Sure Happy It’s Thursday Open Thread

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Next week is the shortest work week of the year (followed by the longest weekend) for anyone with a traditional job.

 

For people in retail sales it’s the beginning of the nightmare before Christmas. For others it’s just another week.

Some people will be traveling (with and without junk-touching) and others will be staying home. For some it will be a time for family and friends, for others a time of isolation and loneliness.

For me it will be time for lots of beer, turkey, football and beer. I’ll also be spending time with some people I wouldn’t have anything to do with if they weren’t my relatives.

What are you doing next week?

This is one of those open thread thingies.

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If you want the "happy ending" that's extra

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James Carville: “If Hillary gave up one of her balls…

…and gave it to Obama, they’d both have two.”

That’s what James Carville is supposed to have said at a breakfast meeting this morning.  (Why don’t I get to go to breakfast with James Carville?? )

But James is wrong.

Hillary has ovaries of kryptonite.

There’s more to it than that.  Stan Greenberg and Carville were discussing the Democrats’ poor messaging that lead to the midterm elections debacle.  Mostly, he’s correct:

Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg said the party’s massive election losses earlier this month are attributable to poor messaging that made Democrats and the White House look “out of touch.”

Greenberg, who was former President Clinton’s top pollster during the 1992 presidential race, criticized President Obama’s repeated use of the “car in the ditch” metaphor on the campaign trail, suggesting that it contributed to the impression that Democrats in Washington are tone deaf.

“A metaphor about a car in the ditch when people are in trouble and angry about the abuse of Wall Street, it’s just out of touch with what’s going on,” said Greenberg.

Speaking to reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, both Greenberg and Carville slammed the party’s election messaging, calling it a mistake to argue that Democratic policies were contributing to economic growth while the unemployment rate remained near 10 percent.

Carville said that while most messaging tends to just “go in one ear and out the other,” the Democratic message this past fall “went in one ear and right to the brain. What were they thinking?”

But then he kinda screws up (or he’s using reverse psychology):

Despite both strategists lambasting the Democratic approach in 2010, Carville said the presidential outlook for Obama in 2012 is a positive one.

“The deck he’s going to be playing with in 2012 is going to be fundamentally more favorable than the one he played with in 2010,” said Carville, arguing that young voters and minorities will come out in large numbers two years from now, making the face of the electorate significantly more Democratic.

“Republicans are forced to double down on older whites,” Carville said. “And longterm, that’s not a very productive place to be.”

What about all the people in the middle, especially working women, who just handed the Democrats their asses?  They’re the ones who stayed home.  You think they’re going to forget the four years where they were shut out of the system and when Obama treated us with contempt?

Wake up and smell the beignets, James.

Avoir le cafard

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Avoir le cafard – To have “The Bug.”

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Designboom (via Blue Lyon):

american kills’ by chilean-born new york based artist sebastian errazuriz is a public installation showcasing the suicide rates of US soldiers. after searching on official war sites on the internet, he accidentally found out that 2 times more american soldiers had died in 2009 by committing suicide than those killed during that same year in the war in iraq; an alarming comparison that errazuriz had personally never read or heard about before.

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I remember reading about a World War II veteran who described his military service as “Long periods of extreme boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.” I first heard about Le Cafard in a book of fiction about the French Foreign Legion.

According to the story men stationed in the deserts of colonial Algeria and Morocco would grow so depressed they would go mad and start shooting cockroaches, each other and themselves. Supposedly deaths from Le Cafard exceeded deaths from combat.

I didn’t believe it at first (it was fiction, after all) but I’ve since learned it is true. Avoir le cafard is now a French idiom referring to an extreme depression or sense of pointlessness.

As you can see from the picture above, Le Cafard is very real and very deadly.

Young men and women, far from home and under stress. Fear, loneliness and firearms.

Stop the madness. End the wars and bring our kids home.

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Thursday: Stating the Obvious

I was flipping through channels last night, trying very carefully to avoid broadcast news, when my low battery powered remote got stuck on PBS during the NewsHour.  There was Judy Woodruff interviewing Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin about their (yet another) budget deficit reduction plan.  This one is just another version of “stick it to the middle class” that has become the popular fad in Washington these days.  In this one, we get a sales tax!  Ooo, it’s like opening a new present every morning.

