Slouching Towards Oblivion

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Pick 'Em

When it comes to policy regarding the US Economy, what we hear over and over from "conservatives" is that the Gubmint shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers.  And yet, here's a nearly unanimous GOP saying they'll continue subsidizing fossil fuels at a rate of 6-1 over alternative fuels.  And they'll do it in spite of what their pets over at DoD ask for every time they get a chance.

From Wonkette:
We remember a time when if “the generals” wanted solid-gold ballwashers, they got solid-gold ballwashers! But now, it seems, the Republican members of the House are a little more frugal. Oh, not for the important stuff, like building East Coast Star Wars installations that the Pentagon doesn’t want — no, that they will get. But for stupid stuff, like biofuels to power their infernal machines, and this:
The Conaway amendment included in the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4310) was meant to limit the Defense Department’s participation in an interagency agreement with the departments of Energy and Agriculture to spend $510 million to construct biorefineries capable of producing “drop-in” biofuels for the use by the Navy in its ships and jets, according to a summary.
Seems like the whole world is waiting for us lead on this shit, and it looks like we're just standing around with our dicks in our hands, wishing it was 1965 again so we didn't have to worry so much about all this complicated stuff.

More from The Burrill Report.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

And Now This Other

The Fail Parade continues.  This time, "conservatives" are using the power of the gubmint to block the construction of a house of worship.
Construction of a suburban Nashville, Tenn., mosque that was supposed to have been completed in 2010 has been halted and could be stopped for good after Chancellor Robert Corlew ruled Tuesday that the public wasn't given the proper notice two years ago at a meeting to approve the site plan.
Technically, it means the Rutherford County Planning Commission could still approve the site near the city of Murfreesboro, but its chances of completion are diminished.
I guess freedom of religion is important as long as the religion in question is Politically Correct.

Lyin' sacks of shit.

And Now This

You know without thinking that motherhood is one of the absolutes when it comes to what "conservatives" are always yammerin' about - but of course they absolutely refuse to give any new mom any kind of break or some small thing to help her and the baby and the rest of her family handle the disruption.



One more example of how "conservatives" are a bunch of lying sacks of shit.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Support The Troops

Gosh - when you send people to fight 2 wars over 10 or 12 years, and they have to go thru 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 deployments of 15 - 30 months at a time, some of them will need healthcare for a very long time after they get back, and some of them will need an ever-increasing level of care because their injuries turn out to be progressive or occult or degenerative in nature.
USA Today - A staggering 45% of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21% who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the Associated Press.
What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea just two.
This seems to come as no big surprise to lot of us - you know, the ones who actually think about shit.

But one of the things I probably should've seen coming and didn't was that now the Anti-Entitlements crowd is pissin' and moanin' about "veterans gaming the system".  Well, I'm gonna go with my first reaction on this one: Fuck you. OK, so yeah - some of that's gonna happen.  Big fuckin' deal.  You're the bunch of posturing chickenhawks who wanted all this war shit in the first place; you guys are always screechin' about fallen heroes; and you're the pricks who're always posting all that maudlin shit about what we all owe to the soldiers - well now it's time to pony up, cupcake.  And where are you?  You're nowhere.  You're hiding behind the cutesy little magnetic ribbons on your SUV.  You're pretending to care about what happens to these men and women by spending a good 15 seconds every few days posting some stupidly drippy bumper-sticker sentiment on your facebook page.  But you're out now - it's just too obvious that by balking at the real cost of your war-mongering, you reveal for all to see that you care more about your ideology than you do about the people you claim make this country great.

I'll say it again in case you missed it:  fuck you.

Rightspeak

A good short piece from Krugman at NYT - lifted in its entirety.


