I confess

I was Liz "Donuts" Sidoti's source for the AP article. And frankly it's true. I am in a funk. Goodbye, euphoria. Hello, reality - and it sucks.

Getting my post ready for December 31

Obama could have thrown all his political capital into getting one big thing done - real health care reform - and even if he didn't have a second term he would have guaranteed his place in history as one of our greatest presidents.

Umm, well, at least for the 35 to 50 years of history we have left on this planet.

Oh, wait. Now I get it: Like, who gives a damn?

Deep thought

The Middle East conflict has already lasted longer than any of the earlier Crusades - even the Seventh.

Jim Cooper...

...gets a bad review.

No laughing matter

Krugman: Paranoia Strikes Deep:

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

Kucinich

Wasn't able to save us. And he's getting his own ass kicked.

Deep thought

The terrorists have won. Let the holocaust begin.

Bad idea

MEMO
To: (you know who you are)
Fr: Bob
Re: Personnel changes

I know you want to "trash the 'stache" and I'm okay with that. But about his replacement: Good grief, what are you smoking? Dumb idea. Don't even think about it. Look, the man doesn't know the first thing about police work, much less running an urban police department. I'll bet he can't even hit anything with that gun he carries. He's just a bean-counter-turned-politician. He can't solve the our crime problem -- unless you expect him to, like, re-work the numbers?

-Bob

Rubes

@Atrios occasional reminder that while HCR will hopefully be an improvement, it really shouldn't be this rube goldberg monstrosity...

You can say that again. Singler-payer, or extending Medicare, would have been far, far simpler.

Clever

(Subway station. Click for a close-up.)

Deep thought: The way things are going, a good movie might cheer us all up and help us forget about politics.

Deep thought

Before drawing any conlusions about the shooter's connections, we should wait and hear what Glenn Beck has to say.

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Hushed

The other, unspoken part of the health care reform story.

Ft. Hood

Shooter still alive. Other two released. Not surprised. Stands to reason that anyone with a drawn weapon, in those circumstances, would have been arrested as a possible suspect -- even if their weapon was drawn only in self-defense. On an Army base, a lot of people would have been carrying weapons.

Kucinich

Pelosi shut him down today. Apparently a state-by-state opt-in for single-payer would break a promise Obama made that people could keep their current insurance.

I guess it's back to chasing UFOs for Dennis.

Prescient

Cookie Monster nailed it, 27 years ago:

The good times are almost over

Get it while you can:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

More: The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

Deep thought

Maybe Dennis Kucinich can still save us. One can only hope.

Deep thought

Good news for the Republicans. He always is.

Rec

Thanks to whoever turned me on to this one (was it Pesky? Newscoma?): FakeAPStylebook is one of the funnier parody Twitterers around. Kinda fills in the gaps between chuckles from FakeMongo. Samples:

Avoid the archaic term "lunatic." Specify whether the subject suffers from Hulkamania or Macho Madness.

All mentions of the band Dokken should be followed by the parenthetical aside "(rhymes with ROCKIN')."

When there's no more room in Hell, omit the final paragraphs to save space.

Play up the dangers of Halloween candy that has been tampered with. Parents need to be irrationally frightened, too.

Deep question

Can you really have a run-off election if one of the two candidates, um, runs off? Absolutely, says the other candidate.