Last Call

Well whaddya know.  Looks like the Powers That Be have decided that Rasmussen's constantly outlying poll numbers are now A Story Of Some Measure.  Oh, but this is Politico, you see...so the story is "How the mean Democrats pick on Scott Rasmussen's polling firm."

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC [Republican National Committee].”

“Whether intended or not, Rasmussen polls have been used by conservative voices as talking points, and when that happens on one side it inevitably produces a reaction from the other,” explained Mark Blumenthal, a polling analyst and the editor and publisher of Pollster.com. “Rasmussen produces a lot of data that appear to produce narratives conservatives are promoting, and that causes a reaction.”

Now I've been complaining about Rasmussen's polls for months now.  It's not just his oddball "likely voter" samples, either...that skews the respondents heavily towards older white voters who have voted before and heavily under-samples minority and young voters.  Scott Rasmussen himself freely admits this.   Rasmussen's questions are heavily suggestive too.

(More after the jump...)

Right Nightmare, Wrong Party

Politico reminds us that terrorism that should happen on a Republican's watch is a chance for America to come together when 3,000 people are killed.  Should a Democrat be in charge however, it's a nightmare.

The muted response, allies said, was aimed at denying al Qaeda a propaganda victory, and at demonstrating how little the terrorists can now disrupt Americans’ lives. “The president and his team have done a good job at handling the situation given the competing interests at play. He’s been forceful without the bellicose chest bumping of the last administration,” said Jim Manley, the chief spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “One thing he’s got going for him is Republicans have no credibility on this issue when their sending out former Vice President Cheney you know they’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.”

Still, the response failed to reckon with the intense public interest in a story of repeated government failures and a near-fatal attack. Not to mention that Americans and flight crews were on edge – as evidenced in the detainment of a man who was in an airplane bathroom for too long and who authorities released once they learned he was just a businessman who’d gotten ill. The White House, already feeling heat for its Christmas Day response, had a spokesman quickly issue a statement when the man was taken into custody.

In Obama’s effective absence, Republicans began sharply attacking the administration, producing a partisan stand-off critics say could have been avoided.

“They should have approached it as a national security emergency requiring a bipartisan response, not a political response,” said Doug Schoen, a pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “He absolutely should have interrupted his vacation and absolutely should have gone back to Washington, and convened a high-level, bipartisan meeting.”

So, to recap:  Republicans have no credibility on terrorism because 9/11 happened on their watch.  Democrats however have less credibility because a Nigerian man set his crotch on fire on an airliner.

Our liberal Village media, ladies and gentlemen, demands a bipartisan solution to the problem, which apparently entails letting the Republicans (with their zero credibility) lecture the President on how to stop the terrorists they couldn't.

Our political discourse is broken.

Volcker's Game

Today's must-read comes from Steve M. at NMMNB.  The banksters, it seems, are going to have a rough time of it in 2010.  The forced consolidation of the industry means that the community bank is rapidly disappearing from the country, to be replaced by the Too Big To Fail megabanks.  140 banks went under in 2009...I expect far more to go under in 2010 as the commercial real estate market continues to swan dive.

Needless to say, the banksters are beefing up their lobbying presence bribery in 2010 significantly.

Steve's post ends with this point on Paul Volcker, however:

But Volcker is the Colin Powell of this administration. Maybe he resists administration groupthink on the economy more vigorously than Powell did on foreign policy in the first Bush term, but, like Powell, he's the guy nobody in the administration listens to. If he wants to make the case that we need a return to Glass-Steagall-style regulation and an end to "too big to fail," he should have the guts to resign, making it obvious that he's not doing so "for personal reasons." He should write a book. He should speak out against business as usual as an independent gray eminence. He should, in other words, be outside the tent pissing in, rather than the opposite, which is just where it suits the fat-cat-friendly administration to have him.

Agreed.  It's time for Volcker to put the screws on Obama from the outside and do the honorable thing.  Right now, he is effectively neutered.

The Last Twenty Years According To Republicans: A Play In Three Acts

Act The First: "Bill Clinton was the worst President ever.  He destroyed our economy and allowed 9/11 to happen so we impeached his ass."

Act The Second: "George W. Bush was the best President ever.  He protected America from terrorists, got that Saddam Hussein bastard that caused 9/11 and the economy was great."

Act The Third:  "Barack Obama is the worst President ever.  In one year he destroyed the Bush economy and almost let another 9/11 happen.  We should impeach his ass."

Fin.

I hear Moose Lady loves the book on tape version of the play, too.

[UPDATE 12:13 PM]  To recap, stock prices and home prices are lower now than they were ten years ago when Clinton was President.

This is all of course clearly Obama's fault for not fixing America in 2009.

[UPDATE 2 3:25 PM]  As Doug at Balloon Juice reminds us...there was a net zero job creation in this country over the last decade as well.



