Saturday, February 28, 2009

Saturday Stuff (updates)

I have to tell you that I think the people at Media Matters (who continue to do God's work) pulled off something amazing here, and that was to capture all of these utterly inglorious moments from the recent CPAC meeting over at their "County Fair" blog; because I don't know if they're going to maintain this collection of all of these wretched videos in one place, I thought I would do so here (no, I'm not a masochist)...
__

Limbaugh mocks "the voice of the new castrati"...



Gregg Jarrett claims Limbaugh and Hannity "not low brow," "exciting for a great many Americans to listen to"...



Presenting award, author Brad O'Leary tells CPAC: "the only way we will be successful is if we listen to Rush Limbaugh" (and somehow I can't imagine that Benjamin Franklin, were he alive, would communicate anything but loathing and disgust to these asshats)...



Limbaugh calls CBS' Rodriguez (Maggie, I believe) an "anchorette," then corrects to "anchor," citing his "women's summit[s]"...



At CPAC Coulter says of MSNBC: "Is there any other station where every host you know was at the alternative prom?"...



Maker of anti-global warming film claim that Al Gore wants to stop her "Auntie Ursula" from flying...



Limbaugh on bipartisanship: "Where is the compromise between good and evil? Should Jesus have cut a different deal?"...



Limbaugh compares "hop[ing] President Obama fails" to his wanting AZ Cards to fail in Super Bowl...



Limbaugh at CPAC: Dems "offering welfare checks to women to keep having babies"...



Limbaugh at CPAC: Dems "don't have the right to take money ... from the back pockets of producers and give it to groups like ACORN"...



Limbaugh says he has Stalin for security because liberals won’t attack for fear of “offending Stalin”...



At CPAC, former MSNBC contributor Niger Innis says environmentalists "must be swept into the ash heap of history just as Jim Crow was"...



Bennett at CPAC: "[O]ur critics, the so-called sophisticates" have had "disdain" for patriotism...



Emceeing, (David) Bossie says Coulter is "always one of the highlights" at CPAC, "everyone enjoyed" remarks...



Coulter proposes raising the voting age to 40...



Coulter suggests she might let three U.S. cities be bombed, depending on which cities they are...



Coulter at CPAC: Obama is most likely to "have poison put in his coffee by Hillary"..



...and let's not forget this also, by the way.

Finally, this video is not a clip from CPAC, but Keith Olbermann interviewing Janeane Garofalo on "Countdown" the other night about Flush Limbore's supposed "women's summit" (I swear, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried).




Update 1 3/1/09: Oh, and here's more nonsense from Flush.

Update 2 3/1/09: Good point here from Digby about a certain former president who was thoroughly ignored - can't imagine why of course (h/t Atrios).

Update 3 3/1/09: Yo, Flush, you keep us all posted on how that whole "cleaning our clocks" thing goes that you're talking about here, OK? Too funny...

Update 1 3/2/09: Try going on his show and saying this, Steele.

Update 2 3/2/09: As predictable as flatulence after indigestion (here - tee hee).

Update 3 3/2/09: Sounds like game, set and match to me (here).

Update 4 3/2/09: Steele and Limbore toss up the softball, as it were, and Tim Kaine hits it about a mile here.

Update 3/6/09: Keep it up, Flush - you're doing a good job of driving even more voters over to the Dems here.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Friday Stuff

Oh noes - looks like President Obama may have another foreign policy crisis on his hands (hat tip for this to Ms. Edith Mansoor; dearest one, my husband bequeathed a fortune to me from the government of Namibia before he was killed by Somali pirates, but now the British consulate is making me give it away - send me all of your bank account information so I can forward it to you instead and I will be happy again)...


Spam Crackdown Threatens Koy4Goff's Penis Enlarger, Free iPod Industry

...and I seem to recall Obama also saying that we "should put aside childish things," but apparently, these geniuses as CPAC "didn't get the memo"...




..."Still Bushed" (J.P. Morgan and Bank of America - them again! - took TARP funds and then decided they "wanted to play some 'hoops'," as it were; Bobby ("Don't Call Me Piyush") Jindal gets left high and dry over his little "fish" story about Katrina; and under Bushco, companies banned from being awarded federal contracts were...umm...awarded federal contracts - to paraphrase Frank Zappa, "the beat goes on and they're so wroo-ong")...




