Multi Medium

That’s Nice, But It Kinda Misses The Point

The problem isn’t that some states don’t know how to make voting accessible to everybody, it’s that THEY DON’T WANT TO.

January 22nd, 2014 at 06:48pm Posted by Eli

How To Tell If You’re A Party Of Idiots

If you have to send your politicians to classes to teach them How Not To Say Stupid Shit, you might just be a party of idiots.

2 comments December 5th, 2013 at 12:03pm Posted by Eli

Deloitte CEO Destroys False Equivalence In Two Sentences

This is why all the both-sides-do-it/both-sides-are-equally-at-fault arguments are bullshit, and have always been bullshit:

While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P. did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90 seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”

Hilarious bonus quote:

“We have got to quit worrying about the next election, and start worrying about the country,” said [House Tea Party caucus member Randy] Neugebauer, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee and is a recipient of significant donations from Wall Street.

Riiiight.  I’d hate to see what it looks like when you guys aren’t worrying about the country.

October 10th, 2013 at 07:02am Posted by Eli

IOKIYAR In Action

Democratic opposition to domestic spying by a Republican president: 73%.  Democratic opposition to domestic spying by a Democratic president: 70%.

Republican opposition to domestic spying by a Republican president: 50%.  Republican opposition to domestic spying by a Democratic president: 77%.

Of course this refers only to Democratic and Republican voters.

August 17th, 2013 at 12:36pm Posted by Eli

So, To Sum Up…

Global warming and racism are hoaxes perpetrated to advance the liberal agenda, but voter fraud is TOTALLY REAL.

July 19th, 2013 at 07:08pm Posted by Eli

Fingers Crossed, But…

While it is certainly encouraging to think that the South is a ticking demographic timebomb poised to blow up the Republican Party once and for all, I would be a lot more excited if the Democrats had not shown themselves to be ready, willing and able to fill the political void that remained.  Much as I like the idea of the GOP relegated to the role of a crazy ineffectual fringe party, it’s not as exciting if the newly dominant Democrats are indistinguishable from, if not actually to the right of, the pre-crazy Republicans.

Maybe it’s an instinctual compulsion to maintain a constant ideological distance from their opponents that causes the Democrats to move rightward at the same pace as the Republicans, or maybe they’re just completely corrupt and cynical, and the most conservative positions they can get away with move to the right as the GOP does.

If the Democrats destroy the Republicans only to become them, it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best, as America will rapidly follow the GOP down the drain.

June 5th, 2013 at 10:42am Posted by Eli

Whither The NRA?

It’ll be interesting to see where the NRA comes down on California’s attempt to ban 3D gun printing.  I can’t think of any other issue where the goals of unfettered, unaccountable gun ownership and maximum gun manufacturer profits aren’t perfectly aligned, much less completely at odds.

May 8th, 2013 at 07:05am Posted by Eli

If Only

If the right “defended” marriage in the same way that they defend gun ownership, I would probably have two husbands and five wives by now.  And at least four of them would be cats.

April 17th, 2013 at 08:21pm Posted by Eli

A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds

I would love to see what the OMG OBAMA DIDN’T SAY TERRORISM BECAUSE HE LOVES TERRORISTS right-wing jackasses will say if it turns out that the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be one of their own, what with the bombings taking place at the site of the original Tea Party on Tax Day and all.  Probably complain about how they’re being persecuted and stereotyped.

April 15th, 2013 at 07:46pm Posted by Eli

Epic Fail Complete

The Democrats are now officially the party that’s trying to cut Social Security, and the Republicans are now the party that’s trying to protect it.  Nice work Mr. President, I didn’t even know it was possible to score an own-goal in eleventy-dimensional chess.

April 10th, 2013 at 07:11pm Posted by Eli

The Internet Is Not An Orange

Wow.  Just… wow.  Okay, admittedly Google’s counsel could have done a better job of explaining that internet advertising isn’t really all that different from traditional advertising, just with better and more dynamic targeting, but in all fairness he probably didn’t think he’d need to.  My condensed transcript for those of you who don’t have time for videos or Louie Gohmert:

Gohmert: “Isn’t it true that you sell your Gmail users’ data to your corporate customers so they can send ads to them?”

