Even a Broken Clock...

... is right once every Friedman Unit.

Tom Friedman... yes, Tom "Friedman Unit" Friedman has written a scathing opinion of Mitt Romney's "1989" foreign policy thinking, including this little gem:

"...President Obama is leading on national security, and it was apparent in his U.N. speech last week, which showed a president who understands that we really do live in a more complex world today... Mitt Romney, given his international business background, should understand this, but he acts instead as if he learned his foreign policy at the International House of Pancakes..."

Ouch. IHOP. Take this assessment for what you will, but this critique in combination with the asinine comments made by Romney surrogate John Sununu whining about President Obama not killing Osama Bin Laden fast enough only emphasizes how completely inept and clueless the Romney campaign really is. And wait until the first debate in a couple of days.

(Cross-posted on ABLC)

Must Reads

Frank Schaeffer: President Obama Will Be Vindicated

E.J. Dionne: Clint, Rick and the limits of pessimism

Sahil Kapur: GOP Ripe For Splits In Assault On Birth Control Rule

NY Times Editorial: A Terrible Transportation Bill

Greg Hanscom: Non-starter: Republican transportation bill is dead on arrival

HuffPo: Cal Thomas Apologizes To Rachel Maddow For Contraception Comment

Rachel Maddow: War on Birth Control

Roger Bybee: Obama/Catholic Contraception Controversy Boils Down to Workers’ Rights

Mark Morford: How to be Outraged in America

Steve Benen: Chronicling Mitt's mendacity

They Really Do Try, Don't They?

I never cease to be amazed at the unadulterated spin from conservative pundits and columnists who look for any opportunity to blame President Obama for pretty much anything. It's almost as if they think they're speaking to or writing for a Fox News audience with no worry about being called to account for the obvious disingenuousness they spew. Markets down? Obama's fault. Greece in financial disarray? ...Damn that Obama. Scrapping the balloons at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this year due to high winds? ...OBAMAAAAAA!

The latest example of this comes from Washington Post opinion columnist Michael Gerson. Mr. Gerson has absolutely no problem blaming the failed Supercommittee debacle on the President. Titled "Obama Let the Supercommittee Fail," Gerson blames indifference on the part of the President for a group of twelve grown adults (yes, I'll include the Republicans on the committee as "grown-up") not coming to an agreement with a looming $1.2 trillion in cuts across the board. But amazingly, Gerson believes, or would have his readers believe, that the "supercommittee failed primarily because President Obama gave a shrug."

So what if Republicans wouldn't budge on actual revenue increases in a balanced combination with spending cuts? So what if their ultimate $300 billion tax increase offer was connected to a basic repeal of the Affordable Care Act which took over a year to pass and a privatization of Medicare? The real problem was that "these were the ingredients for a deal. But only a president can mix them and apply the heat." Yep, Obama is the cook that stirs the pot and self-motivation for 12 of an elite 100 members of our political system is of no consequence. ...Damn Obama!

The disconnect is the fact that Gerson knows that Republicans would have never agreed to anything, as witnessed by the moving of the goalposts farther and farther to the right. Ezra Klein analyzes:

If by "at fault" we mean "unwilling to compromise," we can do better than listen to the self-serving remarks of the players. We can look hard at the movement in the actual plans...

The final Boehner [/Obama] plan envisioned tax reform that would generate $800 billion in new revenues and bring the top rate down to 35 percent. In the supercommittee, the highest Republicans ever got on taxes was the Toomey plan's $300 billion, with envisioned a top rate of 28 percent. So on taxes, it's fairly clear: The supercommittee Republicans were far to the right of Boehner.

On the Democratic side, Obama eventually insisted on somewhere near $1.2 trillion in tax reform or, if the revenues were to move lower, on much less in entitlement cuts. In the supercommittee, the Democrats offered a plan with less than a trillion dollars in tax reform -- and more entitlement reforms than Obama was willing to agree to.

Boehner had about $150 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts in his opening bid in the negotiations with the president, and he went down from there. In the supercommittee, Baucus offered $200 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts...

These steps toward compromise by the Democrats, who swallowed hard in a serious effort to get something done, were far more than anything Republicans offered. Does it surprise anyone that Republicans would take a step further to the right in an effort to sink any deal and let the usual Republican "Obama can't get anything done" talking points continue? This has been their strategy from the start. And Gerson knows this. But why point the blame at a deadlocked "supercommittee" when you can just blame the President?

I won't bore you with anymore detail in Gerson's column (you can read it for yourself to get the full frontal asshattery) except for one line. Gerson asserts that the President "is simply in over his head." This was the same accusation hurled at President Obama on the supposed failed stimulus to stop our economy from hurdling over a cliff. Sorry for the bad timing, Mike, but maybe you should read the latest CBO report:

The economy would have been in much worse shape without the 2009 stimulus — which increased employment in the third quarter of this year by as many as 3.3 million full-time jobs, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office...

...The CBO figures released Tuesday estimate that the stimulus package raised the gross domestic product this past quarter by 0.3 percent-1.9 percent.

Yep, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted by this "in over his head" President is still stimulating the economy a year after its "end." We now know the recession we found ourselves in was much deeper and dire than anyone had estimated and had the stimulus been even larger, we might be in even better shape today. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good villain story, right Mr. Gerson?

They're Not The Same

This is a rare Sunday "Must Read."

Former 30-year Republican Capitol Hill staffer Mike Lofgren, has written a rather extensive piece explaining the machinations of the GOP, leading to his decision to retire after witnessing the current crop of crazies that has enveloped the Republican Party. It's a truly insightful piece that needs to be read, shared and pulled out when confronted by your idiot relative at the next family dinner when they take center stage to proclaim that "both parties are the same." Here are some tasty morsels:

...The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. 

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics... the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

[...]

...It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

[...]

...The media are also complicit in [the phenomenon of distrust of the government.] Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'" 

Inside-the-Beltway wise guy Chris Cillizza merely proves Krugman right in his Washington Post analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. He wrote that the institution of Congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course, correct, but then he opined: "Lawmakers - bless their hearts - seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on their tremendous magnanimity." Note how the pundit's ironic deprecation falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the needless crisis and those who despaired of it. He seems oblivious that one side - or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.

[...]

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard choices" - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

The "both sides are the same" meme is what got us in trouble in 2000. Does anyone want to wager that a President Al Gore would have invaded a country that had nothing to do with a terrorist attack on our soil? Or that had there  been a keener eye at the helm we would have had a better chance at possible prevention of the attack in the first place?

Let's not make that same mistake again.

Go read, "Goodbye To All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left The Cult." ...NOW.

The Blaze's Mike Opelka - A Day Late and A Whine Short

The Blaze's political blogger Mike Opelka took umbrage with President Obama's "Frustrated" campaign email I referred to yesterday. But it wasn't for the same reasons. No, he takes the usual right wing hacky talking points that don't hold water. He complains about President Obama waiting until next week to lay out his jobs plan speech, the "failed" stimulus and the Martha's Vineyard vacation.

So I felt the need to post a response:

Very interesting, Mr. Opelka, that you would criticize the President for waiting until next week to make his speech.

1- The White House chose the date to coincide with first day that Congress was back in session.

2- I see no criticism of Boehner refusing the request and making the country wait yet another day. After grousing for months with the "Where are the jobs?" playground taunt, it seems Mr. Boehner and the GOP didn't think it was important enough and could actually let it go another day.

3- Bemoaning the President a vacation is petty considering the entire Congress has been out for the ENTIRE month of August. Five weeks. And the previous President spent a full 3 years out of his 8 year term on vacation.

4- If you're dealing with reality, you should note that just recently, a study came out citing the recession that started in 2007 (that would be before Obama took office) was much worse than previously thought. If you're going to criticize the stimulus, the correct criticism was that it wasn't nearly large enough to push back against the recession. Oh, and one third of that Recovery Act was tax cuts.

I'd forgive Mr. Opelka his talking points had it not been for his omission of point number two. If he'd written this post with no knowledge of the sequence of events regarding the joint session request, then okay. But it's posted with today's date. A good day and a half after Schedulegate. You can't complain about the timing of the speech and why we have to wait until next week, when John Boehner didn't think it important enough and delayed it yet another day. Opelka is a day late and a bitch session short.

More Krautlogic

Another week, and another example of Charles Krauthammer defecating on perfectly good paper. What a waste.

