- posted by demo kid
Poor Jonathan Gardner has gone from simply crazy to completely fucking unhinged. Whiny, too.
You know what though? It’s sweet, sweet music. The more this loser whines, the more I know that this Obama administration is pure torture for him. :)
Oh, and Jonathan? Before you embarrass yourself even further, take an economics class or two. Random variation around a mean in a volatile market is NOT a sign of anything.
Except, of course, your paranoid delusions.
- posted by demo kid
So what about Obama’s first full day, Jonathan?
President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information.
Not too bad in my book. Now that Jonathan and his ilk have been reduced to a quivering mass of paranoid hate and hypocrisy, most rational people can look upon the flawed philosophies they preach and see that they’re laughable at best, dangerous at worst.
(And yet again, Jonathan pulls an economics FAIL. Apparently rabid conservative Taliban are far dumber with financial issues than I thought.)
Finally, this this picture makes me happy. Especially the caption. “Former president” has a nice ring to it.
- posted by demo kid
I have a much longer post waiting in the wings about the conservative worship of free markets as a good unto themselves, and why certain passionate defenses of neoliberal economics are absolutely, positively ludicrous. But… I’m prepping for a job interview over the next little while, which means that the longer posts need to wait.
However, I’m still quite amused that conservative idiots read into the stock market as the absolute augur of the wishes of their great god Mammon. Take Federal Way Conservative, who roundly declares that the first day of the Obama administration was “a failure” because, in part:
The DOW drops below 8,000, losing 4% in one day, the worst of any inauguration. (link) Losing 4% a day for, we will see the DOW fall to literally nothing by the end of his first year.
I can’t fully express in words how stupid this is, or how hard I’d fail Mr. Gardner if I were an economics teacher.
Never mind, of course, that the markets are extremely volatile, or that maybe there were actually other economic factors that could have played a role in the drop? To quote:
Bank and financial stocks led the Tuesday selloff after a number of ratings downgrades and growing concern bank losses will mean financial companies will need to find new ways to raise capital.
I mean, is Mr. Gardner ready to say that an increase the next day was also due to the Obama Administration?
Well, single ballots were fraudulently cast and caught, and there are some irregularities with a tiny fraction of ballots, so the entire system is corrupt! Damn ACORN!
Oh, and pudge? Screw you too. Your baseless post exceeded the typical pseudo-intellectual crap that you tend to write. I’m truly amazed at your fundamental revisionist perspective on American political systems sometimes, but this has reached an all-time low.
I have to admit, though, that it seems like all of our local conservative friends are dissolving into puddles of bile…
Posted by Carl Ballard
Obamygod! edition.
Shorter FW Con: I’d like Obama’s policies to fail the country for the good of the country.
Shorter Bruce Chapman: Obama could be too imperialistic.*
Shorter Washington Policy Center: Obama might not let large corporations keep trashing the planet.
Shorter Michael Medved: I’m against large deficits again!
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- posted by demo kid
…although I have to admit that I needed to check myself. :)
Good ol’ Don said:
How in heck could President Barack Obama completely flub the oath of office? Listening on the radio, coming into Seattle this morning, it was heartbreaking to hear the Commander-in-Chief botch the most important act he’ll ever do in his lifetime.
Since Don needs a factchecker following him around at all times, he should have done his homework:
Here’s the oath as written:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But what John Roberts says is “I Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear, that I will execute the office of President to the united states faithfully.”
Obama begins to repeat after Roberts, saying, “That I will execute…” then he stops, kind of smiles. At this point, the penny drops for Roberts, who begins to repeat the correct order of words: “Faithfully the office of the President of the United States.” There’s some talking over each other at that point. The rest of the oath goes smoothly. Then Roberts asks: “So help you God?”
“So help me God,” Obama replies, but the last part isn’t officially part of the oath either, it’s usually up to the President to decide if he should say “so help me God.”
Sheesh.
But I’ll have to admit… even if the writers for the Weekly are… well… weak, the Spitfire was sure crowded this morning. :)
Posted by Carl Ballard
Bruce Chapman – who it should be noted is listened to by the political establishment in one of the most liberal cities in the country – is offended that anyone would think of prosecuting criminals. If they are members of the Bush administration.
Some people think that the worst kind of government lawsuit is one in which office-holders, in pursuit of their duty, are accused of criminal malfeasance by political adversaries. In the 80s, Mark Helpern, the author and social observer, famously characterized it as “the criminalization of policy differences.”
Mark Helpren was excusing lying to Congress.* About selling shoulder fired surface to air missiles to Iran. Then taking the profits from those sales and using them to fight a war that Congress specifically said they couldn’t use any Federal money to fight. The real problem under Reagan and Bush is that they committed crimes and then called it political to prosecute them for those crimes. In effect the politicization of criminal acts.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, a sincere admirer of his own righteousness, is of a different frame of mind, at least when the targets are Republicans. His column (“Forgive and Forget?”) in the Friday edition is number one on the paper’s most-emailed list of articles, so there must be some resonance for his protest that President-Elect Obama has “no right” to foreclose such legal pursuit.
Krugman also won some sort of prize recently. And has been pretty much right about President Bush back since when he was Governor Bush. But yes, if people in the Bush administration committed crimes, Obama owes the American people a prosecution. I don’t think you get to just say no, I don’t feel like prosecuting him (unless Bush at the 11th hour or Obama issues a pardon; that’s the president’s right, I guess, but would be a horrible idea). Especially in the case of torture, where our international agreements are pretty clear we can’t make exceptions for “a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency.”
Krugman, and some in Congress, especially want the new president to open criminal investigations into the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. He is furious about “illegal wiretapping” to find terrorists, even though the courts seem to be siding with the outgoing Bush Administration that certain telephone and cyber-spying is constitutional, and the incoming Obama Administration shows little interest in losing such options.
Bruce Chapman, who Mayor Nichols thinks has some good ideas, apparently can’t read. Here’s what Krugman said, about crimes beyond just unwarranted wiretapping and torture, with my emphasis: “Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.”
In Krugman’s telling–and in the feverish hallucinations of the Left–the Bush years were unusually rife with scandals. But any comparison with previous Administrations shows otherwise. There have been a number of independent panels that showed that the Bush Administration did not intentionally mislead the nation about WMDs or encourage such fiascos as the Abu Graib cruelties. Almost all of the Bush scandals were about process questions (the Libby case, notoriously) or were simply manufactured by the likes of The Times for political effect and had no other significance whatever.
Just because Scooter obstructed justice, pergered himself, and made false statements when we were trying to find out who outed a CIA agent doesn’t mean it’s anything more than process. And if the New York Times reports on anything, ipso facto it’s not a scandal because the whole paper has Bush Derangement Syndrome. Like the majority of America.
But, maybe there really should be a Federal case made of the way the U.S. responded to 9/11, conducted the war on terrorism and the specific war in Iraq. Let it all come out. But let all sides air their grievances and suspicions, not just the Torquemadas of The Times. Some of those grievances might be aimed at The New York Times itself, as it happens. Many would be aimed at liberals in Congress.
Yes, Bruce Chapman did bring up Torquemada as a way to excuse torture. Wrap your head around that.
The new president seems more prudent about this topic than his constant-adviser, Paul Krugman. Actual responsibility has that effect sometimes.
Having responsibility sure didn’t make President Bush more prudent in matters of torture, unwarranted wiretapping, or the politicization of justice and science.
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– posted by thehim
I guess this guy is now perfectly qualified to be Pajamas Media’s West Africa correspondent.
The King County Council is like the Chinese Communist Party because they have chairmen.
posted by Carl Ballard
Bruce Chapman a few days ago.
Less than two weeks before President Bush leaves office, the leading Iraqi blog, Iraq the Model–a light of fair and accurate reporting from inside Iraq ever since the fall of Saddam–describes the difference between the Iraq where a reporter’s shoes were thrown at Bush and the Iraqi reality that is the actual Bush legacy. Who can deny the huge institutional progress? Only Sadrites and head in the sand Leftists in the West.
Sure, the country totally on the road to recovery: The refugee problem is still terrible. Sure there are more than 4200 dead Americans, and countless Iraqis. Sure even the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs is all, whoopsidoodle. Sure the polls might be plagued with violence in their upcomming elections in Mosul. But you’re right, those of us who refuse to call that progress are just a bunch of head in the sand leftists. Just ignore all that Bruce Chapman.
You know what, I’m fucking against the tunnel option just because of this paragraph. Fuck Bruce Chapman; fuck the Discovery Institute.