Salgado: “Well no.”

Gohmert: “So couldn’t you therefore sell the same kind of data to the government BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI?”

Salgado: “Wait… what?”

Gohmert: “HuffPo reporters are simpletons.”

Sensenbrenner: “My son is a HuffPo reporter.”

Gohmert: “Oh.  Mumble grumble mumble.”

And one direct quote because there is no way I can do it justice:

Salgado: “Sir, I think those are apples and oranges.  The disclosure of the identity-”

Gohmert: “Well, I’m not asking for a fruit comparison.”

Your Congress at work.

(Crossposted at MyFDL)

1 comment March 21st, 2013 at 07:44pm Posted by Eli

That’s All Well And Good, But…

Wouldn’t it be nice if more Republicans could have empathy for gay people without having to have a gay family member first?  Sure, it’s great that Rob Portman finally tapped into “the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and [his] belief that we are all children of God,” but he didn’t bother to have that conversation with himself until he had to think about his own kid not being able to get married.  As long as it’s someone else’s gay son or daughter, who cares, right?

March 15th, 2013 at 08:39pm Posted by Eli

So it Has Come To This

Our media landscape is now so thoroughly debased that Rupert Murdoch buying up the Tribune Company is apparently the best outcome we can hope for.

March 12th, 2013 at 07:44pm Posted by Eli

It All Depends On What Your Definition Of “Prominent” Is

Mr. Pierce spots a very simple difference between “Republicans” and pro-Marriage Equality “Prominent Republicans” – can you guess what it is?

P.S. Surely President Obama wouldn’t want to find himself to starboard of so many PROMINENT Republicans, right?

(h/t Teddy)

February 26th, 2013 at 08:23pm Posted by Eli

The Spots Look The Same To Me

What Mr. Pierce said.  The saner elements of the GOP may recognize that the party has an image problem, but they’ve conditioned their base to believe, expect and demand so much hateful madness that they can’t back away from it.

All they can do is talk about how they’re not really as crazy as all that and they’re going to rein in the loonies, and hope that that sounds enough like responsible maturity that normal people won’t be appalled by them anymore.

February 8th, 2013 at 07:28am Posted by Eli

Left & Right Are Not The Only Directions

There’s also up & down, and inside & outside (although they tend to correlate with each other pretty closely).  Which is why you can have a bipartisan consensus among the outsiders at the lower income levels that has absolutely zero influence on the bipartisan consensus among the elite insiders at the higher income levels.

Unfortunately, the 1% (or .1%, or .01%) are the ones who get to set policy, and they don’t have much interest in what the rest of us think, except insofar as they desire it to conform more closely with their own Beltway/millionaire worldview.

February 4th, 2013 at 06:10pm Posted by Eli

The Most Patient Man In The World

Harry Reid still hasn’t seen enough obstruction from Senate Republicans to support filibuster reform, saying, “The only way we’ll get rid of the filibuster is if it continues to be abused.”  He has either been sound asleep for the past four years, is the most trusting man alive, or he is simply and completely full of the brown stuff.

I believe that what’s going on here is that filibuster reform would actually make life more difficult for Reid and the rest of the Democratic caucus.  Their job isn’t to enact progressive economic laws that their corporate donors oppose, it’s to quietly prevent them while avoiding blame.  The continued existence of the filibuster makes this easy: They can all declare their undying support for financial reform, or the public option, or tax increases for the rich, and then let the Republicans do all the dirty work of blocking it.

But if there’s no filibuster and all the Democrats need is a simple majority which is easily attainable, Reid must engage in reverse whipping: Finding enough conservative Democrats from the Villain Rotation to vote against Progressive Bill X in pretend defiance of the party leadership.  Instead of just exposing one or two at a time to the wrath of their state’s Democratic voters, Reid could find himself forced to burn half his villain pool on every vote.