We would have come up with a net job loss for the decade without the stimulus. Even the 70's under Jimmy Carter were far, far better for Americans than the last ten years. Eight of those last ten were under George W. Bush. You do the math.

And yet our liberal media has convinced America that the problem was Clinton in '01 and Obama in '09.

2010: The Future Is Now!

Unfortunately, as Yggy points out, it's the bad, grimy, cyberpunk parts of the future.  William Gibson's seminal novel Neuromancer has its protagonist Case living out of a capsule hotel in Chiba City, Japan.  In 1984, when Gibson's novel was published, Japanese salarymen used the hotels to grab a night's sleep when they missed the last train home.

And now in 2010, unemployed Japanese are now living out of them.

For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

(More after the jump...)

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Sales of e-books are exploding, and so is e-book piracy.
• Wednesday's bombing of a U.S. base in Afghanistan may have been a case of inside help.
• A judge has ordered California Gov. Schwarzenegger to stop furloughing state worker union employees, calling the practice "flawed and illegal".
• Time Warner and Fox have finally resolved their cable dispute, avoiding a blackout for nearly 4 million subscribers.
• A class action suit against Apple's iPod for "dangerous hearing loss" has been dismissed again by an appeals court.
  

Last Call

Gotta love nutballs.  Seems the Danish cartoonist who depicted a rather explosive Mohammed, Kurt Westergaard,  ran into some trouble today.  A Somali man broke into his home brandishing a few weapons and was shot for his troubles.

The 27-year-old man, who was not identified, wielded an ax and a knife and cracked a window at Westergaard's home in Aarhus, said police spokesman Morten Jensen. A home alarm alerted police to the scene at 10 p.m., and they were attacked by the man, he said.

The officers shot the man in the right leg and left hand. He was hospitalized, but was not seriously injured, police said.

Danish intelligence officials said the suspect is connected to al-Shabaab, al Qaeda's ally in east Africa.

The incident "once again confirms the terrorist threat that is directed against Denmark and against cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, in particular," said Jakob Scharf, spokesman for the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, in a statement.

Yeah, I'd keep an eye on the guy too.

A Pair To Think About

Two health care stories from ABC News tonight.  First, Rush Limbaugh is out of the hospital and is doing fine, apparently.

Limbaugh, who made no public statements during his two days in the hospital, added that he is "grateful that this happened as it did."

Limbaugh was admitted to Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu on Wednesday afternoon after he experienced chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii. According to Limbaugh, doctors could not determine the exact cause of his pain.

The right wing talk radio king used the moment for a political shot at President Obama's massive effort to reform health care, saying he got the best medical care "right here in the United States of America." "I don't think there's one thing wrong with the United States health system," he said.

Nothing wrong with our health care system...if you have the kind of money Rush Limbaugh does.  39-year old Bill Caudle doesn't.  He lost his job and had to join to Army to get health insurance for his wife, who is being treated with chemo for ovarian cancer.  A father of three who is making a hell of a sacrifice...perhaps the ultimate sacrifice, as he's going to Afghanistan...just to be able to afford health care for his wife.

But there's not one thing wrong with our system.

Not one thing.  If you're El Rushbo, that is.

[UPDATE 11:07 PM]  Steve M. has an excellent take on this.

But Limbaugh knows that, at least to part of the country, his let-them-eat-cake statement actually sounds plausible. To these people, Limbaugh isn't an Ivy League, big-city elitist, even if he is filthy rich and incredibly influential. To them, the insiders are "liberal elitists" like the president of the United States and all Democrats (every one of whom is, by definition, a real or honorary big-city latte-swilling elitist) ... as well as every poor, uninsured person who needs health care. In the wingnut narrative, that's the enemy: the unholy alliance of the elite and the unwashed. The elite, you see, use the poor as a weapon to destroy civilization as hard-working, rock-ribbed regular Americans know it. And one of the most regular, most non-elite guys around is ... Rush Limbaugh! He didn't go to Harvard! He isn't a swell! He's just a regular guy from Missouri!

So when Limbaugh says the health system works, part of America thinks he's really qualified to judge. It doesn't ring false at all. They don't even recognize the completely reversal of class roles embodied in Limbaugh's statement.

If I'm right about this, we live in a very sick country.

Agreed.   Very sick.

One Really Bad Clean-Up Job

As I keep advising Republicans at all levels of government, remember that Democrats can access the internet too.  Today's violator:  Minnesota State Senate candidate Mike Perry.

Local bloggers are reporting that Minnesota State Senate candidate Mike Parry removed more than 43 racist and homophobic tweets from his Twitter feed after progressives began researching and responding to him. The Minnesota Independent highlights one of Parry’s scrubbed tweets, which was apparently directed at President Barack Obama:
The day after the New York Times published an editorial on the Matthew Shepard Act and a week after it was passed in the House, Parry posted a tweet stating “what’s with Dems and Pedophiles?” After winning the GOP’s endorsement this week, Parry aptly described himself as “pro-life, a Christian, a second amendment rights supporter, a hard worker and not politically correct.”

Not included in that description, the words "technologically savvy", "tactful enough to be in politics" or "even remotely intelligent."

Bonus points:  the GOP is backing Mike Perry anyway.  The Hoffmanization of the GOP continues unabated.

Rick Sanchez: The Exception To The Rule

Every now and again, a Villager does their job and asks the tough, uncomfortable questions.  CNN's Rick Sanchez keeps turning out to be one of those Villagers.



Yes, he's the exception that proves the rule, but perhaps after he gets Froomkined, he'll end up on MSNBC or something.

Still, it is gratifying to see John Ensign get sucker punched like this.

Drowning In Hypocrisy

I'll be the first to tell you that Obama's economic and civil liberties policies are flawed and are hurting the country.  But the alternative...well, the alternative as Steven D reminds us, is the Republicans.

The American media are quick to condemn the brutality of the religious extremists who govern Iran. Yet these people differ from the religious extremists in our own country in only one essential regard: they have control over the government of their country. Imagine what would happen if the Christian extremists in our land ever acquired that same power. We already know that many of these power mad individuals who espouse the most virulent and hateful form of Christianity have assumed control of much of the current Republican Party infrastructure at both the local and national levels.

That should be all you need to do to realize that as bad as the Democrats have been (and you know I have been more than critical of their failures both before and after Obama became President), abandoning support for them in the upcoming election cycle in 2010 is not a viable option. Unless you want the Rick Warrens or Doug Coes (or their lackeys) of the Christian Right in control of this nation's fate. For that is what will happen if we stay away from the polls and let the pied pipers of Fox News and all the crazies in the GOP lead their deluded tea bagging followers to increase the representation of Republicans in the Senate and the House.

I honestly wish that the Republican party was a sane and viable alternative to the current Democrats.  But that just is not possible right now.  The last time Americans in the middle decided the Republicans were better, we ended up with 1994 through 2008.  There are those that want us to repeat the same mistake twice, hoping for a magically different outcome should the Republicans get back into power.

The concept of principles before party is meaningless if the people you hand over the country to have no principles at all.

Epic Granite Solid Equality Win

New Hampshire's same-sex marriage law went into effect at 12:01 AM this morning, and several couples were married on the steps of the Statehouse in Concord.

After 19 years together Linda Murphy and Donna Swartwout tied the knot at 12:01 a.m. Friday, when New Hampshire's law legalizing same-sex marriage took effect.

Nineteen years together...and here's hoping for at least twice as many more.

The couple, who live in Hudson, New Hampshire, said they wanted to be married as soon as they could.

"We were thrilled and proud of New Hampshire ... it was a such a historic moment," Murphy said.

Swartwout said the marriage gives them "words and language that the rest of the world uses."

"When my nephew asks, 'Who's Linda?" I get to say, 'she's my wife,' " she said.

That arc of history does bend towards of justice, as a man infinitely better than myself once mentioned.  Nice work, Granite State.

EPIC WIN.

Wile E. Republican Arrives Fresh From The Drawing Board

Above:   Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown's campaign manager

All the GOP has to do to reduce Obama to a three-year lame duck President is for Scott Brown to pretend to be Mitt Romney long enough to win Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, giving the Dems only 59 seats, giving the GOP minority effective control over Congress, giving America three years of The Party Of No, which of course will be blamed on Obama and then President Sarah Palin will take over in 2012 with a Republican Congress and a nation of grateful Teabaggers and start restoring America to glorious freedom by outlawing rational thought and compassion, forcing Americans into self-sufficiency like our Pioneer fathers or deportation of those Liberal pussies who can't hack it to Canada and then we get get back to starting a war or three, by God.

But it all starts with Scott Brown being the 41st No.

What could possibly go wrong?

(Oh yes...reality.  We failed to plan for that.  Also, Mitt Romney being the key to our plan.)

StupidiNews, New Year's Edition

• North Korea has an interesting nuclear-free New Year's resolution this morning.
• The Czech Republic has legalized drug laws in effect as of today.
• The President is meeting Tuesday with air safety officials to design a new plan for 2010.
• The S&P 500 was up for the year, but lost nearly 10% for the decade ending yesterday.
• The warming Arctic climate could cause more trees to grow, trees that would break up reflective snow cover and cause the Arctic to warm even faster.
  

Last Call Of The Decade

And the decade ends on a perfect note:  FOX and Time Warner are both refusing to budge, and if nothing happens by midnight, no New Year's Day bowl games on FOX stations here in Cincy.

The FCC has decided to step in and say "Hey look, guys..."

And the free market screws over the American consumer:  your microcosm of the last ten years.  The next ten?  Not looking much better.

Have a good night and a safe New Year, folks.