Then again...who among us is?

When I saw the YouTube on the front page of TPM this morning, I was struck by how much Stone looks like an older, healthier brother of Ben Stein. Sounds a little too much like him, too.

Stone...Stein...one of them adopted? Separated at birth? Or are they both ashamed of each other enough to deny each other? One for being a swinger, the other for being a nerdy dork?

ha ha

...that so many lefty voices I run into on the Internets Tubes say they want a ruthless, uncompromising and ideological market type choice of action from the gummint towards the Big Bad Automakers...

Via atrios at eschaton: Was clearing brush just a campaign prop, too? Or is that the only thing George W. Bush is actually qualified to do?

First Lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush are moving back to Dallas when the president's term expires in January, the Associated Press is reporting.

The AP says the first lady's press secretary confirmed Wednesday that the couple are purchasing a home in Dallas.

Bush's family bought the place about one year before he began to run for President. I'm not even sure if George W. Bush actually holds the deed in his own name.

Worst President Ever. Let's make a list of all the ideas of what we could do with Bush's 'ranch' down in Texas. War Pig farm, anyone?

The auto industry is about to collapse. The financial industry WOULD have--if we hadn't instantly tripled our national debt. Airlines are merging and going out of business. Oil is down again, but prices for everything ELSE certainly aren't. The currency is still at record lows, even though it's recovering because of the oil price slump.

Shit is happening. Bad shit.

But the FCC Republican chairman Kevin Martin sees the writing on the wall. He NEVER would have suggested what he's suggesting now, with George W. Bush looking over his shoulder:


The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is likely to consider a plan this month to auction public airwaves with a mandate that the winning bidder set aside some for free Internet nationwide, a proposal staunchly opposed by the cell phone industry.

The plan is championed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican whose time as chairman is waning as the Obama administration prepares takes office in January. Martin is expected to announce on Tuesday that his proposal will be considered at the commission's Dec. 18 meeting.


Of course, there're plenty of details left out of my excerpt. And this will probably never happen. But if it DID...it would be greeted with hoots of "Socialism!" at first, until things settled down and the next complaints from FOX News would be about the shitty government-forced service. And then ten years go by, and it's simply taken for granted, like trash service.

Conservatives. Never met a public service they didn't automatically reject, but eventually embrace.

He says he'll work for a year for one dollar if we give his company a bailout.

That's (my guess) trading ten to twenty million dollars for nearly ten billion dollars. Very roughly, a thousand-to-one tradeoff.

And it'll probably work. According to Yahoo!News, Ford's stock is up significantly as a result of this PR stunt. And if we know anything about the American public, it's this: they prefer style over substance any day. It's our custom.

On the other hand, they can't get a bailout without some sort of populist appeal, so Congress can have an excuse to grant it.

And this guy Mullally is a very shrewd CEO. Ford brought him in a couple of years ago, long before this financial crisis, to try to turn the company around. He managed to not only save Boeing when he ran it, but wrested it to the top of the American aerospace industry by means of it being the Last Company Standing, more or less.

...in the Bush Presidency. That's what my little Backwards Bush key chain tells me. My bass player gave it to me for my birthday, when there was an unbelievable 500+ days on its little LCD display.

Will Bush pardon himself? Will he pardon Cheney, and has Cheney already pardoned Bush, during Bush's colonoscopy last year? Is that how they're going to end this thing?

Can they keep these pardons secret, hidden in their own pockets? (Yes, they can, legally) Will they keep these pardons just in case the Democrats and Obama decide to investigate their administration?

Will we ever find out? Probably not. Even the staunchest Bush opponents are willing to forgive the Worst President Ever's criminal record, and just 'move on'.

These two belong hanging from lampposts, folks, not retiring to elder statesmen status. These two men have trashed our entire country, our military, our currency, our indebtedness, our economy, our reputations, our laws, our values. They are dirt. They are whale shit. They are the ultimate conspiracy theorist's wet dream--a conspiracy that just happens to be true.

God damn George W. Bush and Richard Cheney to Hell for all eternity. There are very few persons I would wish such a fate for, and these two are among the select.

I would have to guess they most certainly do. America is the only country with genuine Fourth Amendment protections that put teeth to the law that a suspect cannot become a suspect without a judge or independent authority not beholden to the enforcement bureau.

In other words: Those Mumbai terrorists planned and executed their terror attacks completely below the technological radar. The security forces in India obviously did not see this coming. With every tool at hand in a security force's disposal, with as heightened a sense of threat level that India is under every single day, somehow these terrorists managed to pull this off without a hint of warning. They were successful, and yet I have been told by my government for the last seven years that the reason we've not been attacked is because I've given up my civil liberties, in order to help the government protect me.

This is exactly the kind of terror attack that could happen anywhere, including here. Planned without computers or cell phones or email. A small but well-coordinated team of dedicated terrorists cannot be stopped, except by pure luck.

I'm not willing to give up my rights to NOT be wiretapped. I am an innocent citizen. The government has no right to come into my home without my knowledge and empty out the contents of my computer, yet that's exactly what the FBI is empowered to do by the Patriot Act.

Suspending civil rights NEVER PROTECTS ANYBODY. Never. Any neocon who tells you otherwise--reassuring us all that we have nothing to fear, as long as we haven't done anything--is lying to your face.