May 26, 2012, 12:11 PMThe New Political Correctness
Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top — but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.
Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.
Thus, even talking about “the wealthy” brings angry denunciations; we’re supposed to call them “job creators”. Even talking about inequality is “class warfare”.
And then there’s the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about “immigration and ethnicity” or “environmental history” becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, he’ll name his new course “US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans.” That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.
Actually, this reminds me of an essay I read a long time ago about Soviet science fiction. The author — if anyone remembers where this came from — noted that most science fiction is about one of two thoughts: “if only”, or “if this goes on”. Both were subversive, from the Soviet point of view: the first implied that things could be better, the second that there was something wrong with the way things are. So stories had to be written about “if only this goes on”, extolling the wonders of being wonderful Soviets.
And now that’s happening in America.

A Cost Of Freedom

The rubes love chanting "freedom ain't free".  It's one of those useful and catchy phrases that can make it sound like they have the high ground - that they have some deeper understanding of a complex issue, when in fact simply by uttering the words and then claiming to win the argument because it takes the other side a lot longer to articulate a coherent position shows a level of ignorance that depresses the shit outa me.

That kind of opening paragraph is usually instigated by something having to do with National Security, but this time it's all about a little kid in Ohio.
Ohio boy, 3, shoots self in head
Tuesday May 29, 2012 12:30 AM
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio (AP) — A 3-year-old boy is in critical condition after shooting himself in the head.
WBNS-TV reports (http://bit.ly/KBZKiC ) that the shooting happened shortly before 6:30 p.m. Monday at a house northwest of Mount Vernon. The boy's grandfather, parents and two younger siblings were at home when it happened.
The station says that family members say the gun was sitting on top of a television.
Knox County Sheriff's Capt. David Shaffer says a firearm was recovered from the house. He says the shooting is an "unfortunate accident."
The incident is being investigated.
Enjoy your little slice of freedom at the expense of your kids, you stupid fucking rednecks.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Maybe Someday

...they'll make something useful out of me.

(Father John Misty, with a hat tip to Balloon Juice)


I guess it's all part of what I see as our evolution.

Periods of transition are always dangerous and exciting and interesting and confusing and frightening and and and.

Parade Of Stoopid

The reason we get incredibly radical nonsense from our "leaders" is simply that we are willing constituents.



I am responsible for everything I think, say and do.  Me.  I'm not under the spell of some cosmic mesmerizer.  And I'm not going to follow blindly along behind anybody who claims to possess some kind of special magic;  or needs me to believe that his particular decoder ring is the only one that works when it comes to figuring out what Gondorff The Magnificent really meant by whatever it was that some half-literate guy wearing a goat skin singlet scratched into a clay tablet 1700 years ago.

I can be persuaded or inspired or cajoled and manipulated - but if I decide to act, the decision is mine.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Today's Pix









Today's Bumper Sticker

If you wanna live like a Republican
Vote like a Democrat

Well, I'm Shocked

Listening to smart people talking about shit that matters is one of the great joys in life.  And one of the truly great things about The Marketplace of Ideas is that when an outlet like MSNBC wises up and realizes it can let good stuff fill a partial content vacuum  - well, it don't get a lot better'n that.

This bit starts with Jamie Dimon and the giant fuck up that Wall Street continues to be.

Bias Confirmed

This is why I never call it anything but DumFux News.
It's a comparison of results on a basic factual-knowledge test for consumers of different news organizations.

hat tip = James Fallows

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A Step At A Time

Just inching our way closer to Robocop II.



What could possibly go wrong?

The Man Factor

I posted a while back about some stupid dust up or another (wait a minute - this is a blog. All my posts are about some stupid dust up or another).

Anyway, one of the big Non-Troversies yesterday was that the White House had sent out "an obviously Photo Shopped" pic of Obama throwing a football.

(to wit:)

So actually, not bad - guy's got decent form blah blah blah.  Why are we attacking it?

Because The Kenyan Usurper must never be seen to possess actual Americanizing characteristics.

Because football good - Obama bad.  If Obama's good at football, then Repub Physics doesn't work anymore, and the pretend universe implodes.

Because part of that pretend universe is totally dependent on the DumAss Dems never thinking to ask, "OK - so what's your guy got?"

