I don’t think that Henry of Crooked Timber is being serious, but his theory as to the timing of the Gonzales resignation, that it was timed to correspond with the Daily Show’s two week haitus, is internally consistency.
Year: 2007
1000 Words On Healthcare
Nice Take Down of the National Sales Tax
And it’s in the WSJ of all places. This editorial shows how the numbers are bogus, and deliberately so.
Bruce Bartlett’s basic points:
- This idea originally sprung from the head of Scientology, because of their clashes with the IRS¹.
- It assumes growth rates in the US economy that appear to come from the planet Skaro.
- They use very bad math to misquote the percentage of tax².
- It has the federal government paying the tax to artificially inflate revenues.
- It applies the tax to everything, including education and health care.
- It creates a de facto national welfare program.³
- It understates the rate needed to balance the budget.
It should be noted that this Mr. Bartlett was senior economic staff under Bush I, this is no Democratic partisan here.
¹Basically they claim that a 30% tax is a 23% tax by figuring it backward. If you take $1.00 and add 30%, you have $1.30, but $0.30 is only 23% of 1.30.
²The required tax rate for this to replace revenues 57%, it goes up to 64% if it exempts things like food, education, and health care, and 89% if there are problems with evasion.
³It creates a transfer payment system in which people get money back on a weekly basis depending on wages.
David S. Broder Please Retire Now
Well, it looks like “the Dean” is at it again. He writes about how he longs for 3rd party candidates for president, specifically a Hagel-Bloomberg ticket.
The idea is that the American public longs for “post partisan” politics.
He thinks that candidates who differ on abortion, gun laws, gay rights, taxes, public schools, and role of religion in the public sphere, can somehow find common ground. This is like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.
What he derides as “partisan” politics is actually the legitimate give and take of differences in policy, but sitting where he does, living in the continuous cocktail party known as Sally Quinn’s Washington, it’s all too inconvenient.
These differences get in the way of a pleasant party, and the policies have very little effect on him, being paid to pontificate being one of the lifestyles least effected by significant policy decision.
He is not effected when other people’s children die in Iraq, or when other people’s children lack medical care and die because Bush and His Evil Minions™ believe that it’s worse to provide government funded health care to one relatively well off kid than it is for 1000 poor children to to have no access to health care.
He is the personification of what is wrong with the culture of Washington, DC.
Iraq is Not their Catastrophe, Iraq is their Utopia
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone cuts to the heart of the matter in their article, “The Great Iraq Swindle“.
It is a must read expose of the corruption in the contracting in Iraq, but it answers a bigger question, why did the Neocons want to go there in the first place?
Here is the money quote:
Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush’s war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity — to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they f%$# things up.
And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it’s not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over — not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureaucracy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure — American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.
They could not do this in Afghanistan, there simply is not the money there, but Iraq, with its immense oil reserves served as the laboratory for their twisted vision of society.
Simply put, it’s scarier than you think. Iraq is not their catastrophe, Iraq is their utopia
Ted Nugent Wets His Pants to Avoid Combat
Facing a draft, Nugent bravely wet his pants
Rocker is all talk as he calls Obama, Hillary vile namesAugust 27, 2007
BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist
So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama “a piece of —–” and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a “worthless bitch” and Dianne Feinstein a “worthless whore.”That Nugent, he’s a man’s man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?
Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!
…
I can’t speak to what I would have done in that situation, but I’m not advocating sending someone else’s children off to war. When he had the chance to be a stand up guy, he did not stand up.
To quote Keith Olbermann, Ted Nugent is today’s worst person in the world.
Moslem Extremist Imam in US Prays for Death of “Allah’s Enemies”
OOPS!!!!
Me bad…It’s not an Imam, Rev. Wiley S. Drake, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, who is calling for his parishioners to pray for vengeance and misfortune against his enemies.
Well, where is the outrage in the right wing blogosphere? What about public condemnations from the faces of the religious right? Their silence is clearly assent.
Well, that’s what the right wing pundits would say if it had been an Imam.
Under the heading, “HOW TO PRAY,” he listed all 31 verses of Psalm 109, in which King David appeals to divine justice. Drake provided his congregation the King James Version of the psalm, including Verse 9, which says: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
On the advice of his attorneys, Drake has declined to be interviewed.
Your Mouth to God’s Ear
This was from the comments section.
TPMmuckraker August 27, 2007 2:42 PM:
Now that the Justice department is finished with it’s house cleaning, The rest of the deal Bush made to spare himself impeachment will begin. The Cheney resignation will be forth coming within the time frame I estimated last week. There are three weeks left on that clock. If you look through obscure posts from three weeks ago until last week, you will see my original predictions about Rove (perfectly timed) and Gonzales (also one week prior as stated) Deny my accuracy and attribute it to coincedence or guessing if you like, but within three weeks from this day the dark one falls. The deal has been made and the substance of it is out. I am not a mystic and do not own a crystal ball. I do however own many devices that are able to communicate messages through the air. These have been put to great use.. Cheney is next, and you heard it here first. AS I STATED WITH MY OTHER POSTS MARK THIS ONE! Do not talk of it, Just mark it! It will be a great remebrance!
Me, I’m not such an optimist.
