(Note: After today, posting of actual content is going to be iffy for probably about another week at least.)
1) Let’s start with Jonah Goldberg and get him out of the way as soon as I can (here)…
This is why I never lend out my iPhone when I visit leper colonies:
Goldberg then includes a story about how quickly germs can be spread from the touch screens of iPhones to one’s fingertips, something of particularly note with the onset of the flu season a month or so away.
But for Jonah’s information, leprosy, though it is in decline (as noted here), is definitely not something to joke about. As the Wikipedia article tells us…
Although the forced quarantine or segregation of patients is unnecessary in places where adequate treatments are available, many leper colonies still remain around the world in countries such as India (where there are still more than 1,000 leper colonies),[11] China,[12] Romania,[13] Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia, Vietnam,[14] and Japan.[15]
If Goldberg is searching for something to laugh about, though, maybe he should tale a look at this.
2) Next, I give you the following from Christopher Rugaber of the AP here…
Numerous polls show voters blame President Barack Obama and his party for the slow economic recovery and the 9.6 percent unemployment rate — not much better than the 9.7 percent rate when the year began.
I know I’ve linked to this a few times already, but I’ll continue to do so whenever lazy reporters like Rugaber say this stuff without any sourcing to back it up.
3) Also, tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of the signing of the Iraqi constitution, as noted here. And at the time, a certain Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History said the following…
“This is a very positive day for the Iraqis and, as well, for world peace,” Bush said in brief remarks to reporters. “Democracies are peaceful countries. The vote today in Iraq stands in stark contrast to the attitudes and philosophy and strategy of al Qaeda and its terrorist friends and killers.”
I wish I could tell you that everything is just hunky dory in Mesopotamia now, but alas I cannot – as noted here…
Washington waits and waits while constantly demanding that Iraq’s government function properly—that its leaders compromise and work together, that it at least provide electricity, trash pick-up, and minimal services to its citizens. Yet all this is impossible because of the structure of government America set up there. Hopelessly dysfunctional, it was doomed from the start.
There is simply no way Iraq’s government could or can succeed. Think first how we destroyed its civil structure—its police, civil service, most of its functions of government, even schoolteachers were fired en masse. Then it’s easier to comprehend that Washington also set up an unworkable government. Indeed, an article in the American Prospect, “The Apprentice,” indicates that wrecking Iraq as a nation state was intentional.
…
“The constitution may well be more of a prelude to civil war than a step forward,” warned another expert in 2005, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Rather than an inclusive document, it is more a recipe for separation based on Shiite and Kurdish privilege,” he wrote, as quoted in an article by Robin Wright in the Washington Post. The Post report also warned that “the Shiite and Kurdish militias are the de facto security forces in their territories and are loyal to their own political leaders.”
By 2006, then CIA director Michael Hayden was acknowledging that in Iraq, “the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible.” He added, “We and the Iraqi government do not agree on who the enemy is … . It’s a legitimate question whether strengthening the Iraqi security forces helps or hurts, when they are viewed as a predatory element.”
…
Washington’s neoconservatives may look benignly on an Iraq whose dysfunctional government serves as an excuse to keep the region occupied with 50,000 troops and massive air bases. But America’s “mission accomplished” has created an unstable, economically devastated nation that will be yet another constant source of instability for the whole Middle East.
And this is from a conservative publication, people.
4) Finally, Michael Gerson profiled Christopher Hitchens today in the WaPo (here). And don’t ask me about the column, because I barely read a word of it. And that’s because I’m tired of our media wasting precious online type and column inches over this guy.
I’m sorry that Hitchens is dying from cancer. I hope his passing from this world comes with as little pain as possible. But somehow I can’t help but get the feeling that our media is hanging with this man through every final hour and second waiting for some moment of clarity in which he’ll exclaim, “Oh God, praise Jesus! You were right all along, and I was wrong!”
That clearly isn’t going to happen (I have a low regard generally for Hitchens, but I’ll give him credit for remaining true to his beliefs).
