Buck Naked Politics

Polls: Most Minnesotans Ready for Coleman to Concede

  detail from photo by Simon Lyall, via Wikimedia Commons |

by Damozel | Kevin Duschere of the Star Tribune reports

Nearly two-thirds of Minnesotans surveyed think Norm Coleman should concede the U.S. Senate race to Al Franken....A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found that 64 percent of those responding believe Coleman, the Republican, should accept the recount trial court's April 13 verdict that Democrat Franken won the race by 312 votes.

Only 28 percent consider last week's appeal by Coleman to the Minnesota Supreme Court "appropriate."

Why the GOP Can't Come to Terms with Reality

 photograph "zirkus-circus" by Thomas Totz, used pursuant to Creative Commons license|

by Damozel | Can it be?  Is it so?  Ben Smith and Jon Martin at The Politico seem to be predicting a pro-reality "rebellion" on the part of Republicans who have tired of the bizarro-world circus atmosphere of the party's first three months well and truly out of power. 

A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.

But, aha!  The key phrase, it turns out, is "GOP elites."  The base?  Maroons to the end.  In other words, the clowns are threatening to strike and the ringmasters have suddenly realized that everyone else has left the tent.  

Good Bloggin': Dick Don't Know Jack, Swine & Flu, Excess Wretchedness and an Excess of Wretches, the Price of Vengeance and License Plate Bingo as Played in Florida

"Golden laurel wreath" by Andreas Praefcke, published pursuant to this license 

by Teh Nutroots |  A Blot, Not a Jot.  Bats Left, Throws Right discusses in plain Anglo-Saxon Cheney's recent demands that Obama produce evidence to negate claims the previous administration never made, due to its having lied about torture.

Look: Dick Cheney can broadcast from his private news bunker all day, every day, from here until that Doomsday he missed his chance to initiate, and it won't mean a jot, nor should it have inspired one. How does Dick Cheney have any credibility, even on FAUX? He's the ShamWow! guy of American political infomercials, except besides punching a hooker his Miracle Washday Product turns out to have be made from recycled nuclear reactor fuel and extract of poison ivy.

Daily Show Twofer: Jon Stewart on Teabagging Against Tyranny; John Oliver Explains Tyranny to Protesters

Damozel |  Jon Stewart:  "On Tax Day, we complied.... We are sheeple, prostrating ourselves to the tyranny of a government that provides us only municipal services, a social safety net, and a military apparatus second to none...."  So it was that Fox News became the voice of the People's Revolution and Bill O'Reilly was heard to utter these words:  "Fox News respects dissent."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Nationwide Tax Protests
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Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Torture Administration: Exposed; The Operatives: Indemnified & Immunized

by Damozel | According to Ambinder, Obama has redacted the identities of the torturers, but the rest is all there.  And, really, I have no words.  What Greenwald said:  "They are unbelievably ugly and grotesque and conclusively demonstrate the sadistic criminality that consumed our government."  Digby:  "I feel like vomiting right now. This is the very definition of the banality of evil --- a dry, legalistic series of justifications for acts of barbaric cruelty."

Conservative Andrew Sullivan, with whom I agree on this issue if on little else, agrees with Digby on the banality as well as the evil:

I've only read the Bybee memo, as chilling an artefact as you are ever likely to read in a democratic society, the work clearly not of a lawyer assessing torture techniques in good faith, but of an administration official tasked with finding how torture techniques already decided upon can be parsed in exquisitely disingenuous ways to fit the law, even when they clearly do not. This is what Hannah Arendt wrote of when she talked of the banality of evil....

Colbert on the Payday Loan "Reform" Act: "They'll Still Feel Like a Debt Pineapple is Being Hammered Up Their Ass, but They Will Have the Comfort of Knowing that that Pineapple Meets the Strictest Federal Standards"

One of Colbert's best in a long time. He takes a run at the proposed Payday Loan Reform Act, which proposes to prevent 800% interest rates by capping them at 780%. A great deal for anyone who gets a weekly 2000% pay raise, as Colbert points out. "The Payday Loan Reform Act drags the payday loan industry out of the darkness and into the anemic firefly flicker of nominal oversight."

