politix

Obama's Windfall Taxes Shift: First Broken Promise?

"The Obama team's decision to drop the idea of forcing oil and natural gas companies to pay a tax on their windfall profits has caused a firestorm among liberals and small business coalitions." -- More on this story

Sigh.

Karl Rove

'Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is a former Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, a Republican political/campaign consultant, a turd blossom, "the brain," a Fox News political "analyst" and contributor, and a dick. Rove is considered a part of the holy trinity of dicks (himself, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush), though the true extent of his role in the ruining of the United States will most likely forever be obscured by "executive privilege," which is a time-honored technique of avoiding culpability for anything while "protecting America." Rove is only 57 years old. One can expect that this will leave Rove plenty of years to continue his life's work of undoing everything the founding fathers did to prevent people like him from existing in the first place." -- More on Karl Rove at Dickipedia - A Wiki of Dicks.

Read the full entry. It's so dead on you'll want to cry. This is exactly the way millions of people will remember Karl Rove. This is infamy.

Things feel different already

"Now, I open the newspaper, and I'm smiling. Not at the news necessarily, but I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing what our new president is at least trying to do. Let's hold aside for the moment the issue of whether his plans will work, or if he'll get to even attempt them all. I know better than to expect a magician. But man oh man -- it sure feels good to believe again. To believe that we have someone working for us, not against us. That we can let go of the cynicism and distrust. That the guy in that office isn't there just to run the agenda of some huge, unseen political machine. That he's not pillaging our resources and goodwill to do favors for his friends or to comfort his "base." Our new president is actually turning his talents and wisdom and courage to try to fix things. Can you believe it? I had forgotten what it feels like to even expect that." -- Paul Reiser: How I Know Things Are Different: Way #247

Bush's Last Days: The Lamest Duck

"In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one." -- TIME.

Thank you, Sarah Palin

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Obama's small-donor base claim is off

"Despite attracting millions of new contributors to his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama received about the same percentage of his total political funds from small donors as President Bush did in 2004, according to a study released today by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute." -- USATODAY.com.

Last Secrets of the Bush Administration

"...when Bush hands over the keys to the White House in January, he will leave behind more unanswered questions of sweeping national importance than any modern president. We still do not know how intelligence operatives, acting in the name of the United States, have interrogated suspected terrorists, and how they are interrogating them now. We do not know how many Americans’ phone calls and e-mails were scanned by the National Security Agency. We do not know—although we can guess—who ordered the firings of the U.S. attorneys who didn’t comply with the Bush administration’s political agenda, and we do not know who may have been wrongly prosecuted by those who did. There are large gaps in our understanding of the backstories to everything from pre-war intelligence in Iraq to the censoring of scientific opinion at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. And those are the things we know we don’t know—there are also what Donald Rumsfeld might call the unknown unknowns." -- Washington Monthly - Charles Homans.

I expect to hear a lot of "let's look forward, not back," from Bush weasels in coming months. Joe Leiberman set the bar pretty low on Meet the Press. I'll bet you wanna look forward and not back. I'm content to let the voters deal with Joe but I think we have to look at all of the slimy shit W & Co. pulled in eight years.

And he got no props for approving torture

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino whining about the "negative" coverage of her boss:

"When the president got legislation passed, such as an extension of electronic eavesdropping authority, Perino says with a touch of exaggeration that the stories would begin, "Despite his low approval rating . . ."

Uh, Dana... extending electronic eavesdropping and water-boarding and secret rendition... these are not good things. You don't get positive press for the evil shit.
Howard Kurtz - Media Notes:washingtonpost.com.

Why this is not the Great Depression II

"After the 1929 crash, the nation had to wait more than three years for a president who simply wasn't up to the job to leave the scene. This time, we've got to wait only two more months." -- Why all those Great Depression analogies are wrong. - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine

Economy is way fucked

"(Timothy) Geithner looks a lot younger than his 47 years (though not as young as he did before the crisis began). He skateboards and snowboards and exudes a sort of hipster-wonkiness, using “way” as a synonym for “very” as in “way consequential” and occasionally underlining his point with the word “fuck”. In temperament he seems similar to Mr Obama: he is suspicious of ideology, questions received wisdom, likes a competition of ideas and is keenly aware of how uncertain the world is."

The Economist.