...and speaking of music, Robert Drake of WXPN's "Land of the Lost" ('80s music) conducted an enjoyable interview tonight with Stan Ridgway of Wall of Voodoo, who apparently is coming to the Sellersville Theater next month, but I couldn't find anything on the schedule - here's the band from "back in the day"...



...and just for the heck of it, here's something a bit more recent.

Some Friday Harwood Hackery

Whenever a column appears from John Harwood of the New York Times labeled “news analysis” or “political analysis,” it is likely that posting material will soon follow.

Concerning President Obama’s recent address before Congress and his recently submitted budget, the Times correspondent tells us the following from here…

His own party remains seared by the last time it followed a new Democratic president on a course of tax increases and ambitious social engineering.
Uh, I presume Harwood is referring to the first Clinton budget and the 1994 congressional elections that followed (which is ancient history that barely anyone except stone-throwing pundits remember, by the way – and “seared”? That to me implies wounded or in a state of retreat, which is hardly the case…just the opposite, in fact - a link to polling data supporting that will appear shortly).

This of course is a hosanna of sorts by Harwood on behalf of that prized notion of “bipartisanship” so cherished by the “villagers” of our media-industrial complex (which, of course, means that the Repugs are always right and unless the Dems find a way to cave and make the Repugs happy, they’re always wrong).

Well, I thought kos had a good thought about 1994 versus now here in a post where he chides the wankerific David Broder for much the same reason, noting that both parties have fewer ideologically dissimilar members then versus now (homogeneity can be a good thing, particularly when times are bad such as now). The point of the kos post is that the Dems have a firmer majority in both houses and have much less of a reason to pay heed to their corporatist, “Third Way,” “Blue Dog” wing to the exclusion of other party members (the flip side of that, though, is that, if things go bad for them, then EVERYBODY loses, though it would be hard for them to sink lower than the Repugs at this moment).

Harwood’s column today actually reminded me that I meant to point out this gem from him a couple of weeks ago, in which he compared Obama to the newly elected FDR (who was blamed for taking a Caribbean yacht cruise before taking office with the country mired in the Depression)…

In other words, it may not be too early to ask whether Tom Daschle’s tax problems, Judd Gregg’s ideological misgivings, Wall Street’s catcalls and the near-complete Republican rejection of Mr. Obama’s economic stimulus package add up to the depletion of his momentum. But it is too early to answer with much confidence.
This of course is a typical pundit trick; namely, putting out an unanswerable question merely to plant doubt (if you can’t answer the question, brainiac, then why pose it at all?).

I’ll tell you what – check this out from The Daily Kos, which shows their poll tracking of Obama as well as congressional Democrats and Republicans. Basically, Obama is still around a 68-71 percent approval rating at this point; I haven’t seen a “depletion of his momentum” between February 14th and today (if someone wants to match this against numbers from Gallup or somebody else, be my guest).

Oh, and Harwood also said the following about Obama’s predecessor in the same column mentioning FDR…

…the 9/11 attacks gave (Bush) enough standing eventually to take the nation to war against Iraq.
And they’re thinking about charging a subscription fee for this stuff?

Our Man In Iran - ?

(And by the way, I posted here also.)

This Yahoo News story tells us that…

TEHRAN, Iran – Beleaguered reformers in Iran are repackaging their once-popular former president Mohamad Khatami (pictured)to challenge the right-wing grip on politics in June elections.

Hailing what they call a "New Khatami," reformist operatives – who have been relegated to Iran's political wilderness for years – hope that Mr. Khatami's campaign will erase a reputation for weakness and rekindle the exuberant spirit for change that brought the cleric landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.

But even Khatami's most vocal supporters say it will not be easy taking on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the conservative institutions of the Islamic Republic that are lined up to back him, or another hard-line candidate, despite Iran's struggling economy and its standoff with the West.
I’m not exactly sure what the Obama Administration could do to help Khatami here, who faces long odds as the story tells us (basically, Ayatollah Khameni, the guy who really runs the country, told Khatami not to run, which probably predicates the outcome in favor of Ahmadinejad, though a massive turnout could – could – be a factor).

