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Very disturbing piece. New York City suffers a devastating blizzard that puts the city under a deep snow. Real problem was how slow the city was able to dig itself out. At the same time, the streets where wealthy people lived were very well-plowed. Is this a harbinger (i.e., "disaster capitalism") of the future or a one-time chance occurence?

The notion that this is all part of a "Southern strategy" (which Greg Sargent tells us is being discussed in the left-leaning blogosphere) is tinfoil-hat sort of stuff...

it's clear that Democrats were either complicit in the goal or too strategically clueless to address it before the clock had almost run out.

as a wonky, Democrat-leaning "centrist" pundit and then makes a career out of drubbing "unrealistic" liberals and progressives with cartoonish Jane Fonda and Hugo Chavez caricatures. This career path is so well-worn in our business, it's like a Great Silk Road of pseudoleft punditry.

The president and his team can start by realizing that "preemptive concessions" are a mistake -- and that a one-sided commitment to bipartisanship is a recipe for failure.

When I first came to Washington I worked at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that gets 20-25 percent of its funding from labor unions. Media outlets, including the New York Times, routinely felt the need to notify readers of this source of funding...

[Foreign Office minister] Kim Howells said he was not convinced that plots to attack Heathrow and Canary Wharf were foiled because of information obtained by waterboarding
[...]
Tom Porteous, the UK Director of Human Rights Watch said...“I’m not saying that [Bush’s] claim that torture evidence prevented terror attacks has no credibility whatsoever, but no evidence has been presented.”

Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day

"...consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day."

I don't begrudge him his little father-son hobby, but honestly, I know enough about how these groups roll to understand how they morph into tea parties, patriot groups, and other modern-day dangers. Don't be fooled. This is a very, very BFD.

Lawdy, lawdy lawdy!! Bring me the smellin' salts Miss Mellie, I almost like to daaaah! Ah have nevah been so appalled in mah laaaahf! Why, po Aunt Pittypat fainted dead awaaay!

"We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

The statement on this page, signed by more than 300 economists and major civic leaders, reflects a grave concern that the “austerity economics” being advocated by many politicians in Washington will derail our already weak economic recovery.

But withdrawing without a plan for safeguarding the women who chose to believe the American promises of empowerment, however deceitfully those promises may have been made, is to live in denial of a tragedy in which we are roundly imputed.

“The president does oppose same-sex marriage but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples.”

But you, dude, you picked that haircut. Voluntarily. You marched straight into some suburban Hair Cuttery of your own free will and accordand said “Make me look like this” while pointing to the cover of an ancient issue of Tiger Beat. (emphases in original)

The Guardian references changes to the Rules of Engagement under Gen McChrystal leading to some changes in how civilian casualties were treated though the only actual change them mention is a “new “information requirement” to record each ‘credible allegation of Isaf [the occupying forces] … causing non-combatant injury/death’.”

All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD.

I’m not going to it in the middle of an oil spill when the political environment doesn’t favor what I want.

Any deficit scold who doesn't put reducing health care costs at the very top of the agenda is just a demagogic crank doing the dirty work for the aristocratic overlords.

Mr. Obama should be ashamed of himself.... Mr. Obama occupies a sacred and noble position entrusted by the American people.

Israel refused this offer of a check on cargo by the UN and instead shadowed the boat for hours, jamming all communications until moving in to seize the ship.

Matthew Dowd complained on ABC recently that he expected Obama not to "politicize things." In this case, "things" is in reference to "elections."

"[The Israelis have] said, 'Here you go. You're in the Mediterranean. This ship -- if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we'll get the stuff into Gaza.' So what's the big deal here?"

A U.N. official said last week that the formal economy in Gaza has “collapsed,” and 60 percent of households there were short on food. The Guardian notes that according to UN statistics, “around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water.”

Constantly jumping in and out of National Guard helicopters and drawing up plans for additional “burrito levees” and “boudin bags”...