And I also think it’s more than a little disingenuous for our corporate media to give Hitchens a “deathbed conversion” and ignore moments like the one here, where (speaking of Iraq) he criticized Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes for making the rather astute connection between the war and the flooding of cheap credit in the early part of this decade to inflate the housing bubble, in which our ruling cabal turned our economy into a casino.
Also (linked to the post), Hitchens claimed that Martin Luther King, Jr. “doesn’t deserve his acclaim,” and Hillary Clinton is “an aging and resentful female.”
And last but perhaps least, I give you this Hitchens moment from an episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
So, let us allow Hitchens to leave us with as little fanfare as possible, please. I will grant that he should be allowed the dignity to spend his final days as he chooses (which he denied to those caught up in the Iraq maelstrom that he considered “worth the price,” but there you are).
Before he goes, though, I’ll give him the salute that he so gleefully gave his detractors on the Bill Maher program…
1) This story has been buzzing around a bit; it’s at philly.com, but I also came across it here…
The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response has embarrassed Pennsylvania’s Governor. Governor Ed Rendell apologized Tuesday to groups whose peaceful protests or events, from an animal rights demonstration to a gay and lesbian festival, were the subject of regular anti-terrorism bulletins being distributed by his homeland security director. Rendell said that the information was useless to law enforcement agencies and that distributing it was tantamount to trampling on constitutional rights. Bulletins also went to members of Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry because of several acts of vandalism at drilling sites.
A Philadelphia rally organized by a nonprofit group to support Rendell’s push for higher spending on public schools even made a bulletin, as did a protest at a couple of Rendell news conferences in recent weeks as he pressed for a tax on the natural gas industry.
“This is ludicrous. This is absolutely ludicrous,” Rendell said. “And I apologize to any of the groups who had this information disseminated about their activities. They have the right to protest.”
Basically, as the ACLU tells us here via Daily Kos, PA’s Homeland Security Director James Powers authorized the ITRR to spy – and quite probably harass in the process – opponents of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale (with ITRR granted a contract for this type of surveillance by the state…one of the questions quite rightly posed by Rendell when he found out about this was why PA was contracting with the ITRR, when the PA State Police is capable of this type of investigation and response from law enforcement…if need be…also).
I’ve done a little bit of poking around and I found out the following here about PA Homeland Security Director Powers; as you can read, he spent 30 years in U.S. Army Special Forces, attaining the rank of colonel. It’s highly possible that he circulated with some big names in the defense biz (which would figure since, as noted here, he was following the U.S. DoD Training Manual, which treats protests of the type over the Marcellus Shale drilling as “low-level terrorism”).
Kudos to Rendell for putting the brakes on this as soon as he heard about it; also, I think you can be safe in assuming that there will be more forthcoming on this story.
Update 9/26/10: I would say that this is a good reason to protest drilling in the Marcellus Shale (dear God).
2) Also, Michael Smerconish of the Philadelphia Daily News had what I thought was a somewhat interesting observation on the whole Pastor Terry Jones/Almost Burning the Quran thing (here – a lot of this is a rehash from last week’s column by Christine Flowers, by the way, but at the time, I was on Jones-Mania-Overload if you will, so I didn’t bother to say anything)…
Politicians can’t treat fringe players like they are world leaders. This story was energized by the likes of Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. The more they talked, the more credibility the object of their ire got from the media.
OK, but Smerky then tells us the following a little later…
Let’s be clear. Petraeus was right. So were Gibbs, Clinton and Holder. The president was right, too, especially in his assessment of the event as a stunt.
But by engaging the instigator – even though they were condemning his actions – Petraeus, Gibbs, Clinton, Holder and Obama created the impression that he was a serious person.
The result? Round-the-clock media attention, which in turn fueled international outrage toward the U.S. And even though the organizer didn’t actually end up burning any Qurans, the attention he received was enough to inspire copycats.
Ummm…so Gen. David Petraeus was right to call attention to that nut because his actions could pose harm to our troops (noted here), but Petraeus was wrong because he contributed to “round-the-clock media attention” also?
Well then, I suppose it’s up to everybody to just ignore religious or pseudo-religious figures who incite passion in an attempt to garner publicity for themselves. OK.