Earlier this week, Krauthammer wasted our time with his twisted logic on why the House should pass the John Boehner plan - mind you this was the original plan that Boehner couldn't garner support for from his own party, long before it actually passed on it's third incarnation which included a balanced budget amendment necessary for getting the votes needed, only to die a quick and merciful death in the Senate a short two hours later. All totaled, Boehner spent the entire week trying to pass a bill that he knew would be rejected in the Senate, while the clock is ticking down to D-Day. ("D" for "Default.")

The basis for Krauthammer's column:

...The distinctive visions of the two parties — social-democratic vs. limited-government — have underlain every debate on every issue since Barack Obama’s inauguration: the stimulus, the auto bailouts, health-care reform, financial regulation, deficit spending. Everything. The debt ceiling is but the latest focus of this fundamental divide.

Sigh... must I go over each of the supposed examples in that last paragraph? I must, I must.

Well, we can't really start off with a "limited government" lie posed as a fact so I'll refer you to a chart broken down by presidential terms showing federal spending and national debt. You'll immediately notice something when comparing the numbers:

Economist Mike Kimel notes that the last five Democratic Presidents (Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, and Truman) all reduced public debt as a share of GDP, while the last four Republican Presidents (GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, and Ford) all oversaw an increase in the country’s indebtedness.

So you can take that limited government bullshit and shove it. Reagan tripled the national debt. George W. Bush doubled it. So the next time some conservative starts with the myth that we somehow were completely fine until that no good Obama got his hands on the credit card, punch him in the neck.

The stimulus that Krauthammer wets his pants on wasn't some kind of socialist spending spree. It was necessitated by a nosediving GDP to shore up the continual loss of jobs (700,000+ per month by the time Bush left office), and not because of some imaginary European style socialist agenda.

Had President Obama not bailed out the auto industry, a bailout that began under Bush, but Obama honed into a reorganization to make the American auto industry profitable again, we would have been more than another million jobs in the hole.

Had President Obama truly wanted a European model of health care in the United States, he would have shot for a single payer system at the beginning of negotiations. And let's not forget that practically every president since Teddy Roosevelt has tried to pass some kind of health care legislation. Don't begrudge Obama for getting it done.

And Krauthammer's complaint about financial regulation is laughable considering the 2007 financial collapse brought on by the deregulatory decisions of both Presidents Clinton and GW Bush. Should we just forget all that's happened and assume the banks and markets can police themselves after a lesson learned?

And finally, deficit spending. I didn't know our country operated in the black until January 20th, 2009. Oh, wait. It didn't.

"The lesson we should have learned [from the Reagan years] is that deficits have little or no short-term economic impacts," said William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.

...The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

So is Charles Krauthammer at risk of being shot in the face by disagreeing with Dick Cheney's now famous, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" line?

Charles Krauthammer Is Missing Something

Today's op-ed from Charles Krauthammer has one craaaazy headline: Call Obama's Bluff

Hasn’t the White House leaked that he’s prepared to raise the Medicare age or change the cost-of-living calculation?

Anonymous talk is cheap. Leaks are designed to manipulate. Offers are floated and disappear.

Say it, Mr. President. Give us one single structural change in entitlements. In public.

Now obviously, when in the course of negotiations, it's a pretty dumb idea to float your ideas in public as far as specifics are concerned. And of course, Mr. Krauthammer knows this - surely he's not that stupid. He's just trying to shoehorn his perspective into his piece. But apparently, Mr. Krauthammer hasn't been listening when it comes to statements in public.

Obama signaled at his press conference today that changes to Social Security could be a bargaining chip in a deficit reduction deal with Republicans – something many Democrats have staunchly opposed.

“The reason to do Social Security is to strengthen Social Security to make sure that those benefits are there for seniors in the out-years,” Obama said. “ And the reason to include that potentially in this package is if you’re going to take a bunch of tough votes, you might as well do it now, as opposed to trying to muster up the political will to get something done further down in the future.”

There's your public statement, Mr. Krauthammer, right in the middle of a news conference, for which the President has taken a barrage of hits from the fringe left that would rather primary him, to the Democratic members of the House. But no matter. He continues:

The Republicans are being totally outmaneuvered. The House speaker appears disoriented. It’s time to act. Time to call Obama’s bluff.

A long-term deal or nothing? The Republican House should immediately pass a short-term debt-ceiling hike of $500 billion containing $500 billion in budget cuts. That would give us about five months to work on something larger.

