No, President Obama Didn’t Have A Flag Removed From Ground Zero

From Media Matters: No, President Obama Didn’t Have A Flag Removed From Ground Zero.

What an extraordinarily unpleasant lot right-wing bloggers are. You’ll also note that even when they did issue retractions or make corrections instead of simply deleting the posts and pretending they never existed, they blamed Obama for their own stupidity, knee-jerk reactions and general dickishness. Stay classy, wingnuts.

Silly Birthers

Silly birthers! Unless your parents are diplomats, parentage is irrelevant for determining natural-born citizenship.

Your arguments are ridiculous, and completely unsupported by the law, case rulings and the Constitution. Still, that’s never stopped you before.

And as to Trump’s letter to the NYT – well, it’s hardly Presidential material, is it? It reads more like a snarky adolescent taking potshots at someone who’s outdone him in a debate.

Then again, it’s not really an issue, is it? The Donald (and his Tribble) will never be President. He’s simply concern trolling to boost ratings for his failing TV show, and I would lay good money on his never filing to run for office; he’s probably too busy being an aging roué with ever more ridiculous hair. Hey, Donald – with all the money you currently have (until the next time you run your business into the ground!), you could at least fork out a few dollars for a mirror or two.

A short burst of aarrgh

Following a comment I left on a blog elsewhere, I’m dragging myself out of my quiescent blogging state to throw a quick post down about the whole screaming over the so-called Slaughter Solution. Because I’m in that kind of mood, I’m going to throw reconciliation into the mix.

Before I start, though, I should point out that the blog I linked to in the first sentence is run by a guy who respects the right of others to hold opinions in opposition to his own, a rare quality in the modern American political sphere; this post is not directed at him, even if he is a little ornery about it… 😉

To everyone else screaming loudly that these measures will be the death of the democratic process in America – shut the fuck up already. It irks me that I have to be so blunt, but, well, sometimes that’s what you have to do.

The self-executing rule, otherwise known as deem and pass, has been in use since the 1930s, and has been relatively uncontroversial since that time, at least in the sense that it has been used broadly by both major parties when in power, and that court cases at the Federal District level have upheld it as a valid procedure.

In a stunning example of hypocrisy, though, many on the right are decrying the use of the rule and claiming it as some kind of new procedure invented by Democrats to cheat the legislative process. My only response is to ask, where were you the last year the Republicans controlled Congress, when the self-executing rule was used 35 times?

The same issue applies to the screeching and flapping over reconciliation. Budgetary reconciliation has been used umpteen times in Congresses controlled by Republicans and Democrats alike, with little or no fuss, and is established as a fully viable, Constitutional procedure – and yet here we are, with the right wing kicking up a whole mess of stupidity over the subject. And again, I ask, where were you when reconciliation was used to pass the massive and economically-debilitating tax cuts which are partly responsible for the current train wreck economy?

There’s a good argument to be made that the requirement of 60 votes for cloture in the Senate is an impediment to the smooth running of that chamber, that it makes for bad lawmaking and that it is not in the spirit of the Constitution’s allowance of each chamber to make its own rules; if I actually believed original intent were in fact a viable and non-risible means of Constitutional interpretation, I might run with it. As I don’t, I won’t. As it stands, though, the rules allow for a straight majority vote in the reconciliation process to allow budgetary bills to pass. Don’t like it? Tough – them’s the rules, and it’s Constitutionally allowed. Don’t piss and moan over it if you don’t like it – exercise your vote and tell your future Senators that you want a change to the rules.

I find it difficult to take seriously the idea that these purported defenders of the Constitution are somehow heroes of democracy and freedom and apple pie and non-aborted foetuses and flags and all that crap when they seem so ill-informed on the subject. You don’t get to claim the mantle of guardian of Constitutional liberties when you don’t know shit about it.

Noodling, the White Rose, Birthers and Somewhere People Talk Like in Fargo

I’ve been noodling around the internet lately reading a good bit about a variety of subjects as they take my fancy, but there have been two major preoccupations for me of late: webcomics, and birthers.

As you can all see, I have a section of blogroll on the left where I list the webcomics which have particularly caught my attention. If you’ve ever dipped into them, you’ll have noticed that they’re a pretty diverse bunch: they range from the abstract, like XKCD and Circle versus Square, to the anime-influenced Questionable Content and the semi-photo realist style of Dr McNinja.

The basic thing that links all of them, though, is that they are all pretty sharp and have good ideas; the writing is usually fresh and funny, and often thought-provoking, as in the case of Subnormality, which is really the one I wanted to bring to your attention.

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Le sigh, as they say in France. Or not.

I’m a person who’s interested in politics generally. I try to keep up with the news via a number of source as much as possible, and I frequently read assorted blogs of various political stripes and persuasions, just to keep my ear on the ground. One of the ways I find them is via links on other people’s pages, which is how I first saw Rumproast; another is by looking through RSS feeds and the tag listings on WordPress.

Major Guantanamo Setback for Bush

I know, I know. I’m late to the party. As you all know, I’m not really one for blogging on news as it breaks. At least not with any kind of analysis. Adding links and quotes, yeah, I can do that. So could a trained monkey, although admittedly said monkey would probably be better than me at climbing trees and such.

Foreign suspects held in Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

In a major legal setback for the Bush administration, the court overturned by five to four a ruling upholding a 2006 law which removed such rights.

It is not clear if the ruling will lead to prompt hearings for the detainees.

Some 270 men are held at the US naval base, on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

US President George W Bush said he would abide by the court’s ruling even if he did not agree with it.

Human rights groups have welcomed the move, Amnesty International saying it was an “essential step forward towards the restoration of the rule of law”.

BBC News

This is obviously a fantastic decision, although disappointingly split; Chief Justice Roberts’s remarks about the rights afforded to detainees are also appallingly self-satisfied and blasé.

This sets the tone, really, for the coming years of the “war on terror”; this decision, coming after Hamdan v Rumsfeld, is likely to be a nail in the coffin of Bush-style unitary executive theory.