John Cornyn isn't very bright.

In other breaking news, water is still wet and Rush Limbaugh is still a fat, fucking liar.

Among the people who died in that Buffalo plane crash were Beverly Eckert, one of the 911 widows who fought to get the commission created, and two members of Chuck Mangione's band.

I was hoping they'd invite Stephen Colbert back.

I believe Rush uses a Mac, so it would be "command-f".

Happy news indeed about Justice Ginsburg.

Reminds me of someone I know who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was undergoing a battery of tests to find other found cancers. They happened to find an unrelated, early-stage ovarian cancer -- like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer is usually found only once it's spread. Her oncologist told her that her breast cancer saved her life and danced around the office a while.

I guess the correspondents' association figured, "now that we have a black president, we should invite a black comic."

It says something about our society these days that a person who's come out as a lesbian isn't considered all that threatening, as in Ellen DeGeneres. (Of course, were Ms. Sykes a gay black male, it'd be a different matter entirely.)

Once in a while, corruption is so insane, it's actually hard to believe.

If judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan took 2.6 million dollars from PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care as a commission to jail juveniles, you can bet there are others. And if they get away with a mere 7 years in prison, let the riots begin.

Not Cornyn again. Jeez. When will these Raygunites realize that cutting taxes right now isn't going to do squat for the economy. People will pocket that money, pay bills, credit cards, etc.

That money will not circulate.

Oh, c'mon citizen_pain. When I got my stimulus last year, why, I got me a big 'ol bucket of tar and gravel and filled some potholes.

Then I took the liberty of unsercuring my wireless networks so the whole neighborhood would have broadband access.

Then I ate about a million popsicles and rebuilt a bridge.

See, it's true. I really do know how to spend my money better than the government.

Command +F doesn't work on pdf's on my computer (I have a Mac, but it's old). But it is nice to learn about the "find" function in adobe.

Ha, last years 'stimulus' package was just that... stimulus. I believe porn sales went through the roof.

I guess when your ass is broke as hell, you may as well pass the time 'stimulating' yourself; it's free!!

Once in a while, corruption is so insane, it's actually hard to believe.

And yet the privatization of our prison system continues apace. Because I'm sure this kind of corruption only happens in the juvenile system, right? Judges in adult criminal cases couldn't possibly be getting kickbacks from, say, CCA to give them as many "clients" as possible.

I mean, that would be like brokers forging mortgage applications just to get a little extra money.

The NRO Top 25 Conservative Movies of all time countdown is oVer now over at the NRO.

What is the most awesomest conservative movie of them all?

Republicans lie. What a revelation. Real news would be when they actually tell the truth.

Funny, doubtful!

Love me some Wanda Sykes. Although, I'm sure her standup routine will be toned down quite a bit.

Wanda Sykes once worked for the National Security Agency I do believe. A very intelligent lady who may know Washington bureaucracy from a couple of different perspectives.

I would like to nominate Judd Gregg as the poster boy for the virtues of bipartisanship. What an asshat.

The ice theory sounds very plausible.

I live in Rochester, New York, and my husband's car was just coated with the stuff this morning.

It is possible to make a PDF unsearchable - but that's done generally out of laziness (scanning pages in graphically instead of through OCR or direct document conversion) then intent.

And a PDF is more difficult to run through more advanced search tools unlike raw text of any sort. So you can't say 'a line starting with F' but you can say 'search for capital F dot space space'

But aside from that, it's very searchable. Especially key word search.

I would like to nominate Judd Gregg as the poster boy for the virtues of bipartisanship.

I second the asshat...

Once in a while, corruption is so insane, it's actually hard to believe.

Every once in a while, my principles bend and I'm actually willing to support the death penalty. But if I can't have that, then judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan deserve to go away for life. 87 months is bullshit. Lock them up and throw away the key for their monstrous crimes.

Why-o-why did I go and look to see what NR thinks are "the best conservative movies"? I hate how they take things that I like-- The Incredibles-- and twist them into bizarre, ugly conservative owned ideas. Arrrrggghhhh. The stoopid, it...well, you know what it does.

Limbaugh is wrong even when he's right. He's wrong about being able to search PDFs, but PDFs still suck ass.

Why-o-why did I go and look to see what NR thinks are "the best conservative movies"?

