US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

yeah daria, no "D"

I have never heard 'se doucher'

Right but you know what I mean - in French the joke "how does your dog smell?" "with his nose" doesn't work because of the explicitness of reflexion - with "I shower" I'm like on tenterhooks for the thing that is being showered or indeed showered upon. If you said "Je vais doucher" - "I'm going to shower" - it would be incomplete - you'd need to know what the object of the sentence was. I am just repeating myself now, I'll stop.

"If you sheet on my bed I sheet on your head"

xpost - the show was a treat! just about the whole hour beck had this look on his face like 'this is not what i thought would happen' & also seemed clear beck hadn't done much research and couldn't manage to keep a coherent story going

i really believe beck thought massa would come on there and trash rahm emanuel and blame the democratic leadership for everything, and that's not remotely what happened, massa just came off as regular joe six pack who hates politics

massa just came off as regular joe six pack who hates politics

― daria-g, Tuesday, March 9, 2010 11:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

and who might be gay.

no i don't think so.

god fuck this stupid shit daily kos blogger on olbermann

This is grim.

John Yoo needs to be slapped upside his head

“What’s the big whoop?” he asked. “The Constitution makes the president the chief law enforcement officer. We had an election. President Obama has softer policies on terror than his predecessor.” He said, “He can and should put people into office who share his views.” Once the American people know who the policy makers are, he said, “they can decide whether they agree with him or not.”

It's still weird that Cheney et al are totally oblivious to the near-universally accepted public opinion that their administration was the worst in our country's history. They must never talk to anyone outside their evil circle.

On the other hand, Adam, there's this:

Susan G at Dkos caught a brilliant illustration of the Village mentality in this New York magazine profile of Liz Cheney:

Fox is a regular pulpit, of course, but Liz is also all over NBC, where she happens to be social friends with Meet the Press host David Gregory (whose wife worked with Liz ’s husband at the law firm Latham & Watkins), family friends with Justice Department reporter Pete Williams (Dick Cheney’s press aide when he was secretary of Defense), and neighborhood friends with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Carter-administration national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. When Mika criticized Dick Cheney on her show last year, the former vice-president sent her a box of chocolate cupcakes.

[...]

Liz’s friends say she sets the bar for all-American normality: She watches Mad Men and 24 on TV, drives an SUV, attends Girl Scout meetings, and is frequently spotted on the sidelines of soccer fields, trading gossip with people like Terry McAuliffe, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, and other power players whose kids go to the Country Day School or the Potomac School.

The fact that these All American folks are also millionaire celebrities with the most powerful people in the world on their speed dials shouldn't be taken as signs that they aren't just like you and me. In fact, they are Real Americans in ways that the frou-frou coastal liberal elites will never understand.

And as Susan rightly notes, there is another teensy problem with this confortable arrangement:

This idea that the national press corps can cozy up to sources or people in power they cover during afternoon soccer games or over Saturday night dinners, then turn around and hold their feet to the fire is ridiculous. You know it. I know it. Everyone outside of Beltway zip codes knows that. Hell, anyone who's ever tried to challenge a neighbor at a local meeting knows it.

so i mean the cheneys (meaning dick and liz) are just straight-up fascists without the name huh? i mean, i know, i shouldn't use that superword and all, but if you question the patriotism and moral standing of those sworn to defend the accused, then you basically have no regard for the institution of law in a putatively free and civil society.

i mean i expect this sort of stuff from dumbfuck talk-show hosts and whatnot, just your basic fascist red-baiting-type thing. but from the daughter of a man who has served in two branches of the federal government, once as vice president? (and one presumes dick is not opposed himself.)

i mean people point to cheney's support for gay marriage, his lack of obvious racial bigotry, etc. as evidence that he's not all bad. sure, but what sort of society and government do you think cheney envisions? a democracy in name perhaps. maybe a bit at the local level? there's little evidence that he has much regard for democratic or civil institutions in general.

this is pretty lazy but i always think of cheney's aberrant support of gay marriage as being not so much proof of his humility but proof that blindly apportioned sanctimonious judgements crumble the second you actually encounter the things you're 'against'. maybe there should be a forced disclosure act for congresspeople's sons and daughters.

that same miracle occurs when a family member gets an incurable disease re: stem cells.

otm

don't forget liz cheney's organization ACTA - http://www.goacta.org/

founded specifically to hound university professors for not being conservative enough, after 9/11 it named 117 academics who it found insufficiently patriotic and called them the "weak links in the chain" in america's fight against terrorism

the Potomac School

A super expensive private school in McLean, Virginia outside DC for snobby folks who don't want to attend the local public high school that is highly ranked and impressive; and for those who will drive a distance from elsewhere in DC, Virginia and Maryland so as to avoid having their kid attending a public school.

I take that back, I did not know she drove an SUV and watched network TV. She truly is a real American.

Consuming mainstream culture > "all men are created equal" in the Real American test

She watches 24. That's the problem--she thinks Jack Bauer is real.

I have long held that the greatest common factor when it comes to right-wing cretins is abject taste.

Cheney and Bush speechwriter Thiessin (who is now the 2nd Bush speechwriter on the Washington post op-ed pages) really believe they were/are protecting America from terrorists and that their views are even supported legally and morally(Thiessin's book tries to offer religious support)--They insist that those who represented detainees are somehow doing something evil and wrong as compared to those who represent Americans who are unable to obtain their own lawyer, or those who are appointed to represent captured soldiers of other nations. Needless to say, in the example I've read in several articles, they probably think John Adams was a traitor for representing British soldiers in a court case during the Revolutionary War era.

It gets better.

[i]When Lawyers Attack [Cesar Conda]

We all know lawyers are a fraternity, but in this case the lawyers denouncing Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol seem to think being a member of the bar in good standing puts you above criticism or even inquiry. Don’t they believe the American people have the right to know whether lawyers who represented terrorists are now working on detainee issues inside the Department of Justice? Or why these lawyers voluntarily flocked to Guantanamo Bay to take up the cause of the detained terror suspects when they did not and do not have a right to legal representation?

The Supreme Court found that they have a right to bring habeas challenges to their detention. That does not confer a right to representation, and in fact, the vast majority of criminals who bring habeas challenges do so without counsel. The John Adams analogy that Ken Starr and the other lawyers cite in their statement is ludicrous: At the time of the Boston Massacre we were not at war and the British soldiers he defended were in court facing a criminal charge of murder. Adams was not representing prisoners of war, enemies of the nation, trying to get them released in the middle of a war. And Adams wasn’t embarrassed about what he did — if what the terrorists’ lawyers did was so noble, why is the DOJ refusing to tell us what they work on now?

Finally, the lawyers’ statement denounces Keep America Safe’s efforts to find out more about lawyers who defended terrorists as “shameful,” yet most of the letter’s signatories stayed silent when the Left was conducting a witch hunt of Bush administration lawyers and CIA interrogators who helped defend America. Keep America Safe is not calling for a witch hunt. They are calling for oversight. [i]]

who the hell is 'cesar conda'?

oh, this is who he is:

http://www.navigatorsllc.com/CesarConda/26/default.aspx

http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/cesar_conda.html

something about the corner is very lizard brain. i don't mean that it's stupid, necessarily, just that it's kind of... autonomic. it's as if it's not really a place for conservative writers, but a place that must necessarily air out the right-wing line on a given subject, no matter what, no matter who it is that speaks.

as in, hey, can we blame haitians for their poverty? we have a guy that'll say that! or, swine flu, are dirty mexicans to blame? i dunno, but we'll get someone to say so. here's a study showing gay people are less happy than average, gee what does maggie gallagher think of it?? the regular writers have their 'personalities' i guess, but u add up the guests and the one-offs and it starts to look, i dunno, daemonic in a CS lewis kind of a way -- a relatively faceless collection of people eager to step up and give ideology a voice. maybe if they each had their own blogs it wouldn't seem that way...

Yeah, I get the sense that K-Lo and Lowry are obligated to allow them space. I can usually tell when a outlier post by the quickness with which said post disappears into the abyss.

McCarthy, on the other hand, totally endorses Costa.

these guys who think there's something wrong with an attorney representing somebody who's charged with a crime as the lowest scumbags on the planet imo. I am seriously stunned by this shit. they should be ashamed of themselves. bright side I guess is like just when I'm thoroughly sickened by the dems, every time, reliably, somebody on the other side reminds me that having to eat a few bites of shit is still preferable to the whole bowl plus dessert.

Andrew McCarthy Former federal prosecutor :

The legal profession’s umbrage over an ad calling out DOJ’s voluntary al Qaeda lawyers is hypocritical and arrogant. The profession swooned as the Obama Justice Department tried to destroy Bush Administration lawyers who had, in good faith, represented what was, to the profession, an unpopular client. GEORGE BUSH WAS POLITICALLY UNPOPULAR? THAT'S KIND OF LIKE BEING PICKED UP AND THROWN INTO GUANTANAMO Our esteemed legal elites fanned the flames as DOJ threatened indictment and censure. FANNED THE FLAMES, DAMN John Yoo and Jay Bybee were not inundated with offers of free legal help for trying to maximize government’s lawful power to protect the American people. DO YOU NEED FREE LEGAL HELP WHEN YOU ARE THE LEGAL HELP? Nor were the Marines who were falsely accused of war crimes at Haditha. PRETTY SURE THESE GUYS HAD A PRETTY GOOD DEFENSE BROSEPH, BUT PLEASE, CONTINUE