Well, President Obama has already stated he will accept no short-term deal. The time for that passed, by Mr. Krauthammer's calculation, about 5 months ago. And his premise sits on the notion that the GOP would work in good faith to "work on something larger" and not use the borrowed time to drag their feet until the next debt ceiling increase vote all the way to November, 2012. Past performance has dictated such an outcome. But let's see what Mr. Krauthammer's proposal on "something larger" is:

Republicans should call for urgent negotiations on tax reform along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles commission that, in one option, strips out annually $1.1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes while lowering tax rates across the board to a top rate of 23 percent. The president says he wants tax reform, doesn’t he? Well, Mr. President, here are five months to do so.

And that's where Mr. Krauthammer's fist shaking falls apart. He is still under the impression that the Republicans are actually serious about debt reduction.

From the very beginning the Republican negotiators have stated unequivocally that any revenue increase is  a non-starter, including closing tax loopholes, streamlining deductions and even an expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Krauthammer assumes the Republicans will automatically change their mind if only that stubborn, mule-headed Obama would accept a short-term deal to work out the kinks of these reforms in the meantime. ...Please...

And taking a jab at the President as a "born-again budget balancer" when St. Ronnie tripled the debt and George W. Bush doubled it in their respective terms in office is just comical. Look at your own party's White House leadership history when it comes to deficit spending, Mr. Krauthammer. Don't try crying crocodile tears now.

Krauthammer ignores the fact that the supposed leader of these negotiations on the GOP side, House Speaker John Boehner, doesn't even have full support of his own members, where somewhere between 60 and 70 Tea Party House members have stated they wouldn't vote for a debt ceiling increase under ANY circumstances, which means Boehner needs Democratic votes in order to pass ANYTHING. To get those votes he needs to make it palatable. It's called "compromise." So please spare me the Republican superiority. The current crop of Krauthammer's party are the ones who decided to tie spending cuts to the debt ceiling increase in the first place. To cry foul now and project that it's President Obama who is holding the debt ceiling hostage is completely preposterous.

And then he ends with this kicker:

If conservatives really want to get the nation’s spending under control, the only way is to win the presidency. Put the question to the country and let the people decide. To seriously jeopardize the election now in pursuit of a long-term, small-government, Ryan-like reform that is inherently unreachable without control of the White House may be good for the soul. But it could very well wreck the cause.

Ah, the cause. Not to save the economy, but to win back the White House. So ultimately, Krauthammer's suggestion of calling the president's bluff is a political ploy to implode the economy in order to gain traction in winning back the Presidency, apparently not aware of polls showing that if there is a US default, the American people will blame the Republicans in Congress before the only adult in the room occupying the White House. How will that bode for the 2012 elections up and down ticket? It is to laugh.

A Ted Nugent Op-Ed?!

It is to laugh.

Ted Nugent, the rock 'n roll star from the 70's turned conservative activist and gun nut, has written an op-ed for the Washington Times called "Obama Punks America" in which he spreads the debunked claim that the stimulus cost $287,000 per job. Go on and read it if you like as it takes nothing less than a 5th grade reading level to get through it. But even a 5th grader will tell you that the amount of the stimulus divided by the number of jobs created does not equal the amount each job cost.

[AP, 11/2/09, via Nexis]:

The reality is more complex.

First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.

Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output -- a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.

Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

A construction project, for one, may only require a few engineers to get going, with the work force to swell as ground is broken and building accelerates.

Hundreds of such projects have been on the books, in which the full value of the contracts is already counted in the spending totals, but few or no jobs have been reported yet because the work is only getting started.

To flip the equation politically, it's as if the 10-year cost of George W. Bush's big tax cuts were compared with the benefits to the economy that only accrued during the first year.

Third, the package approved by Congress is aimed at more than direct job creation, although employment was certainly central to its promotion and purpose.

Its features include money for research, training, plant equipment, extended unemployment benefits, credit assistance for businesses and more -- spending meant to pay off over time but impossible to judge in a short-term job formula.

Nor do the estimates made Friday include indirect employment already created by the package -- difficult if not impossible to measure.

Nowhere in the editorial does Nugent include the fact that $282 billion in stimulus spending was in the form of tax cuts for the rubes who waste money on his concert tickets, something that would usually have the GOP's nipples get hard, and something they fought to get into the package, but since it was provided by a Democratic president (and a Kenyan at that!) they voted against en masse, but still like to take credit for it.

Interesting that a newspaper would give a guy, who threatened the current President of the United States while he was still a Senator, along with two other Senators in a concert setting while waving machine guns around, an op-ed column to reprise a 21-month old bogus claim. But I don't completely blame this bit of idiocy on Nugent alone. After all, he's citing the Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Anderson, who for some reason chooses to mislead on the numbers and the report he's basing it on. I wonder why?

So, is this the strategy? Are we going to rehash stimulus spending for the next 16 months until the election? Because if so, my guess is that the voters who benefitted from those jobs saved or created will be voting Democratic - all 2.4 to 3.6 million and counting.

Quote of the Day

"Like a drunk swearing off hooch for the hundredth time, Republicans are now trying to show they are serious about controlling the deficit by saying they won't raise the debt ceiling...

Raising the debt ceiling isn't, as the GOP tries to say, Congress giving itself permission to continue excessive spending: It's something that's necessary to pay for past congressional decisions on taxes and spending, and those decisions were made primarily when Republicans were in charge."

~Retired Republican Congressional Staffer Mike Lofgren

(H/T GottaLaff)

Rrrruhh?!

Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain issued high praise for President Obama's Wednesday address that honored victims of the Arizona shootings.

..."Our political discourse should be more civil than it currently is, and we all, myself included, bear some responsibility for it not being so," McCain writes. "It probably asks too much of human nature to expect any of us to be restrained at all times by persistent modesty and empathy from committing rhetorical excesses that exaggerate our differences and ignore our similarities."

In all seriousness, I am glad that someone in a leadership position* in the Republican party actually came out to praise President Obama's address in Tucson. After hearing some positive response from the right regarding memorial service speech, most of them immediately went into their usual tones, completely missing the message.

While that was expected, it's good to see not only a prominent Republican, but the one man who has seemed the most bitter and contrarian after his 2008 presidential defeat, be the one to openly join the President in his message of civility.

(* When I say leadership position, I mean someone of seniority and stature, not an official position. Especially after seeing the newly elected Speaker of the House reject the notion that he can tell Birthers within his party occupying House seats to knock off the nonsense.)

Olbermann Takes On Koppel, False Equivalency

Keith Olbermann responded to criticism from Ted Koppel in a Washington Post opinion piece lamenting the "death of real news." Shorter Keith: If it's the death of journalism you're ruing, you should have thought of that when you ignored the run up to Iraq and its aftermath instead of remaining silent for objectivity's sake. Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow didn't do that.

Quote of the Day

"Kebabs do not threaten our way of life." 

~ Eugene Robinson on the Republican politicization of the not Mosque not on Ground Zero

Quote of the Day

Frank Rich: "So how does that profiling work without race or ethnicity, exactly? Brian Bilbray, a Republican Congressman from California and another supporter of the [Arizona "Paper's Please"] law, rode to the rescue by suggesting 'they will look at the kind of dress you wear.' Wise Latinas better start shopping at Talbots!"

Quote of the Week

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

~ Frank Rich, March 28th, 2010 New York Times Op-Ed

Friedman Jacks Off On The Military

I really run hot and cold with Tom Friedman. Mostly cold. I'd like to dismiss him altogether but even a broken journalist is right twice a day, as in the case of his analysis on the current political climate of Obama hate coming from the far right.

But Friedman's latest column in which he suggests that President Obama embarrass the Nobel Committee by accepting the Peace Prize not on his behalf but instead on behalf of all the US military who have ever fought because they are the true peace keepers is a little over the top. Well, it would only be a little over the top if he'd just left it at that. What drives him over the Thelma and Louise egde is going on and on and writing an Obama speech in which the President stands before the US military, drops trou and proceeds to give them all a pearl necklace because of how fucking awesome they are. He then leaves a medal with Alfred Nobel's portrait on the side table and tells them he'll see them in Afghanistan.

Friedman seems to confuse empty Sarah Palin style military rhetoric with anything our President has ever said. That's where Friedman blew it, and his load, on this one.