Free Trade Inevitably Leads to Democracy….NOT!!!
Microsoft and Yahoo have signed an agreement with the Chinese to persecute political dissent.
He who fights wih monsters should be careful least he thereby becomes a monster. When you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
–Friedrich Nietzsche
Still More Guys Who Write Better than I Ever Will
In this case, Duncan “Atrios” Black on the fact that Max Boot is on the Council on Foreign Relations.
What do I have to do to become a CFR fellow? Advocate invading Switzerland with our army of zombie monkeys?
FWIW, I support this plan.
We must protect our strategic chocolate supplies.
TheHill.com – Johnson makes public return in Sioux Falls
Good news, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has made his first public appearance.
He needs a cane, at least, and his speech is halting, but he seems to be doing well in his recovery from his brain hemorrhage of almost a year ago..
Congratulations and best wishes to him and his family.
Two Years Ago, Grover Norquist Achieved His Goal
New Orleans, two years ago today.
Yes, It’s a Cheap Pun, but that’s a Weakeness of Mine
Well, it appears that the corrosive properties of pigeon excrement may have contributed to the Minneapolis bridge collapse.
To quote noted Internet wit Bladesmith, “Like I said elsewhere, it’s all fun and games till the shit hits the span”.
Sigh, someone else who writes better than I do.
The Bush War on Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers about fraud in Iraq subject to illegal detention and torture.
Where is America these days, we’ve lost it.
Impeach Dick Cheney todays, go zero tolerance on Haliburton’s corruption, and impeach George W. Bush tomorrow.
It’s Official, We Need to Abolish the Air Force
Or, as David Axe, of War is Boring puts it, Reason #817 Why the Air Force Sucks.
This a real quote from the real Air Combat Command chief Ronald Keys, “The hardest wars we fight are not on the battlefield, but the wars we fight in the halls of Congress. They are fought in the Pentagon, they are fought in these programs, to make sure the money is paid and eventually the program is operating.”
That’s our problem. The air force is not a bunch of soldiers, it’s a bunch of f&^%ing K-street lobbiests.
Go read Axe’s stuff…It has the some quotes from Air Force’s counter-insurgency manual that are so stupid, you would think that Alberto Gonzalez would remember them.
One quote from Axe:
The Air Force bailed out of the potentially revolutionary UCAS killer drone program in order to buy a big new fleet of big new manned bombers for much more money. The service wants to prepare for an imaginary high-tech air war with China instead of fighting the dirty, low-tech wars we’re actually in. Why? Because high-tech superpower showdowns are what the Air Force knows. They’re easy. The low-tech approach to warfare, by contrast, requires patience and smarts, two things today’s Air Force lacks.
The independent air force was a bad idea.
Ironically, I considered joining the USAF, despite my myopia after I left high school.
Another Guy Who Writes Better Than I Ever Will
It appears that Paperwhite is one such individual.A he said / he said misunderstanding? Seriously, that’s what Larry Craig (R-My Own Private Idaho) is saying?
LOL!!!! I wish I had thought of “My Own Private Idaho“.
Look, closeted gay self-hating Republicans, wouldn’t it just be easier if you could just lay it all out there, something like this:
I’m a rich white guy who has nothing but contempt for poor people, worships Mammon, knows that the babymaking apparatus means that women aren’t really full persons, and thinks that blowing shit up is the extent of foreign policy, so vote for me! Oh, and I’m really into other guys. Yes, in that way.
Word up. This guy can write.
A Very Interesting Point About Iraq
The folks at Think Progress ask the question is the prospect of withdrawal responsible for the modest security gains in Iraq?
They quote the following from the NIE:
Gearing a Coalition withdrawal, some tribal elements and Sunni groups probably will continue to seek accommodation with the Coalition to strengthen themselves for a post- Coalition security environment…
It’s a good point.
There are a lot of people in Iraq who would be preparing for what follows, and hence not blowing up our soldiers, if they believed that our exit, or at least our withdrawal from routine security operations, were imminent.
Another Corrupt Rat Leaving the Ship
Buh bye!
My guess is that given that it’s a competitive district, and Renzi is being investigated for crooked land deals, campaign law violations, and a significant roll in the US attorney firings, he though that it was time to get out of dodge.
On the brighter side, unlike some other people who have returned to private life *cough* Gonzalez *cough* Rumsfeld *cough* Bremer *cough*, he won’t have to worry about being hauled off to the Hague.
Corrupting the Military for Politics
Well, it looks like the Pentagon is setting up a propaganda office to sell their phony report.
I am so not surprised.
FWIW, a Pentagon propaganda operation directed at the American public is technically illegal, but that’s never stopped Bush and His Evil Minions&trade before.
Natalie’s First Day of School
My mother-in-law visited this weekend, and my Wife* had to drop her off at the train station this morning. She took Charlie with them, since his school does not start for a week, and I had to get Natalie on the bus to school.
She was hard to get started in the morning, and when the bus was a bit late (about 15 minutes), she got a bit weepy about the prospect of being late for school on her first day, but once the bus showed up, she was all smiles, though she had a legitimate complaint about the weight of her knapsack.
I was never that eager to go to school, nor that concerned about being on time.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.