But what was funny about this interview was not their earnest but misguided assertion that if we, the naively childish middle class voters of America, would just understand what the problem is, we would thank them for bringing it to our attention before things got really bad.  It wasn’t the magical rearranging of the debt burden saddling us while the rich get away with murder with (yet another) income tax cut.  It’s not that these bipartisan groups to which no one WE know were invited to participate in keep coming up with new ways to screw us.  No, it was Domenici forgetting where he was.  Literally:

ALICE RIVLIN: We got a surplus. We both worked on that.

And we got the budget from a considerable deficit into surplus. And the way it was done was some tax increase and holding down spending. The caps on spending are the same idea that we had back in the ’90s. And it worked. It worked. Yes, it worked.

PETE DOMENICI: I want to say this one thing about this. And, as far as I’m concerned — tell me what I’m talking about, because I have forgotten.

JUDY WOODRUFF: About whether you believe that this will actually be solved, that the members of Congress will vote…

PETE DOMENICI: Oh. Yes. We were able to — we were able — we were able to do bipartisan work and get some big problems solved. [RD hides head in hands from embarrassment] This problem is many, many more times difficult for America. We’re going to be ruined as a nation and become a second-rate country if this debt is allowed to continue like it is.

So, we have a bigger, a more just reason to convince people. We convinced them then to work together. We ought to be able to now. It won’t be easy, but I believe leadership, including leadership from the president, is going to make this a war, a war on this debt. And, if we do that, we might win.

Well, I’m confident now.

(Ok, maybe I was too hasty.  Pete Domenici apparently suffers from a brain disorder that leads to Republicanism dementia.  My remarks might be misconstrued as a bit insensitive.  However, with that in mind, Domenici probably was not the best person to work on this committee or present it on TV.  It tends to make me not take this bipartisan task force very seriously)

By the way, Washington, the next time you want to set up (yet another) bipartisan group thingy to examine the deficit, I suggest you go through the formal route and have Congress do it so the people’s representatives, some of whom may be liberal Democrats (we’re not positive but some claim to lean that way) have some semblence of having the teeniest, tiniest input.  Otherwise, it doesn’t look legitimate to us and we will probably not “understand” and will be harder to “convince”.  JMHO

Paul Krugman weighs in on a national sales tax with some graphs to back it up but I’m with Atrios on this one.  (come to think of it, I’m in agreement with a lot of what Atrios wants like better urban planning and mass transit. If Obama hadn’t destroyed the left blogosphere, we might even be allies.  Go figure.)  The deficit hawks aren’t giving us any choices to reduce the deficit except on the backs of the middle class and I’m agin it until they do.

Accountability before Austerity

But I could think of at least one way to boost the nation’s economy in a big way that got taken down by Ben Nelson of Nebraska yesterday…

Join me below the fold…

Miss Cleo says “Don’t hold your breath”

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New York Birdcage Liner:

Reid to Push to Allow End of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

In a direct challenge to Republicans who support the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would push ahead with a military policy bill that includes language authorizing the Pentagon to repeal the ban.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, led his colleagues in blocking consideration of the bill in September in part because it allowed the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Mr. McCain has not changed his position, and Democrats had been considering stripping the provision to advance the legislation.

But the White House on Wednesday repeated President Obama’s commitment to repealing the ban. In a statement later in the day, Mr. Reid said he would bring the bill to the floor, with the repeal language in place. “We need to repeal this discriminatory policy so that any American who wants to defend our country can do so,” Mr. Reid said.

Gee Harry, why don’t you just ask President Obama TO DROP THE FUCKING DADT APPEAL?

It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that the Democrats don’t really want to repeal DADT, but they want the Republicans to take the blame.

I hope the Senate Republicans let just enough enough of their senators vote in favor of cloture to bring the DADT repeal to an upperdown floor vote.

Then the Democrats can’t posture anymore.

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Et tu, Brute?

(Soros is the man seated next to the stairs)

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The schadenfreude keeps on coming:

George Soros Tells Progressive Donors Obama Might Not Be The Best Investment

At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president.

The Hungarian-American financier was speaking to a small side gathering of donors who had convened in Washington D.C. for the annual gathering of the Democracy Alliance — a formal community of well-funded, progressive-minded individuals and activists.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is “used to fighting losing battles but doesn’t like to lose without fighting.”

“We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

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Okay, everyone repeat after me:

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“WE TOLD YOU SO!”

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I’m a beer drinker so I take my schadenfreude with a nice cold pilsner or a pale ale. But I was wondering if anyone knows the proper wine to serve while taking enjoyment from other people’s misery?