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The Word - Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too
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Was It the Teabags Talking? Rick Perry, Gov. of Texas, Says Texas Might Secede

 by Teh Nutroots |  Man. What are they putting in that tea the wingnuts are all drinking, I wonder?   Even Sarah Palin was savvy enough to keep quiet about any sympathy she might have shown in the past toward her state's pro-secessionist movement.

The election of Barack Obama and the end of Republican rule has certainly sent the bats winging out of the various belfries.  It is kind of unsettling;  Ah say --Ah say it is KINDA UNSETTLING -- to hear the governor of the second largest American state even mentioning secession as a potential "scenario" (and getting that wrong, by the way). 

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Colbert: Spontaneous Grassroots Events Hosted by Fox

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Tax Atax
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The Daily Show Tea Par-TAY! "Americans buy one million teabags to protest wasteful spending. "

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Tempest in a Tea Party
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Progressives Ponder the Teabaggers & Teabagging Rhetoric [Yes, They Can -- Fool Some of the People All of the Time]

by Damozel | Via Think Progress:  What do you really need to get a truly mad Mad Teaparty going?  "You're going to need a Dick Armey." Schuster said. And that's a sentence that I'm sure has never before in the whole history of the American media been uttered by anyone of liberal or progressive tendencies.. 

An Astroturf movement indeed.... Even so: "Dick Armey," heheheheheheheh. As Video Cafe notes, Schuster's discussion is full of win and also of teabag-based innuendo. "I think he decided to give Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox a run for their money with this one." Cf. 

Dept of Hollow Laughter: Right Wingers Incensed Over DHS Report on Rise of Right Wing Extremism

by Damozel | The report of the Department of Homeland Security has spawned much grinding and gnashing of teeth among the bloviators of the far right, and especially Michelle Malkin.  And who can blame them?  No anti-government crazy from the far right has ever, ever committed any violent or terrorist act such as blowing up a federal courthouse and killing 300 people or gunning down people in a little Tennessee church....at least not since last weekend.   Nor have any far right nutjobs ever planned to kill a 102 young African-American high school students to express their distaste for an African-American president.   As we all know, only Mooslims ever become terrorists.

No wonder the Malkin's ever-frangible feeeeeeeeeelings are hurt. 

Multiple Teabaggings Everywhere: Teabaggings for Everyone!

by Damozel |  Yes, kids,  it's Tax Day Eve!  And it would be remiss in us not to offer another salute to the Mad Tea Party and its corporate puppeteers.  John Amato observes:

I've been trying to figure out when FOX News actually covered a bona-fide live protest that they didn't condemn or ridicule. Can you think of one? How many anti-war protests were held since the Iraq war began in which FOX proclaimed that they would give it wall to wall coverage because they just cover news events?...

Can you imagine if Tom Daschle, Paul Begala, James Carville and the late Paul Wellstone twittered and blogged and wrote op-eds for the NY Times, while Nancy Pelosi appeared on CNN and put out the call to arms as the Situation Room, Countdown, Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper promised everyone air time on their shows if they make sure to come on down to "the protests" they will be covering live, up close and in person? And it was funded by millions of dollars of the richest of the rich?

The Mad Tea Party

by Damozel | "How do you know I'm Mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Exactly.

Krugman wonders if it's even quite fair to pick on Republicans and their risible yet tragic teabaggings anymore. These are people who are flailing about because they are fundamentally off balance.  Is it rude to point and laugh?  Krugman writes:

Today’s G.O.P. is, after all, very much a minority party. It retains some limited ability to obstruct the Democrats, but has no ability to make or even significantly shape policy.

Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.

Any Way They Look at It, We Lose

by Teh Nutroots | "If Obama cured cancer, they'd complain about overpopulation," TBogg muses.  For now, they've got their hands full complaining about the White House puppy.. TBogg has compiled some of the more random bitchings and howlings (of the wingnuts, not the puppy).