Didn't you at least laugh when you saw "Team America" on the list?

Check out Jon Stewart's show from yesterday--he speaks well to stimulus package as he debates his guest. Likewise, Debbie Wasserman Schultz offers up fantastic defense on today's 'Hardball' (first segment) as she confronts her Republican colleague.

What the Dems need are more cogent and forceful spokespeople like these two. A whole lot more.

Boston Food Stamp Act

I really wish the wasteful Alternative Minimum Tax patch had gotten more attention.

Yeah but...

What about the "moderate" republicans opposition to food stamps? I missed how that ended up. Did the "moderates" manage to get that cut out?

The food stamp thing became especially salient after R.Maddow's brilliant "Give me freedom or give me bull puckey" speech. Grammy please.

Anybody got the skinny on the stimulus bill and food stamps? Hungry minds want to know...

If the AMT fix was just a CPI adjustment, then it was right to fix, otherwise ... ?

Here is something to add...Peanut Corp of America has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Given that the Stimulus Package was/is going to pass tonight, and everybody knew that, wouldn't it have been a nice, classy, "bipartisan" move for some Republican Senator - George Voinovich, for example - to say "I'm going to save Sherrod Brown from having to hurry back from his mother's funeral, and vote a 'proxy yes', even though I'm opposed to the bill."

Why-o-why did I go and look to see what NR thinks are "the best conservative movies"?

#19 is AWOL. Apparently conservatives can't count.

I wonder how long the Republican Party can continue to use their simple, self-serving, yet flawed logic to sell their policies.

The most important change in the discussion will come from those of us who never fell for these arguments. We must change. But how?

We must stop attacking the republican excuses and arguments in the first instance. Instead we should start categorizing which part of their ideology is supported by their comments.

Some examples are easy: cut taxes no matter what to solve any problem under discussion, or government cannot work and we shouldn't trust government with our money, also, only "tax payers" deserve tax cuts, but finally business knows best, leave 'em alone.

If reporters could internalize these and other ideological points as what animates the typical republican, they could ask interesting and embarrassing questions. For instance, they could just ask what Joe Republican means by "tax payer". Republicans are pissed off with the "make work pay" tax cut, which is an extension of the earned income tax credit which pays very low income tax payers. The republicans are starting to call it welfare. Eventually anyone who makes below a certain income and only pays taxes in the lowest bracket will be deemed to have received welfare.

In defense of their policies they will point out that the top x% of people pay most of the taxes, but fail to mention that these people also make most of the income.

It is easy to turn the republican arguments around on them. Maybe just ask how much is left over at the end of the month for the typical family in lower, middle, upper income brackets.

Or compare corporate taxation to individual taxation. Corporations pay tax only after they have paid all their bills. They get to pay their rent, their utilities, their help, their gas, their office supplies, their phone bill, their air travel, their hotel bills, their medical insurance.

If the corporate rules were applied to individuals, most people, like most corporations would pay no tax.

Republicans want to have one tax system for everyone. Why not adopt the corporate tax code? The first $50k in profit (after all those deductions) is only 15%!

Second impose a wealth tax, just like local governments. Tax assets. Think about this. If we taxed the owners of stuff in the US, we could make money from foreign owners. Most assets are hard to move, so this is something you can't export.

Again, most people have almost no assets, and have very little reason to pay for our government to protect these assets with a huge military. People who own stuff should pay for the necessary protection.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.

* John Cornyn isn't very bright. -- Steve Benen

I've come to the conclusion that you don't have to (be very bright) to function as A Republican Spout. Your own intelligence level can be that of A Brussels Sprout but, as long as you have a good memory chip installed somewhere on your person (I refuse to speculate on specifics, though have my suspicions), you'll do. I think they all gather, in some undisclosed location, bright and early every morning. There, they get their chips recharged, are handed their talking points and their marching orders, and spread out -- in an orderly phalanx, like Hoffman's Nutcracker rats -- to the media,

*How else* could all of them say 'ggzacly same thing, verbatim? I was passing by as my husband was watching the news (PBS?) and there was Davie Brooks, a-spoutin'. My husband thinks Davie is one of the saner Repubs but, there he was... sayin' what y'all have reported Hannity's been sayin', Rush-to-Limbo's been sayin', O'Reilly's been sayin', all the Repub Congress critters have been sayin'... Purely 'mazed I was, at hearin' the same song agin...