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She’s baaack!

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Nancy Pelosi survives Democratic revolt

Bruised but not beaten, Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday locked up the votes needed to transition from speaker to minority leader in the new Congress, topping Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), 150-43, on a secret ballot in a private Wednesday meeting of House Democrats.

The 43 votes against her — and the 68 cast in a losing effort to delay her election — reveal that a caucus bloodied by the loss of at least 61 seats and control of the House no longer bends to her will the way it once did.

But Pelosi was defiant as ever in her post-election press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Asked why she should remain Democratic leader after the election wipeout, Pelosi said: “Because I’m an effective leader, because we got the job done on health care and Wall Street reform and consumer protection. Because they know that I’m the person that can attract the resources both intellectual and otherwise to take us to victory — because I’ve done it before.”

Since it’s that time of year I’ll use a football analogy. If any NFL coach led his team to such a disastrous season as the Democrats just had he would be fired even if the team owner had to eat a multi-million dollar contract.

Nobody is cheering this news harder than the Republican party. That alone tells you all you need to know.

Nancy Pelousy lost my support four years ago when she said “Impeachment is off the table.” I won’t even go into her involvement with what went wrong in 2008.

So after the worst mid-term beating in modern history Obama is still in the White House, Dirty Harry Reid is still Senate Majority Leader, and Nancy Pelosi is demoted but still has a job. No personnel changes, no new blood in the Democratic leadership, no change of direction.

The Democratic party must have a death wish.

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Tina Fey repeats a zombie lie, PBS edits it out

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Last week Tina Fey was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In her acceptance speech she said this:

I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me.

And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women [applause before the joke kicks in] — except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape kit and stuff.

But for everybody else, it’s a win-win — unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years — whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us — unless you believe in evolution. You know — actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.

All kidding aside, I’m so proud to represent American humor, I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to make my home in the ‘not real’ America. And I am most proud that during trying times, like an orange [terror] alert, a bad economy or a contentious election, that we as a nation retain our sense of humor.

Tina Fey repeated the zombie lie about how Sarah Palin supposedly wanted sexual assault victims to pay for their own rape kits.  As you can see from the video above that portion of Fey’s acceptance speech was edited out by PBS, along with a couple other slams at Palin and conservative women.

Rachel Larimore at Slate:

What’s a “Liberal” Again?

President Obama is considered a “liberal” Democrat in denial by the Village. If you ask Obama about his “shellacking” (can I take the time to point out how lame that word is and how sick I am of hearing it?) two weeks ago he will say that it was a messaging problem. While he was toiling away with legislation trying to help us ingrates he just didn’t have the time to go out and say how all of it was going to benefit our ungrateful behinds so we punished him at the voting booth for not chatting with us enough.

Hellooo? Paycheck Fairness Bill? Anyone??

For some peculiar reason, the news that there will be a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Bill today has somehow slipped right under the radar.  How could that be??  Where is NOW?  This issue gets second billing on their front page.

Did anyone really buy that crap the Democrats were floating about Lilly Ledbetter?  I’m not saying it’s not an important bill but it’s sort of like the People’s Front of Judea fighting for a man’s right to have babies even though he ” ‘asn’t got a ‘oomb’ “.  Come to think of it, if men wanted to have babies, that bill would probably get passed first.

C’mon people.  Who’s really going to go to HR and ask to see the salaries of everyone in the department?  It’s like branding your forehead with a giant “L”.  HR is there to serve management, not troublemaking upstarts.  And it’s only after you have the information that you know whether there’s a suit worth pursuing.

In any case, the bill is supposed to fall 60 votes short in the Senate.  Are you frickin’ kidding me??  There are a bunch of lame ducks in the Senate.  If they can’t take a stand for women and do something right now, when can we ever expect such a thing?  And this would be a great boost to the economy that wouldn’t cost the government a cent.  Yeah, actually pay women what they’re worth so they can go and buy stuff.  What we really need for the economy to improve is for wages to increase and we’re half the fricking country.  It’s a no-brainer guys.  Even Republican women will love you for it.  You don’t get better political cover than this.

So, what gives?  Why is the concept of Paycheck Fairness, getting paid the same wages for the same work, regardless of your gender, meeting so much resistance in the 21st century?   If there was only one regulation worth passing on business this session, this bill would be it.

And we hear- nothing.