Unlike the situation with Katrina, the [BP] oil spill occurred in Federal waters, and the Federal Gov't was not directed by law to defer to local responders.

Which is an interesting historical revision to the usual narrative of "The New Orleans/ Louisiana responders were lazy and incompetent." It's also rather instructive to compare the response of the Bush Administration in Louisiana to that same Administration's response to four hurricanes in Florida in 2004 (A swing state in an election year, and yes, "Brownie" was in charge of FEMA then, too). BTW, The Governor of Lousiana asked President Bush to declare a "state of emergency" after Mayor Nagin had declared one for New Orleans at 5:00pm on August 27th, the hurricane struck just after midnight [on the 28th].
Update: Ah-ha! This talking point comes from Karl Rove:


Why, of course, this law created any sort of problem is not specified in Rove's piece.


Not precisely. When Bush made a personal appearance was beside the point. The point was that the Federal Government very, very badly slacked off and failed to do anything.

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Looks like President Obama is getting rea-a-aly tired of the Republican Party and seems to have lost his taste for bipartisanship. Good!!! 'Bout frakin' time!!!

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For a woman to decide that her unborn child takes precedence over her own life would deserve to be honored in song and legend. But for someone else to insist that her life counted for less than that of said unborn child? Nope, sorry, wrong answer.

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The department's acting inspector general, Mary L. Kendall, emphasized that all of the misconduct occurred before the Obama administration took office in January 2009. The Interior Department's efforts to clean up the MMS have been ongoing, and the agency's ethics code was overhauled soon after the transition between administrations.

Anthony spent no time on the politics of abortion. It was of no interest to her, despite living in a society (and a family) where women aborted unwanted pregnancies.

The List's mission statement proclaims, "Although [Anthony] is known for helping women win the right to vote, it is often untold in history that she and most early feminists were strongly pro-life." There's a good reason it's "untold:" historians and good journalists rely on evidence. Of which there is none. [emphasis added]

...blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration's lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority.

...if we emerge from the spill of the Deepwater Horizon with anything less than a permanent moratorium on expanded offshore oil drilling, and climate change energy policies moving forward without this drilling built in, than Obama will have permanently discredited himself with the environment, and, further, as a guardian of the public interest.

Beck previously responded to people who asked, “where were you when George Bush was spending?” by saying, “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

Liz [Cheney] is also all over NBC, where she happens to be social friends with Meet the Press host David Gregory (whose wife worked with Liz ’s husband at the law firm Latham & Watkins), family friends with Justice Department reporter Pete Williams (Dick Cheney’s press aide when he was secretary of Defense), and neighborhood friends with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Carter-administration national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Palin's view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard...

...from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for "numerous violations of its rules, including those dealing with client welfare, dual relationships with clients and counselors, and advertising"

...there’s no law or rule that only black people can talk about issues affecting black people, or the same for white, latino, asian people, etc.

...completely paternalistic and autocratic culture of Il Papa led to an insular, exclusionary system that failed to police itself...

When I told people to come locked, loaded and ready, I didn't mean locked, loaded and ready.

The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated.  

It wasn't even his office that was hit. It was a two story townhouse-looking office building in which his office is on the second floor and the window that was hit was on the first floor [snip]

And it wasn't a building that was labeled as Cantor's office. No one would have ever known that he even had an office in that building! It's not listed in any directory, it's not on his website, it's not even in his Congressional district!

The legal advisers said there were only four times during the past thirty years in which they were intentionally cut out of the decision-making process on issues involving the interpretation or application of international law, and they described each as a “train wreck.”

[Palin] was part of a GOP ticket that lost in an electoral landslide. She walked away from her job as governor, and is now viewed by most Americans as being wholly unqualified to lead the nation.

It's at least marginally better to have the ad expressly say that it was paid for by Dow Chemical rather than by "Americans for Happy Kittens and Grandmothers."