Where are all the pix of Romney doing manly things?  Go ahead - Google that one, and get back to me.

More About That IPO Thingie

From SFGate:
"Facebook left nothing for the common investor," Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard wrote. "The insider pig pile of (private equity) firms and celebrity Silicon Valley angels took it all. This is a rather new, post-Sarbanes-Oxley fact, and it should make Americans very, very angry."
This new Uber-Investor model is set up to make sure that the value of any new company being offered has already been stripped out before it "goes public".  At this point, facebook may have achieved that weird critical mass that makes some companies float along like a massive planetoid falling thru space, but anybody on the outside who buys shares from here on out is really just paying a voluntary tax that keeps the Hedge Funders and Sarbanes-Oxley lawyers healthy.

We're arguing over the possession of the corpse, and I think this is what Kleptocracy looks like.

Monday, May 21, 2012

About That IPO Thingie (updated)

We might be able to call it Sean Parker's Revenge by Proxy - can't wait for the movie.  I hope Oliver Stone is ready.

Anyway, facebook is the greatest thing since perforated toilet paper, and when you can't make a big messy splash with facebook's IPO, well, there's something not quite right.

The thing went public at about $38 a share, "spiked" all the way up around $40; and when it looked like it could seriously flop, the big underwriters had to jump in and take huge Price-Support Positions to keep the thing from going so deep in the tank you'd need a wormhole generator to find it.

So, whaddup widdat?  One thing for sure is that now a few very big investments houses own significant holdings in facebook.  I don't know any of the rules where these things are concerned, but you're talkin' JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs - so recent history would indicate "rules are for somebody else" and none of that crap about market-driven morality matters anyway.  Just let your imagination wander.

Maybe we're seeing more evidence of how people just don't relate to the structures of the economy.  I'll bet lots of people are in the standard default mode of "facebook's pretty cool - why are they always trying to fuck it up?"

For myself, I'll stay with "I don't trust those guys on WallStreet any farther than I could spit one of 'em".

All we really need to figure out now is: How do they make sure American Tax Payers keep having to eat the losses, and how do they turn that into a political liability for Obama, in order to hide the fact that tax payers are getting fucked with their pants on?

update:
oh yeah - when was the last time Wall Street launched something really good? And really, if you're a smart guy with great ideas, and you've spent the last 15 years or so bustin' your hump to make your cool little business work - why the fuck would you turn to any of these pricks for help when you know they're just gonna steal as much as they can carry and move on to the next sucker?  I don't get it.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Hiatus Alert

I'll be out for a few days.

Mike's New Hip - The Sequel

debuts tomorrow!

Meanwhile, In Malaysia

It's pretty sad, but it seems Justice has escaped and is trying to set up shop in SE Asia.  Hooda thunk it?

hat tip = Democratic Underground

via CultureMap Austin:
How is it possible that the unanimous conviction of a former U.S. President as a war criminal does not immediately register as the most important news of the day? Today's endorsement of Romney by the newly minted war criminal is getting far more traction in the news. (Though, as Politicker notes, the Romney camp has yet to comment on the news.)

Chase

Why is Jamie Dimon not being dragged thru the streets by his heels?  And when will any of these fuckin' crooks be held to account?

Crooks and Liars
The JPMorgan Chase story is also the story behind the financial crisis that has thrown millions of people out of work. It's the story behind our ever-growing wealth inequity. It's the story behind Washington's inability to prosecute criminal bankers, regulate reckless ones, and propose the economic solutions the rest of us urgently need.
Predictably, the pundits who aid and abet people like Jamie Dimon are dismissing this story's importance, pointing out that $2 billion (it could become much more) pales against the $19 billion in profit Chase reported last year.
But it was potentially $2 billion earned through crime. And more importantly, this story isn't just about Chase's errors and crimes. It's much bigger than that.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Today's Pix


Shouldn't every "anti-gubmint conservative" be tickled silly about this?



Here - lemme get that for ya




What Does It Mean?

These days, a "conservative: is a guy who loves America - or at least an idealized version of America - but seems to hate just about any American who doesn't look, think and act almost exactly like he does.

So how do I reconcile this one?  Justice David Souter quit the Supreme Court a coupla years ago, and took a pretty hard shot at his "conservative" peers on his way out, in the form of a dissenting opinion on a matter before the court at the time.  Meanwhile, Chief Justice Roberts (no relation to your beloved blogger here) used a procedural gimmick to delay the court's decision (Citizens United) long enough to make it impossible for Souter's critique to escape into the public domain - and his rationale was based on not wanting to harm the credibility of the court.

Didja catch that one?

hat tip = Balloon Juice

From The New Yorker - Jeffrey Toobin:
In one sense, the story of the Citizens United case goes back more than a hundred years. It begins in the Gilded Age, when the Supreme Court barred most attempts by the government to ameliorate the harsh effects of market forces. In that era, the Court said, for the first time, that corporations, like people, have constitutional rights. The Progressive Era, which followed, saw the development of activist government and the first major efforts to limit the impact of money in politics. Since then, the sides in the continuing battle have remained more or less the same: progressives (or liberals) vs. conservatives, Democrats vs. Republicans, regulators vs. libertarians. One side has favored government rules to limit the influence of the moneyed in political campaigns; the other has supported a freer market, allowing individuals and corporations to contribute as they see fit. Citizens United marked another round in this contest.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/21/120521fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1uxL8bOut

Monday, May 14, 2012

Today's Quote

"Every man has a right to an opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." --Bernard Baruch

Friday, May 11, 2012

Thank You, Dr Chomsky

I was never a big fan, but the simple fact that so much scalding vitriol is aimed in his direction requires me to look for myself.



Special Bonus: David Frum at about 8:30.

I'm good with it until near the end (about 1:15:00) when he starts talking about the new "Libertarian Socialism" which will lead us to a spiritual transformation.

First, as soon as you tack that "ism" on the end of a set of philosophical tenets, you're well on your way towards the logical extreme, which means you've begun the slide into the abyss of self-cancellation.

Second, never bet against human nature.  If your system requires people to behave as anything other than people, then your system just ain't gonna work - not any time soon anyway.

But third, maybe it's more of a chicken-or-the-egg proposition.  Maybe it does work the way Chomsky imagines it working, where if you take the idea of Libertarian Socialism, and mash it up together with the need for a spiritual transformation, you nudge the evolutionary process - the philosophy and the transformation serve to carry each other forward.  I like that one better.

We're #1

...except when we're not - or about stuff we shouldn't be - or somethin'.

We have an amazing capacity for deluding ourselves.  And while it's not exactly unique to Americans, it seems like we have some special kind of weird need to buy into our own bullshit.  Maybe it's because our insistence on Free Speech made the slide into Propaganda unavoidable.  Maybe it's because we've allowed Free Speech to mean we can say whatever we want to say without being held to account for its consequences.

We think Foreign Aid makes up 25% of the Federal Budget, and that a more appropriate level would be about 13% - when it's actually less than 1%.

  • 48% of Americans believe Healthcare Reform has been repealed.
  • 51% don't know The US Supreme Court has 9 Justices
  • ...and 54% can't name even one of 'em.
  • 78% know Larry, Curly and Moe, while 58% can't name all 3 branches of the US Government.
  • 125 million American Christians can't name all 4 Gospels.
  • 67% of adults in the US can't find England on a map.
  • 80% of us consider ourselves Above Average Drivers.
  • 41% can't name the current Vice President of the United States.
  • 7% think funding for Public Broadcasting represents more than half of the federal budget.
  • As recently as 1999, 20% of Americans thought the Sun orbits the Earth.




