It’s about time. Tucker is everything I hate in TV punditry– ill informed, smarmy and mule-headed. He’s not as bad as Sean Hannity (or even worse, Joe Scarborough) but as Monica says, he’s a poo tissue. I can deal with a Reaganite (barely), but not when they’re masquerading as a populist.

It was a matter of great satisfaction to see him get torn a new one by Jon Stewart on an infamous episode of Crossfire, Carlson’s previous show.

Tucker, I hope you go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under.

Ciao!

How are you? So, you finally decided to drop out of the presidential race, huh? That doesn’t surprise me. What does is that you hadn’t dropped out a while ago, back when it was determined that it was impossible for you to earn the nomination. But, as you said, you believe in miracles. I guess you just didn’t get one. Maybe it’s like saving up for later, when you’ll really need it, like when you’re running for president of the galaxy or something.

I have to admit, for a bible-thumping ultra-conservative right wing Republican, you seem like a pretty nice guy. It’s not often that you come across people like that, especially when they’re running for president, but you never really acted like a jerk, ever. You give bible-thumping ultra-conservative right wing Republicans a good name, which is a very difficult task to accomplish. So I commend you on that.

But the public’s dismissal of you has a silver lining, for me at least. I actually figured you for the Republican nominee a couple of months ago. But the fact that John McCain is more popular goes to show how sick the American people are of Bush-era politics. Instead of the politically and religously conservative candidate, they go for the wild card, so to speak, someone who doesn’t believe in the impending apocolypse, and who probably believes in evolution, and…uh… gravity and all of that. That’s a positive sign.

It was nice knowing you, and I’m glad you pardoned Keith Richards after all of these years. Take care.

Your Pal,

The Idea of Progress

Does this mean that Democrats are more honest? Do they just hide these things better? Do we only hear about the Republicans because the press has a liberal bias?

Who else should be on this list?

Your friend,

The Idea of Progress

PS: It’s called Russia now, not the Soviet Union. And just in case it comes up, there’s only one Germany.

Here’s what really happened. I ate Taco Bell for Lunch. You ever eat Taco Bell? I had a chalupa, whatever the hell a chalupa is. I was in a hurry. I’m a very busy man, as you can quite imagine. The chalupa, and the hot sauce I unfortunately put on it, went through me like tax dollars through a Democrat’s fingers (vote Romney!)

I went to the mens’s room to, er… relieve myself. That’s where a man goes to do his business! What a man does in the privacy of his own bathroom should be kept as confidential as our wiretapping records! The bathroom was full (the Taco Bell was, in fact, quite busy, which may or may not be a coincidence), and I waited for a moment for a stall. What happened next was described inaccurately by Keith Olbermann:

I was merely adjusting myself, and looking for the sports section, which I had carelessly dropped behind the bowl. Is that a crime? How could someone insinuate that tapping my foot was in any way an attempt to solicit a sex act?

My fellow Americans, This is a crime against me, and a crime against our great nation.

I’m not gay.

We grow up with the politics of our parents. As children, we have no other exposure to political opinions, and so like many things, the voice of our parents amounts to the voice of truth. Our parents may have had well thought out ideas on the nation and the economy, or perhaps they were just repeating what they themselves were taught.

At some point we began to watch the news and read the newspaper, and began forming opinions of our own. These may have mirrored the ideals our parents had, or perhaps not, but regardless they became not our parents’ politics but our own.

My father votes Republican (except in 2000, where he voted for Gore). I don’t necessarily believe that this is because of any deep held beliefs in the free market or ideas on the role of government vs the individual, but because that’s probably what his dad voted. So I grew up in a mildly right-leaning household, and although my mother is pro-choice she also votes to the right.

I believe it was as a teenager when I first began thinking about politics. Rush Limbaugh had a TV show then (he still may, for all I know), and I had just gotten a TV in my bedroom. I felt like such a sophisticated teen, watching TV not for pure entertainment, but for ideas as well. I found myself reading the paper more, and I can’t say that I was particularly agreeing with Limbaugh or disagreeing. I just knew that his show was occasionally funny (something I probably wouldn’t find it today, with his jokes about feminazis and all), and it talked about politics. It was for me what the Daily Show would become later, politics with jokes. I even read a couple of Limbaugh’s books.

Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending.

This was the time of Clinton’s first term. Remember those good old days? Back then we had a president who was getting things done, our budget deficit was shrinking down into nothing and turning into a surplus, and America was liked and admired around the world (when I visited Europe in 1998, I experienced this first hand. It’s great being thought well of just because of where you’re born).

was the watershed moment when this all changed? I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but I’d have to guess it was reading Al Franken’s book, Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot. Reading that was a sort of epiphany. Here was a guy that was much, much funnier than Rush (always important for a young mind to be entertained while educated), and whose opinons just seemed to make more sense. I mean, I would hear what Limbaugh had to say, but it never really sank in because it just didn’t seem like common sense, but Franken’s ideas just seemed logical.

That, and he pointed out repeatedly in his book that Limbaugh was not only a compulsive liar and showboat (much like Bill O’Reilly has become), but a big fat idiot as well, an opinion I have not deviated from since.

Common Sense

Why all of the nostalgia? I was just thinking about common sense when it comes to politics. There’s always bills being passed that escape the public eye, or that we just ignore as Politics As Usual. But last night (Thursday) the Senate passed what I see as being the first really logical bill I’ve seen in a while.

