Told ya

Sarah Palin and Fox to wed. No word on when to expect offspring, though past experience suggests it won't take nine (more) months. I had this called in July!

Update: Celebrity news is exactly where Palin belongs. Next to Paris Hilton. But, look out, Kim Kardashian would outshine Caribou Barbie.

Click image for Creative Commons ShareAlike license for use of the image.

Inherited money is the natural constituency of the Republicans. Sarah Palin exists to bridge the gap to the thoughtless segment of male voters. Too bad Kardashian's father defended O.J., or she'd be even better!

Thought experiment

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Sixth circle

Hope springs eternal - for spring, anyway.

Click image for full John Branch/San Antonio Express-News cartoon.

No shame among the affluent

Scott Brown is running a commercial that features this line straight out of the candidate's mouth:

I love this ole pick-up truck. It's brought me closer to the people of this state.

It reminds me of Lamar Alexander's plaid shirt. He had a pick-up, too. That's just how stupid Republican strategists and candidates think people are. I hope they're wrong this time.

Update (1/11): Fixed quote.

Bridge-burning

I've been trying to figure out what would motivate Paul Loscocco to sign on as Tim Cahill's running mate, but that's too big a bite. I was surprised when he bowed out of the Massachusetts House in 2008; how am I going to figure out this much bigger question off the top of my head!

First thing, Paul (yes, I know him) has burned his bridges to the Republican Party. They won't take him back. On the other hand, after his switch to support for gay marriage (effectively, anyway, though all he actually did was to help keep it from danger of being legislatively overturned), he wasn't going to be a national Republican - ever. (I've seen rumors that his split from Mitt Romney to John McCain meant he had a Cabinet position lined up, but even considering that McCain picked Sarah Palin, that's nonsense.)

Of course, in Massachusetts, there's hardly any Republican Party to leave - except for the ambitious refugees who have taken shelter in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party here. Maybe Paul thought he had nothing much to lose, other than his chains to the extremes of the national party.

Tim Cahill was one of those conservative Democrats before he jumped ship. I didn't hold his ideology against him, but even when he was a Dem, I never trusted him. What he does have that Loscocco may have found attractive is a statewide network of supporters. I just don't see that network as portable to Paul even should this ticket beat the extreme odds and squeak by in a three- or four-way race.

Do Cahill and Loscocco actually think they can win? It's hard to see how they can compete with Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick organizationally or financially, and neither Cahill nor Loscocco has the overwhelming charisma that would make this more credible.

Still, to win an election this way requires a leap of faith, rather than dues-paying and an attempt at inevitability. Their chances are slim to none. Baker has to stumble really badly for Cahill to get to second place. Patrick has already stumbled in office, though his notices are much worse than his actual performance in trying times.

Maybe this seemingly quixotic candidacy is simply Paul's up-or-out test. If he wins, he's a broker of the center. If he loses, he can get on with making enough money to send his kids to college (which was how I explained his getting out in 2008), and he still might be viewed as an independent appointee to boards and commissions.

Here's a very sketchy scenario in which they could win:

• Christy Mihos damages Charlie Baker in the Republican primary and - if Charlie, despite his intelligence and accomplishments, is as bad a campaigner as he might be - maybe even beats him.
  
• Unemployment stays bad, bad, bad, and Deval is not actually at his nadir now. (I've been hoping for better news to start Deval's recovery.)
• Cahill keeps his self-esteem from becoming too visible and off-putting.

They still need an issue to hammer at in order to get people to take a chance on them. The current popular dissatisfaction is not enough.

Eating their young

Doesn't Michael Steele know by now that the Republican Party doesn't value a rational assessment of the future? Nope, the craaazier, the better.

Underpants of mass hysteria

Click image for full Tom Tomorrow/Salon cartoon.

Newsworthy as stale bread

There is no reason whatsoever to report on what Liz Cheney has to say about anything. None. It's not newsworthy. It's not surprising. She has no authority or expertise.

Al Gore's son drove his Prius 100 mph. Why doesn't CNN ask his opinion on global warming?

Instead, they're happy to thrust the wingnut propaganda. Easier to lightly massage a Republican press release than to report any messy, hard-to-gather news.

Liberal media? Don't try to bullshit me.

Hollow wealth

Who's creating wealth in America? Bob Lewis writes:

The Anchor Steam brewery creates wealth. Chase does not.

Here’s what’s disturbing: The private sector, for quite a long time, has been a minor contributor to the underlying drivers of wealth. Our preference for free markets notwithstanding, over the past couple of decades the federal government has done more to create the foundations of wealth than private industry, and it’s hard to find any modern foundation of wealth that hasn’t depended heavily on government-funded innovation.

Yet the creative financiers are the people our economy - and our government bailouts - reward.