Thursday, May 10, 2012

Economic Mobility

"The South is the native home of American poverty" --Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

I really wish this would come as a surprise - just once in a while.  Why is it always The South?  There're 9 states doing worse than the average and they're all in The South, and they're all Deep Red politically.  The politics in every one of those states is dominated by Right Wing TeaBaggers and/or Christianists, but certainly by radicals who're pretending to be "conservatives".

Utah's an obvious outlier, but on the other side of that coin, there're 8 states doing better than average, and 7 of those are either Hard Blue or toward the blue end of Purple.





























I don't know what exactly has to happen to change all of this, but I do know that not much will change until people figure out for themselves just how badly they're being swindled.

Where Credit Is Due

Jon Stewart is a fucking genius.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Politicizing Mothers' Day

Ann Romney has a piece in USA Today all about the glories of motherhood and the importance of cherishing our moms.  Wow - way to take a tough stand on that one, Annie.

Go read it if you think you need a little blast of meaningless treacle from about 1915.  For my own self, this is one of those times I wish I could spell the sound I make when I puke.
It's hard to imagine now, but before the birth of my first child, I had never held a baby. Not once, not in my entire life. No baby at home to tend, no niece or nephew to babysit. So you can imagine, the day my first boy was born I felt woefully unprepared.
She tries to make it sound like she's some kinda "regular person".  She isn't.  She'd never held a baby?  Seems odd 'til you take a quick little Google spin thru her old neighborhood, or do a bit of reading on Bloomfield Hills Michigan* where she grew up.  She probably never did any laundry or cooked a meal for herself either.  Not that any of that makes her a bad egg in any way - just that it doesn't make her any kind of kindred spirit with anybody who's ever struggled with any of life's little obstacles.  It's hard to imagine Ann Romney ever being denied much of anything, or a time when somebody wasn't shinin' her ass over one thing or another.
*Bloomfield Hills ... consistently ranks as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States with population between 2,500 to 9,999 — it currently is listed at the number four position and in 1990 it was ranked number two,[6] and has the highest income of any city outside of California, Florida or Virginia. The median income for a family is over $200,000. In 2000, 49% of residential property in Bloomfield Hills had a value of over $1,000,000.[7]
Generally, I don't mind when campaign consultants insist on trying to pull this kind of crap; I just wish they weren't always so fucking clumsy and obvious about it.

Go Greeks

Y'know, some people just really know how to do that protest thing better than others.

Prostesters in Greece managed to get into the studio and pelted a TV Anchor Guy with eggs and yogurt (this is Greece after all).

Unofficially translated, they're chanting, "Cops, TV, neo-nazis, all the scoundrels are working together."

One Example

Government as Business can be even more of a nightmare than what "conservatives" are always creamin' their jeans over.

A teenager in a For-Profit Prison in Mississippi turned up missing, and it took his dad more than a month to find him - in a local hospital, after suffering irreparable brain damage in a riot that was possibly instigated by at least one of the guards.  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From AlterNet via Democratic Underground:
On March 26, U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves issued a blistering court order approving the settlement of the lawsuit. He wrote that the GEO Group Inc., the company that runs Walnut Grove, “has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate.”
Violence by youths and guards wasn’t the only problem. Neither were the gang affiliations of some guards. Or the grossly inadequate medical and mental health care. Or the proliferation of drugs and other contraband. Or the lack of educational and rehabilitative programs. Or the wild overuse of pepper spray on passive youths.
Indeed, the DOJ found that sexual abuse – including brutal youth-on-youth rapes and “brazen” sexual misconduct by prison staffers who coerced youths – was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
What’s more, both the prison staff and the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which pays GEO $14 million each year to run the prison, showed “deliberate indifference” to these problems.
This hyper-macho, get-tough bullshit just ain't workin', guys.  We gotta figure out something else.

Back In The Black

Not that it's gonna last, but the US Gov't reported a budget surplus of $58 Billion for April 2012.
CBO estimated that receipts were $30 billion higher in April than the same month a year ago, due to declining refunds that month and higher corporate income tax receipts. Spending fell by $69 billion compared to April 2011, marked by lower outlays on defense, Medicaid and the Postal Service.  --Market Watch
How this happened is anybody's guess, but the real question is how long will it take for the Repubs to turn it around, and get the failure they've been pushing for?

