Digg It

Thanks much! It’s snowing here this morning…ugh.

It’s snowing here in Atlanta, too. Well, they call it snow here. It’s just a few flakes. Kind of like Congress.

Ah but Christy, with very few exceptions, Democrats in Congress are the real shame. A failure to communicate and a failure to lead.

Maybe Olsen can call Cornyn…not only is Cornyn here, I just heard more about his role in the Franken case. He’s like the tin man…if he only had a brain.

I covered my little garden last night — really glad I did now. Was worried about frost, but didn’t think we’d get much snow. Well, we got enough for the whole sheet to be covered in a light blanket at this point. Ayyyiieeeee.

Am so ready for Spring weather!

It’s not snowing in MN! And here’s my really big question. Who is Susan Peters?

I am so beyond pissed off about this at the moment. And I’d love it if some of the Dem Senators especially would hear from folks about the need to stand up — now.

If they think this won’t get worse for judicial nominees, then they are just living in la la land.

Allowing tactical dishonesty to stand is a mistake, in my opinion.

The only place such dishonesty is NOT to be found these days is in blogs such as this one. Ignoring “tactical dishonesty” by media, Villagers and elected officials is what has brought us to the hell hole in which we find ourselves.

We had snow last thurs, fri, sat & Sun. 60s today

I wrote an op-ed piece about Koh, Johnsen, and Cornyn’s buffoonish behavior and continual threats of “War” and submitted it to the Austin paper yesterday. They regularly print my letters to the Editor, but this is my first stab at a lengthy submission. It remains to be seen if they will print it.

We had two inches of heavy, wet snow overnight on Sunday night, and I had to dig my snow boots out of the closet yesterday morning. Most of it is gone now, but it is cold and flurrying this morning here in NW Indiana. I am pissed off enough at the GOP’s tactics with Koh and Johnsen that the heat from my hair on fire will melt any snow that falls on it!

happens whenever we put the narrative before the truth. can happen to anyone. but honest people try to correct their mistakes. don’t see many honest people in deecee. :(

The statement by the conservative students on behalf of Koh is the most lucid writing I’ve seen from a conservative source in more than eight years. They may not agree entirely with Koh, but they respected him and they had little use for the harpy-like response of their fellows in ideology.

Amazing, almost template-like in form, so straightforward. One hopes they are the future of the Republican Party and not the last gasp of its past.

There was talk here yesterday about Obama making the appointments…where is the push for that?

Just read the following Harry Truman quote:

It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.

Bipartisanship will never, ever happen until the Dems are solid and at least relatively united, and we are so far from that happening. Furthermore, everyone wants to be a star. And mostly the stardom is about obstructing rather than accomplishment. It burns.

I don’t know…but I’ll bet that’s a flick you will be disappointed in if you track it down!

Thanks for the heads up, Christy. I guess I’ll be Dialing for Dollars ( another stinker!)this morning

Must mark the end of global warming. *g*

ROFL — sadly, I think it’s our usual last winter hurrah. But here’s hoping for the arctic ice shelves, anyway…

I’ve spent the last few minutes trying to find my boots, too!

It’s beyond frustrating to have to push people to stand up for something that is right. Arrrrrgh…

With things spiralling down the toilet you can expect the pukes to try to rally their wingnut base about “family values” issues while their minions continue to not practice what they preach.

Hypocrisy and lying with a straight face are the fundamental requirements of these jerks.

When enough people reach the end of the rope (coming soon) they won’t sit in their pews and listen to this rubbush. Hunger will change their views and their apathy.

To the topic. Rs are still trying to create their own reality. It hasn’t worked as they would have hoped, so they’re doubling down.

Had dinner on Saturday night with some liberal friends who still read mainly the MSM. They have noticed a shift to the left in the last year. So maybe there is an itsy bitsy bit of progress.

Well, I’ve noticed that as well, but the media is still lying to US; I’ve noticed THAT too.

Obama in Iraq!!!!!

and msnbc just asked: “is it still dangerous for the president to go in to iraq?”

I’m still a U.S. history & political neophyte, so reading up to try to become less so. But such books as Nixonland point out how much in kahoots the media has been with the pols. Also, Perlstein asserts, Nixon was the first to have a deliberate policy of manipulating the media. That was 4 decades ago. The Rs have only gotten better at it with practice. So they’re still doing it. But the advent of the internet has provided an organizing factor for the lefties. So I am hopeful (while remembering that hope is a 4-letter word) that the worm may be turning.

Did he bring a plastic Easter bunny?

Say what?

Is Michelle with him in Iraq?

Harking back to the plastic turkey that W brought to Iraq for his surprise Thanksgiving visit. Will look for a photo.

Definitely we have been “saved’, in terms of knowledge, by the internet.

But, since the corporations own the media and it’s more and more consolidated ( another effect of Gramm Bliley Rudmann fiasco) we really never get the facts out to the most folks who need them. I was talking to a young womon at the doctor’s office several months back and she said she had voted for McCain “Because he had experience”. I asked her about Palin and she didn’t even know who she was! Talk about “low information”.

I bet most people in this country think Obama’s doing a good job with the eekconomy, too.

She came back to DC on Sunday and saw the girls off to school monday AM

Here it is.

the only time the DC dems seem relatively united is when it’s against us (see TARP, for example).

just caught that myself. noted they were employing Montgomery Meigs a discredited Pentagon shill as an “analyst” on the story

Mornin’ All

Not saying there isn’t a long way to go, or that success is guaranteed, just that there’s a start. (And I’m not the optimistic type. Just trying to assess what’s really going on.)

And the MSM are doing their best to put themselves out of business. Not the least of which was going heavily into debt to try to make profitability appear higher, during good times, of course. So (at least this is my understanding), many newspapers would be reasonably profitable were it not for debt payments, it is those that are driving them into bankruptcy.

