August 2007

Making Fun of Anti-Semitism isn’t Anti-Semitism

ArchPundit August 14, 2007 2 Comments

I’ve often wondered how Mike Royko dealt with stupid people who didn’t have any understanding of satire. From the brilliant geniuses attacking Seals and Footlik comes word that this is anti-semitic:

O Tommy boy/
the polls, the polls are falling/
from Council Bluffs, and down to Waterloo/
the summer’s gone, and your numbers are dying/
because you failed/
to raise money like a Jew/
And don’t come back, your time has come and gone, son/
You’re just a hack, who can’t hold in his pee/
But you were good for laughs, at least, dear cheesehead/
O Tommy Boy, O Tommy Boy/
we’ll miss you . . . see?  So?  I’m sorry, what was that last word?  My hearing aid isn’t working . . .

Perhaps the geniuses cannot follow a hyperlink to Atrios’ discussion of Thompson’s comment about Jews:

Tommy!

Feel the Tomentum:

WASHINGTON – Former Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson told Jewish activists Monday that making money is “part of the Jewish tradition,” and something that he applauded.

Speaking to an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington D.C., Thompson said that, “I’m in the private sector and for the first time in my life I’m earning money. You know that’s sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that.”

Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment, and had only wanted to highlight the “accomplishments” of the Jewish religion.

I would like to compliment my African-American readers on their dancing abilities and athletic prowess, my Asian-American readers on their studiousness, and of course my female readers for their excellence in homemaking.

…almost forgot to congratulate my white male readers for their astounding successes in the face of unprecedented oppression.

For those who have an IQ approaching the single digits, Duncan is making fun of racist stereotyping as was Trapper John.

Could we have a better class or morons supporting Mark Kirk?

I’ll Be Getting Back to Illinois Real Soon

ArchPundit August 13, 2007 3 Comments

However, I’m amused by the DLC’s insistence on claiming they are relevant–Really!

Atrios is having fun toying with them here, here, here, here, and here I find the reaction rather funny.

The oddity of the DLC argument is that it consists of if you took at face value the Bush administration’s claims regarding Iraq there were perfectly good reasons to go to war.

It is certainly true that if you accept a bunch of false premises and outright lies, there was a perfectly good reason to go to war.  The appropriate response if you were on the wrong end as I was, is to say, yep, I screwed the pooch on this and a lot of kids are dying.  But not the DLC.  Instead they want to make the argument that going to war was perfectly reasonable given what we knew at the time.  Sure, if we accepted the Bush Administration’s lies and made up intelligence about knowing where the WMDs were, it sure would make sense. But we now know that it was a crock and that we should have seen it as a crock then.  Joe Wilson and three others (remember the three others for the Wilson debunker team out there) debunked the Niger uranium claims.  Yet, the administration still sold the story.  We had Colin Powell deliver claims of mobile labs that appear to be mobile trucks.

There were people who saw the intelligence and thought it was bunk and weren’t wide eyed anti-war whatever the label is today.  People like Bob Graham.  Why didn’t I listen to Graham.  I have no excuse. Why didn’t I listen to Durbin?  I have no excuse.

Why didn’t I fall back on the assumption of Bush incompetence and realize he was going to not only get us into a unnecessary war, but screw it and the necessary one up to boot? I have no excuse.

I was wrong and it was stupid to support the invasion of Iraq on so many different levels there is no excuse.  Yes, looking back is 20-20 and no one is perfect in hindsight.  However, trying to pretend one could come to a perfectly rational position to support invading Iraq forces one to fall back on really stupid arguments to go to war over as Cohen finds himself relying upon:

Like it or not, there was a defensible case for war in Iraq – Saddam had for 12 years thumbed his nose at the United Nations and international community; he had refused to account for his WMD programs and had consistently tried to hide from international inspectors the extent of these programs; and continued UN sanctions against Iraq were causing a real and unrequited humanitarian emergency among the Iraqi people. Saddam was a very bad guy and many well-meaning Democrats believed that getting rid of him was worth the cost of war even if they didn’t buy into the Administration’s fear-mongering and hyping of the WMD threat.