Making Government run like a business is great as long as it's never ever allowed to turn a profit.  Which kinda shows how fucked up the GOP's premise actually is.  Because if Gubmint works like a business, then Gubmint is - in fact - working.  And that just can't be because we all know that Gubmint doesn't work at all, so we have to work a lot harder to make it work better, but...  

If your premise is false, your conclusion can't be true.  So, like I've said before - they run in tighter and tighter circles until they disappear up their own assholes.

Monday, May 07, 2012

Today's Pix








Political Judo

You take your own negative and project it onto your opponent.  It's worked for a long time because most people have short memories where this kinda shit is concerned - which is actually what Willard's campaign guy was talking about when he made that Etch-A-Sketch remark.

Well, Obama kicked off his 2012 campaign at Ohio State's basketball venue (I think), where, according to the wingnuts, "he was preaching to an empty room", or he "failed to fill the seats" or some such hokum.

Here's one view of what that empty room looked like:























Here's one more:

























And here's a look at the adoring throngs that showed up for Romney's major economics address in Detroit earlier this year - this is the one the Repubs need us to forget about:

Well, That Sucks

86% of us (per recent polling) think that unlimited donations to SuperPACs has a corrupting influence on our democracy.

Which means there're more than twice as many Americans who don't understand how fucked up Campaign Financing is in this joint than there are who believe the moon landings were faked.

And Jesus wept.

hat tip = Republic Report

To Be Clear

If somebody tells you they think you're sounding a little racist, it doesn't have to mean they're just "playing the race card" and that you should ignore them and go right on being a cheap imitation of a normal human.

Sometimes it means you need to stop for a minute and recheck your assumptions.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

France

Lil Nik Sarkozy has lost the French presidency to a Socialist named Francois Hollande, who is expected (by some folks anyway) to ease up on the austerity choker.  So OK, I guess we're about to see something more of a Keynesian approach to the economic side of the house (france is the # 2 economy in the EU - right behind Germany), and that can only mean that the Right Radicals in the US are about to freak the fuck out.

Won't that be fun.

BTW Broad Observation:
The political world is cratering in on the Repubs, so that's why they're doing everything they can to pass legislation that's mostly just plain stupid, and will take a long time to sort thru once they're gone.  I think the strategy is to make it look like it's the Dems who're implementing the "radical agenda" as they work to unravel all this crap, and the GOP can sit on the sidelines complaining about how the Dems aren't doing the things they said they'd do to make things better.

Ya heard it here first.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Progressive Roster

Lifted directly from Crooks and Liars, and with a hat tip to The Professional Left.

Here's a list of Progressives doing their thing in the world of "New Media":