Just remember, though, that that includes this guy also.
3) Finally, I give you the following from the campaign of Patrick Murphy for U.S. Congress:
We knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time.
Big Oil has officially put me on their list.
This week the corporate front group Americans for Prosperity bought TV and radio ads attacking me.
Americans for Prosperity is the comically named corporate front group for the oil industry. They have the distinction of being the primary corporate sponsors for those “grassroots” Tea Party rallies. Now they have decided to back my opponent, and it’s no wonder why.
Americans for Prosperity uses their vast corporate resources to advance their radical agenda. This was the group that fought so that oil companies like BP could drill wherever they wanted to, however they wanted to. Then when things went wrong, they fought to make sure that BP could carry on like nothing ever happened. These are my opponent’s new best friends.
My opponent has sold his campaign to the far-right. Americans for Prosperity is just one of many groups he has courted by simply molding his beliefs to fit with theirs. He has been rewarded for his “flexibility.”
All my opponent had to do was deny the existence of global warming, turn his back on working families, and pledge his allegiance to corporate tax breaks instead of investing in American jobs. This time his reward was $22,000 in character attacks against me.
Now we know who is in my opponent’s corner. Now we know whose interests he fights for – BP and Big Oil, not us.
Well, I want you to know that while my opponent knows he can count on his friends from Big Oil, I know I can count on you. I need your help to fight back against Mike’s pile of corporate cash.
Please, contribute $25, $50 or even $100 today, and help me reach my goal of $22,001 so we can show these corporate interests that we are NOT backing down.
Together, we can show my opponent and his Big Oil buddies that the people own this seat now – and it’s not for sale.
Thank you as always for your incredible friendship and support.
God, this is so disgustingly typical of Mikey.
He couldn’t even win the PA-08 seat to begin with in 2004 without some truly foul campaigning against Ginny Schrader, trying to link her to Hezbollah (and worse, as noted here, a particularly rank stunt since Schrader’s husband was a Jew).
He couldn’t even defend the seat in 2006 without trying to slime Patrick Murphy’s military service with the assistance of Young Philadelphia Republican Kevin Kelly (here).
And now, having lost the seat, he can’t compete for it once more without more odious campaign garbage as noted above (and in all three instances, he’s tried to disavow any knowledge of what went on or make sure he has an “out” for himself).
Let’s help Patrick however our means may allow and send Mikey packing for good by clicking here (and don’t strain too much listening for a response of protest from the teabaggers, who profess to oppose politics as usual…if the issue has anything to do with Mikey, you can rely on hearing nothing but the sound of crickets).
And K.O. tells us the story (and please disregard the snickering from the peanut gallery – the day J.D. Mullane is an expert on Islam is the same day that I learn the basics of particle fusion).
1) Here’s a late-breaking development from the Media Research Center…
Appearing as a guest on Friday’s (9/10) Countdown show, MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe, formerly with Newsweek, referred to the debunked story that was retracted by Newsweek in May 2005 which had incorrectly claimed that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down a toilet to intimidate Muslim prisoners. But Wolffe did not inform viewers that the story was untrue as he accused conservatives of a double standard for criticizing Newsweek’s inaccurate Koran desecration story from 2005 while not being aggressive enough in condemning Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn the Koran on September 11.
Wow, congratulations to the MRC for finding a droplet of water in an ocean and complaining that it’s wet.
Yes, as it turns out, the story was retracted by Newsweek after the unnamed official used by the magazine as the source changed his story. However, as we also learn from here, “accusations of Qur’an desecration as a part of U.S. interrogations at prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Guantánamo Bay had been made by a number of sources going back to 2002,” with about a dozen such accusations cited.
Besides, the real story here (which the MRC actually notes…shocking, I know) is that, given the uproar the last time a Quran desecration story appeared, the relative silence by conservatives on this was dangerously irresponsible (though, fortunately, the whole issue became moot when “Pastor” Terry Jones came down with an attack of sanity and decided not to do anything, though here is a story of a chronic offender on this who really is likely not to be restricted by anything except a jail cell…and kudos to the kid on the skateboard in this story.)
