I got a CCR rummy/cheney rookie card. Any traders?

Had dinner with a friend who’s a therapist on Tuesday. Also keenly interested in politics & foreign policy. I remarked that I thought the Rs were certifiable. He understood I was not exaggerating, and agreed with me. So there’s one professional opinion.

Norah O’Donnell reporting on MSNBC [my paraphrase]…Sarah Palin goin’ bitchy. Bus tour, score settling begins….

Looking forward to the cat fight.

Nitpick: “deficit hawks” link goes to the same article as the “bring them home” link

It is a good thing she left Alaska to (hopefully) the grown ups.

Now the gang are sitting around talking about Lou Dobbs and Bartiromo notes “he became a target….” Yeah, like he didn’t make himself a lightning rod.

And there ought to be a place for an old-fashioned network that doesn’t come from a particular point of view, that presents both sides, opines the Time guy…

Here’s a novel idea: how about a news network that presents THE NEWS.

Put CNN International into the CNN programming 24-7.

I noticed that, too. Why is it that the two people to first notice and comment on it are from North Carolina?

I actually have some Republican friends who have been very loyal party members who now cannot believe where their party has gone. They no longer see the party as the the party they began working with 25 years ago. They are actually finding themselves appreciating the efforts of progressives, especially in the areas of health care, economic stimulus and torture. They seem to understand that torture has got to be addressed as far as our ability to regain international leverage. Businesses need to have healthcare addressed and, alternative energy and economic stimulus must happen in order to build a strong economy that can stand on its’ own.

Finally, they do not like the lack of diversity and the constant anger and hate spewing. They view it as certifiable and extremely divisive and distracting towards positive sum efforts to recover the nation.

I heard the $4.– ad yesterday…looks like they can’t give ‘em away. Nice.

We might give a copy to those folks who voted for McCain….a good Christmas present…cheap.

The price may be to get the book in as many hands as possible as a means of campaigning.

Does she have pictures of Russia in her book?

Bawwwhahaha!!!!!

You mean Roooosha? You betcha!

Regarding Eikenberry’s “classified cable”, I have to wonder who shared this with the press and to what end.

It better have a lot of pictures because anyone who would buy it must be dumb.

Morning pups,

I was zapping yesterday evening, and I saw Dobbs’s departure speech.

But each of those issues is in my opinion informed by our capacity to demonstrate strong resilience of our now weakened capitalist economy and demonstrate the political will to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C. I believe these to be profoundly critically important issues and I will continue to strive to deal honestly and straightforwardly with those issues in the future.

Unfortunately, these issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion. I’ll be working diligently to change that as best I can. And, as for the important work of restoring inspiration to our great free society and our market economy, I will strive as well to be a leader in that national conversation.

I screamed at my tv: ” Project much, do we???” and then I threw my running shoe at the damn box.

Maybe they are planning on a study guide as a sequel.

I hope it wasn’t made in Mexico … *g*

G’mornin’ all !

Per the cited censure of Graham:

“U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham — in the name of bipartisanship — continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism,” the resolution reads.

Emphasis mine.

These are the same people who applauded GWB when he trashed the Bill of Rights, engaged in a pattern of war crimes and violations of FISA, and ran up the biggest deficit in the history of the nation. Where is their condemnation of him?

I suspect that they hate Lindsey Graham because they thing he has some of teh gay.

As Johnny Wendell was wont to say, Conservatism = Mental Illness.

In one of John Dean’s recent books, he discusses the Authoritarian mindset, the chief one among hardcore Cons. The key thing with Authoritarians is that they can’t be abstract with their empathy; a situation has to impact them or someone they care about in a direct and undeniable manner. That’s how you get someone like Jim Ramstad, who is a lockstep Con when it counts in pretty much everything but mental health and substance abuse issues because he’s a recovering substance abuser. Or Jesse Ventura, who when he was governor of Minnesota was a fiscal conservative except when it came to light rail transit (because he’s spent time using the DC Metro) and special needs kids (his daughter Jade is one).

‘Morning, Q! How goes the running and biking?

Speaking of mental illness, Goodhair just went plumb over the edge:

Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of “punishing” Texas and being “hell-bent” on turning the United States into a socialist country.

Speaking at a luncheon for a Midland County Republican Women’s group, Perry said that “this is an administration hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don’t need to be afraid to say that because that’s what it is.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29424.html

Per Sean Hannity: (video included here) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/12/hannity-jon-stewart-was-r_n_354887.html

And although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, he was right. Now on his program last night, he mentioned that we had played some inccorect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct, we screwed up. we aired some video of a rally in september along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadverdent mistake, but a mistake none the less. So, Mr. Stewart, you were right. We apologize. But by the way, we wanna thank you and all your writers for watching.

No mention of the fact that it was obviously a deliberate attempt at deception to make it look like Michele Bachman’s 4000-person rally was much larger than it really was.

They have no other choice. They cannot lose their racist crazy base, the one whose racial fantasies they’ve spent the last four decades encouraging. Per Reagan strategist Lee Atwater, way back in 1981:

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that [President Ronald] Reagan does get to the [George] Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with Legal Services, by cutting down on food stamps …”

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni–er, ni–er, ni–er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni–er” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni–er, ni–er.”

This is why the GOP was willing to cut loose the Hispanics, who less than a decade ago were touted as becoming the GOP’s new base because of their social conservatism’s allegedly meshing with the GOP’s. They could not keep both the Hispanics and the racist crazy base.

As I understand the “share”, it was directed at Afghan. governance and corruption. Think they’re listening?

New post upstairs…

Saw a documentary on Atwater a couple of years ago. All that toxic thinking must have killed him.

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading that this morning. But, the sense I got was that Eikenberry feels that the Karzai regime is fundamentally unreliable and corrupt. If true, it’s hard to imagine that this will change them to any meaningful degree. Surely whoever released the story realized that it would also have a significant impact in this country too.

See this to confirm the extent of the corruption.

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=BA5B73C2AD0E9BC7FE9738CA2B583CD0?diaryId=3397

karen

Gosh, so is Dobbs going to run for President with Palin? There is a Dobbs4President 2012 website.

And as for the quickie version of the Palin book, she must be totally panicked to change her release date and went for a shorter book because of Levi’s Playgirl “spread” and article. Or, she’s trying to make more bucks off of his article by releasing her book at the same time creating the media frenzy of she said-he said.

Don’t know if this is a mistake, but the second and third links go to the same article.

Morning PW,

I can run a couple of minutes before the pain becomes overwhelming. For a guy who’s not supposed to walk, I’ll say that it’s a wonderful result. Biking should be back in my life next year. Hope you are well.

You’re lucky to have Republican friends who are mostly sane. Most of the ones I know are either full-on teabaggers or teabagger sympathizers. Mostly, though, these are the fundies who are of the authoritarian mindset, and I observe directly what Phoenix Woman indicates is in a John Dean book: these people are incapable of caring or relating to anything, unless they directly experience it themselves and sometimes not even then (as in: they vote against their own self-interests all the time). Their churches definitely go out of their way to encourage this kind of narcissistic self-absorbed selfishness.

We have Repub neighbors whom we like a lot, and sadly, their son has some mental illness issues, which led to him being institutionalized for a time. The son is now struggling to finish college. The father snapped out a kind of nasty comment last Sunday about the House HC bill that barely passed.

My husband said to me later: the bill sucks, but you’d think that they would appreciate and be in favor of something that will force Big Ins to ignore pre-existing conditions. If things stay as they are, good luck to their son ever getting any Health insurance under any circumstances. Beats me how our neighbors can see this as “bad.”

I see most Republicans, esp some of my family members, as certifiable. They simply make no sense anymore, and the level of their inarticulate rage is, well, crazy. At the end of the day, I think they are all boiling mad because they are not “in charge” anymore. Plus BHO is black, ya know….