Some of the points in the bill:

“–It requires automakers to make a 40 percent increase in the fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 2020 and for the first time puts SUVs, vans and small trucks under the same regulation as passenger cars.

–Grants, loan guarantees and other assistance to promote research into fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, advanced diesel and battery technologies” (from the AP).

The bill wasn’t perfect.

“–Republicans also blocked another central goal, known as the Renewable Portfolio Standard, that would have required electric utilities to produce at least 15 percent of their power from renewable fuels by the year 2020.“

There are a lot of things the the Republicans voted down. Most importantly, while the bill calls for more renewable resources to be developed and used, it provides no tax breaks to do so. No tax breaks means limited corporate involvement, and no corporations means that it’s still on the backs of the entrepreneurs. With an undertaking as massive as that of the nation’s energy needs, at some point Big Business is going to have to get involved. Personally, i don’t see why they don’t.

The Con:

–A crapload of money needs to be spent in R&D on renewable energy sources. I’m aware of this. But…

The Pro:

–Energy that is FREE. They won’t have to drill for oil or mine for coal once they get the technology. At some point it merely becomes about maintenance, and they can still charge people for a power bill and make lots and lots of money without having to spend it.

It all comes down to common sense. The fuel efficiency laws haven’t been changed for three decades. With all of our technological advances, what does this make you think of?

Who benefits from low fuel economy standards? Just think about it for a moment. There are a few people who this helps. The oil industry. Gas station owners. Bribe taking politicians (both parties). For everyone else it means more environmental destruction, a further drain on the earth’s oil reserves, and more money out of our pockets. So this isn’t just something that affects the treehuggers and their endangered wildlife, but the pocketbooks of the right, too, which is something that they understand.

Why wouldn’t we want this?

Why haven’t things been changed? Because in the philosophy of the right, the market will adjust to the desires of the consumers, right? Well, if the market compensates for itself, it only does so after it has destroyed its supply. No supply, no demand, and eventually the oil tycoons (including the Bush family, surprise surprise) will be gagging on the toxic air that pollution has caused, and huddling in caves with the rest of us, because they’ve made such a good effort at blocking attempts at developing and promoting cleaner alternative sources of energy. They’re screwing their children and grandchildren, too.

It all comes back to what makes sense. It makes sense for cars to be as fuel efficient as technology will allow. It makes sense to develop alternative energy sources, clean ones. Doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

One More Thing

Bush’s approval rating has slipped to 26%. I just want to quote from Newsweek, because this is too good.

June 21, 2007 – In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.

The new numbers—a 2 point drop from the last NEWSWEEK Poll at the beginning of May—are statistically unchanged, given the poll’s 4 point margin of error. But the 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June 1979. In fact, the only president in the last 35 years to score lower than Bush is Richard Nixon. Nixon’s approval rating tumbled to 23 percent in January 1974, seven months before his resignation over the botched Watergate break-in.

When I mean good, I don’t mean that I like the fact that we are all suffering from under a President we seem to generally dislike. I’m just glad that even the Republicans are looking around and wondering what the hell is going on.

Okay, One MORE Thing
How many branches of government do we have? I always thought it was three, but Keith Olbermann pointed out that there are in fact four, Legislative, Judicial, Executive, and The Dick.

Cheney has declared himself as not a part of the executive branch. Really. I’m not making this up (a statement I’ve become accustomed to making over and over again during the Bush reign of terror).

From Countdown, 6/21/07

Actual quote from one email:

> >May I request that you or someone on your staff send directions
> >regarding
> >what Counties can and cannot do as it pertains to newsletters and phone
> >banks usage for federal candidates. There is a great deal of ignorance
> >out
> >here and many counties are violating the campaign law as I understood it
> >
> >from you. God help us if the Democrats find out.

All of those emails, including lists of black voters in Florida (possibly/ probably listed in an attempt to keep them from voting) are available here

As a part of my daily web rituals, I check out Digg, which is kind of like del.icio.us, a place to bookmark pages and show off the odd or interesting things you’ve found. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve found that almost every day there is something about Ron Paul.

Who the fuck is Ron Paul?

Today this is what is up there, Ron Paul Goes On the Offensive. It’s from a site called Prison Planet, a website by a conspiricy theorist and ‘Constitutionalist’ named Alex Jones.

Looking for mentions on the New York Times website, I found this one about his wealth, one on a debate that he’s barely mentioed in, and this one also about the debate. “The three apparent front-runners had plenty of opportunities to make their case, but the lesser-known candidates had to jostle for attention. Nobody really managed to steal the show and display graveltas, the ability to steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements the way former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska did in the recent Democratic debate in South Carolina. But Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who calls himself a paleolibertarian, came closest. His reedy voice and excitable manner stood out in what was otherwise a blending chorus of deep monotones.”

His internet supporters seem rabid. Almost like LaRouche people (not that he’s as crazy as LaRouche, as far as I can tell). He’s been mentioned in U.S. News and World Reports as being the most searched term on technorati.com.

Watch out for this guy. He seems like the longest of long shots, and I’m not a supporter, but it will be interesting to see how the internet affects this election.

As far as I’m concerned, another rich old white guy? Yawn.