PART 1


  • All Power To The Positive—Featuring Sensei Gregory C. Lewis and Jacob “The Jacobin” Brown (radio)
  • Alternet Radio Hour—With Joshua Holland (radio)
  • The Anonymous Show—With Mr. X aka John Smith (radio)
  • BearMan Radio Show—Featuring the BearMan (radio)
  • Blacking It Up—Featuring Elon James White, L. Joy Williams and Aaron Rand Freeman (radio)
  • The Blatant Minority—Featuring Greg Hanson (radio)
  • Bob and Chez Show—Featuring Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza (radio)
  • The Breakdown—With Richard Eskow (radio)
  • Brookland Café—(radio)
  • Captain Jack Show—With Captain Jack (radio)
  • Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed)—With Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers (radio)
  • Coffee Party Radio—Featuring Annabel Park and Coffee Party volunteers (radio)
  • Create the Change—(radio)
  • The DC Sports Beat—With Mitch Malasky (radio)
  • DC Voice’s Education Town Hall—With Thomas Byrd (radio)
  • Democracy Now—With Amy Goodman (video/radio)
  • Digital Politics Radio—With Karen Jagoda (radio)
  • The DMZ at BloggingHeads.TV—With Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis (video)
  • Earth Radio One—Featuring Doctor Drake and Doctor Truth (radio)
  • Equal Time Radio—With Frank Blair, Traci Kelly, Andrew Bacon (radio)
  • The Matthew Filipowicz Show—Featuring Matthew Filipowicz (radio)
  • Filter Free Radio—With Jacob Dean (radio)
  • Fireside Chats at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)
  • The Flaming Sword of Justice—With Ben Wikler (radio)
  • Foreign Entanglements at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)
  • The Richard Fowler Show—With Richard Fowler (radio)
  • The Frank Factor—With Frank (radio)
  • Friedersdorf at BloggingHeads.TV—With Conor Friedersdorf (video)
  • The Glenn Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Glenn Loury (video)
  • The God Above God—Aeon Byte (radio)
  • GoLeft TV—Featuring Mike Papantonio (video)
  • Green Power—Featuring Akili West (radio)
  • GRITradio—With Laura Flanders (radio)
  • The Thom Hartmann Show—Featuring Thom Hartmann (radio)
  • ill doctrine—Featuring Jay Smooth (video)
  • In Deep and Live From the Left Coast—With Angie Coiro (radio)
  • In Your Face Radio—With JD & Greg Zollo (Radio)
  • The Inside Scoop—With Mark Levine (radio)
  • Leaning Left—With Rutherford Lawson and Sandi Behrns (radio)
  • Left Jab Radio—Featuring Mark Walsh and Dave Goodfriend (radio)
  • Liberal Oasis Radio Show—Featuring Bill Scher & Traci Olsen (radio)
  • The Josh Lopez Show—Featuring Josh Lopez (radio)
  • The Luv Lounge—Featuring Jamal Muhammad, aka Dj One Luv (radio)
  • Majority Report—Featuring Sam Seder (video)
  • The Leslie Marshall Show—Featuring Leslie Marshall (radio)
  • Media Matters Radio—With Bob McChesney (radio)
  • The Stephanie Miller Show—With Stephanie Miller (radio)
  • Moment of Clarity—Featuring Lee Camp (video)
  • MOMocrats—Progressive mom bloggers writing about politics from a mom's perspective (radio)
  • The Shannyn Moore Show—Featuring Shannyn Moore (radio)
  • The More Me Show—With DJ Downtown and Eddie Herradura (radio)
  • Moyers and Company—Featuring Bill Moyers (video)
  • The Nation Conversations—With various hosts (radio)
  • One on the Right—Maine politics with Gerald Weinand (radio)
  • The Other Side—With Ron Moten (radio)
  • The David Pakman Show—Featuring David Pakman (radio)
  • The Posner Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Sarah Posner (video)
  • Power To The People—With Mike (radio)
  • The Power To The People Radio Program—Featuring The Bedouin (radio)
  • The Bill Press Show—With Bill Press (radio)
  • The Professional Left—Featuring Driftglass & Blue Gal (radio)
  • The Professor Rex Show—Florida politics with Professor Rex aka Kenneth Quinnell (radio)
  • Progressive Blend Radio—On Radio or Not (radio)
  • Progressive News Network—Florida politics (and beyond) with Richard W. Spisak Jr. (radio)
  • Ring of Fire—With Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder (radio)
  • Roots Radio—(radio)
  • The Nicole Sandler Show at Radio or Not—With Nicole Sandler (radio)
  • The Ed Schultz Show—Featuring Ed Schultz (radio)
  • The Sara Schulz Show—Wisconsin politics with Sara Schulz (radio)
  • The Scream Cafe—With Grobeck and Monkeyhead (radio)
  • The Nancy Skinner Show—Featuring Nancy Skinner (radio)
  • Soulful Green Living—With Vicki Blues (radio)
  • SpeakEasy—With Kymone Freeman and Ron Pinchback (radio)
  • Take Action News—With David Shuster (radio)
  • Talking Left—With Danielle, the Left Neck Chick, and Shane-O (radio)
  • This Week In Blackness—Featuring Elon James White (video)
  • The Trees Radio—With Stone Kawala (radio)
  • True Blue Talk—With Steve M. (radio)
  • Turn Up the Night—With Kenny Pick (radio)
  • Virtually Speaking—Featuring Jay Ackroyd, Stuart Zechman, Alan Boyle, Tom Levenson and various other hosts (radio)
  • Washington Squares at BloggingHeads.TV—With Michael Brendan Dougherty (video)

