Let's congratulate the GOP on their new chairman

Reince Priebus. That doesn't sound very American. Has anyone checked his birth certificate?

Forward! Into the past!

It's been a week since the Republicans won the election and they've only moved the country one hour back. They're going to have to work a lot harder than that to get us back to 1901 before the next election. At least Sarah Palin is doing her part. In her new ad, the sun moves backwards across New York.

Separated at birth

Michele Bachmann and Bat-boy
This has been another edition of Cheap Shots with your host, John.

They came from Uranus

David Brooks deserves some kind of award for his use of a tired metaphor:

But deep in the bowels of the G.O.P., there are serious people having quiet conversations.

These are the people who are looking to save the Republican Party> Brooks doesn't make it clear whether these serious people will come exploding out the bowels with their ideas or whether their plans will trickle out of the bowels one fetid detail at a time. We can be assured, however, that these bowel-hatched ideas will make all of us unserious people go "eewwww" when we are finally exposed to them.

Feel free to insert your own scatological humor in the comments.

She hides it so well

Alaska attorney Thomas Van Flein on his client Sarah Palin:

She's actually very articulate.

Does anyone remember the old Saturday Night Live skit where Phil Hartman played Ronald Reagan switching between his senile grandfather public persona and his evil mastermind private persona. I'm not sure why I thought of that.

Too easy

David Neiwert (who is finally getting some of the media attention he deserves) asks:

Is there anyone more congenitally dishonest than Jonah Goldberg working in the right-wing media? Deeply, appallingly dishonest?

No.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.*

* "Simple Answers To Simple Questions" concept created by Duncan Black.

This just in from the Department of Who Gives a Damn

Joe "The Unlicensed Plumer" Wurzelbacher doesn't like watching gay men kiss. CNN will be interrupting its scheduled programming (of wall-to-wall interviews with Dick Cheney and his very relevant daughter Elizabeth telling the same lies over and over again) to give us minute-by-minute coverage this breaking story.

You guys are the best sorts of people

In my experience -- and I'm just generalizing here -- the more intelligent, perceptive, and morally pure a person is, the more they agree with me. Certainly less dim witted and embarrassing. Most of the people I admire most uphold my beliefs. This brings us to Jay Nordlinger of The National Review:

In my experience -- and I'm just generalizing here -- the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Certainly the less snarky and narrow. Most of the people I admire most, admire the 43rd president.

I'm sure you all agree with me in in detecting a wee bit of self-congratulatory nincompoopery in Mr. Nordlinger. I might even go so far as to say he's a complete ass. In fact, I think I will go that far. Jay Nordlinger is a complete ass.

Memo to the Tea Party

Didn't you guys pick the wrong symbol for your "grassroots" movement?

The Jindal question

This morning I got up and started a brilliant post on all aspects of Bobby Jindal's speech, but then I had to take Clever Wife to a doctor appointment and, by the time I got back, people with much better traffic than I have had stolen all of my good points. However, no one asked the most important question about this man who wants to be president: How come he has never shown us his birth certificate? He admits to being conceived in a foreign country by foreigners. If he has nothing to hide, why hasn't he given us the state's original copy of his birth certificate and allowed us to subject it to exhaustive font and kerning examination? The American people deserve answers.

I can see Afghanistan from my porch

Everyone say something stupid now and then, but some people abuse the privilege.

Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic values”.

“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan,” she told several hundred supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco.

Where does he put it?

Rick Warren, the televangelist who is hosting the faith forum with John McCain and Barack Obama today is being marketed by the press as a new breed of politically active Evangelical who is a less divisive figure than previous televangelists. I don't see it. From my seat (one of the cheap seats, to be sure) the only real difference I can between him and a Swagart or a Robertson is of style. He appears to spend less on haircare products. He presents the same old culture war policies in slightly less confrontational language and that seems to have the pundits swooning.

Earlier this week, over at The Atlantic, Jeffery Goldberg interviewed him.

JG: What are you, as a human, a Christian, and an American, commanded to do when you know a genocide is taking place, a documented genocide?

RW: In the Old Testament, it says that if you have the power to do something good, then you have to do it. You're not to avoid helping somebody in their time of need. Shoot, the Torah says that if you find a cow in a ditch you've got to help it out. Even if it's the enemy's cow, you've got to help it out. We've got this compassion fatigue in America. It's why we have a slow genocide going on in Darfur.

JG: So America has a duty to help.

RW: The answer is, we must do all we can. People say America is not the policeman of the world. We may not be, but the Bible says, if you have been blessed, then you are to care for people who can't care for themselves, you are to speak up for people who can't speak for themselves, and to defend the defenseless.

JG: Some people argue that we're not so great ourselves.

RW: The difference is that there are no death squads in America. The worst you can get here is that you can get blogged, you can get Lewinskied, on the Internet. There is a difference between that and living under oppression, living with fear for your life. That's why whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point. Saddam and his sons were raping the country, literally. And we morally had to do something.

Matt Stoller had something to say about that: "So invading Iraq based on lies is not bearing false witness, as long as the end goal is just?" It is a fair question.

I happen to agree with Warren that, as a powerful and influential country, we have an obligation to try and influence the world to make it a better place, but I find his answer frustratingly incomplete. How do we decide which actions to take in response to which bad players? Over which countries should our leaders fabricate evidence, lie to our own people, villify our allies, assemble a Potemkin alliance, and invade? Over which ones do we use international law and alliances to wage war against? Which ones are treated to sanctions, or to dirty looks? Which ones do we continue to do business with while ignoring their crimes? I could easily make arguments that the people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Belarus, and Equatorial Guinea would benefit from having their governments deposed. How do we decide which ones should get which treatment. Warren has no answers. he simply falls in with the Bush loyalists in assuring us that the need for removing and killing Saddam and his sons was strong enough to justify any action by our government.