JammieWearingFool seems unhappy because the Obama's named their dog Bo. Better safe than sorry. Had the first family named their dog something like Allahu Akbark,  it might have been enough to send someone on a cop-killing spree.

Filling in over at Michelle Malkin's place (while Michelle takes a few days off to get her bile ducts enlarged so they can handle a heavier load) is minor league wingnut Doug Powers  who, lacking  any one thing to hook onto, goes full metal Leno with painful results. Even the crickets are yawning.

In addition, there was a short-lived scandal which we'll call "Pizza-Gate."  Details by Tintin at Sadly, No! 

Focus on the Family's James Dobson: The Wingnuts Have Lost the Culture War

by Damozel | Okay, he didn't put it quite like that.  But golly, what an extended moan!  How about Jonah in the whale and Noah in the Ark?  What did they do when everything looked so dark? 

Apparently when God's self-appointed political warriors don't get their way, their response nowadays is an extended tantrum.n

At first, I thought Dobson had had a Damascene moment because he said, among much else, "now we are absolutely awash in evil."  I couldn't agree more. But then TPM said that Dobson meant that the nation -- or perhaps he meant only the Christian Right -- is awash in our evil, i.e., the evil of the liberal and tolerant.  As for the causes of "our" decline?  Bill Clinton and the internets!  (Like most wingnuts who claim to speak for the right-eous, he wants us to forget that W ever happened -- as if his regime really was just one long national nightmare. )

"Night of Teh Living Gays:" A Response to the National Organization for Marriage

(A Sadly, No! production)   Wonkette:

The very scary National Organization for Marriage folks have launched this new initiative, “2 Million For Marriage"..... This group is still not considered a parody, for the record.

And so...the sadly-naughts took care of that little problem.

Best O' the Daily Show: Investment Banks, the DoD's New Budget, & "Queer Eye for the Hawkeye"

The difference between an investment bank and a Ponzi scheme explained....

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William Cohan
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Jon:  "Is our economy tinkerbell?  Will it die if we stop clapping?"

"Focus on Family" Employee Allegedly Sought Sex with Teenager

Via Memeorandum, the Colorado Independent reports:

"A Colorado Springs man who narrates the Bible in Spanish on CDs and works in the Spanish broadcasting department of Focus on the Family appeared in court Monday in Golden on two felony counts of using the Internet to lure a 15-year-old girl for sex, The Denver Post reports.

"Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, was arrested Friday when he drove to Lakewood to meet the girl — who turned out to be an undercover officer — after discussing various sexual acts he wanted to perform with her, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office said."

This is not the first time that someone from Focus on the Family was spotlighted for major  (alleged) hypocrisy.

Tales of the Torture Administration: Harsh Interrogation Led to False Leads

by Damozel |  No, really?  Did any sane, thinking person who actually listened to what the experts in the intelligence field had to say about the uselessness of torture ever expect otherwise?

The problem is that Bush & Co., and that craven segment of the American public known as "the Republican base" thought then and no doubt think now that false leads are better than no lead.....  At least if you apply "harsh interrogation methods" you can tell yourself that you're doing something terrorism," even if the something in question is illegal, inhumane, unproductive, and a violation of moral principle America has stood for.  Then too there was the matter of revenge --- ever the resort of the bully, the coward, the morally immature, and the Dwight Shrutes of the world, who are satisfied to wreak vengeance on a ringer if they can't get hold of the ringleader -- which is the reason I imagine "the base" is really all about defending torture.  

The Washington Post reports what you already know:

Republicans Have a Better 'Plan': Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, a Budget with Imaginary Numbers, & Some Boffo Charts!

by Damozel | It's like the GOP is going out of its way to become a caricature of itself. Dave Weigl (Behold, Charts!):

An anonymous official quoted in Politico’s story on the House GOP budget plans said, “We need to hold something up and say, ‘Here are our charts. Here are our graphs. It’s real.”

So that's what they did: Unleash Hilarious ‘Road To Recovery’ Plan On Embarrassed Public. And we in the public especially like their health care graphic.  It is choice.