Because a dicator is a very bad guy isn’t reason to remove them from power. There are plenty of bad guys the United States is in alliance with and very bad guys who still walk the Earth despite being worse than Saddam. And a critical review of the analysis at the time would have determined a not surprising finding that it was in Saddam’s domestic interest to say he had WMDs even though there was no evidence of them.
Furthermore, inspectors were in Iraq and finding that there likely weren’t any WMDs so that was a silly justification as well.
Maybe it’s hard for the very serious people to admit, but they were wrong. I was horribly wrong.  Bad judgment has consequences.  Some people accept that and admit they were wrong and move on. Others insist they didn’t have bad judgment because they are very serious people who had very serious reasons.  Who do you trust?

John Cox Right Behind McCain in Iowa Straw Poll

ArchPundit August 12, 2007 1 Comment

Putting him in 11th place and the mid double digits in votes.

You Tube Anti-Semitic

ArchPundit August 8, 2007 0 Comment

Seriously, there’s a commenter suggesting we invade Israel

we should invade israel and stop them from slaeughtering civilian ppl like Rachel Corrie the US peace activist killed by an israeli armie bulldozer in gaza , the muslim world won t believe that u represent freedom as long as u support a racist state like israel

And, you know, some people post videos critical of Mark Kirk–real evidence.

/Snark.

Go Daniel

ArchPundit August 8, 2007 0 Comment

My name is Daniel Biss and I’m running for State Representative here in Illinois.  I’m a math professor by day, but starting early in the Bush administration, I got so upset about the direction the country was going that I started doing a lot of grassroots organizing to affect change.

In other words, I’m very proud to say that I come out of the same new movement that produced the progressive blogosphere.

As you might imagine, I was incredibly excited to discover that Yearly Kos would take place in Chicago.  I knew it would be a great opportunity to meet fantastic activists and network.  I didn’t realize it would give our campaign a new focus and goal.  I had no idea the netroots would come into town and transform our campaign overnight.  Read more to see how it happened.

• danielbiss’s diary :: ::

It all started on July 6, when ActBlue’s blog announced that our campaign was the 4th ranking state-level campaign in the country in terms of dollars raised via ActBlue in Q2.

We were proud of that accomplishment, of course, but then something interesting happened: local reporters and bloggers got very interested, and it led to a small flurry of coverage, including this positive article in the Pioneer Press, a widely-distributed suburban weekly.

We in the campaign were very excited about this, and wondered how to build on it.  First we thought we should try to become the #1 fundraising campaign; however, because some of the other candidates have such huge budgets, that probably wouldn’t be possible.

We realized, however, that while raising the most dollars was probably out of reach, we were within striking distance of having the most donors of any state-level campaign in the country.

So that became our goal: to get to #1 in the country in terms of number of donations, and to get there during the Yearly Kos convention.  By doing it during the conference, we wouldn’t only be helping our campaign raise money and get attention, we’d be proving to local media and political insiders that this is a new kind of campaign, built on a new base of supporters.  They’d always understand, not just during the campaign, but even more importantly after I’m elected, that we represent a new force in progressive politics, a new partnership between political candidates and a nationwide network of activists.

So we set up a special ActBlue page to raise funds at the convention.  Whenever I met people at the conference, I’d tell them about our goal and ask them to give whatever they could via that dedicated ActBlue page.

The contributions started rolling in, faster than I could have imagined and as I write this diary, the page has raised over $1,000 from 34 donors!

This afternoon I got an email from ActBlue staff telling me that, sure enough, we’ve reached our goal and we now have more individual donations on ActBlue than any other state-level candidate!

We are a part of a movement that is changing the face of politics in America.  We are building — and funding — this campaign with the energy and hard work of ordinary people who have for way, way too long been shut out of the process.  I can’t tell you how proud and honored I am to be a small part of this movement.

I’m writing this diary to thank the community for playing such an exciting role in our campaign.  I’m also writing to ask you to help keep the momentum going!

First, please head to that special YKos ActBlue page to keep this amazing run of donations going.

But that’s not the only way you can help.  Forward the above link (http://www.actblue.com/page/dbyk2007?refcode=dkosdiary) to 5 friends and explain why any contribution will help build this critical relationship between a progressive movement and a progressive candidate.

Check out our website and sign up for our e-mail list.  Direct friends to our website.

Join us at our campaign kick-off event on Sunday, August 19.  Bring a couple of friends.

This campaign is built on the values, principles, and open communication style that brought this community together. I’m honored to partner with you. Your work is making all the difference in the world.