Certifiable

With Rand Paul, caveat emptor is not merely an empty phrase. He lives it personally.

Paul's only certification was provided instead by something called the National Board of Ophthalmology, which is very convenient because he operates that organization himself.

If you believe the libertarian bullshit he peddles, he might be able to dig up the title to that bridge he's trying to sell.

Joe Conason nails it:

Libertarian ideology rejects most of the modern regulatory systems that protect consumers, because everyone should be responsible for determining whether the hamburger contains E. coli on his own.

Among other odd beliefs they hide, libertarians such as Paul believe they have every right to lie to you as long as they don't commit the lie inside a contract.

Oppose Social Security

The bald honest truth is that Republicans oppose Social Security. They dress up their opposition in various ways, but they're against the idea of government involvement in the welfare of people. It makes the citizenry to safe to work themselves to the bone on behalf of a corporation! That can't be good.

If you have the bad luck to make a mistake in choosing your parents, you had better be prepared for an old age of penury and suffering.

Originalist poser

Just how is it that the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court can grant the First Amendment to corporations, when the modern limited liability corporation wasn't even legal until decades after the ratification of the Bill of Rights?

Could it possibly be, as with federalism, states' rights, and especially Bush v. Gore, the right-wing activist judges who claim to be originalists are not really acting on principle at all?

I dare question the sincerity of Their High Honors the Supreme Justices! Off with me 'ead!

For anyone who thinks borking has bad connotations, check Robert Bork's further career as a rigid ideologue, willing to rationalize almost any extremity of wingnuttism (who knew that word would be in the Firefox spelling dictionary!). We Democrats and liberals should have borked Scalia, Thomas, and Alito too. The world would be a better place - and especially America would be better without ever having suffered the maladministration of Darth and Duhbya - if we has seen the importance of keeping the first two of those Republican ideologues off the court.

As for Scalito's objection to President Obama's criticism of the Court's predictable bullshit decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Alito knew the stakes, no matter how piously he may now deny it. Principle? The winner establishes principle, and they won, liberal bitches!

Why we listen to Rudy

In the aftermath of Rudy Giuliani's straight-faced claim that there were no terrorist attacks (none!) during Duhbya and Darth's excellent adventure, Joe Conason asks why we listen to such a fact-free buffoon. Giuliani has someone managed to slide over, not just the shoe bomber and the anthrax attacks and the many attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan; he has managed conveniently to forget 9/11 itself, the one news item that pushed him onto the national stage after his career had effectively ended in widely shared disdain for his ugly personality and for every one of his municipal policies except for community policing.

But it's not just Rudy who should have no claim on our credence. Dana Perino had made the same claim. Mary Matalin had, too. Among others.

The reason this goes is that slow-learning Democrats have failed to assert every damn day that there's nothing a Republican says that you can trust. The media are not going to hold these guys accountable for even being in the ballpark of accuracy. The right browbeat them out of their ref job years ago, to the point that they only call penalties on Democrats - or offsetting pox-on-both-their-houses fouls.

This can be funny, but it's also dangerous. A culture that cannot even grapple with what's true and what's false is doomed.

Yet, all these Republicans will be back on TV spouting lies just as soon as some producer's Rolodex needs them...

Biconservativeship

Republicans are thrilled with bipartisanship just so long as it's the effort to find the sweet spot of compromise between the center-right and the extreme right. Otherwise, they'll take their ball and go home.

It's long past time to fight back.

See what sticks

GOP to health care reform: Drop dead!

Joe Conason is right on when he says bipartisanship is for suckers:

Individual Republicans in both the House and the Senate may well share the concerns of Democrats about the rising costs and diminishing accessibility of health insurance, but as a matter of policy, their party is bluntly opposed to any real reform. ...

Listening to Republicans and their pet pundits on Fox News, CNBC and talk radio, it quickly becomes clear that the conservative objective is not to fashion a solution acceptable to both parties, but to obstruct. ...

So much for bipartisanship, a vanishingly rare commodity that is of no value to the Republicans, who know that voters will credit the Democratic majority for reform whether the minority offers support or not. What the Democrats need to understand is that there can be no cooperation without sincere partners. Among the opposition on Capitol Hill there are no such partners. ...

Kristol-ography

The common thread of Bill Kristol's advocacy: A completely incompetent politician is the perfect Republican figurehead. J. Danforth Quayle, Duhbya, Sarah Palin.

A truth that deeply needs repeating: There is no reason, not the slightest breath of a reason, to believe any position whatsoever that Bill Kristol advocates. He is a proven and virtually uninterrupted purveyor of frumious bullshit.

