugQuotes

Posted by: DrewM at 11:44 AM | Comments (411)
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Damn those Tea Partiers with their barely-disguised hostility to minorities, seeking to cut the budget just because a black man is in the White House.

Damn these spoiled-brat wingnuts.

Democrats add fiscal austerity as a campaign issue

By Shailagh Murray

Friday, September 3, 2010; 9:03 PM

The candidate was outraged - just outraged - at the country's sorry fiscal state.

"We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet," he fumed to a roomful of voters. "In my view, we have nothing to show for it."

And that was a Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who voted "yes" on the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, increased education funding and other costly bills Congress approved under his party's control.

Faced with a potential wipeout in November's midterm elections, candidates such as Bennet are embracing budget cuts with the enthusiasm of Reagan Republicans.

The trouble is, all that snark in the article, and its clearly sarcastic tone, makes it obvious this is from the conservative-tilting Washington Times, and thus can be safely ignored by the MFM.

Except... it's not the Washington Times. It's the liberal/establishment Washington Post. Even they aren't buying this bill of goods.

And they have other examples of Democratic candidates suddenly getting "teabagger" fever too.

Democrats racing to claim "me too" deserves a little somethin'-somethin'.

From George Orwell, a variation on The Mega-Indpendent's PuddingSkull:

I call this skull "Quenchy."

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (183)
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It's here, thank God.

Hope you are all having a great weekend, you morons.

AP Top 25 here.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:06 AM | Comments (189)
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I didn't know the rules. I've paid back all the money. I take full responsibility.

I'm ready to move on.

Texas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson steered Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships to relatives and the children of relatives, and got busted by the Dallas Morning News. Gabriel covered this story a few days ago.

Cathy over at the Splitters forwarded me a video of Anderson Cooper interviewing Johnson by phone, in which she explains very clearly how she accepts full responsibility, she made a mistake, she didn't know the rules, she paid back all the money, and she's so ready to move on. I'm just linking 3 minutes of it, but you can back it up and watch it all if you want.

Cooper presses the mind-numbingly obvious question, "even if you didn't know the rules (liar), don't you understand that there's an obvious conflict of interest here?"

I'm ready to move on. Also we lost the forms. And I've never seen them.

I did it. I got caught. I gave it back. We can be done now.

Just a possible scenario playing in her head, I do not mean to imply I know what she is thinking.

Anyway, posting this for the sheer brazenness of her response. She's in a totally safe district, but there is a Republican running against her, Stephen Broden. He hasn't got much of a chance, unless perhaps people get pissed off at these unbelievably arrogant politicians, who as LauraW put it, are "draining us and living like rock stars on our money", and presume to tell us how we need to live. (not to put too fine a point on it, she has it exactly goddam right.)

I don't know anything about Stephen Broden and I already know he'd be an improvement. Even if he has a hobo murder conviction. Or two.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:49 PM | Comments (266)
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Good evening, fellow shut-ins. I've stumbled across a new show in addition to Haven and that is White Collar on USA. They're doin' a season 2 marathon this evening and I. can't. turn. off. (On right now. Dude, check it out.)

What is up in your world?

Oh, and this has been played a few (dozen) times in the Malor household:

more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:24 PM | Comments (200)
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Hurricane “My Name is Earl” edition

O hai! It’s Friday again. And once again we’re cooped up here together in this Godforsaken thread. Well, you freaks are. As soon as I hit “publish” I’m running for the exit at top speed and locking it from the outside. What you do to yourselves and each other within the confines of the thread is of little concern to me. I’ll sleep comfortably tonight knowing that the world is a much safer place without any of you roaming the streets. Just be grateful I didn't fire the place on my way out.

Le Hurricane

Is Earl still a 'cane or has it been downgraded to a big sloppy wet kiss of a tropical storm? If you're on the scene, now's your chance to become the next Dan Rather and provide us with some live, yet drunken, updates on the storm.

As we all (don't) know, Mr. Rather first gained fame by his live reportage of Hurricane Carla which hit Galveston in 1961. This was many years prior to his transformation into the shadowy figure we now know as "Kenneth," as the following video documents:

More sordid and unseemly crap below the fold...

more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:15 PM | Comments (708)
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Raising the bar:

In reality, barring some major and dramatic turnaround in the political landscape, the 50 seat GOP wave has now in many ways moved closer to the floor for Democratic losses. With the economy continuing to flounder and with fewer than 60 days until Election Day, the potential for a once-in-a-century type of wave that would lead to GOP gains in the 60-90 seat range is increasing.

The latest Gallup generic ballot tracking finds that, among registered voters, Republicans are leading by ten points, 51 percent to 41 percent. Three of the four highest leads for the GOP since Gallup began tracking the generic ballot in 1942 have been measured in the past month alone (and Republicans won the House seven times during those intervening years, with as many as 246 seats which would be a 68 seat pickup today).

Moreover, this is a poll of registered voters. This poll only partially accounts for a massive 25-point "enthusiasm gap" between the parties (highly enthusiastic partisans are more likely to answer a phone and sit through a survey). If Gallup had been using a likely voter screen, it would likely have shown upwards of a 14 point lead for the GOP. The last time a party won the national vote by fourteen points was in 1964, when the Democrats won 295 seats in Congress (in 1974 they won the national vote by 17 points and won 291 seats).

There's a snag: Those voter-enthusiasm models won't translate into huge numbers like he's talking about if they're concentrated too much in GOP strongholds. To some extent, they will be -- they must be. We'll have Republicans coming out of the woodwork in some districts; but you can only pound your opponent so much. Your "extra" votes can't be donated to fellow candidate.

But that's why it's important to vote even in places you don't think you can win -- because honestly, someone's going to get shocked out there.

And it's also to vote even in these very-red districts to hit everything upticket and downticket, to paint the whole apparatus of state government High Plains Drifter red:

Posted by: Ace at 06:06 PM | Comments (75)
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