Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’


Al Qaida hates Indiana, loves NYC!

For anyone who’s worried about Al Qaida coming after you: Did you know that it’s much safer for you to live in the crown of the statue of liberty than by your neighborhood donut shop?Also, be sure you stay away from your local bean fest. Al Qaida apparently hates beans. You’d be much safer going to the top of the Empire State Building, apparently.Y’know, our current leaders operate with such brazen ineptitude and thievery that it’s almost as if they feel they don’t have to worry about elections…


The President and the Pig

Will Ferrell‘s got nothing on this Bush impersonator. It is an impersonator, right? Please tell me this is a joke:


Candorville lampoon of Senator Bunning “treasonous and traitor-like”

From yesterday’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

Sen. Jim Bunning made newspapers across the United States again yesterday — this time in the funny pages.A national cartoonist with a reputation for wry political humor took a swing at Kentucky’s Hall of Famer after Bunning called for The New York Times to be charged with treason.Candorville, which runs in about 50 papers across the nation as well as another in Ecuador and the Pacific Stars & Stripes, featured a faux political commercial yesterday from “Senator Bunting.” However, the face on the TV is that of Bunning, a Republican in his second term in the Senate and a pitcher in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The strip’s main character, Lemont Brown, hears the ad apparently from the bathroom — the third panel features a flush as “Bunting” denies that his attack on the “Candorville Chronicle” is politically motivated.Cartoonist Darrin Bell said Bunning caught his eye last month after condemning the Times’ report on the Bush administration’s not-so-secret surveillance of international banking transactions.”Senator Bunning at the time seemed to be the GOP’s point man for the treason charge against The New York Times, so he was the logical one to use as a representative for the whole party,” Bell said yesterday. The flush was “the most appropriate” activity that came to mind, he said.He had not gotten any feedback yesterday from Bunning’s office on Capitol Hill. “I don’t really expect to. Somehow, I really doubt they read Candorville,” he said.Bunning’s office did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment for this story.Bell said he doesn’t see his work as falling into either the Democrat or Republican camp. In the 1990s, he was called a fascist for picking on President Clinton.”I just go after whoever’s in charge,” Bell said.As for Senator Bunting, he could make a return appearance, but that depends on Bunning.”He’s got my attention,” Bell said. “The next time he gives me material, I’m going to use it.”

Apparently, one reader was not amused:

I have always thought political cartoons to be inherently anti-Republican, and this has gotten to be even worse with all the nationwide progress witnessed in the last 5 years. It’s even possible that this drawn criticism has in fact lent itself to limiting the progress we have had…because it’s so treasonous and traitorlike.Posted by: Bill

This was one of the comments below the article (comments have since been removed, possibly because the argument got sort of heated. People stopped just short of burning each other in effigy. Barely.The “treasonous and traitorlike” comment doesn’t interest me as much as “limiting the progress we have had…” in the last five years. What progress is that, again? And if there is any progress, how can it be undone by a comic strip? If only Bill would have explained himself further. It would have been fascinating.


BE AFRAID! Plot to bomb planes thwarted!

Nabbing a few poor Black people from the projects who surprisingly aren’t fond of the government wasn’t scary enough. Neither was foiling a boneheaded plot to flood Manhattan by bombing the Holland Tunnel – a scheme that didn’t take into account the fact that New York is above the water level (you never know when water’s going to decide to flow up though, so thank God Homeland Security was on the ball on that one). No, the latest election-year scare has been ratcheted up severeal notches on the Rove scale.If they’ve already pulled an international large-scale plot out of their hat in August, they’re going to have to top themselves in coming months. Expect American and British intelligence to thwart an attack on Disneyland by aliens from the rings of Saturn around, oh I don’t know, late October.Still, this could all be real, of course. Even the boy who cried wolf was eventually eaten.**UPDATE: Surprisingly, the White House is seeking to capitalize on the alleged plot.

“I’d rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn’t done well,” one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals. “Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won’t “look as appealing” under the circumstances.


Foiled Terrorist Plot Doesn’t Help Republicans

Dick Cheney and others in the G.O.P. (which, for all intents and purposes, includes Joe Lieberman), are trying to use the recently-foiled, alleged terrorist plot for partisan gain. According to them, Connecticut Democrats who voted against Lieberman last week are America-hating, terrorist-supporting surrender monkeys. The G.O.P. is blanketing the nation with the message that Democrats — who keep suggesting that Bush obtain warrants before prying into Americans’ private lives in violation of the Fourth Amendment — oppose policies like the ones that foiled the recent terrorist plot. I suppose that means policies such as Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance programs.

Only one problem with that message: The British investigation didn’t come across this plot through the wiretapping and datamining of millions of people. The British uncovered this plot because of a tip. In Britain, the authorities don’t have to present a court with probable cause in order to obtain a wiretapping warrant. But in America, a tip like this would be all the probable cause a court would need to allow surveillance without violating the Fourth Amendment.

Far from rationalizing the White House’s illegal surveillance programs, the thwarting of this alleged terror plot demonstrates why such illegal programs are unnecessary.


Olberman Channels Edward R. Murrow


What a surprise…

This is all over the conservative blogosphere. Can someone explain to me how a person can actually be nonchalant – if not downright proud – of using divisive wedge issues to drum up support they otherwise wouldn’t earn?

ROVE TIMEStaffers in the White House have been talking up the possibilities of an “October Surprise” or two leading into the mid-term elections. They say the President feels confident he can still play a role in the election, that he intends to campaign hard for Republicans, and that on the policy front, there are a couple of issues that can be used as wedges along the way.-from the conservative mag, The American Spectator 


Clinton Unloads on Faux News

As anyone who’s seen a brilliant trailer and then gone to find out that the movie was total crap knows, it’s easy to give a false impression with a few simple editing tricks. For the past couple days, the Drudge Report and other right-wing sites have been downright orgasmic over a 50-second clip that they claimed showed Clinton coming unhinged and being forced by Fox News to admit he failed to prevent 9-11. Watch a longer version of that interview, which has just a little bit more substance following the “I failed” part than the Fox promo would suggest.


Calling all spinners — explain how Bush has “made us safer.”

There are times when being right makes you the happiest person in the world, and then there are the times it makes you crap your pants. Guess which one of those times this is. I want every angry, slogan-spouting flag-waiver who’s ever written in ordering me to “leave the President alone, he’s making us safer” to take a second, put down your copy of the National Review (the one with the Sean Hannity centerfold), and write to me again. Write to me and explain why our intelligence agencies now say the Iraq occupation has increased the threat of terror.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.More…


Clinton on Faux: How could Roger Ailes be so confused?

There’s been so much whine coming from the direction of the “Fair & Balanced” network that you’d think they were based in Napa. “Boo hoo, Bill Clinton raised his voice! Waaaah, Bill Clinton looked at me angry! Mommy! Mommy! Mommmmyyyyyy!” Today, Fox even tried to portray Clinton’s forceful response to their interviewer as an attack upon all of journalism. Why Ailes confused Fox News with journalism, I have no idea.To hear them tell it, Clinton ripped off his shirt, turned lime green and feasted on poor Chris Wallace’s intestines before relieving himself on the First Amendment. That’s not exactly how it happened.Meanwhile Keith Olberman has a different take on it: