The best government that money can buy

This makes me ill: TEAM OBAMA BEGINS PLANNING $1 BILLION REELECTION CAMPAIGN “Bracing for a half-billion-dollar onslaught of outside GOP cash in 2012, President Obama’s advisers are quietly working to bring back together the major donor base that produced a record-breaking fundraising haul in his first run for president. In the past few months, Democratic [...]

Podcast of the day: Witness- the birth of Medicare

It’s funny that the BBC frequently does American history better than, well, Americans. Recently, the BBC4 program, Witness, did a podcast on the Great Society and the birth of Medicare. What I found interesting is that although LBJ was the president to sign the bill into law, the concept of Medicare was not a new [...]

Freaky Freitag News-n-stuff

It’s Friday the Fourteenth, and you know what that means! Football playoffs this weekend!!! Here’s that “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights in action: DOJ Files DOMA Defense in First Circuit Cases Today, the Department of Justice filed its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [...]

Beating a dead horse

  Gallup: Most Doubt Political Rhetoric a Major Factor in Ariz. Shootings A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds Americans dubious that the heated language used in politics today was a major factor that influenced the alleged gunman in last week’s shootings in Tucson, Ariz. Twenty percent say such rhetoric was a major factor in the [...]

Thursday: Obama Calls For More Civility In Politics?

Or so the NYTimes says based on its coverage of the Tucson memorial service where he is reported to have said: “Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.” Ok, sounds good. Why don’t we let Obama and his lackeys go first and STOP [...]

Thursday wake-up and smell the coffee

There’s not a lot of news today unless you want to discuss events in Arizona. Let’s start with this not-cheerful news: 2010 home foreclosures top 1 million for first time Banks seized more than a million U.S. homes in one year for the first time last year, despite a slowdown in the last few months [...]

Football vs. Politics

I was ruminating on some of the comments we typically get when we don’t join in the latest Palinpalooza Wankfestivus. Then a football analogy occurred to me. Both football and politics are popular spectator sports. The actual players make lots of money and have little in common with their loyal fans. They both use violent [...]

Offensive and inappropriate open thread

It occurred to me that I might have missed angering and offending a few people this week. If you’re one of them, this post’s for you. Julian Assange was in court this week but we didn’t talk about it because somebody used up all the pixels. IBS. (I blame Sarah) Did we miss anything else? [...]

Tucson Memorial Service. Live Blogging begins at 8pm Eastern

The victims were: U.S. District Judge John Roll, 63. Gabe Zimmerman, 30, Giffords’ director of community outreach. Dorwin Stoddard, 76, a pastor at Mountain Ave. Church of Christ. Christina Greene, 9, a student at Mesa Verde Elementary. Dorthy Murray, 76. Phyllis Scheck, 79. This post is for the discussion of the service. Tucson memorial service [...]

Do you think Steve Benen might be a tad biased?

Seriously: HALF-TERM GOVERNOR BREAKS HER SILENCE…. As tempted as I am to simply ignore former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) latest statement, I suppose there’s no point in pretending it’s not of some interest to the political world this morning. Palin has been unusually quiet since Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, and as interest in the [...]