Stories to Watch: 10/7/11

Last time I checked, it was 82 degrees out. Eighty-freakin'-two. I have to grill burgers. I have no choice. Now here's the news...


It's come to this; Rick Perry has an ad out attacking Mitt Romney for being concerned about the environment. Perry's clearly going for the asshole vote -- i.e., those people who buy the least fuel efficient vehicles they can find, just to piss Al Gore off.


Speaking of Mittens, he made a foreign policy speech to day that was a hopeless mess of inane and paranoid nonsense.


Steve Benen takes on GOP economic flateartherism; "In the GOP worldview, the economy will improve when hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers lose their jobs. That may sound ridiculous -- and it is -- but it's also a central tenet to the Republican employment policy. Remember what House Speaker John Boehner said earlier this year, told that his budget plan would force hundreds of thousands of government employees into unemployment? 'So be it.'"


Also from Benen; You may have heard that Harry Reid invoked the "nuclear option." That's only true if you completely redefine what "nuclear option" means.


The White House responds to Eric Cantor's assertion that Occupy Wall Street is a "mob," calling it "hypocrisy unbound." To fully understand Cantor's argument, see my handy infographic.


Good news for President Obama; the birthers are still out there, making the right look like a group of idiots and mental patients.


The Obama administration takes Alabama to court, seeking to overturn their insane anti-immigrant law.


Finally, the return of the glitter protest.

Related articles

• Cantor worried about #OccupyWallStreet protesters. He should be. (americablog.com)
• Eric Cantor Says He's 'Worried' About The Occupied Wall Street 'Mobs' (mediaite.com)
• The media asks: Why oh why won't Obama compromise with the Republicans? (americablog.com)
• Populism And The Shift In Political Debate (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Stories to Watch: 9/7/11

Big GOP debate tonight. I, for one, plan to skip it. For one, it's at the Reagan Library. The last debate there turned into a macabre contest to see who could fit in the dead man's clothes. Expect "I'm Reagan! No, I'm Reagan!"

For another; all the candidates have basically been in a competition to see who can be the most like the GOP congress. So you know what they're going to say; tax cuts, regulation, "job creators," Jesus, wank, wank, wank. I could practically write the transcript right now.

I'll read about it tomorrow, so I don't have to suffer through it. Now here's the news...


Karl Rove thinks Rick Perry's biggest problem will be the self-inflicted wound caused by his own idiotic book. His views on Social Security, for example, are "toxic in a general election environment and they are also toxic in a Republican primary."


In way-local news, Wisconsin State Rep. Mark Pocan announces he'll be running for the congressional seat Tammy Baldwin will leave open to run for the US Senate. Liberal as all get out and strongly supported by labor, he'll probably win it in a walk.


Al Gore's not real happy with President Obama right now. He shouldn't be. And neither should you. Gore writes of the president's abandonment of EPA guidelines for smog, "Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution -- even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology."


The Union of Concerned Scientists agrees with Gore -- Obama's move was boneheaded. "This delay is shocking," says UCS Scientific Integrity Program Director Francesca Grifo. "President Obama's decision will leave us with a rule that flouts the Clean Air Act and ignores science. They've allowed politics to trump science at the expense of the American people's health."


Greg Sargent reveals one reason why the right plays the victim card so often. The short version is that the base is gullible, thin-skinned, and easily spooked -- which translates into a fundraising bonanza every time someone cooks up some new and imaginary offense, plot, or threat. The long version is even worse.


Erick-Erick is frustrated with Sarah Palin's coquettery. I'll bet he'll even take her poster out of his locker at CNN.


Harry Reid plans to put a clean disaster relief bill up for a vote and dare Senate Republicans to join Eric Cantor in holding Irene victims hostage.


Rep. Allen West continues to be a hateful jackass.


Finally, the GOP will not rebut the president's jobs speech. "The Republicans' refusal to respond to the president's proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people," says Nancy Pelosi.

Related articles

• The Caucus: Republican Debate: Five Things to Watch (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Al Gore Just Took A Big Shot At Obama (businessinsider.com)
• GOP Already Blasting Obama's Jobs Speech (abcnews.go.com)
• Crazy Georgian GOP Rep. latest to boycott Obama's jobs speech (americablog.com)

News Roundup for 6/15/11

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, all-American boob

-Headline of the day-
"Rorhabacher: Iraqis 'Just Aren't Grateful For What We've Done.'"

Danged ingrates. We make up a story to justify blowing the living shit out of their country, kill countless people, and what thanks do we get? Zip. It's an outrage, I tells ya...

See, all Rep. Dana Rohrabacher wanted from Iraqis was a little recognition -- and a whole lot of dough. We've been blowing up the place for eight years now and Dana wanted to know when Iraqis were going to pay us back for all the ammo and rebuilding and stuff.

So he went to Iraq to ask the Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki just that; when are you guys gonna fork over for all we've done for you?

Well, you'd think that Rohrabacher had said something insane, from the way they acted. They told him and a bunch of other Republican congress critters to get the fuck out. No, really. They threw them out of the country -- which we won in a war fair and square.

"We spent a trillion dollars trying to free those people from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and help them build a more democratic society," he said. "Yet now it seems there is no gratitude on the part of the people who now are in charge of the Iraqi government... They just aren't grateful for what we've done... American people gave their lives, their children, and we expended billions of dollars, which now we're -- is hurting our economy." Here we are throwing lives and money and bullets at this country and what do we get out of the deal? Nothin'.

It's almost as if the whole thing was a big waste of time and money and lives, just like all those hippies said it would be at the beginning.

Damned reality. (ThinkProgress, with video)


-It's just a game...-
A true-life tale of the greatest existential crisis imaginable.


We are a cruel people... (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)


-Bonus HotD-
"Al Gore praises Romney on climate."

And thus was Mittens doomed. (Politico)

Gore Compares Offshore Drilling to Iraq

clipped from www.politico.com In a surprise appearance at Netroots Nation — which apparently was the worst-kept secret in Austin, Texas — former Vice President Al Gore followed up a speech by Nancy Pelosi by laying out a narrative on climate change and the energy crisis that seems ready-made for the Obama campaign to download. “The defenders of the status quo are the ones who have dug us into this hole,” he said, commenting that Americans have been “so often fooled into finding a remedy for a problem" that has nothing to do with the problem at hand — pointing to the invasion of Iraq when America was attacked by terrorists in Afghanistan as an example. “The engines of distraction and the great concentrated power of communication that you’ve seen turned on this issue or that issue is already hard at work," he says. "They will say we can’t switch away from oil."

Holy crap, has Gore been reading my blog?

Griper Blade: On the Nobel Peace Prize and the Buggy Whip Industry

It was a bad day for climate change deniers worldwide yesterday, when former Vice President Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri.

According to the Norwegian Aftenposten, "Pachauri said the actual costs of mitigating climate change aren't as high as many might think, especially if they're taken during the next seven years before the consequences of global warming become irreversible. Nor, he said, do emissions control measure need to halt economic growth."

Pachuari was countering a climate change skeptic argument -- one shared by the Bush administration -- that reducing carbon emissions would be bad for economies. It's hard to see the reasoning here. You develop new technologies and new industries and that's supposed to hurt business? Look at the computer boom -- how was suddenly doing everything differently bad for the economy? Even breweries are computerized now. These aren't the concerns voiced by people thinking about the future, they're the concerns of those invested in the status quo. It's the argument of the buggy whip industry against horseless carriages...

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