But I’m quite sure that Obama won’t commit the mistake of his pretender of a predecessor by making that ridiculous “axis of evil” pronouncement (here) that ended up uniting both Khameni and Khatami against a common enemy (us, to the point where we "bailed" on Khatami), the same way that our war of choice in Iraq ended up uniting the Sunnis and the Shiites against us also (and in case anyone is prone to write off Khatami as just another Iranian bent on attacking “the great Satan” at any moment, note here that Khatami condemned the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings, saying they “did Islam an injustice” and those responsible “would not go to heaven”).

As a result of President George W. Milhous Bush’s influence in the middle east, Hamas consolidated itself in Palestine, Hezbollah did likewise in Lebanon, and Ahmadinejad (who quite probably was one of the “students” responsible for the illegal takeover of our embassy in Iran in 1979, as noted here) emerged as the president of Iran.

And I know President Obama has his plate more than full primarily with domestic issues at the moment, but I think a foreign policy overture of support to Khatami directly from him would be a positive development overall.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Thursday Stuff

I had a post lined up for today but I just wasn't able to get to it - I'll shoot for tomorrow (though I did manage to post over here).

In the meantime, here's "Worst Persons" with K.O. tonight; the first one of these is typically idiotic, but the other two are genuinely sick (Bill Orally and Dennis Miller try to put forward the lie that Barack Obama would have actually supported Proposition 8 in California; idiot Repug State Sen. Dave Schultheis of Colorado claims that HIV testing for pregnant women rewards "sexual promiscuity"and then, believe it or not, digs himself an even BIGGER hole trying to explain his way out of it; and finally, Sean Inanity conducts a poll on his web site about "what kind of revolution appeals most to you" - my choice is D) Arrest this lunatic for supporting armed insurrection!)...



...and more friends of mine lost their jobs today and others have recently; I don't know about you, but I'm sick of this shit and having all of this hanging over our heads - this wasn't what I had originally planned to put up tonight, but this seems to fit the mood as far as I'm concerned...this is for them.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Wednesday Stuff

As you watch that bubblehead Katie Couric here, please keep in mind this from K.O. last June...



...yes, I know I supported TARP, but I keep hoping that the designated financial geniuses in either party will somehow revive the original version that will only take the toxic assets off the books of these soon-to-be-nationalized banks and NOT reward people like Ken Lewis of Bank of America instead, who should be strung up by his thumbs and left as food for the buzzards...



..."Worst Persons" (back to Olbermann...Michael Calderone of Drudgico thinks K.O. said 'Oh, God' before Bobby (Don't Call Me Piyush) Jindal gave his "response" - tee hee - to Obama's address before Congress last night; Bill Orally repeats the one about UAW workers making $70 an hour...may be awfully hard to kill this "zombie lie"; and Sean Inanity goes on about the supposed mouse relief or whatever in the stimulus, as well as the supposed rail line between LA and Las Vegas, neither of which are in fact IN the stimulus - kudos to Admiral Joe for giving it back to him)...




...and these guys could sing a song from names in a phone book, and it would still rock; definitely an upgrade over George Michael's version, which was good to begin with - thanks to YouTuber carleyb81 for including some of the pics in this fan video.

Our RAND-Y (And Wrong) Take On Technology

(And you know where else I posted, right?)

This is probably going to be “water wet, sky blue” stuff, but it bears repeating (from here)…

The competitive edge of the United States economy has eroded sharply over the last decade, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.

The report by the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that the United States ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on 16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness. They included venture capital investment, scientific researchers, spending on research and educational achievement.

But the American economy placed last in terms of progress made over the last decade. “The trend is very troubling,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the foundation.

Measuring national competitiveness and the capacity for innovation is tricky. Definitions and methods differ, and so do the outcomes. For example, the World Economic Forum’s recent global competitiveness report ranked the United States first. Much of the forum’s report is based on opinion surveys.
Now, I admit that what we get out of any “think tank” or any allegedly nonpartisan advocacy group is going to be a bit skewed based on their statistics (which, as the writer Mark Twain said, can easily be paired with “lies and damn lies”), but this is probably closer to the truth.

Particularly when you consider the following…

A report last year by the Rand Corporation concluded that the United States was in “no imminent danger” of losing its competitive advantage in science and technology.
And this is typical, considering the following from Chalmers Johnson, a former RAND consultant and author of a quite damning book on the “uber” think tank of them all; as noted here…

RAND's research conclusions on the Third World, limited war, and counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War were notably wrong-headed. It argued that the United States should support "military modernization" in underdeveloped countries, that military takeovers and military rule were good things, that we could work with military officers in other countries, where democracy was best honored in the breach. The result was that virtually every government in East Asia during the 1960s and 1970s was a U.S.-backed military dictatorship, including South Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan.



Similarly, RAND researchers saw Soviet motives in the blackest, most unnuanced terms, leading them to oppose the dΓ©tente that President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger sought and, in the 1980s, vastly to overestimate the Soviet threat. (Co-Author Alex) Abella observes, "For a place where thinking the unthinkable was supposed to be the common coin, strangely enough there was virtually no internal RAND debate on the nature of the Soviet Union or on the validity of existing American policies to contain it. RANDites took their cues from the military's top echelons." A typical RAND product of those years was Nathan Leites's The Operational Code of the Politburo (1951), a fairly mechanistic study of Soviet military strategy and doctrine and the organization and operation of the Soviet economy.



Among more ordinary mortals, workers in the vineyard, and hangers-on at RAND were Donald Rumsfeld, a trustee of the Rand Corporation from 1977 to 2001; Condoleezza Rice, a trustee from 1991 to 1997; Francis Fukuyama, a RAND researcher from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1983 to 1989, as well as the author of the thesis that history ended when the United States outlasted the Soviet Union; Zalmay Khalilzad, the second President Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations; and Samuel Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb (although the French military perfected its tactical use).



The RAND Corporation is surely one of the world's most unusual, Cold War-bred private organizations in the field of international relations. While it has attracted and supported some of the most distinguished analysts of war and weaponry, it has not stood for the highest standards of intellectual inquiry and debate. While RAND has an unparalleled record of providing unbiased, unblinking analyses of technical and carefully limited problems involved in waging contemporary war, its record of advice on cardinal policies involving war and peace, the protection of civilians in wartime, arms races, and decisions to resort to armed force has been abysmal.
So the whole “don’t worry, be happy” prognosis of RAND on our precarious standing among other industrialized nations in technological development and innovation is pretty much “par for the course,” assuming that American hegemony will last forever, I guess; Johnson, in his article, recalls Albert Wohlstetter – “easily the best of the RAND researchers,” as Johnson puts it – displaying his fabled arrogance during a 1967 gathering in New Delhi to promote the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with Wohlstetter telling the delegates that he did not believe India, as a civilization, "deserved an atom bomb," with Johnson adding that “as I looked at the smoldering faces of Indian scientists and strategists around the room, I knew right then and there that India would join the nuclear club, which it did in 1974.”

So what of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, then? Well, as I looked over the group’s web site, I found it hard to attach any kind of ideological bent to them, though they (primarily Foundation president Robert Atkinson) are proponents of a mileage-based gas tax, which is an utterly ridiculous idea, for all the reasons listed by Atrios and Kagro X here.

Also, Dem U.S. House Rep (and gubernatorial candidate) Artur Davis of Alabama is a board member, he of the Blue Dog corporate/centrist Democratic “cred,” so presumably, he supports the group (which has a lot of wonky “position papers” to peruse; I don’t know about you, but after the last eight years of “let’s shoot first, count the bodies and see if we were right later” decision making, I could go for some wonky stuff now and again).

So RAND tells us that everything’s fine, the ITIF says we’re sixth out of 40…so who’s right, exactly?

Well, I would side more towards the ITIF, though the World Economic Forum here says that we’re fourth behind Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland (jeez, how did those zany Danes end up as Number One? And why did the Times note above that that's where the Forum put the U.S. instead of fourth?).

So, bringing all of this stuff “down to earth” a bit, what are we talking about here? Well, as noted here…

The U.S. trade balance in high-technology manufacturing industries and advanced products has declined.

  • The U.S. world market share of exports by high-technology industries dropped from about 20% in the early 1990s to 12% in 2005, primarily because of losses in export share by U.S. industries producing communications equipment and office machinery and computers.

  • The trend for China has been quite different. China’s share has grown rapidly; its world market share of high-technology industry exports has more than doubled, from 8% in 1999 to an estimated 19% in 2005. Exports by China’s high-technology industries surpassed those of Japan in 2001, the EU (excluding intra-EU exports) in 2002, and the United States in 2003. China has become the world’s largest exporter.

  • The reduction of U.S. industry’s world export share has coincided with the decline in the U.S. trade balance in high-technology manufacturing industries that began in the late 1990s.

  • The historically strong U.S. trade balance in advanced technology products exhibited a similar reduction, shifting from surplus to deficit starting in 2002. The overall U.S. trade deficit is largely driven by U.S. trade with Asian countries, especially China and Malaysia.
  • So, it sounds like the decline became apparent in 2002 through 2005, and you know who resided in “an Oval Office” back then, don’t you?

    Sigh…

    Tuesday, February 24, 2009

    Tuesday Stuff

    I hope putting up this video helps Nigel Haskett in some small way - a true hero, IMHO (as opposed to the crooks at the "golden arches")...



    ...and I thought this was good stuff; the title of this song sums up the prior vid (and my day in general) pretty well, I think (and by the way, Seal is coming to the Tower Theater in Philadelphia in April).

    Extra! Extra! Philly Papers' Epic "Phail" Over Tierney "Comp" Caper!

    That’s gotta be the “wood” baby (and no, that isn’t a personal comment...and I also posted here).

    Seriously, though, it gives me no joy whatsoever to read that Philadelphia Newspapers has filed for bankruptcy, though given our economy and the particularly sad state of the media business as a whole (with some exceptions), as well as the precarious financing of the company, it comes as no surprise.

    However, it is more than a little galling to know the following about CEO Brian Tierney (here)…

    …an affidavit by Richard R. Thayer, executive vice president, finance, said…Tierney "without an increase in compensation" became publisher of both papers in the fall of 2006 after the $565,000-a-year incumbent resigned. Even though Tierney in January 2008 demanded a 10% cost concession from workers, his own pay was bumped up 3% in May 2008 to $618,000. Then came the big boost around Christmas (to $858K).
    Ho, ho, ho, those sound like Bill Marrazzo numbers, boys and girls (oh all right, Tierney says here that he’s giving back the raise, so that will bring him down to mortal levels at about $618 grand, I suppose; I guess that’s what you do when you get your hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar).

    And Tierney was raking in his $858 grand while he was telling Mayor Nutter here to lay off 5 percent of the workforce of the city of Philadelphia across the board (of course, heaven forbid that Tierney had any particular plan to do that - and in the same column full of self-serving treacle, he was also encouraging the Toys for Tots campaign and donations to area food banks; worthy causes indeed, but their platitudes sound like garbage coming from a self-serving charlatan like Tierney).

    I just don’t know what it’s going to take for Tierney and his crowd to understand that mass communications companies are public trusts, and if you fail in your mission to inform and educate (comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and like that), then it doesn’t matter what your balance sheet says – you are doomed to eventually lose the asset you seem to prize most, namely your newspapers (hell, I GAVE you a plan to succeed here; try actually reading it, OK?).

    In the column in which Tierney chided Nutter, the former lamented the “personal services” industry, stating that, “to profit from it seems unconscionable.”

    As far as I’m concerned, given his already sweet deal without the $232K raise, that applies more to Tierney's ownership of the Inquirer and Daily News than anything else.

    Monday, February 23, 2009

    Monday Stuff

    Sounds like Louisiana Repug Governor Bobby (Don’t Call Me Piyush) Jindal is going to blow off some of the stimulus dough – idiot – though it sounds like Dem Governor Jennifer Granholm will happily take it and put it to good use…



    …"Still Bushed" (Karl Rove didn’t testify before the House Judiciary Committee – still stonewalling, as he will be until the day comes, God willing, when Rove FINALLY gets fitted for that orange jumpsuit; yep, world class liar Ari Fleischer, in typical Bushian - ? - fashion, blames everyone but his former boss for Saddam Hussein’s lack of WMD; and believe it or not, the next generation of Bushco continues to spew its garbage, this time attacking fellow Repug Charlie Crist – as I’ve said before, that gene pool need a lifeguard)…




    …”Worst Persons” (Fred Barnes tries to tell us that, when Bristol Palin says abstinence programs don’t work – she being Exhibit A in that argument, of course – Palin really means that they DO work…typical for Barnes; as I said last week, I thought what Holder said about race was pretty crappy, but if someone’s going to call out Holder on it, try doing it with FACTS, OK?; and as K.O. says in response to Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao, if you’re a small businessman making about $200 grand and you’re paying taxes individually without incorporating yourself, then you may be too dumb to be allowed to actually run a business)…




    ...and here's a bit of a change of pace; I don't usually "do" country, but this was nice, and I'll give a listen to T-Bone Burnett any day of the week.