But his statement raises another question. he says, "Saddam and his sons were raping the country, literally." When bad guys "rap[e] the country, literally," exactly where do they insert their penises? It's important that we know this, because this seems to be the action that determines whether our leaders are justified in bearing false witness and violating their vows.

Original Maverick my butt

John McCain's latest campaign ads are calling him "the original maverick." To those of us of a certain age, James Garner is the original Maverick. If I was going to compare McCain to a character in a sixties television show I would cast him as Grampa Amos (Walter Brennan) in The Real McCoys or Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) in Petticoat Junction. What are your casting suggestions?

Snappy answers to offensive questions

At this weekend’s Texas Republican convention a booth hosted by Republicanmarket sold buttons asking, “If Obama Is President…Will We Still Call It The White House?”

Yes, but we won't call it the Whitie House.

Republicanmarket's slogan is: "Patriotic and Republican Products at Republican Market." They also sell buttons with messages like "There Are Americans And There Are Liberals" or a picture of Hillary Clinton with the phrase: “Life’s A Bitch, Don’t Vote For One.” What a class act.

It does explain a lot about him

Speaking before the National Press Club today, Dick Cheney mentioned some of the revelations that his wife discovered when researching his family tree. Earlier press reports covered the fact that Cheney and Obama are distantly related. Today he revealed the fact that he's a Cheney on both sides of his family. "And we don't even live in West Virginia," he quipped. The West Virginians in the audience did not find his mot very bon. "This is exactly the type of stereotyping that we don't need from our elected officials," said Republican congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat was not amused: "The Vice President should be more careful about cheap shots aimed at the very people who elected him." Neither was Governor Joe Manchin: "I truly cannot believe that any vice president of the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would make such a derogatory statement about my state or any state for that matter." Nick Rahall, a 16-term Democratic congressman added. "We may owe the vice president a debt of gratitude for yet another great West Virginia slogan: Dick Cheney is not from here."

At least he didn't call them bitter. That would have been elitist.

The Bush Doctrine

Texas is a state run by religious reactionaries that imprisons and executes many of its citizens--it also has oil. Let's invade them.

Your Republican Party, now whiter than ever

Just a few years after Ken Melman launched a highly publicized diversity effort for the big tent, the Grand Ol' Party is heading into an election season without a single minority candidate who has a chance of winning their campaign for House, Senate, or governor. If it wasn't for the older generation Miami Cubans and Bobby Jindal, the GOP caucus would be indistinguishable from a meeting of the Sons of the Confederacy. As for their beliefs, even with Bobby and the Cubans the GOP is completely indistinguishable from the SOC.

When it's gone, it's gone

Minnesota's freshman congressperson, Michele Bachmann*, took advantage of an appearance before members of the Monticello Chamber of Commerce to express her support for a big fence to keep foreigners out of the US.

She was particularly emotional about immigration, a subject that she made headlines with back in February when she was very critical of the system that allowed the woman charged with crashing into a bus in Cottonwood, Minn., to continue driving.

“We’re losing our country,” she said. “People are not assimilating themselves to America. They’re not speaking [our language], and you must speak it if you want to succeed here in this country.”

A spokesperson for the American Indian Movement was sympathetic. "We know how you feel," he said.

* No relation to Bachmann Turner Overdrive.

I hope no one got hurt

The man who is just a heartbeat away from the presidency went out for some R and R yesterday.

Vice President Dick Cheney spent about eight hours hunting Monday at a secluded Hudson Valley gun club where well-heeled enthusiasts shoot ducks and pheasants. It was Cheney's second visit to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in Dutchess County, about 70 miles north of New York City.

I hope the staff was careful to explain that he was allowed to shoot pheasants-with-an-H and that pheasant is a type of bird.

Even though no one was shot in the face, Cheney was unable to avoid problems.

Although a heavy police presence kept the media and curious local residents at a distance, Cheney's visit did stir up a bit of controversy when a New York Daily News photographer snapped a picture of a small Confederate flag hanging inside a garage on the hunt club property.

I almost feel sorry for Cheney. The poor man just wants to unwind by killing something tame and helpless that has been chased toward his gun and look what happens. His friends rudely put their faces where he is about to shoot or leave their true feelings about race and class out where reporters can report on them. He probably feels, like Andrew Jackson, that his friends aren't worth the powder to blow away, but given his record regarding gunpowder and his friends, that's not a sentiment that he should voice out loud.

The Confederate flag has managed to stir up yet another mini-brouhaha for Cheney. Al Sharpton's eminently bunchable panties are predictably in a bunch over the affair. He's demanding apologies and denouncements. Cheney is ignoring Sharpton. The next step in the dance is that right-wing talking heads, pundits, and bloggers will all rush to the defense of the Confederate flag (and perhaps Cheney), pointing out that the flag isn't just a symbol of racism, treason, and armed rebellion against the legal government of the United States; sometimes it's also a symbol of the owner's pride in his southern (New York) heritage. Besides, whenever liberals complain about the flag, it's only because they are all bi-coastal, big city, atheistic, media elites sneering at the common man. Cheney will decline to comment on the affair and Bush will never hear about it.

Isn't it about time for the War on Christmas^TM to start?

"This government does not torture people"

Yesterday, President Bush clarified his administration's position interrogating terrorism suspects, insisting, "This government does not torture people." He went on to say, "When we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we're going to detain them and you bet we're going to question them. But we draw a line at torture. What you gotta understand is that the bureaucracy isn't the right place for torture. If we let them do that, then we'd have a situation where torture was socialized. That's not how we do it in America. Torture is best left to the private sector, like our friends at Blackwater and those guys at the mall who sell the giant pretzels. I am not a crook."