The Slacktivist makes Bush an offer he cannot resist:

Dear Mr. President:

I've figured out a way for you to funnel another $500 million to your buddies in the oil and gas industry. And you'll be able to do it openly, without any of those annoying liberals criticizing you for it.

The trick is to launder the money through poor households. Simply add another $500 million in emergency funding for LIHEAP (don't worry about what it stands for, Andy can handle those details). You can call this "compassionate." You can call this "economic stimulus." And, since a lot of these LIHEAP funds are administered through charities like the Salvation Army, you can call this a "faith- based initiative."

You could even make a big deal out of how you're providing assistance to help low-income families in places like Massachusetts (home of John Kerry), Vermont (home of Howard Dean -- the guy Karl was telling you about) and South Dakota (home of Tom Daschle).

But the bottom line is that this money ultimately goes back to your good friends in the energy biz. How could you possibly object to that?

Warmly,
the slacktivist

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Posted 12:09 AM by Martin Wisse

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The Sideshow has found a better word for "religious extremists":

I have found the word I've been looking for.

We usually say "religious extremists", which is a neat phrase, I guess, except that it already relies on the idea that the people we're talking about are advocating an extreme version of the religion they claim to espouse - not that they have twisted the faith beyond all recognition, but that they are adhering to it so intensely that they are becoming an annoyance and embarrassment to the larger faith's own adherents. As if all Christians or Muslims should be as "devout" as the Christianists and Islamists want us to be, but we just can't be bothered.

This presentation has long offended me and, worse, I think, gives an unearned legitimacy to these versions of our faiths. I'll leave aside the question of how other faiths' "extremists" wander from the origins of their professed faiths, but I'm pretty familiar with Christianity, and while I recognize its bloody history I also know that most of what is presented to us as "Christianity" by so-called fundamentalists doesn't really have a lot to do with the teachings of Christ, so I feel I'm on pretty safe ground in saying that whatever these people are, they are not actually extreme Christians - they are something else.

[...]

But the "Christian" foreign policy, based on deliberately trying to stir up Armageddon, is the capper. These people are most assuredly not embarked on a project of beating their swords into plowshares and following the Prince of Peace. Instead, they want a bloodbath to shatter the world. They don't just want to defeat their enemy, they want to commit the most absolute act of genocide that can be imagined, in which everyone but their relatively small sect of believers ends up not only dead but consigned to an eternity in the fiery pits of Hell.

And then they will be happy. They'll have an eternity of congratulating themselves for killing everyone else.

They're Thanaticists; death is the basis of their lives.

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Posted 12:04 AM by Martin Wisse

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RC3 is frustrated:

One of the most frustrating things to me is that it seems so screamingly obvious to me that Bush has to go, that he's not just a bad politician but that he is an absolute danger to the things that make America the great country that it is, and yet probably half of the people in this country see him as a good leader. What do they see that I don't see? Don't the huge structural changes in our country's fiscal position totally scare the crap out of them? Aren't they alarmed by the fact that he seeks to justify his destructive and undermining foreign policy by keeping us in constant fear? Doesn't it bother them that Bush runs around talking about the resurgent economy when the employment situation totally sucks, we're down millions of jobs from when he began, and wages are completely stagnant? Indeed, one of the biggest problems I face when explaining to people why Bush is just so darn bad is that I honestly don't know where to begin. How could I and so many other people be so far apart on this? It baffles me.

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Posted 4:48 PM by Martin Wisse

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Archy on Bush as the "CEO president":

It's interesting that the 2000 campaign used the image of the "CEO president" to describe Bush, because the best parallel I can think of for his style is a bad business executive. Anyone who has worked in the bottom three-quarters of a corporation of any size has experienced the executive who has the trust and even affection of his peers and higher, but is generally regarded as a drooling idiot by everyone below. Typical comments from the productive classes are "Who hired that idiot?" and "Does he actually do anything around here?" Conference calls and charging lunch to the company seem to be their only visible skills, yet they do not seem to be aware of their intrinsic lack of worth. To hear them describe it, their value comes from something called "keeping track of the big picture." I'm not sure what would happen to that big picture if they stopped keeping track of it and I probably will never find out because they are ever vigilant in their track keeping.

All of the - admittedly anecdotal - evidence I've seen about Bush the businessman and Bush the politician fit that mold. Bush doesn't like to make decisions. He doesn?t like to be bothered by details. He doesn't like to be questioned and he doesn't like to be challenged (in either sense of the word). He likes to give commands. When someone brings a problem to his attention, he likes to be able to say, "Solve that problem," and not think about it again until it is time to celebrate the victory.

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Posted 10:20 AM by Martin Wisse

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Matt Yglesias neatly skewers AP reporter Nedra Pickler's style of insinuating:

A Dec. 10 wire story took a look at a recent Democratic debate and concluded that Democrats "sometimes leave out the facts" in their critiques of the Bush administration. For example: "[S]everal of the nine candidates criticized the tax cuts George W. Bush pushed through Congress. But none mentioned that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan . . . has cited those cuts as a reason for the recent economic growth." Shocking! Sources indicate that the candidates also failed to mention the Tuesday- evening chicken wings special at the Lucky Bar and my little brother's late guinea pig, creatively named Guinea.

[...]

According to Jack Stokes of AP media relations, "these fact-checking" pieces "aren't criticism," they're simply an effort to "add some context to what was said." But they read an awful lot like attempts to insinuate dishonesty, whether or not the candidate in question is telling the truth.

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Posted 9:56 AM by Martin Wisse

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Hullabaloo says it's showtime for the Democrats:

It's a wide open race and I think it's a good thing because it's turning into a helluva show. And, a helluva show keeps the media talking to Democrats, showing footage of Democrats, analyzing Democrats and basically giving us lots of free air time and exposure. Our guys are entertaining, unpredictable and they are giving some very good television. Every minute that we are being discussed and examined is a minute they aren't showing another tedious, mind-numbing Dubya fund raising speech in front of "subliminable" backdrops and handpicked cheering crowds. The longer we keep Bush from getting that free and easy oxygen and the longer our story remains suspenseful and exciting, the less he gets to dominate the narrative.

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Posted 10:04 PM by Martin Wisse

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Digby on politics as entertainment:

Why, my friends ask me, do I think that modern politics (except in times of real extreme crisis) is almost entirely a matter of entertainment product consumer marketing? Why do I persist in my cynical view that with the proliferation of cable "news" entertainment wrestling, people see politics as a reality TV program, a cross between Survivor and American Idol? Why do I look at the current political contest and the media's predictable yet mind numbingly contentless horserace "coverage" and see a general election that is not a grassroots uprising or a patriotic affirmation, but a made-for-TV game show?

It's because that?s what I see and it's not just here in Lala land, but all across this country.

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Posted 11:55 AM by Martin Wisse

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Nathan Newman shines a light over Bush's immigration proposal:

The bottom line is that citizenship for undocumented immigrants is THE ONLY way to protect the rights of all American workers. Some buy into the illusion that keeping undocumented workers marginalized somehow deters their entry into the US, but given economic deprivation south of the border, there's just no evidence of that.

What the marginalization does do is deny them access to our labor laws and makes them attractive to unscrupulous employers.

The best way for American workers to defend their rights is to defend the rights of all workers, in the US through legalization, and internationally through strong labor standards in trade agreements. Anything else is a recipe for a race to the bottom for labor rights.

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Posted 10:03 AM by Martin Wisse

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