    “Mad Thad” And His Latest Sad Song On The Stimulus

    (Note: The subject of this post, Repug Thad McCotter of Michigan, apparently plays the guitar.)

    This New York Times story today tells us that Repug U.S. House Rep Thad McCotter of Michigan, in total lockstep, lemming-like fashion in accordance with the Repug House “leadership,” opposes the stimulus (of course)…

    Since Mr. McCotter had opposed the economic stimulus program, just what was his plan, she asked, to deal with the increasingly dire situation that she and thousands of other McCotter constituents find themselves in?

    Mr. McCotter, a junior member of the House Republican leadership, ticked off some alternatives offered by Republicans and stuck to his position that the $787 billion stimulus package presented an unacceptable trade of minimal near-term benefits for future fiscal disaster.

    “It won’t work,” said Mr. McCotter, 43, who worked his way up from local elected office. “If I thought it would work, I would have voted for it.”
    This story was written by Carl Hulse, who, as nearly as I can tell, is a thoroughly professional reporter. However, it would have been nice if he had spelled out exactly what those “alternatives” are (or perhaps his editor could have flagged that for him and asked for further details?).

    It also would have been nice if the Times had bothered to report that one of McCotter’s gripes with the stimulus was over his utterly bogus charge that it provided funding for a high-speed rail project between Las Vegas and Los Angeles (which McCotter stated in a Detroit News editorial, noted here, referring to it as the “Sin Express”).

    Too funny…

    And a cursory examination of McCotter reveals some more stunning wingnuttery, by the way (noted here)…

    (McCotter) drew some heat last campaign over his vote against expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Catholics United criticized him immensely for it, and he called the group "the devil" over it. No, Thad didn't back down, and urged other Republicans to hold firm with him. For, if the GOP was to be "daunted by the politics of SCHIP," it would most certainly "lose its soul."

    Well, after 11 Republican Congressmen who voted against S-CHIP lost their seats in 2008, Thad was daunted by the politics of S-CHIP: Thad voted in favor of the expansion.

    Does that mean that Thaddeus has lost his soul? Perhaps. But it seems to me that he's simply exposed himself for the opportunist he is. Thad knows that he is going to be challenged in 2010, and he is unwilling to give Democrats in the District this issue to run on.
    Uh huh…

    And did I mention that McCotter is a real comedian (noted here)?



    Also, as noted here by Wikipedia, McCotter said of the automaker loan, "We will not walk out of this room after a forced vote waving a piece of paper in our hands claiming 'fleeced in our time.'"

    Uh, Thad, you’re a U.S. House rep from Michigan, not Kentucky, OK?

    This Daily Kos post tells us that McCotter is rightly being targeted by DCCC robocalls reminding everyone in McCotter’s district that he opposed the stimulus (along with eleven other House Repugs – I hope the fact that Gerlach is apparently going to run for PA governor doesn’t mean that people will forget his complicity here also).

    However, as the Times notes…

    Bill Ballenger, the editor of Inside Michigan Politics…is skeptical that Mr. McCotter’s vote against the stimulus will be much of a political liability, particularly if the economy does not improve. “They may look like heroes a year from now,” he said.
    While I believe it will take a year at a minimum to turn things around, I will do all I possibly can from now until then and beyond to ensure that McCotter and his band of idiots look not so much like heroes, but more like the clueless, obstructing lickspittles that they indeed are.

    Or, maybe I could explains this in terms Thad understands, given his cute little Politico video...

    "TAX CUTS" = "MORE RUINOUS DEBT"

    "Republicans support more ruinous debt."

    Translation: "Republicans will be a totally marginalized, regional party utterly unable to do anything expect pander to racist, nativist white rage well into the next millennia."