2) Also, here’s another alert for Sheryl Gay Stolberg, former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm, and everyone else worried about the “negative perception” generated by Michelle Obama (more hard-hitting Politico “journalism” from here).
And she didn’t even say “freedom fries”! Worse, I didn’t read about it from either Malcolm or Stolberg. I actually had to find out about this on my own!
You’re slipping, people!
Actually, I take that back on Malcolm; as it turns out – he did have something typically snark-filled to say about it here, including the following…
First Lady Michelle Obama, who has been unable to convince the Smoker-in-Chief to give up that dreadful habit, now has some health suggestions for other American families and for restaurant menus across the country.
Yeah, it sure is a shame when presidents have their “dreadful habit(s),” isn’t it?
3) Finally, I came across the following from Joel Stein of Time (one of the stupidest columns about Net Neutrality that I’ve ever read, and that’s saying something; more info is here)…
I like that everything is allowed to be on the Internet, which is like a planet-size bookstore with, for some reason, a continent-size section for pets doing stupid things. But I like that at a real bookstore, I can instantly tell the difference between works by actual historians and works by conspiracy theorists, since the real books are printed on good paper with pretty covers and the others are smudgy pamphlets. We need to bring those barriers of entry to the Internet, and speed is a key way to do it.
Senator Al Franken, at the Netroots Nation conference in late July, talked about a dystopian future without Net neutrality: “How long do you think it will take before the Fox News website loads five times faster than Daily Kos?” Hopefully, this will happen right away. Fox News should load 20 times faster than Daily Kos, because far more people read it. It’s better for society that millions of people get someplace a little faster while the relatively few Daily Kos readers wait a few seconds. This is why not all roads are the same width. And more people go to the Fox News site because it’s got tons of people reporting, balancing and fairing, whereas two of the contributing editors at Daily Kos are named DarkSyde and Angry Mouse.
Their names are also Steven Andrew and Kalli Joy Grey, but that’s not the main point, I know (also, according to this, the “relatively few” readers of Daily Kos include “thousands of diarists” and “millions of page views” every day – and this was in 2008; I should note that I found out everything in this paragraph through some truly easy Google searches).
I want to comment also on Stein’s bookstore analogy, which may be more apropos than he realizes (and I know from whence I speak on this, since I toiled briefly in such an establishment that, happily, went out of business long ago…it was a big conservative donor).
In a typical chain retail bookstore, you’ve got the mass market titles on display all over the place, since they will sell the most, obviously. And if the “self-help” and Edgar Cayce titles will sell more than the John Grishams and the Richard North Pattersons, well then, they get the center display table so it’s the first thing the customer sees after they shuffle in from Spencer’s, FYE, or whatever.
But suppose you get somebody like me who may be looking for “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard, and I need to go to the microfiche counter to order it. Should I have to be told “well, we have more bandwidth for the best sellers than we do for some dusty piece of sociological piffle like the book you want” (and that certainly doesn’t describe “The Hidden Persuaders,” by the way, written about the ad biz in the era of “Mad Men”)? And for that reason, I get told that they have no possible idea of when the book can be shipped.
I guess a scenario like this is just fine for Stein, but it certainly isn’t fine for me (Stein being a writer callow enough to concoct allegedly humorous columns about Asian Indians in America here, and here, where he said, “Most of what I know about poor people comes from watching ‘Good Times’”).
Oh, and let’s not forget this from Stein about our troops and Iraq……
After we’ve decided that we made a mistake, we don’t want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.
But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they’re following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff’s pet name for the House of Representatives.
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I’m tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.
Yes, but somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever click on a pop-up ad and, as a result, have my leg or another body part blown to bits, or suffer a concussive brain injury (idiot).
Update 9/11/10: Good for Jones for deciding to call it off – never should have even thought of it to begin with, but at least he did the right thing (here).
Seriously, I’d love to know how much “Astro Turf” money is being spent on this operation (here – and actually, I think we have our thoroughly unsurprising answer here).
Oh, and by the way, the guy wearing the head scarf, or whatever that is, is a guy named Kenny who is a Union carpenter working at Ground Zero (and as he tells us later, he most definitely is not a Muslim.)
(Also, as far as I’m concerned, this bunch of protesters might as well be teabaggers, and here is a doozy of an item about that bunch.)
1) Kudos to letter writer Rob Turbovsky of Holland, PA for writing a Letter to the Editor of the Bucks County Courier Times criticizing J.D. Mullane’s ridiculous blog (here).
Of course, it would have meant a lot more if the paper had printed it before Mullane went on vacation, forcing him to respond (problematic as to whether or not he’ll do that when he returns).
2) Also, Time’s Amy Sullivan reports the following about the “SCARY MUSLIM” rumors about President Obama (here)…
Where is this confusion coming from? I asked (Alan Cooperman of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life) who suggested this explanation: “Part of what’s going on here may be that there’s been a relative–especially compared to the previous president–absence of information from the president himself and from the White House about his personal religion and his practice of his personal faith. In the relative vacuum of information, suggestions from the president’s critics have been able to gain more currency and uncertainty is rising.”
In response, I give you the BS factory known as Marc Thiessen today (here)…
The poll on Obama’s religious affiliation probably would have been a one-day story had the White House not launched a surprisingly aggressive defense of the president’s Christian bona fides. The White House immediately put out a statement declaring “President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life.” We soon learned from White House officials that the president reads a daily devotional on his BlackBerry each morning and that he dialed three Christian pastors to pray with him on his birthday. The White House even made one of those pastors, Joel Hunter, available to the media to discuss Obama’s Christian journey.
Soo…the story is Obama’s fault because he didn’t say enough about his religion (probably because of the full plate of urgent issues left to him by his clueless predecessor…more on him shortly…that he thought he should devote his energy to instead), but it’s also Obama’s fault because of his “surprisingly aggressive defense.”
3) Next, we have another item I was unable to get to last week from John Feehery at The Hill (here, about the upcoming elections)…
That President Bush is making a comeback at the expense of President Obama in the 40 most vulnerable Democratic seats speaks volumes about where the collective head of the American people is now.
Of course, Feehery is choosing to ignore the very real possibility that those voters who allegedly support Dubya more than Obama in those 40 Democratic seats would have done so regardless of anything Obama did.
And as if it isn’t bad enough that a bought-and-paid-for GOP stooge like Feehery would say something like this, along comes someone a bit more legit like Howard Fineman of Newsweek (here)…
To answer the billboard question of a year ago — Do You Miss Him Yet? — the answer about Bush remains “no.” But it’s less emphatic than it was a few months ago.
I guess there’s a lot I could say in response, but I’ll merely link to this Media Matters post debunking yet again the “zombie lie” that a “Bush Bounce” is right around the corner.
The people ruling our discourse working for the initials-for-names news organizations just loves them a whole big bunch of GOP sugar daddies, people. And none bigger than Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History.
4) Finally, Joe Pitts continues to propagandize at The Daily Caller (here)…
Over the past nine weeks the House has been in session, Republicans have offered more than $120 billion in cuts to wasteful government programs. These cuts could have paid for extensions of unemployment compensation, COBRA health insurance assistance and state Medicaid assistance — and there would have been tens of billions of dollars left that could have gone toward reducing the deficit.
It’s really hilarious to read Pitts claim that he supports COBRA benefits considering that he voted against funding those benefits here.
Continuing…
All of these cuts were offered as part of the YouCut program, an effort to include the American people in the fight to cut government waste. Each week that Congress is in session, Republican Whip Eric Cantor hosts a poll on his website. The poll offers five different government programs that could be considered wasteful.
Participants can vote for the cut they support by voting online or sending a text message from their phone. The cut receiving the most votes is offered as a motion on the House floor and every Member has to decide whether they support the program.
What type of cuts have been winning polls so far?
…
The winning cut in week six aimed to stop taxpayer support for union activities. Some federal employees currently spend their entire workweek on union activity. Federal employees should be doing the business of the people, and union membership fees should be used to compensate workers for performing union organizing and lobbying. It’s estimated that in a single year $120 million is spent paying federal employees who are doing union work.
