Lawsuits are still gobbling up $865 billion a year from our nation. So when is Congress going to step in and socialize legal care?
All posts by Mike
Remember Kids
Corruptly slashing the budget of regulatory agencies to let your political allies and campaign donors get away with murder is only a crime when you’re a Republican.
When Democrats do it, it’s OK.
Pot-Kettle
Just a reminder of what was going on four years ago, when it was the Democrats deriding an all-night debate session as political theater while the GOP insisted that they were doing the right thing.
And then, back to today, where the positions are reversed.
Seriously, folks, why do we take these lunkheads so seriously? It’s clear that they think this whole political thing is a great big joke. The only issues they have a consistent stance on from one year to another is that they are in favor of getting elected.
ITMFA?
Lee at Right-Thinking — a conservative, BTW — has a great post on impeaching the President. He’s getting the usual “you’re just a Leftist; you want to impeach him for invading Iraq” non-sequitur responses from the Right. And I’m not sure he actually supports impeachement. Nor do I.
But it’s worth a read.
Yessir Yassir
Did Arafat die of AIDS? Color me skeptical. This is appearing in an Israeli newspaper and is fairly unsourced. Still, if true, it will be a bombshell in the muslim world. Imagine if one of their “greatest leaders” was also engaged in evil practices. Methinks some heads in the middle east are ‘sploding right now.
Wednesday Linkorama
Feinstein said she wants to change a law used by Sutton that required the agents receive at least 10 years for firing their weapons.
Um, Di? You’re gun-grabbing party was the one that passed those fucking laws.
a) all our politicans will claim credit for this;
b) they will all claim our children are in danger and need more government programs.
Shoe On Other Foot
So, I wonder what the GOP think of the filibuster rule now? Remember when they had power and the filibuster was pure unadulterated evil that was destroying our country? Remember how the Gang of 14 were evil monsters for working out a compromise?
Real conservatives like me were warning that the filibuster needed to be preserved in case the Dems got power. And we were mocked. Now we’re warning about the need to restrain Presidential power. Will we be ignored again?
Ellison == Stalin
Seems in our haste to get our britches in a bunch over the first Muslim in Congress, we forgot to ask whether or not he was nut.
Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler’s later seizure of emergency powers.
“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Mr Ellison said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box – dismiss you”.
See, here’s the thing. Jerks like Ellison are poisoning the well for everyone. Now if I say that I think the Bush Administration used 9/11 to empower themselves, I’m in that nutbag group. It provides the Right an easy response: “So you think Bush is Hitler? You think 9/11 was the Reichstag?”
Memo to the left: cut it out. As Jon Stewart said, the comparisons to Hitler are demeaning to Hitler – he worked too hard being a psychotic murdering monster to be used as the comparison for every Tom, Dick and Harriet Myers that comes down the pipe. What are we going to compare someone to when he’s a real Hitler? For Chrissake, we have genocides going on in Darfur and Congo. What do we say about them?
And try to learn something of history beyond World War II movies. For example, read about the Zimmerman Telegram, which would make an excellent discussion point for Iraq.
The Plural of Anecdote
One of the things that drives me berzerk about the global warming debate is the use of anecdotal evidence. Global warming supporters will cite Hurricane Katrina or a hot summer as evidence that global warming exists. Global warming detractors will cite a cold winter as evidence that it’s false.
In science, this is known as “cherry picking” — taking only the data that support your view instead of analyzing all the data. Global warming is a slow process, one that’s much more subtle than the natural year to year variations in global temperature. It doesn’t just show up in July all of the sudden.
Imagine that you were listening to the radio. Sometimes the music is loud, sometimes the music is soft. But the volume is being turned up slowly — so slowly you can hardly notice. But after a while, you have a headache.
A graph of the planet’s temperature will look very spikey as we have cold years and warm years — literally noise. But slowly, the spikes are moving upward.
Whatever you think of global warming, the plural of anecdote is not data (hat tip, Robert). A hurricane or a heat wave do not prove global warming any more than a cold snap disproves it. It’s the slow steady accumulation of planet-wide data that reveals the process.
Monday Morning Linkorama
Things that amuse while I ponder my potential pending unemployment.
Finally, on BBTN, Phillips and Kruk debate the “Worst Franchise in Sports.” Phillips chooses the Phillies because their next loss will be their 10,000th. This is problematic for several reasons: first, because that says as much about the longevity of the franchise (starting in 1890) as anything else. Second, the team is only 4 games out this year and has a lot of good players. Third, the team has been in the WS as recently as 1993. The Phils aren’t close to being the worst franchise in baseball, much less all of pro sports.
Not to be outdone, Kruk chose the New Orleans Saints.
Who played in the NFC Championship Game.
Last year.
Nice work, everybody.
Then I took my first sip. Nothing in this world could have prepared me for that. The initial thought that came rushing into my mind was from a deep, dark place: Oh, that’s bad.
I didn’t know quite what I had just tasted, but my mind immediately painted a picture of someone going into a supermarket, opening every can in the canned fruit aisle, pouring all the various syrups into one 16-oz container, and hoping for the best. It was like an evil punch made from fruits that had no business ever knowing each other.
The second sip was even worse. This was when I first noticed the awful aftertaste. Initially, it reminded me of rancid peaches, but it quickly went downhill from there.
The Libertarian Center
Brink Lindsey argues that it is our destiny. I would agree, but only when our government is divided so that Democrats can block stupid GOP social meddling and Republicans can block stupid Dem economic meddling.
More on Genarlow
All right, come on you Republicans. You went nuts over Mike Nifong and the Duke Three. Are you going to get outraged about what’s been going on in the Genarlow Wilson case?
The tape story began in the last legislative session during arguments to make the change in the law retroactive so as to encompass Genarlow Wilson. Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson rose in the Senate and delivered a lie-laced speech which included alluding that rape had indeed occurred. A CNN reporter covering the case caught the speech on tape. He then went to D.A. McDade’s office, viewed the tape, spoke to jurors and publicly pantsed Johnson for his fibbing
Read the whole thing. The DA has been circulating a tape of Wilson having sex with a 17-year-old. Technically speaking, this is child pornography (oh the irony!).
Really, what’s the story here? It can’t really be racism, can it? It must be sexual envy. I bet DA McDade didn’t score with any girls when he was in high school, let alone two. Neither did I, but I don’t want to throw anyone in prison over it.
So come on, Hannity. Speak up, Malkin. Let’s hear it, Limbaugh. What that you say, Coulter?
Come on, you fucking “conservatives”. A black man is getting railroaded even worse than the Duke Three. Let’s hear the outrage!
(crickets chirping)
Friday Linkorama
Andrus said a friend of his who owned a restaurant that did not feature music was contacted by a company looking to charge him because it owned the rights to a Hank Williams Jr. song, “Are You Ready for Some Football?” The song preceded every “Monday Night Football” telecast, which the restaurant carried on its televisions.
We need to seriously revisit our copyright laws. And by that, I don’t mean “give the recording industry yet more power”.
Blackout
Just a reminder of how bad things were just thirty years ago. If something similar happened today, we wouldn’t have anything like this.
Progress, people. We’re making it every day. Don’t let some nitwit politician or pundit tell you things are bad.