Motley Moose – Archive

Well, one at least. Here’s some of what the whackadoodle had to say yesterday:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose authority is teetering amid a popular uprising, said in an interview with a French newspaper on Sunday that an Islamic holy war would engulf the Mediterranean if the insurrection in Libya succeeded and that “we will go back to the time of Red Beard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats.”

Of course, this isn’t particularly surprising from an omnicidal dictator who fancies himself a Flemingesque mastermind. Red Beard? This from an asshat who takes fashion advice from Capt. Crunch.

Not a lot of details yet, but we know that Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic Representative for Arizona’s 8th congressional district has been shot:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was among as many as 12 people wounded in a shooting at a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store where she was holding a campaign event.

ABC affiliate KGUN-TV in Tucson reported that as many as 12 people had been shot, including Giffords. A law enforcement source told KGUN that the shooter was in custody.

Giffords, a Democrat, was scheduled to hold a “Congress on Your Corner” event today at a supermarket in northwest Tucson.

Her condition is not currently known. Other sources reporting on this tragic turn of events:

MSNBC:

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, U.S. National Public Radio reported Saturday.

At least three of her staff members were also shot by an unidentified gunman who ran up and began shooting indiscriminately, according to media reports.

Politico:

Giffords was taken to University Medical Center in Tucson, according to the report. Her condition was not immediately known.

Twelve people were injured in the shooting shortly after 10 o’clock local time, according to Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima Country Sherrif’s department. The police are sweeping the area for any other possible suspects and currently have one person in custody.

Why on earth would somebody do something like this?

UPDATE:  Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has died.

Screenshot from the (now removed) Mspace page of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in custody.

UPDATE:

2:37 PM ET Giffords Alive And In Surgery

A hospital spokeswoman tells MSNBC that Giffords is alive, still in surgery.

Today President Obama formally called for a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers. So much for socialism, eh? The White House is characterizing the move as part of a ‘broad sacrifice’ that seeks to help restore the fiscal and economic health of the country.

“The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice, and that sacrifice must be shared by employees of the federal government,” Mr. Obama told reporters. He called federal workers “patriots who love their country” but added, “I’m asking civil servants to do what they’ve always done” for the nation.

White House officials insist that the freeze will not apply to military personnel, but will affect all civilian federal employees, including workers at the Department of Defense. They’re saying the freeze should save more than $5 billion over two years, $28 billion over five years, and more than $60 billion over 10 years. Don’t get me wrong — that’s a lot of cashish, but it’s a mere drop in the deep sea that is our $1 trillion-plus federal budget deficit.

Keep in mind, this was a call for a freeze, not an executive order. Federal pay is determined by Congress, and lawmakers still have to approve. Given the mood of the nation, any guess how that will turn out?  Is Obama’s move here strategic? Sound and sincere? A symbolic gesture? Completely unreasonable? As with everything, it depends entirely on your point of view.

Today, the New York Times reports: Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S.

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

This report, uh, reportedly details the triumphs and travails of Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.  People have long acknowledged the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi scientists with regard to postwar intelligence, but per the NY Times, “this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.”

For decades, stuff like this has made great fodder for conspiracy theorists, who like to suggest that US collaboration with Nazi technokrauts after WWII marked the beginning of fascist domination of the upper echelons of the US establishment and the military-industrial complex.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present six minutes and eleven seconds of pure, solid gold ‘awesome’:

It’s funny ’cause it’s true! It’s also scary, because as you well know, there are Teahadist candidates all over the damned map in the election to be held just four short days from now, and they are salivating at the possibility of political power. Here’s the deal: I don’t give an ounce of shit how disappointed you are with the President, this or that Democrat, this policy or the other, or anything else. These knuckleheads need to be stopped.  Blunted.  Averted. After everything else, it really is that simple.  

…than subject myself or those I love to the visual and mental rigors that surely come with watching TLC’s soon to drop Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Here’s a taste:

It’s only thirty seconds worth. Be sure to swallow a couple of charcoal tablets afterwards, just in case.

From the right, and now increasingly from the left, we’re getting used to hearing Where’s the change, Obama?

I anticipated this sort of horseshit from the established right, a now completely rudderless opposition party who are determined to see the President’s agenda (and the POTUS himself) fail at any cost. The stakes are high, but it’s evident to anyone who’s even remotely paying attention that the GOP are willing to sacrifice the nation, over the well being of citizens, in their quest to achieve and maintain political power. If the Republican Party were an ex-lover, they’d be the type to slash your tires by dark of night, kidnap your beloved pet, or spend hours calling to hang up on you. Whatever, not much surprise here (see also BREAKING! stories on the wetness of water).