In response, the following should be noted from here (from a Fox site, surprisingly enough)…
Another program is described as “Taxpayer Subsidized Union Activities” which, if eliminated, would save about $120 million a year by not paying federal workers who spend their time on union activities. Unions already are at a disadvantage in dealing with the federal government because they are not permitted to strike. Having as officers individuals who are federal employees and know exactly what goes on in the workplace is an important effort to level the playing field.
…
The point, though, is not to challenge each of the programs selected for popular vote. It is probably easy to find, and describe, programs which might incur the wrath of the electorate and its budget paring. Ronald Reagan famously railed against a welfare queen – later found to be fictitious — as he argued against federal welfare programs.
And Think Progress tells us here that YouCut ended up leading the Repugs to suggest shutting down a successful jobs program.
Also, I believe the following should be noted (here)…
Given the Republican Party’s history of fiscal recklessness, it’s no surprise that Eric Cantor and his House colleagues want to outsource responsibility to the conservative activists that will traffic his web site. But their fuzzy math doesn’t work. Even as the GOP and its Tea Party base calls for a balanced budget, they want the Treasury-draining Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be made permanent.
Of course, a balanced budget could theoretically still be achieved if the GOP and its Tea Party storm troopers were willing to make draconian budget cuts to the $3.8 trillion federal budget proposed by President Obama. But these faux fiscal conservatives won’t make the choices. We know this, because they told us so.
A quick note on the basic math of the budget. President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 is forecast to produce a $1.3 trillion deficit (down from $1.6 trillion in 2010). National defense and Social Security each come in at $738 billion. Medicare totals $498 billion, while Medicaid and other health care services add $260 billion and $25 billion, respectively. Throw in the required $251 billion in required interest payments on the national debt, and those portions alone of Washington’s bill total over $2.5 trillion. Meanwhile, given that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure and more than half over the next decade, the Obama budget rightly calls for letting the Bush tax cuts expire for Americans earning over $250,000.
The Perspectives post tells us more about how those zany teabaggers, who are alleged to be budget hawks, have “taken the big ticket items off table when it comes to budget cuts.”
And “Republic” Party blowhard Pitts concludes with this…
Our debt isn’t a Republican problem or a Democrat problem.
In response, please click here to support Lois Herr, Pitts’ Dem opponent in the PA-16 congressional race.
1) This story in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer tells us the following…
Peter DeStefano says he’s just an “average Joe,” working voters at Wawas, diners, and beaches to get elected to the House.
But to Republican nominee Jon Runyan, the former Eagles tackle in a tough race to unseat Democratic Rep. John Adler, DeStefano is an irritant who could prove toxic.
The little-known DeStefano, a picture framer from Mount Laurel, is running as an independent candidate under the NJ Tea Party moniker in the Third Congressional District, which runs through Burlington and Ocean Counties and includes Cherry Hill in Camden County. The tag alone could draw votes away from Runyan.
After reviewing the 200-plus signatures on DeStefano’s nominating petitions and finding he had more than enough, Runyan’s campaign has continued to dig, looking for something to knock DeStefano off the ballot.
The campaign is considering a lawsuit alleging that those who signed may not have known that DeStefano was unaffiliated with a formal tea-party group, according to Runyan’s campaign consultant, Chris Russell.
Gee, I would call that a rather pointless distraction for a campaign that probably can use all the resources it can muster.
The Runyan campaign did uncover something a bit interesting, however, as the story tells us…
Marshall Spevak of Cherry Hill signed one of DeStefano’s petitions. Spevak lives just doors from Adler, and was active in Adler’s freshman House campaign in 2008. His father, Eric, has contributed to Adler campaigns and is an administrative law judge for the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Sounds like Runyan is alleging that DeStefano is trying to pull a “Jay Russell” as it turns out, based on this (i.e., a third-party candidate who has the potential to screw up an election…the last noteworthy item I heard about from the NJ-03 contest was this “taxing” matter concerning Runyan).
And this June Inquirer story tells us the following about the Runyan campaign (which, apparently, is trying to embrace some of Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich’s Contract on America)…
“It’s back to the future. I’m seeing this all over the country,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who keeps an eye on federal races. “Republicans are hoping it’s 1994 all over again for two reasons: They sense a Republican wave and just as in 1994, they have a third force in politics.”
…
“Things like term limits (supported by Runyan but not Adler) have a permanent appeal,” Sabato said. “In fact, it has more appeal today than in 1994 because we have 50 additional scandals, maybe 100.”
Of course, Sabato doesn’t take time to name those “50 additional scandals, maybe 100,” a typical tactic for someone who once said that the “Swift Boat” liars were telling the truth in 2008, along with claiming that it would be “a national disgrace” to continue “the Clinton/Bush dynasty” (in an effort to attack Hillary Clinton…I always thought that was an idiotic construct) and the Democrats are the “mommy” party while the Repugs are the “daddy” party (all here).
Getting back to DeStefano/Adler/Runyan, yesterday’s Inquirer story also tells us the following…
In addition to his unhappiness with rising fuel prices and a barely regulated mortgage market, DeStefano said, he opposed the war in Iraq, which he believes was “started on a rumor.” He also is against the war in Afghanistan, which he said was helping a corrupt regime. He supports the military, he said, but believes the United States should be taking care of domestic problems.
After the 2008 general election, DeStefano switched to the Democratic Party. But “it didn’t take me much longer to find out it was worse,” he said.
“As far as I’m concerned, they are both full of crap,” he said.
He doesn’t have kind words for local tea-party organizations, who have made it clear from the start that they did not sponsor his candidacy.
The groups endorsed Justin Murphy over Runyan in the Republican primary. But last week, the West Jersey Tea Party, which has members in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties, endorsed the former Eagle.
They’re “shills” for the Republicans, DeStefano said.
That statement about DeStefano definitely intrigues me, I should add, though he has no shot at winning the general election, unfortunately (and I wouldn’t mind if he posed enough of a threat to Adler to make him remember that Democrats are supposed to have spines).
2) Also, Joke Line concocted more puffery here today on the Kentucky Senate race…
Welcome to Campaign 2010. This is going to be a Republican year, perhaps a big one. The question of how big will be resolved in states like Kentucky, where mainstream Republican candidates were defeated in primaries by Tea Party sorts like Rand Paul, and the public will have to decide if the GOP is too loony to rule.
Conway, the other guy in the race, is almost an afterthought, but a solid test case. He’s wicked handsome, moderate and Kentucky’s attorney general, which is perhaps the best office a Democratic candidate can hold these days. He has spent the past three years doing real-world populist things like suing pharmaceutical companies and cracking down on crime and drug abuse, which is epidemic among eastern Kentucky’s impoverished hill-country youth. Such activities are far more acceptable than voting for bank bailouts and stimulus packages, the burden that most incumbent Democratic members of Congress carry. But Kentucky is a fervent Republican state these days — Barack Obama is about as popular there as Tennessee — and Conway’s staffers admit they wouldn’t have a chance if a standard-issue Republican had won the primary. Paul, by contrast, is a fat target, which became apparent in Conway’s Fancy Farm speech.
And at this point, I hope our media just keep repeating over and over that this will be a big Republican electoral year. I honestly do. That way, they’ll look even stupider than they already are when this country realizes that we’re talking about a political party more concerned about mosques in New York City (more on that shortly), “terror babies,” and a nonexistent rise in Arizona immigrant crime than they are about trying to solve our country’s genuine problems and acts accordingly on Election Day.
I really wish Klein had spent just a few more words describing how, as noted here, Paul is totally out to lunch on the issue of Kentucky’s drug problems, as noted here (marijuana is that state’s number one cash crop, which to me is an even stronger argument for decriminalization at the least).
3) Finally, I regret to return to the mosque issue once more, but based on this, I believe I must…
Dear American Taxpayer,
You are paying for the Ground Zero Mosque.
Chances are you’re in not in the 20% of people who support the blasphemous Ground Zero mega-mosque. But guess what? You are currently paying for the Imam who wants to build it to visit Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar to raise money for it.
The right-wing media is attacking Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s upcoming State Department trip to the Middle East to “discuss Muslim life in America and religious tolerance,” by falsely claiming he will use the trip as a “taxpayer-funded fundraising jaunt” to finance construction of his Islamic cultural center in New York City. In fact, the State Department has made clear that fundraising of any kind is prohibited during the trip, and Rauf has previously participated in this program, first under President Bush.
And when it comes to wingnuttiness on this issue, I think you have to go a long way to find something crazier than this.
8/18/10: You know, just go ahead and call me a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but given the trillions spent on Dubya’s idiotic tax cuts and his war of choice in Iraq, I have a hard time getting worked up over “16 large” for this story (here).
I hope to get back to posting tomorrow, but for now, I give you this (and if there’s any justice anywhere, Olbermann gets an Emmy or a Cable ACE Award someday for it)…
As noted here, yesterday marked the final “regular” (???) column in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Former Senator Man-On-Dog himself, Little Ricky Santorum. And, true to form, he conjured up all kinds of “Oooga Booga!” scenarios in response to the news that “a federal district court judge in… Boston ruled that the majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act for the one purpose forbidden by law: ‘to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves’.”
To which I reply, well…duuuuh! And of course, it is also appropriate that Santorum ended his stint at the Inky by taking another shot at Beantown, as he did here.
As noted here, “The (Boston) ruling relied on two arguments: that the law interfered with the rights of states guaranteed in the 10th Amendment, and that it violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a “tenther,” “states rights” argument was used to refute a position or belief most commonly held by Tea Party wingnuts?
Well anyway, I should note that, on the occasion of Santorum’s final Inquirer column, it really behooves us all to take a look back at some of his less stellar moments (I’m just providing excerpts here – if I included all of them, it would take two days to write this post)…
Said President Obama was “detached from the American experience” here…
Said Obama’s “charm offensive” was a bust in Muslim nations, though the numbers state otherwise (here)…
Blamed President Clinton for inflating the housing bubble here (seriously)…
Argued here that if a government-run public option had been included in health care reform, it would have meant fewer dollars for the life sciences industry in Philadelphia…
Defended Dutch filmmaker and politician Geert Wilders from Muslim attacks without noting that Wilders had drawn a correlation between the Koran and Mein Kampfhere…
Criticized Joe Biden for blocking a resolution he sponsored against Iran when he was senator, though Santorum voted against a resolution penalizing companies doing business with Iran (here)…
Asked (and answered), “But are any treatments with embryonic stem cells being used today? No,” and also asked/answered, “Are there any anticipated in the near future? No,” and he was wrong on both counts (here)…
Said that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was “replacing legitimate popular elections” here (uh, no – if that country rids itself of him, they’ll be able to do it without our help)
Criticized Obama for trying to control the manipulation of gas prices on the futures market here – meanwhile, he voted No on a bill to reduce our oil usage by 40 percent instead of 5 percent by 2025, voted Yes on terminating Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards for vehicles within 15 months, and voted Yes to defund renewable and solar energy…
Kept up the same theme as his signoff column about how “teh gay” is trying to destroy marriage here…
And just to let you know that I actually agreed with Santorum once in a great, great while, I did so in response to this column in which he criticized a PA voter for switching his party allegiance from Republican to Democratic in 2008 to vote for the “weaker” Dem presidential candidate in the primary election (Pennsylvania has “closed,” primaries, I should point out).
Finally, for what it’s worth, this was my reaction when I first heard that The Inquirer was going to give Santorum a “soap box” for his blather.
So there you have it, and with that, one “regular” right-wing ideologue columnist for philly.com bites the dust (don’t worry, though, since they still have at least three more between Kevin Ferris, Christine Flowers and John Yoo).
And I have no doubt that we’ll hear from Little Ricky again – I’m sure either The National Review or The Daily Caller is beckoning, probably among others.
Posted by doomsy 
