QOTD

Bill Maher via Twitter:

Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty

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From Whiskey Fire, in response to a RedState blogger who "doesn't care about the facts."

WE’RE AT WAR! An insistence on factual accuracy is a luxury we can’t afford when the nation faces an existential threat, such as the top marginal tax rate being raised back up a couple percentage points from its all-time historical low to its previous all-time historical low. It’s just like Pearl Harbor (if the Japanese had only mildly dented 5 percent of the ships in our Pacific fleet while actually performing some needed maintenance on the remaining boats)!

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From here, via Whiskey Fire.

If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you'd only see one circle.

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Comes from Rep. Barney Frank, after getting yelled at and called faggot by some distinguished gentlemen from the Tea Party Movement:

At some point... I'd like to retire. As long as I think it might make some of those people happy, I can never retire. I may have to work forever as long as they're out there.

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“What you shooting at, Hoss?”

American Marine to ANA soldier in the Marja offensive. A story in today's NYT reports that many of the Afghan troops active in the operation aren't actually aiming their rifles when shooting.

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Jonathan Zasloff via Paul Krugman, on the Obama Administration's proposed spending freeze:

What next? The rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary? Or do we already have that?

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Sorry blogging has been so light from my end--I'm out of town for the rest of the week.

Today's QOTD comes from Dave Brockington over at LGM:

The U.S. Senate sucks. As an institution...I tend to treat the U.S. Senate in a breath normally reserved for the House of Lords. It's bad enough in terms of representation that the institution is highly skewed, and the median voter as represented in the Senate is considerably to the right of the median voter as represented in the House (or in the general population).

However, to add the tacit requirement of a super majority on top of this already skewed pattern of representation is to add insult to (small d) democratic injury.

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From Weber's Politics as a Vocation. Reading this, I could not help but think of Joe Lieberman:

Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. In academic and scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity--however disagreeably it may express itself--is relatively harmless...With the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, 'power instinct,' as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of 'the cause.' For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and--often but not always identical with it--irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon 'effect.' He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the 'impression' he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power's sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se. The mere 'power politician' may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of 'power politics' are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.

Bonus Brett Favre QOTD

An online Packers fan, on the possibility of Favre winning a Super Bowl with the Vikings:

Seriously. It is like Abraham Lincoln defecting to the Confederacy and winning the Civil War for them.

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From a message board commenter:

Pfft, just realize Favre is truly the All-American QB.

Before each game he takes a Prilosec OTC or two to make sure he doesn't get heartburn while he's out there having fun and calling plays.

Underneath his pants are not pads, but American made Five Star Wrangler jeans with each star being a Hail Mary he's recited in the back to have God watch over not only himself, his team, his family and the opposition, but to also have it snow that much harder in Green Bay.

When he's out there, the man's just in the huddle with his left hand outstretched, using his right hand to draw out plays..telling Percy to run a hook route to the stop sign and to have Berrian run all the way to the street light before cutting it back towards the red house on the left.

If he's out there "running up the score", its only because he's trying to make sure that thru his play, America can rest assure that while she may be down, he is still going to perservere and overcome his struggles, which in turn motivates America to make a change and renew her hopes and dreams.

Face it guys, Brett Favre = America.

(Incorrect) QOTD

From Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher, on some of the hangups in the new START talks:

This agreement is about strategic offensive systems. Missile defense is a defense system.

Not really.

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Palin:

It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.

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I really wish I could say that this surprised me.

In the days leading up to an interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson, aides were worried with Ms. Palin’s grasp of facts. She couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and she did not know what the Federal Reserve did. She also said she believed Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

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Rudy "9/11, 9/11, 9/11" Giuliani:

We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.

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Sam Harris:

People will torture their children with battery acid from time to time anyway -- and who among us hasn't wanted to kill and eat an albino?

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Adam Serwer at TAPPED:

During the last administration, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil occurred, despite some forewarning. The Bush administration then failed to capture the leadership of the group responsible for the 9/11 attacks, allowing Osama bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora. Then, they manipulated the American people into supporting the invasion of a country completely unrelated to the terrorist group that attacked the United States, granting al-Qaeda a considerable propaganda victory as well as a second front where their adherents could gain combat experience. This focus of resources and attention on a country unrelated to the fight against al-Qaeda led to the Taliban regaining the strategic initiative in Afghanistan, the single biggest factor in producing what may be an indefinite American military presence there. The prison created by the Bush administration to hold suspected terrorists features prominently in the promotional materials terrorists use to swell their numbers. The current centerpiece of the GOP's national security policy vision is a crime under domestic and international law, one that their own dream presidential candidate has said helps al-Qaeda win more recruits to their cause. The torture wing of the GOP wants to turn the United States into the kind of country it would want the U.S. to invade. That doesn't sound very appealing to me.

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The smartest thing I've read yet on the Hanes Bomber.

Paul Campos over at LGM, on "Terrorball."

I’m quite sure I could beat LeBron James in a game of one on one basketball. The game merely needs to feature two special rules: It lasts until I score, and as soon as I score I win. Such a game might last several hours, or even a week or two, and James would probably score hundreds and possibly thousands of points before my ultimate victory, but eventually I’m going to find a way to put the ball in the basket.

Our national government and almost all of the establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;
(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.

How else can one explain the extreme and ongoing over-reaction to last week’s botched attempt to blow up Northwest flight 253?...demands that the government keep us completely safe from the risk of terror attacks are both absurdly infantile, and very helpful to terrorists, since such demands place the bar for what counts as successful terrorism practically on the ground.

Meanwhile, in the week that began with a terrorist incident in which no one other than the pathetically incompetent aspiring terrorist was hurt, approximately 47,000 Americans died. Around 13,000 of these people never reached old age, including nearly one thousand children.

Indeed over the past seven days approximately 350 Americans were murdered. About twenty of these murder victims were women killed by their husbands and boyfriends, while something like 35 were children who died as a result of abuse. Several hundred Americans committed suicide between Christmas and New Year’s Day and several hundred others died as a direct consequence of not having any medical insurance.

All of this is considered completely natural and normal and therefore not in the slightest bit newsworthy. At the same time, President Obama is being criticized for not rushing back to Washington from his holiday vacation because a wannabe terrorist managed to set his own underwear on fire.

Read the whole thing, for goodness sake.

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Nightwatch, on the underwear bomber and "intelligence failure."

As in all past intelligence failures, the most critical failure is cognitive, meaning a person must recognize information is important before he or she recognizes the need to share that insight. There is no technology or technique in use that would ensure that perfect, unquestioning information sharing would have generated a warning to the airline industry, unless some recipient first discerned a credible threat in it. The probabilities of that occurring were zero because holders of similar information in different agencies all discounted or ignored it.

This problem is not about sharing. It is about the quality of the thinking. Those who had the information failed to recognize that it needed to be acted on. That is a cognitive failure of threat recognition and is the critical first step in any warning system. You have to see dots before you can begin to try to connect them.

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Kung Fu Monkey:

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

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Attackerman:

Umar Farouk “When There’s Nothing Left To Burn, You Must Set Your Crotch On Fire” Abdulmutallab is currently detained in a federal prison in Michigan. For now! In a few days he’ll use his Muslim heat vision to escape and run amok in Ann Arbor, shortly after America is brought to its knees by the force of his oratory in open federal court.