What’s harder for me to stomach is the bizarre intransigence from the left of center folk who decry ‘incrementalism’. We saw this all throughout the healthcare debate; we saw it again with DADT, and again with FinReg. Nothing has been good enough for these people. Nothing.

Again and again, over and over, issue after issue. I’m not talking about the general swath of leftward-leaning people who have disappointments. I have a few of my own. I’m talking about the self-absorbed, holier-than-thou lefty motherfuckers who are willing to hand control back over to the aforementioned power-mongering GOP, purely out of spite.

These are the same assholes who are willing to sit out the midterms, deliberately dampen enthusiasm for Democrats down ticket, and shoot all of the country in the collective ass, just to teach that dirty Corporocrat shill Obama that they will not brook any ‘dirty fucking hippie punching’. He needs to be more like LBJ they say, more like FDR. Apparently, hippies have been too busy shitting themselves (and complaining about the stink) to read an 8th grade history textbook.

If they had, or even if they had the will power to read beyond the Huffington Post headlines or spatula their dialated pupils off the front page of FireDogLake, they’d know that the substantial progressive achievements of both FDR and LBJ were only possible because of significant compromises and political deal-making. In fact, many of the programs, laws, and policies we know and love started small, and improved over time. A long time. You know, little shit like social security and civil rights. The kind of things that only begin to live up to our ideals as Americans.

Recently, I’ve been reminded that real gestalt level change takes time. This little lesson came to me the other day as I carried out one of the regular functions of my job — a gig made possible in large part by the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Thanks Obama and Democrats, you swarthy bunch of neo-liberal corporatist shit-sandwich servers tossing us all under the bus!

SRSLY people, let’s get a goddamned grip. Change takes time. Given the challenges we face as a nation, now is most assuredly not the time for poutrage.

I’ve been reading Jonathan Alter’s The Promise – President Obama, Year One, and have come across a number of striking passages that have led me to spend much time ruminating on the monumental challenges President Obama faces in his attempt to pilot the ‘ship of state’ in the tumultuous political seas of the 21st century.

With your indulgence, I’d like to share a number of these passages in an on-going series. In particular, I’ll present snippets that have resonated with me. Some are shocking, some humorous, some awe-inspiring, some infuriating, but I hope you’ll find each of them as illuminating as I have.  

Yesterday, voters in 12 states cast ballots on a number of issues and a number of races. The chattering class has focused mostly on the Arkansas battle royale between Senate incumbent Blanche Lincoln and her only-slightly-more-left-leaning challenger, Bill Halter. We’ve also seen lots of gossip on the sex scandal-laden gubernatorial primary in South Carolina, and pondered the matchups for high-stakes races in both Nevada and California.

Turnout was expected to be low in the Golden State, largely due to the lack of competition in Democratic races and the absence of off-the-chart controversial ballot measures. My polling place was hopping last night however, and I didn't see any people in the crowd wearing tricorn hats and breeches, so that’s encouraging. Should be interesting to see what the turnout gap was, or if there was much of one at all. Lately, I'm having a hard time buying the 'Dems are doomed' meme that the TradMed has been pushing. Anyhoo, some California result highlights, and a few thoughts on some of the other state/national contests are below the fold.

…and he is us.

Last night, I spent a few hours wading through BP oil spill related diaries over at Daily Kos, and spent a good portion of this morning getting a second dose. I don’t visit there all that often anymore, and when I do I rarely venture into the diaries, and even less frequently into the comment sections. Having now spent some time there, I can now safely say that I’m pretty much done with that place.  

Truth be told, I’d have to go to FreeRepublic to see the same amount of utterly uninformed, hyperbolic bullshit. The place is overrun with imbeciles. Save the lesser objects of scorn, there is literally no difference between these knuckleheads and the very worst of the Teabagging Birther set. The obvious, and excruciatingly irrational hatred of all things Obama leads me to conclude that they are kindred spirits, drooling sycophants trapped in an endless For/Next loop.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve always known that wingnuts turn both ways, but up until now I’ve always taken comfort in the thought that, for the most part, we that skewed left were better, more rational, more reasoned. Smarter. Today, that illusion is shattered.