Only our terrorist enemies get the red carpet treatment. OSCAR SEASON, TIMELY “Enemies” in this context is not hyperbole. We are at war under a congressional authorization. Nearly 200,000 young Americans are in harm’s way. But enemy operatives are returning to their jihad against our troops and our citizens thanks to the help of American law firms. YEAH MUST BE LIKE HUNDREDS AT THIS POINT RIGHT Only lawyers demand immunity from the ordinary duties of citizenship in a nation at war. ONLY LAWYERS? HOW ABOUT THE 99.8% OF THE POPULATION THAT'S NOT SERVING IN ANY WAY AND STILL WANTS THEIR TAXES TO GO DOWN And they further demand to be above criticism for donating their skills to al Qaeda operatives (though American prisoners must represent themselves in habeas corpus actions) DEMANDING TO BE ABOVE CRITICISM? NO, DIPSHIT, THEY ARE SAYING THE CRITICISM ITSELF IS DISGUSTING. The profession would reinterpret “patriotism” in total relativism: some risk their lives to fight the enemy for us, while others litigate so the enemy may be freed to return to the fight. I THINK WE ARE HAVING TROUBLE DETERMINING WHAT 'ENEMY' MEANS HERE AREN'T WE Americans are not buying – that’s why Liz Cheney’s common sense resonates. MY DICK IN YOUR EAR RESONATES TOO CAN YOU FEEL THAT SHIT ANDY BABY

thx, feel better now

Goddammit can this discredited-ass, rejected neoconservative philosophy please finish it's dying throes already?

Anyway, Reid wants to change (do away with? unclear) the filibuster.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/harry-reid-filibuster-rul_n_493474.html

If I were a writer for Mad Men and found out that Liz Cheney was a fan it would be so hard to not write a one-episode character named Liz Cheney who only exists so the rest of the cast can tell her to fuck off.

Somewhat amusing:

President Obama, Replace Rahm With Me: An Open Letter From Michael Moore

Let me be clear about one thing: The Democrats on Election Day 2010 are going to get an ass-whoopin' of biblical proportions if things don't change right now. And after the new Republican majority takes over, they, along with a few conservative Democrats in Congress, will get to bipartisanly impeach you for being a socialist and a citizen of Kenya. How nice to see both sides of the aisle working together again!

KING: It may be silly, but I guess we have to ask it, are your -- are you gay?
MASSA: Well, here's that answer, I'm not going to answer that.

"Ask my friends. Ask the 10,000 sailors I served with in the Navy."

"...who I vividly recall sliding down chutes in their birthday suits."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw

MASSA: Well, here's that answer, I'm not going to answer that.

this is fucking amazing

Obama is planning to ban recreational fishing from the general public. This means that all fishing that anyone would want to attempt would now be illegal, even simple fishing in a pond would be banned. As a result of no fishing hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. Fishing tackle and supply companies would be forced to be shut down. All boat manufactures would be dealt another significant blow in this already hard economic time. Many Marinas across the country would be forced to cut back on employees, with the loss of clients who are out on the water to fish. The effect of this plan is endless, many more people will be put out of jobs and the economy would be hurt once again. If this goes as planned you can expect higher price on fish in restaurants, higher taxes on other random items to compensate for the loss of income from fishing license. Please pass this to everyone and make this a bigger issue

I better get to Red Lobster soon before the menu items get bumped up.

Why would menu prices go up from banning RECREATIONAL fishing?

Our nation's fisheries don't take it kindly when socialists ban fun.

In So. Louisiana lots of good seafood restaurants get fish from regular dudes who go out and have "great fishing weekends" every weekend.

these folks denouncing the defense attorneys are basically birchites for the 21st century no? again, what's shocking is that it involves the highly-connected daughter of a former vice-president/congressman/etc.

i hear obama is also banning wheelies. and pop tarts.

ugh - above meant to refer to LYNNE cheney's creepy anachronistic red-baiting anti-academic org, not liz's

Wow. Just. Wow.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6286426n&tag=api

oh man, i saw that clip earlier @ fox report and had to turn the volume down. good god. the thing is, i heard about it earlier because all these liberal blogs were like YEAH PATRICK KENNEDY. um.. is he ok?

hoooooly shit

haha i kind of love pat

RI forever

He's leaving Congress at the election.

i know

I mean, like, what happens when your kids see that video? what do you tell them? "April Fools CSPAN LOLZ!"?