David Vitter watch, day 717

The response of conservatives to sexual misconduct in their leaders is objectively pro-hypocrisy:

[W]hile Vitter, Ensign, Gingrich and perhaps Sanford have been able to retain their positions and political viability, the same cannot be said for the most recent offenders on the progressive side. Neither Eliot Spitzer nor John Edwards, each among the most promising figures in the Democratic Party, will ever be a candidate for public office again, although their misbehavior was no worse than what their Republican counterparts did.

Not to mention, pro-adultery.

King Tut-tut

Joe Conason and I are back on the same side after a brief and mild estrangement.

The reason the media love tut-tutting stories about pot-smoking celebrities (not to mention blow job stories and drunk driving stories and Amy Winehouse breakdown stories and commando miniskirt stories and missing blond white girl stories and ...), the reason they love these stories is that they provide circus for the king to distract viewers from the real power they king's men hold over us.

Of course I'm not calling Obama king. He's only the President, not even part of the permanent ruling class that acts as if it were king.

Bullshit from the left

This is really unusual. I'm a big fan of Joe Conason, but he goes off the rails with this:

But it was obvious that Clinton would not have participated in such a public encounter, witnessed by scores of people at the Putin party, unless the White House and the State Department had approved in advance.

Obvious that the Big Dog has enough impulse control to take direction from the Obama White House? Uh, Joe, possible, maybe, but not obvious.

Holder of the bag

Joe Conason's column on the Marc Rich pardon is very interesting. It's thinly sourced and thus awaits confirmation, but any pundit who puts down these words has the credibility that comes from the demonstrated ability to sniff bullshit:

Holder listened as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., one of the leading windbags of our time, held forth on how dreadful Rich is and how awful the pardon was.

STFU, Republican gasbags

Joe Conason says what I've also been saying for weeks: Put up or shut up about election theft in Minnesota. So far, *crickets*.

Conason and I are both shouting into the whirlwind. The wankernuts on the right are not evidence-based. They don't care about the facts. They don't care about the will of the people. They only care about power.

They will always be lying liars, which is why they hate Al Franken so much.

Factitious checking

McCNN looks to the goddamn Heritage Foundation to fact-check John McCain's desperate and obviously bullshit claims that Barack Obama's economic plan will "destroy six million jobs." The Heritage Foundation was created for the political purpose of manufacturing convenient right-wing factoids.

Funny, even by this completely spurious standard, CNN admits that McCain is misleading us!

But the truth is that McCain is bullshitting us even on his most fundamental claim. Democrats, not laissez-faire Republicans, do better economically for all of us. Obama is no exception.

Update (11/1): Joe Conason reminds me that Democratic Presidents ("goddamn socialists") do better even for the stock market. Of course, this stands to reason. If incomes are up in every quintile, GDP is up, and that makes equities go up, generally speaking.

Lalalala, I'm not listening

They'd rather be dumb than intellectual.

Republicans say the complaints are coming from "intellectual" conservatives -- not Main Street Republicans, who they insist love the "hockey mom," from Alaska, as Palin describes herself.

Truth is, though, it's too late. Not to worry, they're stuck with Palin. So no one will be smearing them this cycle by calling them intellectuals.

Update (9/30): If this post isn't meaty enough (and, honestly, it is a little thin), take a look here or here. Even better, start Halloween a month early with "Spooky".

Update (10/4): Joe Conason disses the dumbing down.

Bad cop - good cop

McCain-Feingold is going to be one of those careful-what-you-wish-for reforms. As interpreted, it leaves lots of room for mischief from political allies, near and far.

The Swift Boat Liars were just the first shot in a new war. They were financed by ardent Texas Bushists, T. Boone Pickens, for example. This was no coincidence, of course. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink! Who needs a junkyard dog as vice president!

There's a new wrinkle. The Tennessee Republican Party issued a scurrilous press release. John McCain, noble bipartisan that he is, condemned it. The Tennessee GOP didn't back down, in fact reveled in the publicity.

Now, the North Carolina Republican Party is running a scurrilous ad (scroll to end). John McCain's crocodile tears and rending of garments continues, alas, to no avail. The NC GOP keeps running the ad and revels in the publicity. McCain gives us this pabulum:

"I can't dictate to them. But I want to be the candidate of everybody. I want to be the candidate of Republicans and Democrats and independents," he said Wednesday.

Look for this good cop/bad cop routine to go on over and over again.

No, by the way, I don't think McCain suckered Feingold and the rest of the Democrats into this fresh hell of 527s and local parties and non-coordinated coordination. He and the rest of the Republican apparat are just using the rules more cannily.

Update: Joe Conason has more (h/t digby).