  • PART 2
  • A World of Progress Radio—(radio)
  • Worldwise at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)
  • The Wright Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Robert Wright (video)
  • The Young Turks—Featuring Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Ben Mankiewicz, Michael Shure, Brian Unger, Wes Clark Jr., RJ Eskow (video)
  • Your World News—From the University of Maryland (radio)

  • AFGE "Inside Government" — From the American Federation of Government Employees (radio)
  • The Alyona Show — Featuring Alyona Minkovski (radio)
  • America's Workforce — With Ed "Flash" Ferenc (radio)
  • Julian Assange on RT — Featuring Julian Assange (radio)
  • At the Chalk Face — Education with Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar (radio)
  • The Big Picture — With Thom Hartmann (video)
  • The BradCast — With Brad Friedman (radio)
  • Building Bridges — Labor-themed show (radio)
  • Cognitive Dissonance the Podcast — With a heavy emphasis on critical thinking (radio)
  • The Tim Corrimal Show — With Tim Corrimal (radio)
  • Democratic Talk Radio — Featuring Stephen Crockett (radio)
  • Electric Politics — With George Kenney (radio)
  • The Norman Goldman Show — With Norman Goldman (radio)
  • The Green News Report — With Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen (radio)
  • Heartland Labor Forum — Radio show about working families from Kansas City (radio)
  • The Keiser Report — With Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert (radio)
  • Labor Neighbor Radio — Labor-themed radio show from Washington state (radio)
  • Local Edge Radio — North Carolina politics and beyond featuring Blake (radio)
  • The Mike Malloy Show — With Mike Malloy (radio)
  • The News Dissector — Featuring Danny Schecter (radio)
  • Progressive Radio Network — With various hosts (radio)
  • Revolution Boston — With hosts including Jim Lowenstern, Jeff Santos, Samantha Clemens, Brad Bannon and others (radio)
  • The Randi Rhodes Show — Featuring Randi Rhodes (radio)
  • RT TV — With various hosts (video)
  • The Lifeboat Hour — With Michael Ruppert (radio)
  • The Rick Smith Show — Featuring Rick Smith (radio)
  • This Is Hell — Featuring Chuck Mertz (radio)
  • Where Is the Outrage? — Featuring Errington C. Thompson, MD (radio)
  • Workers Independent News — With various hosts (radio)
  • Working Family Radio Network — With various hosts (radio)
  • Your Guide To Natural Living — Featuring Gary Null (radio)
  • Jay Smooth

    I lost track of this guy for a while.  Glad I caught up with him again.

    Who Are Those Guys?

    The Washington Post has gone from a truly great example of Gutsy and Righteous Journalism in the mid-70s to its current smarmy incarnation as a Bullshit Centrist Rag.  And seeing as how this piece is co-authored by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, on the surface, it's just more of the same "both sides do it" malarkey.  But it doesn't just feel different - it says it straight out: "the Republican Party is the problem".
    Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
    Then scan through some of the (>5000) comments - which (by my quick and totally unsubstantiated estimation) appear to be running 10-1 in support of the basic premise that the GOP is the problem.  Tho' I think a more accurate characterization would be that the extremists in the GOP who are masquerading as conservatives are the problem.

    So like driftglass and BlueGal have been saying, conservatives are lying to us and those dirty liberals were right all along.

    Which brings me to my newest bumper sticker idea: