Bitterenders waiting for the new Saddam

Krugman:

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings….

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit….

[S]omething snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

It’s the fate the Republican party deserves, but not a fate this country should have to endure. This Republican party is never coming back. If conservative Americans do manage to rescue the GOP from the dustbin of history, it will only be because they ridded themselves of the neo-Confederates and Dixiecrats, i.e., the people most responsible for what Rush would call the anal poisoning of the Republican party.

More from Krauthammer, who definitely did not get the memo, and more from Ed Markey who says G.O.P. now stands for Grandstand, Oppose and Pretend.

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Chris Cillizza dumps on Gov. BridgeFail.

As you can see from this front page display from the Des Moines Register, Pawlenty’s not exactly setting Iowa on fire.

Yes, Gov. BridgeFail was at that event as well. And the doofus on the right? That’s the schlub who ran Iowa during the Reagan years. Blame his obsessive job destruction compulsion for me moving to Minnesota.

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McClatchy has an insanely stupid story about how students and workers staying home sick could crash the Internet.

The catch? 40% of us would have to stay home sick. Without, of course, being so sick you pass on the internet and go with the tube instead.

Yes, once upon a time you could tell when the kids got home from school. The intertubes did slow down that noticeably.

I think we’ve moved past that now, however much the suits desperately desire to gate the ‘net and create new levels of service for which they can charge more.

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An economist is somebody who did not have the personality to become an accountant.

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Best Buy is shifting to download über alles this Xmas.

Do not buy download cards for young people on your shopping list. Just don’t. Not unless they ask, and then pat them on the head and praise them for being polite honest suckers.

I’m even thinking about picking up a Nano. I think I could fill one up.

Actually, I’m backing up my iTunes library starting last night. I realized that the RIAA goons were never going to break down my door, and that the biggest threat to my 76,000-song library was a hard drive crash.

I also suspect iTunes would run better if I reloaded it from one hard drive instead of the current five-drive array (yes, the USB drive is still kaput, but it just held movies and comics).

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Courts stop Blue Beat from selling The Beatles catalog at a quarter a song.

The order set back a novel legal argument by BlueBeat that songs produced through digital regeneration are akin to songs performed by cover bands and therefore do not run afoul of copyright law. BlueBeat had argued in court filings that its downloads were legal because the company had created entirely new versions by computer through a process called “psychoacoustic simulations” that makes the re-created songs sound just like the original recordings.

But, as the article goes on to say, the court didn’t buy it.

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A state senate candidate was furious that I went to work for her because he’d assumed I’d help out on his campaign. I was Joe Labor on a feminist campaign, office manager and volunteer straw boss for a woman who stood next to Gloria Steinem at the NYC Playboy Club protest back in the ’60s.

Roxanne Conlin is running against Chuck Grassley for the U.S. Senate in Iowa, and I wish her all the best.

Someone needs to unseat that twittering fool.

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Palin’s “no cameras or recorders” speech.

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This means it’s all bipartisan, right?

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When a beard and a yarmulke speak as loudly as sheets and burning crosses: Sholom Rubashkin’s trial continues in Sioux Falls.

Lubbavitchers don’t believe they have to be honorable in their dealings with non-Lubbavitchers. It’s them against the world, or, in this case, them against the USDA, OSHA, and the State of Iowa.

If America were truly anti-Semitic, we’d let the Rubashkins sell all the fecal-contaminated meat they like.

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Glenn W. Smith:

The debate over health care reform, for instance, has been bright with it. Just about every word uttered by the opponents of health care reform has been moonshine. Every word, and everyone knows it.  The House managed to shield its eyes from the glare just long enough to pass a health reform bill. And in retrospect, the attacks on reform look all the more ridiculous.

We were told that freedom would be destroyed by our better health. We were told health care reform was communism, or fascism, for socialism, or some other non sequiturism. We were told we’d go broke. Or maybe die. Well, at least if it makes us sick we can afford to see a doctor.

Now the Senate, then the conference committee.

A long way to go and more projection to overcome. (health insurance reform is LITERALLY THE SAME THING AS STALIN TIMES THE HOLOCAUST!)Do we have the courage to kill this beast if the Blue Dogs keep shoving poison up this bill’s ass?

Oh, and fuck Collin Peterson.

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Greenwald on Friedman on Israel and leverage.

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Bachmann gets leied.

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Have I mentioned the unemployment rate for young adults lately?

 

 

Explore posts in the same categories: Republicans, intertubes, politics, propaganda

Tags: Chuck Grassley, healthcare reform, Michele Bachmann, Roxanne Conlin, Rubashkins, Sarah Palin, ThefuckingBeatles

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