Goes To Twelve

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Imagine trying To Explain Why God Let Mommy Die In A War Of Choice

Don't Forget to tell @NOMTWEETS to SUCK IT!

Good Question

Just Asking
First Read:
"We have this one question for the GOP straw-man argument on Gitmo: So is living near a prison with convicted rapists or murderers safer than living next to a prison with suspected terrorists? Discuss."

DEEEEEETROOOOOOOIIIIT!

Brothers and Sisters of the rainbow, one of our greatest siblings (straights can claim him and love him too):

Not All Irish Eyes Smiling

Thanking Buddha for Jim and Ginny Angevine again today...

NY Times

Report Details Abuse in Irish Church-Run Reform Schools
DUBLIN (AP) -- A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades -- and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families -- a category that often included unmarried mothers -- were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.
The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."
Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.
But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.

Long Time Readers will remember my connection to this, reviewed here

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

How's Newt Doin'?

Don't Fuck With The Internets old man ... heh

More Cute

esp for Mr. GB

President Barack Obama, runs away from the family dog, Bo, during a brief break from meetings on the South Lawn of the White House May 12, 2009.

Yay!

Kennedy's cancer in remission

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s brain cancer is in remission and the Massachusetts Democrat is expected back in the Senate after the Memorial Day recess, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that he spoke with Kennedy’s wife and was told the 77-year-old lawmaker will return to work full time during the first week of June.
Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has been mostly absent from the chamber for the past year, recovering in Florida and Massachusetts. He is expected to lead a markup of highly anticipated health reform legislation in his first month back - one of the biggest bills of the year and a signature domestic initiative for President Obama.

Cuter Than LOLDogs

White House Flickr Feed, via Ben Smith:

“President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can
pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster
wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own.”

And This

See, even the GOP has given up on beating BHO.

A new Web promotion by the Republican National Committee, the "ObamaCard" -- parodying the national debt built up by the stimulus bill -- seems to be a bit confused about exactly when a presidential term ends:

@newtgingrich Must Now Be Included In All Your Tweets!

TWITTERERS UNITE!

We Must NOT FORGET NEWT!

Getting Lost in the Twitter

Newt Gingrich sends cease and desist letter to pro-EFCA twitterer demanding that he stop using @newtgingrich in his twitters, which is just asking for a Twitter-based movement to use @newtgingrich in all twitters. Not that I'm advocating such a thing

And Then There's This

Re-branding the Dems DEMOCRATIC-SOCIALISTS may be a good idea ... for the Dems

Millennials are not afraid of big government.
Derek Thompson notes:
What I find interesting, if not entirely revelatory, is that Millennials are stoked about the goals of liberal government (more than two-thirds support sustainable eco-solutions, universal health care, alternative energies) but pretty ambivalent about the means...Of course we don't have strong opinions about economic strategy: We're waiting to see if Obama's tactics work first. And if they don't, the big government generation could slow its leftish shift.
After all, let's remember: about two-thirds of this group once supported the Iraq War.

Looking Forward To the Next 41

The Washington Independent documents the 7 Republican Rebranding Efforts in the last 7 months since the election.

Rebuild the Party Announced: November 7, 2008 Mission: “Set in motion the changes needed to rebuild our party from the grassroots up, modernize the way we run campaigns, and attract different, energetic, and younger candidates at all levels.” Progress: Got all six candidates for Republican National Committee chairman to sign on to its agenda. Launched an interactive site where members could propose, and vote for, an agenda for the next chairman; the site was swiftly taken over by Ron Paul and Fair Tax supports. Heavily pushed volunteering and donating to Jim Tedisco’s unsuccessful campaign to win NY-20. Status: Active, but much less prominent since the New York election was held on March 31.
The Center for Republican Renewal Announced: December 16, 2008 Mission: A think tank inside the Republican National Committee charged with “identifying the most innovative ideas and policies from across the nation.” Progress: Hired some staff in run-up to the RNC chairman’s race. Status: Disbanded by new RNC chairman Michael Steele on February 6, 2009.
Young Conservatives Coalition Announced: February 27, 2009 Mission: “To implement a new conservative agenda for the 21st century” and “allow young conservative activists the opportunity to communicate and network with each other, while fostering an environment for sharing resources and strategic coordination to counter the rising young, progressive left.” Progress: Launched and held a “brainstorming session” at the Conservative Political Action Conference, followed by “Reaganpalooza,” a massive party and “young professional networking event.” Held a “Earth Day Beach Party” outside of the Environmental Protection Agency. Status: Active.
The Tea Party movement Announced: February 27, 2009 Mission: Hard to define, but the gist is to protest government overspending. Progress: Held hundreds of anti-spending, anti-tax “Tea Parties,” heavily promoted by Fox News, on April 15, 2009. Survived some post-Tea Party infighting. Status: Active, although activity since Tea Party day has largely consisted of protesting a CNN reporter who asked rude questions at the Chicago event and demanding a meeting with President Obama.
Renewing American Leadership Announced: March 20, 2009 Mission: Unite social and economic conservatives to survive a “crisis in which the secular state, if allowed, will fundamentally and radically change America against the wishes of most Americans,” according to founder Newt Gingrich. Progress: Web site still under construction. Status: At the moment, not much more than a promotional vehicle for Gingrich’s upcoming documentary about Pope John Paul II.
Resurgent Republic Announced: April 28, 2009 Mission: “Promote market-oriented policies, lower taxes and economic growth, and strong national security policies. It will help policy makers, think tanks, interest groups and others advocate for policies that are consistent with conservative principles, and oppose policies that stifle job creation, weaken national security and undermine values that have made America a great country.” Progress: Released a poll that, they argued, proved that independents were siding with the Republican message. Battled with pollster Stan Greenberg after he argued that the poll was badly sampled and off base. Status: Still active.
The National Council for a New America Announced: April 30, 2009 Mission: Bring together Republican leaders to “engage with and empower the American people to develop innovative solutions that meet the serious challenges confronting our country.” Progress: Held its first event, a pizza lunch with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney, in Arlington. Spent a week defending this from accusations of pandering lobbed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Status: Planning at least four future events across the country.