I do think that Lewis overstates his case a little, but his main point - that almost our entire wealth-creating economy is based on a foundation of public rather than private investments - is right on the mark.

(By the way, be sure to follow Lewis's link to "A Decade of Zeroes".)

What fourth amendment?

The Transportation Security Administration has surrendered its foolish diktat that peeing within an hour of landing is a security threat, but another of its other responses to the controversy is equally stupid and more disturbing. They've tried to suppress news of the policy:

The subpoenas demand presentation of “all documents, emails, and/or faxsimile transmissions (sic) in your control possession or control concerning your receipt of TSA Security Directive 1544-09-06 dated December 25, 2009.” They are signed by Dan Kuntz, senior counsel for civil enforcement at TSA.

Under the Constitution, a warrant issued by a judge should be required for any seizure of property. Yeah, we were way past that even before the so-called PATRIOT Act. Now, the Fourth Amendment is gone.

Motorman's friend

A three-ounce shampoo bottle is not going to be enough to substitute for an airplane bathroom. How tight is a Ziploc bag? My advice: Skip the slide-locks, and double-bag. Women, you'll need a funnel, too.

(Fortunately, by now, the TSA has given up on this additional stupid idea.)

RIP 2009

Click image for full Tom Briscoe cartoon.

Conservative media bias

The big media imply every day that Republicans are responsible with the budget and that Democrats aren't, when in fact the opposite is true.

Mama warned you

"What if you were hit by a bus and had to be taken to the hospital airport!"

Click image for full Ted Rall/Universal Press cartoon.

Burying the lead

Kudos to Chief Justice John Roberts for setting a laconic example that Karl Rove should take to heart:

"Many of those needs remain to be addressed," said Roberts. "This year, however, when the political branches are faced with so many difficult issues, and when so many of our fellow citizens have been touched by hardship, the public might welcome a year-end report limited to what is essential: The courts are operating soundly."

But CNN buries this important story:

The slow pace [of Federal judicial confirmations] can be traced to the Republican minority in the Senate, which has successfully blocked floor votes for a number of pending judicial nominations. Such vacancies in the long run can create backlogs in hearing cases, and strain financial and manpower resources.

Harry Reid is a poor politician for failing to make the Republicans pay a public price for their incessant obstructionism.

Thirty years class war

The mainly Bushist record of going oh for the aughts in job creation is the result of thirty years of Washington consensus that the investment class's financial interests are far more important than even the middle class's employment. Our elite leaders didn't set out to stop job creation. They just didn't care enough to make policy that put it ahead of rewarding the creation of fraudulent investment vehicles.

Opposite of progress

Click image for full Jim Morin/Miami Herald cartoon.

Feverish stupidity

Lots of editorial cartoons, left and right, are unfunny. Humor is hard to achieve every day. But this one from conservative Stephen Rustad is particularly stupid.

Imagine who must be in your audience to find Barack Obama as Hugo Chávez's puppet credible even as over-the-top exaggeration. Loons and dim bulbs of hate radio who don't actually know anything...

Who are the real puppets?

American conservatives have a huge apparatus whose purpose is to tell lies to the stupid. Those lies keep them stupid and easily exploited, but their appetite for bullshit is so unquenchable that they prefer their ignorance.

If you don't think this institutionalized ignorance is an existential problem for our democracy, take a closer look at what's still happening around us.

C'mon baby

Click image for full John Branch/San Antonio Express-News cartoon.

Turd blossoming

New year, no change.

Despite Karl Rove's utter and total lack of any credibility whatsoever on any topics other than rank hypocrisy and political hardball, America's media continue to spread his propaganda. It's no surprise that the Wall Street Journal editorial page would print him. It should no longer be a surprise that CNN is happy to go along for the ride.

This is at least the third iteration of CNN's item thrusting forward Rove's concern-trolling of New Year's resolutions for President Barack Obama. The original had lots of negative comments, including one from me, pointing out Rove's arrant bullshit. CNN floated it back to the top of their political ticker by reposting it yesterday. This morning, they floated it up again, like a turd blossoming up from a failed flush, sans the hygienic responses of their readers.

Even though this happens often, wingnuts - and even ordinary conservatives - continue to flay CNN with all sorts of epithets. "Clinton News Network." "Communist News Network." Doing this shows them to be - not just dissenting or even wrong - but willfully stupid to the point of insanity.

The article of faith for conservatives that the media is filled with liberal conspirators who are aligned against them is just that, an article of faith. Like many of the other things they believe, it is not based on reality.

It's still true that liberals are the reality-based community. 2010 will be another year I'll be here pointing out the constant bullshit of conservatives. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it, and most of the Washington Democrats don't seem to have the stomach for it.