Jeff Pitchell

Heading out to see this fella live tonight .... I love blues/country blues so hopefully I will like this

Republicans Filibuster Desperately Needed War Funding

Congress left for its Thanksgiving break Friday without passing a bill to pay for the war in Iraq after the Senate deadlocked over a Democratic demand that the measure include a call for most troops to be withdrawn by the end of next year.

As they have all year, Senate Democrats failed to muster the votes to consider a proposal to condition further spending on a timeline for withdrawing troops. The $50-billion bill, which narrowly passed the House on Wednesday, failed by seven votes.

And Republicans in the narrowly divided chamber fell short of a majority for their alternative proposal to send President Bush $70 billion without restrictions.

but further down is the real story ...

The Democratic funding measure received 53 votes, seven shy of the 60-vote supermajority needed to end a filibuster.

Does anyone think that if the parties were reversed here the headline at the LA Times would have been "Democrats filibuster desperately needed war funding" rather than Congress breaks without passing war spending bill

Just asking ...

Warren Buffett for Commissioner of Baseball

Warren Buffett advised Alex Rodriguez to approach the New York Yankees and go around agent Scott Boras, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Now if we can get him to take on the job of reforming the tax system ...


Read at ESPN.com

Warren Buffett On Inherited Wealth

"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline," Buffett said. "A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."

Compare and contrast with the "I have mine, now go fuck yourself" attitude seen too often lately.

I see the wingnut's heads exploding now ...

Story at reuters.com

Donita Sparks

Sigh

Nice show review over at Conversations with Mud. I really have to start going to clubs again. Anyone within driving distance (I am in hardford, ct) want to be a partner in crime?

Cat Doors Are Dangerous

St. Johns County deputies recently launched an investigation into what they called one of the strangest accidents they've ever seen when a man was found dead after getting stuck in a cat door.

Investigators said 32-year-old Charles Tucker Jr. was using the cat door early Saturday morning as a way to get back into his girlfriend's St. Augustine home after the woman kicked him out.

My cats stay indoors and I am currently single. Now, that could mean that I am a crazy cat person or it could mean that I am just trying to save lives... you decide.

See Darwin in action at WJXT Jacksonville

Yes, the teen is a victim

"It's my understanding he was grooming her and she wasn't grooming him," Davis said.

"I see true victims every day," he added. "This young man is no victim."

Davis also suggested that the boy -- who authorities say is 13 -- may actually be 16 or older -- too old for a state statutory rape count to apply.

"The information I have is that he might be older," said Davis, declining to elaborate. "The kid is sophisticated. He shaves, he has a mustache. I'll be requesting his original birth certificate from the Mexican consulate. I think he had one here, but I don't know if anyone vouched for its authenticity."

A prosecutor and a relative of the boy rejected Davis' claims.

I understand that an attorney has a duty to vigorously defend his client but this is some of the slimiest shit that I have seen in a while.

Even if (a big if) the kid is 16 instead of 13 it still means that the 25 year old teacher, by definition in a position of trust, was having sex with someone over whom she had a huge amount of control. This is not a romeo and juliet situation, this is abuse.

I predict that the fact that the boy is not in the country legally will either come into play in this woman's defense or it will turn out to be one of the key reasons that she targeted him. Abusers target the vulnerable. How much more vulnerable could someone be than a 13 year old kid who could have his entire family kicked out of the country if he told what was going on.

This woman is despicable.

See the story at CNN.com

Dexter For President

Why not? If someone can claim with a straight face that Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson or Tom Tancredo is qualified to be president why not a 1 Year old Maine Coon Cat?

Especially once as cute as this.

Tom Tancredo - Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Tom Tancredo is a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. He is also a xenophobic alarmist lunatic.

Go join in the commentary on this at any of your favorite blogs .. I am sure they are all talking about this pile of shit.

