South Carolina

“She isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the President’s wife.”-Newt Gingrich

South Carolina

I'm going to post one more video today and then I'll stop (for now). There was a lot going on over the weekend and I was out of town (and effectively AFK) for most of it, so today I've been doing some catch up. Unfortunately, I missed the debate last night, but it might be just as well -- from what I've seen today, it was pretty disgusting.

You know, I used to be way more rah-rah Democratic party than I am these days. More and more, I'm starting to think of myself as post-partisan. I've got a great Republican county commissioner who I'll be very sorry to lose in this year's redistricting. I admire the work of some Republicans, and I agree with many people that the extremists on the left can be just as deranged as extremists on the right.

But there is one thing that I just cannot do in this election cycle, and that is like any of the Republican candidates. They are assholes, sounding the same dog whistles that became very tiresome many years ago. You can't claim to have a big tent when you pull this kind of bullshit. And the willful obtuseness is pretty fucking annoying, too.

Poor people are some of the "hardest working people in the country." Thanks for saying that, Chris. Bravo. And shame on the willfully ignorant Republicans who are pretending that poor people are the problem.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Take a deep breath!

Apparently Bono spoke too soon...

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

Here are a few links responding to the day's news:

House GOP Defeat of Bailout Over 'Partisan Remarks' Is Worst Fit of Pique Since Gingrich Shut Down Government Over Clinton 'Snub'

Shorter House GOP: We killed the bailout bill because Pelosi hurt our feelings

Who Are America’s Worst Politicians Today? All Of Them!

Krugman: OK, we are a banana republic

Barney Frank responds

CNN's Ed Henry: John McCain failed

McCain has another "McCain Moment"

That’s Rich

Which John McCain?

And here's a quick question from me: Whatever happened to "Country First?" The stock market has set new records in plummeting and the House members have pretty much all split town -- and they won't be back until Thursday?!?!? WTF? What the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime? What do they think the market is going to do for the next few days?!? Did they even bother looking at what this is doing to the world's markets before they hightailed it out of town?

Uh, would I be speaking for most of the country if I suggested that they just not bother coming back?* With wankers like these, who needs Herbert Hoover?

-----

Oh, and ps! Michael Bérubé is back, and he's ready to place the blame!

Also, have you checked out the Tennessee's Progressive Blog Roundup this week?

*If anyone sees Zach Wamp skulking or slithering about town this week, please smack him upside the head for the rest of us!

Video catchup!

While we here at Chez 10K have been distracted by the TV (for weeks, really -- first by the Olympics and then by the Democratic and Republican conventions, respectively), the creative among us have been churning out the videos. Here's a sampling:

Worst AG Ever?

The Justice Department is horribly demoralized, we apparently haven't yet plumbed the depths of the United States attorney scandal, and now even Newt Gingrich thinks Gonzales needs to go.

Will Alberto make it through the week?

White House 2008: Non-evangelicals need not apply

Whoops. Just kidding.

Well, someone did actually make the suggestion, but the person proposing such a ridiculous idea was none other than the deranged James Dobson, who is famous for encouraging parents to beat their children to tears and then stop, unless the children cry too much, in which case they should be beaten some more.

Why anyone takes this medieval throwback at all seriously is a mystery. Check out these other examples of "insight" from Dobson:

"[P]ain is a marvelous purifier. . . It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely." (from Dobson's Dare to Discipline, pages 6-7)

"If children cry for longer than five minutes, the child is merely complaining...I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears." (from Dobson's "Complete Marriage and Family Reference Guide")

"I strongly recommend that parents of strong-willed and rebellious females, especially, quietly keep track of the particulars of their daughters' menstrual cycles." (from Dobson's "Challenges In The Family Years: Understanding Early Adolescents")

Yikes! Is it any wonder, then, that Dobson's favorite 2008 candidate is the ethically challenged, thrice-married, admitted philanderer, Newt Gingrich? What a shining model of evangelical Christianity!

Once In a Lifetime

Salon.com published an interesting piece today by Gary Kamiya, titled How Bush helped the GOP commit suicide, which is largely based on the results of a long-term study by the Pew Research Center which shows Americans are turning away from the Republican party (and, though, not necessarily turning to the Democratic party instead).

The Iraq War, regressive taxation, Enron, Katrina, and scandal after scandal after scandal -- there are many reasons to blame Bush, Cheney and Rove for recent GOP tribulations, but there are also structural issues at work.

The Republican party as long relied on intolerant right-wing Christians to turn out their vote, without giving that crucial base much in return. It was easy for the GOP to put off this group by blaming the evil liberals for their own lack of action on abortion and "family values" issues back when the Democrats still had some power in DC, but once Bush and Republicans took over all three branches of government, they didn't have that excuse anymore. And what we saw was that the real problem was a lack of support for the Republican base's extreme positions on those issues. No one wants to live in a world of James Dobson's making -- probabaly not even James Dobson, if he was really being honest about it. Or Jerry Falwell, or Ted Haggard, or any of the rest of the flabby, white men who claim moral superiority over the rest of us. These are people who live in the shattered remains of glass houses with their third wives and secret lovers and offshore bank accounts while they preach conservative values to the rest of us.

In the meantime, the rest of us go about life. And the rest of us are, by and large, good people. We're Democrats and Republicans, Christians and non-Christians. And we're starting to figure some of this stuff out. Just because George Bush mumbles something about Jesus once in a while doesn't mean that he's a good Christian man, or that the Republican agenda is a Christian agenda. But we're not there yet, as demostrated by this disturbing tidbit in Kamiya's article:

The survey does not paint a uniformly flattering picture of America. A scary 43 percent of Americans think torture can often or sometimes be justified -- perhaps a tribute to the work of "24" creator and Rush Limbaugh pal Joel Surnow. In a singularly telling finding, 45 percent of those who identified themselves as liberal Democrats said torture was never justified, compared to 18 percent of conservative Republicans. These contrasting responses should be deeply troubling to traditional conservatives; they show how badly their movement has degenerated under Gingrich and Bush. When did being a conservative start meaning signing off on torture? Isn't there a ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" in the Eighth Amendment of some old document drawn up by some geezers in powdered wigs that conservatives are supposed to care passionately about? And what would Jesus think about torture? Apparently being a conservative no longer means believing in a transcendental morality.

Torture, people? Really? Have you seriously thought about this, read about it, prayed about it, discussed it with your mom and your preacher and your philosophy prof and your kids and decided, yeah, torture -- that's what we need? I don't think so. I think y'all have been letting Karl Rove get to you a little bit too much. I suspect if you really think about this, America, you'll realize that torture is not a place a Great Nation goes. We're better than that. We don't have to go there.

We might be stuck with this twisted, immoral administration for another 665 days (at most), but we don't have to sling ourselves down there in the gutter with them. Let's not go there, OK?

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god! ...what have I done?

Uncomfortable Republicans

It must be tough to be a hard-core Republican these days. They've been forced into some very uncomfortable contortions as they try to justify a pardon for Libby when their ferocious attempt to take down a president is still a very recent memory. And, of course, their field for 2008 isn't looking all that hot at the moment, and what they've got waiting in the wings is even worse.

How hard can it be for the GOP to find a legitimate, serious presidential contender who's not an adulturer, let alone one who's a one-woman man (be honest -- is Mitt really a serious candidate?)? Even their supposed savior, Fred Dalton Thompson, has a divorce under his belt, along with the clichéd much, much younger second wife.

Family values, we hardly knew ye!