Frank Rich: They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do

As political theater, the Sonia Sotomayor hearings tanked faster than the 2008 Fred Thompson presidential campaign. They boasted no drama to rival the Clarence-Anita slapdown, the Bork hissy fits or the tearful exodus of Samuel Alito’s wife. There was rarely a moment to match even the high point of the Senate’s previous grilling of Sotomayor — in 1997, when she was elevated to the Second Circuit. It was then that Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri previewed the brand of white male legal wisdom that would soon become his hallmark at the Bush Justice Department. “Do you believe there’s a constitutional right to homosexual conduct by prisoners?” he asked. (She aced it: “No, sir.”)

Yet the Sotomayor show was still rich in historical significance. Someday we may regard it as we do those final, frozen tableaus of Pompeii. It offered a vivid snapshot of what Washington looked like when clueless ancien-régime conservatives were feebly clinging to their last levers of power, blissfully oblivious to the new America that was crashing down on their heads and reducing their antics to a sideshow as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

Read the rest of the op-ed here.

Palin Wrote What?!

Escuse me while I wipe the tears from my eyes. I haven't been able to stop laughing at this statement: "Sarah Palin wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post." Seriously? C'mon. Her name may be on it, but anyone who's paid any attention to Sarah Palin over the last 9 months has to realize that this did not come from the pen of Palin. Especially on the heels of her rambling resignation "speech" less than two weeks ago which began, "Hi Alaska."

Ezra Klein expounds on her op-ed explaining her cap and trade opposition:

It's probably a bit kind to say that Sarah Palin "wrote" this. There are no words in all capital letters. There are no sports metaphors. There is nothing at all like "*((Gotta put First Things First))*." The stylistic and grammatical tics on display in last week's speech are totally absent. Sarah Palin signed her name to this. Or at least let someone else do so.

But that's not all that's missing. The term "global warming" is absent. So is "climate change." It's a bit like an op-ed that attacks firefighters for pointing pressurized water cannon at everything but never mentions fires, or a column that condemns surgeons for sticking sharp things into people but never mentions illness.

You could no more argue with this op-ed than you could drive a car made out of candy.

We've obviously not heard the last of Sarah Palin. She is now putting her name to op-eds in the same paper as Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson.

I do have one question: who wrote that op-ed for her?

Dowd on Cheney: The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up.

I don't say this often, but great Maureen Dowd piece on Dick Cheney.

Turdblossom's Nuggets of Wisdom

Karl Rove: Few events mobilize as many interest groups and set Washington atwitter as much as a Supreme Court vacancy. In the Bush White House, I served on a five-person committee charged with recommending nominees for Supreme Court vacancies. We had the opportunity to do so twice, though admittedly it took us three nominees.

We collected thick binders of background material on prospective nominees -- not just opinions, utterances and legal writings, but everything from college transcripts to tax-return summaries to charity dinner speeches. We had years to prepare, update and review this exhaustive research. It helped get Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed within three months.

Oh, Karl. Karl. Three words: HARRIET. FRIGGIN'. MIERS!

Rove writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal warning the Obama administration of all the hard work they'll need to do to make the right choice on their Supreme Court Justice nominee and completely undercuts his argument in the third sentence of his piece.

"We had the opportunity to do so twice, though admittedly it took us three nominees."

That's right, Karl. With all your vetting, research and months of background work, you still put up Harriet Miers as a pick for the Supreme Court of the United States. So please do us a favor and spare us all your wisdom, your experienced hand and your sagely advice that has found your "permanent Republican majority" where it is today.

Douchebag of the Week: Bill O'Reilly

By now we all know that Bill O'Reilly is unofficially King of the Douchebags and if I really wanted to, I could find something each week that would put him at the top of the list. So I guess you can say being named Douchebag of the Week is judged on a curve. If you're normally a douchenozzle, it should take something pretty extraordinary to have the dubious distinction awarded to you. Well, never let it be said that Bill O'Reilly disappoints in this regard.

Bill O'Reilly's Boston Herald Op-Ed: The other day, left-wing muckraker Seymour Hersh went on MSNBC and said he had information, provided by the usual anonymous sources, that Dick Cheney was running an assassination squad out of the White House.

I have but one simple observation: If Cheney really had such a crew, Hersh would have been dead a long time ago, and so would most everybody at MSNBC.

If you can stomach the six remaining short paragraphs, O'Reilly feigns humor with possible "lefty" news headline predictions with a wild swing and a miss; this along with the comments section continue to add justifiable proof to the theory that conservatives have no sense of humor.

Bill O'Reilly: Douchebag of the Week.

(H/T Think Progress)