Thanks.

new post up back at fdl…

Late snowy morn but hearty greetings Christy and Pups.

I trust that broccoli is nested in protective snow.

Had to react my dear, wise, warrior-lady.

This nation has far too many problems on its plate at the moment without some narrow-minded nincompoops trying to create more out of bile and bullshit.

We should have neither the patience nor the time for liars. We cannot afford them. Moreover, we should not abide them.

Amen!

Mr. Obama seems to be acting like Capt. Kirk in The Trouble with Tribbles. He’s made his crew vow not to start a fight or get into one.

Where is the Scottie who will let loose and defend his team, if not because his opponent called his captain a Denebian slime devil, then because he called his ship a “garbage scow”.

Politics, like bull fighting, is a blood sport. Being nice is something accorded an opponent worthy of respect. It’s not merited when the opponent plays by no rules, respects no prohibitions on en familia attacks, and chooses only to lay waste to anything within its grasp.

Gratuitous swagger is not needed. Neither is pretending to be so far above the fray that you miss the fight altogether, but live with having lost it.

Dean Koh wrote an excellent book back in the early 90s called The National Security Constitution. It’s a good exposition of what has happened to this country since the passage of the National Security Act in 1947.

One of the clearest explanations of the Steel Seizure case is in here and a comparison between that case and Curtiss-Wright in 1936 that spelled out the president’s plenary powers in foreign affairs.

We need to put a stop to the garbage that happens every time someone gets a chance to nominate anyone who will actually help this country instead of advancing a neanderthal agenda.

Also find it curious that anyone has the gall to actually impugn Koh based on his ancestry. I didn’t hear anyone comparing John Yoo to Reverend Moon when the torture documents were revealed.

Good on the conservative Yalies defending their dean. The right’s dishonesty has been going on so long that that it must be strategic as well as tactical. A massive failure, IMO, but they have been getting away with it for so many loooooong years. I long to thumb my nose and other protuberances.

What’s really interesting is that the Republicans who are so concerned about Koh and Johnsen apparently have no problem or issue with the continued service of Jay Bybee as a Circuit Court judge, despite his investigation for war crimes participation.

I have never heard any kind of linkage offered by the Koh detractors as to how it is that they think he can do anything to affect the interpretation of the US Constitution from a position outside of DOJ and outside, even, of any domestic impact agency. Just how is gen counsel for the Sec of State going to impact US constitutional law? It’s not like Taft’s memos explaining that we couldn’t ignore the Geneva Conventions affected US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So
a) Republicans are much more concerned with someone who is against the commission of war crimes being appointed to OLC than they are with someone who may have participated in war crimes serving on the Circuit bench, and
b) Rebublicans who suppoted DOJ’s rejection of input from Taft on even the application of the Geneva Conventions overseas, when he served as general counsel for Powell, are now concerned that somehow the general counsel for the Sec of State will be setting US domestic constitutional law agendas and applications.

Re b – has anyone explained to them that the Dept of State isn’t the Dept of Justice? Maybe something in the nature of a diagram with pretty pictures and little emoticons that dance and jeer when they click on the right answer?

Koh’s nomination is still pending before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and a source there says it’ll be a while before they get around to holding hearings.)

WTF? Pardon my French, but what is wrong with “our” Senate “leaders?”

Really, I suspect some of the Obama Admin’s missteps are due to lack of staff and high departmental posts, such as Koh’s and Johnsen’s.
So why the heck aren’t the Senate committees moving fast on confirmations?
Aaargh.

Oops, forgot to attribute the quote to the TPM piece linked to by Christy, above.

Whatever happened to recess appointments?

My thoughts exactly.

FYI folks — I’ve got some people coming on to chat about these issues on Thursday. More details on that as I firm it up, but wanted to give you a heads up that we’d have some live chat on this later in the week…

Maybe we could work something up with dancing jelly beans in the spirit of Easter. *g*

This is only to be expected. The MSM is owned body and soul by corporations. The news that we get from network TV is censored by the owners. The millionaire anchors will say that they are not censored, but at the same time they know damn well what their owners expect from them and they will do nothing to rock their boat. At any rate we get all of 5-7 min of hard news, the rest of the network newscasts are just fillers. I no longer watch any network news program, nor do I watch CNN or Foux news. The corporations own congress and any person who attempts to fight against that ownership is doomed to failure thru false stories in the “news” and by the new age “journalists” who get their “facts” from drudge and politico. We have become what futurists have been writing about for years. Our govt is quickl;y becoming a wholy owned subsidiary of multinationals. The Iraq is a good example of this. Next thing you know we will be going to war to give raw materials to corps who desire them-Iraq and the oil companies, only 1 of which is an american corp. I give our present form of govt no more than 20-50 years until it is a hollow shell with authoritarians running govt at the beck and call of multicorps. I believe we are too far gone to change things now. We were too far along this path 20 years ago. We are all replaceable cogs. The gilded age of corporate ownership is fast approaching, the middle class is dying. We will soon belong to a corp for life or until we can no longer work. Good wages are going to be a thing of the past, as are benefits.
Remember the mantra. Shit happens, then you die.

51 – EPU territory, but remember Jon Stewart doing a piece with “I’m a PC” John as his global advisor, explaining to Bush and the audience the differences between Pakistan and India. He had a globe or a map, and one was colored pink, with the other yellow. Maybe when he’s not getting TDS up to speed, he could moonlight on explaining civics to Senators?

Re your remark about good wages “going to be a thing of the past?” They’re a thing of the past already and have been going that way since ‘73 when the all out attack on organized labor began in this country.

As far as where this country is going let’s also amend that last line–shit happens and then hope that you die.