* Rush Limbaugh hasn't heard about CTRL F. -- Steve Benen

Neither have I. Can I have his job now? I can't Twitter, either (but I know how to come across as all a-twitter!), so I'm doubly qualified.

in re the plane crash in buffalo:

when i heard earlier today that icing was a likely cause of the crash, i remembered the earlier report that i had heard -- that the plane crashed straight down into one house instead of gliding in and taking out bunches of houses.

is it possible that the pilot, knowing there was no way to save the plane made an effort to minimize, put the plane nose first to avoid killing more people on the ground?

This sounds good. I just tipped it to Drudge more out of spite than much hope, who is being shameless in ragging on Democrats (Murtha troubles but not Pete D. of NM etc, on Pelosi - not posting the Bill, etc.)

Pentagon Officials Impressed With Obama
February 12, 2009 01:58 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

Pentagon officials don't normally gush, but Whispers has learned that top staffers were positively enthusiastic following their first meeting with the commander in chief in the secure conference room dubbed "the Tank" recently. They were impressed by the "high-level, global-strategic" discussion and by President Obama's detailed grasp of the difficulties that face the U.S. military. Said one senior Pentagon official: "He asked a lot of really, really good questions."

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/02/12/pentagon-officials-impressed-with-obama.html

Did Obama just pass the 60 vote margin or did the republicans just give Obama the minimum support needed to pass?

I wondered where the U.S. was going to borrow all that "stimulus". These guys have money to lend:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Technology-firms-sitting-a-growing/story.aspx?guid={CC2BA9EA-13AA-4CE2-B590-4B51E21D9FEC}&dist=hplatest

Any news about the American UN worker who was kidnapped in Pakistan? I understand he is under threat of beheading in 72 hours unless prisoners are released. Any information??

F--k yes I know how to spend money better than the government. I have my I eye on a hot new metal-flake Toyota Sequoia 4-wheel drive crew cab, and my rebate should just about make the down payment. Imagine, the Democrats wanted to waste this money on school and roads.

Re the NRO's list of the most conservative movies: 300 at #5

Guess they don''t know or care about the real story. The Spartans didn't believe in "don't ask, don't tell", they advocated "ask everyone, tell everyone". They figured their warriors would fight harder if their lovers were in the foxhole with them, so to speak.

Yep, another 30 victims of the American Taliban's War on the People of Iraq. One of the most sick-making things about the bloody, unprovoked, assault on the Iraqi people is that the perpetrators and apologists are treated as if they had something to contribute to our discourse. They most emphatically do not Those who started teh war should be clamped in leg-irons and tried for crimes against humanity. The blood of their victims, including those killed today, indicts them.

[refrain from making attacks of a personal nature like the deleted text - mod.]

Proposal to combine fusion and fission in one device to generate power and reprocess spent nuclear fuel:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/university-of-texas-at-austin-proposes.html

Fusion is for the distant-distant future, if at all, but maybe this thing will work. I'm skeptical but not nihilistic.

Yep, another 30 victims of the American Taliban's War on the People of Iraq.

Under the Baath regime, the pilgrimages by Shi'ites were prohibited. That is, everyone who tried to carry out the pilgrimage was targeted by the government for arrest, etc.

I missed the note on Wanda Sykes. She might well be very good (in a Colbert way). I saw her on with Leno (?) one time, and he asked if she was critical of George W Bush. Her answer (as best I recall):

Oh no. Being critical of him would be like booing at the Special Olympics...Too easy, and just not done!

President Carter calls the Republican Representatives: "a bunch of robots" as he explains to Olbermann why they all voted against the Stimulus Package. He goes on to say that they are captive to vote as they're told, lest they lose special privileges such as their place on certain committees and so forth...

Go Carter!!!!!!!!!!!

NO DRAMA OBAMA

President Obama, ever sensitive to the needs and wishes of the media and their audiences, has taken steps to avoid political boredom and inject some drama into his administration. It started with the sudden withdrawal of Bill Richardson as candidate for Secretary of Commerce. A pay-for-play problem. Then came Tim Geithner, who became Treasury Secretary despite failure to pay some income taxes when due. Meanwhile, the President was having cocktail and Super Bowl parties and otherwise courting Republicans to support a huge, controversial stimulus bill.