No Matter

Who Are We Kidding? These guys are irelevant until at least '14

There's this

Republican Favorable Ratings
Republican/ Net Favorable / # Polls

Laura Bush/+54%/3
Condoleezza Rice/+29%/1
John McCain*/+18%/4
Cindy McCain/+17%/6
Tim Pawlenty/+5%/1
Rudy Guiliani/+4%/2
Sarah Palin*/+2%/5
Mike Huckabee**/+1%/4
Bobby Jindal/+1%/2
Mitt Romney**/-11%/3
Mitch McConnell/-16%/2
Rush Limbaugh/-18%/4
Karl Rove***/-19%/2
John Boehner/-21%/2
Newt Gingrich***/-23%/2
Dick Cheney/-27%/5
George W. Bush*/-29%/6

* = Post-2008 election

** = Polling from January-February 2008

*** = Polling from early 2007

and this

Michael Steele isn't looking back, he swears:

The Republican Party has turned a corner, and as we move forward Republicans should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan. Again, we’re not looking back – if President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward. Ronald Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America. For Reagan’s conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to this age.

and this

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman] probably assumes that the GOP will spend the next few years banging rocks together in the wilderness, throwing moderates like Colin Powell out of the party, and trying to wind the clock back to the early 1980s while the rest of the country moves on. He probably assumes that he's already established himself as "a different kind of conservative," that the domestic policy fights he'll face as governor will be frustrating and possibly fruitless, and that the GOP will need a few more electoral thrashings before it is ready to buy what he's selling.

What's more, he probably assumes that, while the rest of the GOP tears itself apart in naval-gazing fights about the meaning of "true conservatism," he can go off and pad his resume with several years of experience managing America's largest (and increasingly, its most important) bilateral relationship, and that when he returns in, say, 2014, not only will the GOP primary voters not punish him, they'll welcome him as a practical, reform-minded leader, attuned to the problems of the 21st century, who puts the national interest above partisan politics -- that is, just the kind of guy to lead them to victory in 2016.

And this

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) approval rating -- at about 33% or 34%, per recent polls -- aren't much different than they were when Gray Davis was governor.

And this

Monday, May 18, 2009

No Gain

The Republicans are losing the entire country .........

This leads to Blago Dem leaders, BTW

NYT's Dowd Admits Plagiarizing Blog
Columnist Took Paragraph Virtually Word-For-Word From Josh Marshall's blog Talking Points Memo

AP) New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.

Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to the Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

The newspaper is expected to issue a formal correction Monday. A request for comment made by The Associated Press was not immediately returned by the Times late Sunday.

The error appeared in Dowd's Sunday column, in which she criticized the Bush administration's use of interrogation methods in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In the original column, Dowd wrote: "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

Marshall last week wrote virtually the same sentence. But where Dowd's column used the phrase "the Bush crowd was," Marshall used "we were."

Dowd, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1990, told the Huffington Post that the mistake was unintentional. She claims she never read Marshall's post last week and had heard the line from a friend who did not mention reading it in Marshall's blog.

Gays Save Country From Crippling Recession

Boston Globe

Study: Gay marriages pump $111 million into Mass

AMHERST, Mass.—A study says the over 12,000 same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts since 2004 have pumped over $111 million into the state's economy.

The report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law says a typical same-sex couple spent about $7,400 on their wedding, with one in ten couples spending over $20,000.

A second study by the same group found that young, highly educated people in same-sex relationships were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts after 2004 than before gay marriage became legal.

M.V. Lee Badgett, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts and a study co-author, says allowing gay couples to marry has helped businesses in tough economic times.

Sunday marks the five-year anniversary of Massachusetts recording its first same-sex marriage licenses.

The Tragedy Of DADT

wonkette gets to the heart of it as it looks at the Rummy article

... Rumsfeld would hand-deliver these briefing documents to the president during the early days of the war, and the briefs had covers with photos from the war combined with Biblical quotes. ..... And the layouts, jesus god, did the Defense Department have not a single queer atheist designer who might have made this shit not look like a PTA newsletter from 1980? Yellow drop-shadows, seriously?

I Understand They Delay

If abortion is still the only issue to judge a politician by what can the gays hope for?

Barry's trying his darndest though

Fine Catholic EJ Dionne:

Facing down protesters who didn't want him at Notre Dame, President Obama fought back not with harsh words but with the most devastating weapons in his political arsenal: a call for "open hearts," "open minds," "fair-minded words" and a search for "common ground."
There were many messages sent from South Bend. Obama's opponents seek to reignite the culture wars. He doesn't. They would reduce religious faith to a narrow set of issues. He refused to join them. They often see theological arguments as leading to certainty. He opted for humility.
He did all this without skirting the abortion question and without flinching from the "controversy surrounding my visit here." ... By facing their arguments head-on and by demonstrating his attentiveness to Catholic concerns, Obama strengthened moderate and liberal forces inside the church itself. He also struck a forceful blow against those who would keep the nation mired in culture-war politics without end. Obama's opponents on the Catholic right placed a large bet on his Notre Dame visit. And they lost.