Category: Politics

Time to remedy that. I’m swamped with classwork & haven’t time for anything original right now. And Digby, as usual, hits the nail on the head. The day Ann Coulter makes the cover of Time magazine as anything other than an object of derision, is a day to worry.

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn’t. For instance, he doesn’t say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn’t say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn’t say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn’t put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn’t, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it’s a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.

James Wolcott is hilarious today. Here’s an except, but go read the whole thing, especially if you’re in the mood for a good snarky laugh to help cheer you up after filing your taxes:

Limbaugh seemed to be implying at the top of his voice that blowjobs are an integral part of the liberal agenda, an argument which he may want to rethink. The popularity of blowjobs is difficult to metric but undeniable; they cause little harm and zero unwanted pregnancies. If the plentitude of blowjobs is part of the Clinton legacy, millions owe the former president a debt of gratitude and an annual pilgrimage to the Clinton Memorial Library in Arkansas.

Yet, like so many products and pleasures, blowjobs aren’t evenly distributed in society. It’s a renewable natural resource not everyone gets to enjoy, and I was struck by the vehement tone of Limbaugh’s tirade. He sounded bitter. I’ve seen this rancor inflict so many middle-aged men. Reading about all the oral sex young people are presumably having, they feel envious and resentful.

But still, better than nothing I suppose.

U.S. intelligence on Iraq was “dead wrong,” dealing a blow to American credibility that will take years to undo, and spymasters still know disturbingly little about nuclear programs in countries like Iran and North Korea, a presidential commission reported on Thursday.

The commission’s bluntly written report, based on more than a year of investigations, offered a damning assessment of the intelligence that President Bush used to launch the Iraq war two years ago and warned that flaws are still all too common throughout spy agencies.

“We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” the commissioners wrote.

I was too young during the Vietnam War to understand who Robert McNamara was. I’ve learned more about him over the past several years (with a little help from The Fog of War and a few other good sources on Vietnam).

But nominating Wolfowitz to head the World Bank? It’s an insult to the World Bank and the world community. In other words, just what you would expect from BushCo.

Daniel Muntz takes a long time to get there, but he makes a really good point over at Ezra Klein’s blog today.

In short:

It’s not about whether we should be choosing big versus small government. It’s about good government versus bad government.

And by that, I mean we should not be fixated on things like how many governemnt agencies there are, or whether Cato thinks we’re doing a good job. Rather, we should consider whether the government is helping American citizens. If so, then it should keep on doing what it’s doing. If not, then it’s time for change.

Good stuff. I hope the meme spreads.

When Republicans can lie and lie and nobody seems to ever actually call them on it …. heck, even so-called “reporters” can blatantly lie and nobody seems to care …. when it’s OK to call even former US Presidents traitors because they don’t agree with you …. when things that would have been a major scandal in the past are glossed over with hardly a peep in the press … what on earth can one small blog do to make a difference?