Further drama ensued when former Majority Leader Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination for health secretary because of tax problems involving a limousine lifestyle. Then came the latest surprise when Judd Gregg, a prominent Republican, withdrew his nomination as secretary of Commerce, upsetting the Team of Rivals nature of the Obama cabinet.

The Gregg withdrawal was sudden and surprising. Mr. Gregg apparently just realized that his views were in conlict with those of the administration. What was it about the Democratic platform and Obama's speeches did he not understand? It seems that, as in Casablanca, he was "shocked, shocked" that there were Democratic policies going on in the White House.

homer www.altara.blogspot.com

Since the attacks by the Gingrich-led GOP against Speaker Pelosi and her alleged "partisanship" are so uniform and consistent it's important to understand what is really going on here. Republicans are attempting to disguise their own extremism on the stimulus by transferring their sins onto Pelosi. It's a very familiar right wing tactic called "projection" that time and time again allows conservatives to attack liberals for the right's very own sins -- kind of like what right wingers do when they accuse the left of "liberal fascism."

At any rate, Republicans only hope for returning to power is to re-invent themselves as Born Again fiscally prudent and parsimonious Reagan Conservatives. To do that meant Republicans all along had to oppose the stimulus “spending� bill virtually unanimously. Nothing else would do. If the bill got even 20 or 30 Republicans all bets were off. The 0 to 178 vote against the bill was the dead giveaway that this was a vote for the future "identity" of the GOP -- a marketing ploy -- not a real vote against the stimulus on the merits. Their vote was designed to send a message to the public that "Reagan is Back," hoping the public would completely forget the last 15 years of Republican waste an abuse under which the national debt doubled with GOP control.

The only problem for Republicans is that the nation teeters on the edge of depression, so voting against a stimulus for political reasons borders on criminal negligence. So, in the typical fashion of extremists who need extremists on the other side to justify their own extremism, Republicans have had to invent one. Obama won’t do. He’s got a 70% approval rating and acts like a moderate. He’s reached his hand across the aisle in the spirit of bi-partisanship – which Republicans, for their own political reasons, had to slap away.

That's why Republicans have selected Pelosi to fill that bill. She’s far less familiar to Americans than Obama, has a far smaller media platform with which to fight back, and is therefore much easier for Republicans to re-fashion for their own partisan purposes. A column this week by William McCurnan in the Wall Street Journal is a good example of that, providing a window into the GOP strategy of picking on Pelosi to deflect attention from their own political opportunism. The dead giveaway is this line: “(Pelosi's) intransigence has set the tone. And her penchant for excess helps explain why out of 535 members of Congress, only three Republicans seem willing to go anywhere near the thing.�

That's right. Republicans didn't vote against this package virtually to a man because they were cynical opportunists trying to claw their way back to power. Absolutely not! They did it as patriotic and principled Americans, bravely engaged in rescuing the nation from the perditions of the ultra-partisan Speaker of the House out to ram her "liberal San Francisco agenda" down America's throat.

Liberals need to call Republicans on these attacks against Pelosi because she's not the real target at all -- just a usefull foil to take the fall for a GOP that puts party ahead of country.

@Danp on February 13, 2009 at 5:50 PM

That was also my reaction to that story.

The story indicates that Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. sentenced an estimate 5,000 teenagers to detention. Also that this rate represented 1/4 of all the teenagers appearing before him compared to a normal rate in PA of 1/10.

That means he saw about 20,000 teens and sentenced about 3,000 more of them to detention that other judges would have unless there is something unique about the county he represented that would cause a higher level of incarceration to be appropriate. That's 3,000 extra teens that served 90 days or more in detention when they should have been sent home.

That represents a minimum of 750 years of excess imprisonment which seems like a good place to start when sentencing the judges. I would be willing to be generous and split the term between the two of them.

In dfense of Rush, he might have had his maid scan it in as a bitmap.

This morning my local newspaper said this about the Wanda Sykes pick: "The dinner has tripped up comedians before. Rich Little and Stephen Colbert both provoked criticism of their performances before the crowd."

Argh ... Rich Little WAS bad ... Colbert was brilliant, but he offended the villagers. The rest of us were LOLing his performance.