A few to start with
Eschaton
Firedoglake
TalkingpointsMemo Election Central

Military Buildup

We are hearing a lot in the last few days about how horrible it has been that President Clinton has let the military gone to hell over the last few years (I wish I was kidding).

I thought that it might be instructive to ask the "we need a bigger military" crowd where exactly they think that we will get more folks to staff this bigger military. Personally I think that the only realistic way is the return of mandatory national service. Yes folks, they are calling for the draft but they are too gutless to admit it.

Halfway through writing this I saw that Steve Benen has said a lot of good stuff about what I was going to say. And since I am lazy, go read his stuff instead.

Stupidest Comment of the day

Worldly Democrats
Lee W. Dodson - Los Angeles

Democrats cannot credibly divorce themselves for their pacifist stance even if it is to secure election to the White House. The liberal wing divorced itself from being citizens of the United States after falling in love with being citizens of the world.

This gem, from the comments on an article by everyone's favourite torture rationalizer ALAN DERSHOWITZ, shows the level of insanity extant in the wingutosphere. By definition, if you are against the Iraq occupation then you are a pacifist. Also by definition you cannot care about anything other than narrowly defined neo-con American self interest otherwise you are not a real American.

Full comments on this over at OpinionJournal

My Senator for VP .. again .. WTF

At the risk of raining on the parade, this seems ridiculously far-fetched. As humiliating as Lieberman is on matters of foreign policy and national security, he's also fairly liberal on most domestic policy matters, including abortion and gay rights. Is the Republican Party so devoid of leaders that can win a national election that it has to look beyond the GOP for running mates?

Yes.

This has been another installment of easy answers to easy questions.

with apologies to atrios

Ron Paul

I don't have anything original to say about Ron Paul. But I figured that shouldn't stop me from saying that I wouldn't vote for him.

Salesmen vs Bankers

A former Countrywide executive who worked closely with Mr. Mozilo and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company, said the way his boss dressed had less to do with a desire to flaunt his wealth and more to do with his ideas of how to be a successful salesman.

And herein lies the problem. The mortgage loan business stopped being banking and became sales. When that happens all kinds of shitty loans are going to be written in the name of making the quotas.

Read the New York Times

Pakistan Election + Martial LaW = WTF

Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that elections will go ahead in January despite a state of emergency that he said was needed to tackle extremists and ensure free and fair elections.

He said the vote will take place before January 9 but he would not say when the state of emergency would end.

Can someone explain to me how it is possible to haVe a free and fair election campaign during a state of Martial law where leaders of the opposition parties are being rounded up and charged with, among other things, treason?

For Condi Rice to say that this is "positive" is such a steaming load of shit that I find it hard to believe that she isnt medicated.

Read the weirdness in full at CNN.com

Frank Rich Notices Some Parallels Too

Even if Mr. Bush had the guts to condemn General Musharraf, there is no longer any moral high ground left for him to stand on. Quite the contrary. Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.

Take the Musharraf assault on human-rights lawyers. Our president would not be so unsubtle as to jail them en masse. But earlier this year a senior Pentagon official, since departed, threatened America’s major white-shoe law firms by implying that corporate clients should fire any firm whose partners volunteer to defend detainees in Guantánamo and elsewhere. For its part, Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department did not round up independent-minded United States attorneys and toss them in prison. It merely purged them without cause to serve Karl Rove’s political agenda.

Tipping his hat in appreciation of Mr. Bush’s example, General Musharraf justified his dismantling of Pakistan’s Supreme Court with language mimicking the president’s diatribes against activist judges. The Pakistani leader further echoed Mr. Bush by expressing a kinship with Abraham Lincoln, citing Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of a prisoner’s fundamental legal right to a hearing in court, habeas corpus, as a precedent for his own excesses. (That’s like praising F.D.R. for setting up internment camps.) Actually, the Bush administration has outdone both Lincoln and Musharraf on this score: Last January, Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

Nice to see that Frank Rich agrees with my take on this too.