Worst case for Reid: Conservadems get primaried and replaced by progressives who refuse to join the Villain Rotation.  Best case for Reid: Conservadems get primaried and replaced by actual Republicans, making his job even easier than it is now.

(Cross-posted at MyFDL)

1 comment January 24th, 2013 at 09:57pm Posted by Eli

The Difference

After finally watching the hilariously bad strawmanathon of Atlas Shrugged: Part I, where corrupt CEOs, lobbyists and politicians conspire to make it harder for corporations to make obscene profits, it was really driven home that one of the biggest differences between the right and the left is a fundamental disagreement on who’s mooching and who’s producing.

January 21st, 2013 at 02:44pm Posted by Eli

Tea Party Continues To Be Totally Not Racist

As the saying goes, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

A T-shirt featuring Barack Obama dressed as a witch doctor — complete with a bone through the president’s nose — is proving to be somewhat popular at the South Carolina tea party convention in Myrtle Beach, according to the shirt’s creator.

Bob Cramer, a Myrtle Beach local, told Palmetto Public Record that his homemade airbrushed shirt is meant to be a comment about President Obama’s “takeover of medicine” through the Affordable Care Act. The shirt claims that Obama-the-medicine-man is “your new doctor, coming soon to a clinic near you!”

“Some people tell me it’s racist, but it’s not racist — it’s political,” Cramer said. “Matter of fact, that’s how I got invited here.”

Oh, absolutely.  I’m sure that if it were Hillarycare or Bidencare, we’d be seeing pictures of Hill or Joe as a witch doctor.  But one of the commenters has the best explanation of all as to why it’s not racist:

How in the world is this racist? If the same image (witch doctor type outfit, pierced nose, etc) were made of say, George Bush—or any white politician—it would be fine, right? To say you can’t depict Obama in a way that would be fine for any other person BECAUSE of his race is sorta’ racist itself, IMO.

So according to this logic, anything that could hypothetically be applied to a white person, no matter how nonsensically, not only can’t be considered racist, but exposes anyone who calls it racist as being the real racist.  It’s so stupid it’s brilliant!

January 14th, 2013 at 07:11am Posted by Eli

Stay Classy, Republicans!

I guess disaster victims are lazy moochers who should just get jobs too.  Or maybe they should have been smart enough to live someplace that didn’t get trashed by a hurricane.

January 2nd, 2013 at 06:51am Posted by Eli

A Partial List Of Things That “Pro-Life” Conservatives Support

…Based on the right’s passionate and indignant opposition to any and all policies that would curtail them:

• Deaths from gun violence.

• Deaths from war.

• Deaths from drone attacks.

• Deaths from torture and mistreatment of military detainees.

• Deaths by execution.

• Deaths from tainted food and poorly tested drugs.

• Deaths from accidents in mines, oil rigs, nuclear plants, or any other unsafe workplaces.

• Deaths from polluted air and water.

• Deaths from infrastructure collapses.

• Deaths from lack of health care.

• Deaths from poverty and starvation.

• Deaths from natural disasters.

• Deaths from abnormal pregnancies.

• Extinction of endangered species.

The right’s definition of “life” as fetuses and corporations is as narrow and senseless as their definition of “civility” as the absence of swear words.

(Cross-posted at MyFDL)

1 comment December 19th, 2012 at 11:27am Posted by Eli

A Mathematical Representation Of The Gun Debate

Day 1: No, it’s much to soon to talk about gun laws.

Day 2: No, still too soon.

Day 3: Nope, sorry.

…

Day n-1: Still too soon.

Day n: Shooting?  What shooting?  Why do we need to talk about gun laws all of a sudden?

December 14th, 2012 at 07:12pm Posted by Eli

Family Values

So, to sum up the family history of Sarah Palin, the darling of religious conservative “values voters”:

• Son Track gets divorced after being married for 18 months.  Baby was born six months after wedding.

• Track himself was born 8 months after Palin wedding.

• Daughter Bristol has a baby out of wedlock, lives across the country from the father.

They sound like some kind of immoral godless liberal stereotype, to be honest.  But hey, as long as you keep saying all the right things, you can have sex with children and sheep for all the Republican base cares.

December 14th, 2012 at 07:29am Posted by Eli

It All Depends On What The Meaning Of “Center-Right” Is…

Great article by Bruce Bartlett in the American Conservative about how the GOP lost its mind and, consequently, elections.  But I think he misses a connection.

At one point, Bartlett says this about Obama (which I agree with 100%):

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

And then, later on, he also says this:

It is now widely understood that the nation may be center-left after all, not center-right as conservatives thought.

This is probably true too, but the point that I think Bartlett should have made more explicit is that the problem is not that Republicans misjudged where the American people are on the political spectrum, so much as where the political spectrum is in the first place.  Even if America is a center-right country as Republicans love to say, the center-right is where Obama and the Democrats are, not where the Republicans are.  Even by their own assessment of the electorate, their political positioning is terrible – and it only makes sense if you define “center-right” as somewhere to the right of Dick Cheney.

So the good news is that between the GOP’s extremism and America’s demographic trends (which Bartlett also talks about), the Republicans may be dooming themselves to irrelevance for a long time to come.  Of course, the bad news is that most Democrats might as well be Republicans too.

November 29th, 2012 at 07:17am Posted by Eli

Sunday Mr. Deity Blogging

I think He might be making a point about conservatives who call themselves Christians, but it’s very subtle…

Seriously, this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time: How can anyone wear their “Christianity” on their sleeve while simultaneously rejecting the message of the Testament which puts the “Christ” in Christianity?

November 25th, 2012 at 12:19pm Posted by Eli

Yay, I Guess?

So yeah, the Democrats had a pretty good election on Tuesday: Electoral vote landslide for Obama, wins for progressives like Liz Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown and Alan Grayson, and losses for misogynistic Tea Party buffoons like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Allen West and Joe Walsh.  Better yet, as the minority and youth votes grow, it looks like these kinds of results could be the new normal.

But.

Isolated pockets of progressivism notwithstanding, today’s Democrats as a whole are still just as corporate-owned as the Republicans, they’re just subtle enough to frame their sellouts as “pragmatism” and “compromise”.  Worse yet, it looks like Obama and the Democrats are poised to Grandly Bargain away Social Security and Medicare, the crown jewels of the liberals and progressives who just swept them back into office.  So you’ll forgive me if I’m less than excited about Democrats retaining control of the White House and Senate when they’re committed to delivering Republican policy outcomes.

Demographics make the GOP irrelevant, Democrats make it unnecessary.

Cross-posted at FDL.

1 comment November 8th, 2012 at 08:03am Posted by Eli

Technically Not Hypocrisy

I mean, as long as Brownie is consistent in his support for slow and ineffectual responses to natural disasters, then who am I to criticize?

October 31st, 2012 at 07:19am Posted by Eli

Something To Look Forward To

Apparently Paul Ryan’s plan for Social Security is awfully similar to Pinochet’s, which didn’t end up working out so well.  That’s why it’s so important to re-elect Obama, because he’ll fight to keep Social Security intact.  Or not.

October 25th, 2012 at 11:56am Posted by Eli

The Romney Plan

As I understand it from last night’s debate, Mitt’s strategy to create jobs is to create jobs, and his strategy to balance the budget is to balance the budget.  It’s brilliant in its simplicity!

Now he just has to turn that genius to winning the election by winning the election.

October 17th, 2012 at 07:04am Posted by Eli

Tell Me Again About That Republican Culture Of Life

Apparently abortion is only okay if you wait until the fetus is old enough to be a rebellious pain in the ass.

I also like this right-wing lunatic’s attempt to draw parallels between liberalism and Islam, when fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity have such similar contempt for gays and women and absolute intolerance for all other beliefs.

October 9th, 2012 at 06:43am Posted by Eli