Archives for posts with tag: politics

My wife and I confessed to eachother not really knowing what was in the news. I went looking and find this pretty interesting:

Leaked US cables show that Australia sees the Iranian nuclear programme as a “deterrent,” a sharply contrary view  to that of most Western countries. The leaks also reveal that Australia doesn’t share the assessment that Iran is a “rogue state.”

Also, Australian intelligence agencies fear Israel may launch a military strike on Iran to knock out its nuclear facilities, which they said could trigger a nuclear war…

I see they’ve played knifey spooney before. I’m always bothered by the idea of a country with like forty percent of the more than 22000 total warheads getting to close the barn door after itself. No nation should want to need nuclear weapons. It’s repellent to stall any effort to reduce the number. We really need more than 1550 ready to launch? Who are we fighting— the entire inner Solar System?

(I don’t know why it has the 3d glasses thing on— to avoid copyright protection? Pretty irritating.)

 

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I said “Tracey Ullman.”

Speaking of satire, I really hate in any way noticing his existence, but I was disheartened to notice in this article about Glenn Beck’s Sunday-after attacks on Obama’s “liberation theology” a mention of Republican concern that all this aggressive rhetoric could backfire. I would always sooner prefer these sorts of people rush headlong into disaster without tarrying to check for it up ahead. Quotes like this

You see, it’s all about victims and victimhood; oppressors and the oppressed; reparations, not repentance; collectivism, not individual salvation… It’s a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.

and his March rant against any church that dare promote “social justice” strike me as pretty astoundingly out of touch with the basic tenets of, I don’t know, Christianity. Oh well— I know better than to expect Americans to notice pretty much anything that isn’t blinking and neon. At least the Tea Party is still good for rib-ticklers like that in the last thirty or so seconds in this Morning Edition piece.

With a title that sexy, you knew it had to be something boring.

I was really glad the Citizens United thing didn’t take me by surprise (thanks, Warren). Between the initial comments on the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque and the willingness here to call Citizens United the big stinking pile of shit it is, I’m happy to see that the Fierce Advocacy of Every Now and Again isn’t getting buried on the way to midterms.

Speaking of which— my folks didn’t sound too down about the recent primary, but it was a fair sight scarier everywhere but Seattle. Round these parts, our incumbent D (and chair of the State’s Ways and Means Committee) is advancing in second place, while Rick Larsen looks vulnerable to ultraconservative John Koster, a no-abortion-even-for-rape-and-incest sort with really irritating deficit hawk-baiting signs peppering I-5. I’d say I hope more folks read sentences like the below between now and the election but, well, clearly, it didn’t help Stan Rumbaugh.

John Koster physically flinches when asked about the prospect of two gay men kissing at the altar.

I was disgusted earlier this week by the size of the Goldman Sachs fraud settlement— amounting to about 3.4% of their 2009 bonus pool— leaving me primed to jump on this Elizabeth Warren bandwagon. I like the idea of Obama using this as his opportunity to make an M Night twist and not only tap Warren for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but simultaneously clean house and can the cronies Geithner and Summers.

It’s a pretty elaborately constructed fantasy world I live in. Meanwhile, in the real one, Glenn Beck gave a Jesus “was a conqueror” and “make the Jews pay” speech and prostitute patron David Vitter is gobsmacked at the idea of Rachel Maddow exhibiting femininity.

Remember how Republicans were so happy to use that Dubai Ports thing a few years ago to make themselves look meaningfully different from the Bush administration line? From yesterday’s newspaper:

Institutions in Abu Dhabi and Qatar are understood to have been sounded out about the prospect of taking a strategic shareholding (of BP) to support the ailing share price and deter potential bidders.

BP being bought, mid-cleanup, by a Middle Eastern company? Tell the Tea Partiers that and you could almost just as soon tell them that, week after that, you’ll be issued your Subdermal Identity eXchange 66 Model Federal RFID chip week after that.

Poor Obama. I read another editorial today about liberal fantasy projections onto him versus the reality of him running as a centrist. I wouldn’t blame him if he wishes he wasn’t the president for this particular stretch of American history but, well, “so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” So chin up— and hope the Republicans continue their unrelenting war on the Middle Class.

The Boehner Bungle reminds me of an effort to lose as many elections as possible for the Republicans. Everybody’s harping on the “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon” line which, yes, minimizes the economic collapse (“ant”) while wildly overstating the financial reform bill (“nuclear weapon”). Reminds me more of a Band-aid on cancer.

Anyway. I think the Dems are missing a great opportunity by not focusing on the rest of that original interview. As Boehner has it, the retirement age should be raised to 70— and means-testing should be employed to weed out the older folks with “substantial” income— to make sure we have enough money for our wars. Compound that with the sentiment that Obama overreacted to the spill and you’ve got a political sludge gold mine.

I’m surprisingly okay with the idea… but I take umbrage with the “app for that” line. It reminds me of a joke a generic lame coworker would make- the guy whose cubicle is covered with Dilberts and is still answering the phone with the Budweiser “what’s uppppp?”

Addendum: My mother upbraided me via email along the lines that the Democrats need all the help they can get and that I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth— and I couldn’t agree more, Mom. I like that they’re waving the flashiest thing they can find in front of idiots who would spite vote against Democrats because Obama didn’t make their mean neighbor’s dog into a unicorn that shits ice cream and babysits for free. It is astounding to think that it’s been less than two years since the 2008 election; less than two years for everybody to forget every reason not to vote for Republicans. I keep hoping there are two things that will Keep The Bums Out— Obama’s secret plan to win the war in Vietnam and the Republicans themselves and their Democrat-like ability to screw up royal. I was really interested to hear on my favorite news program today that pundits on both sides are rightly marking up the Petraeus Hail Mary as a political masterstroke.