Pelosi the partisan

Justin has a great post on the collapsed bailout. Following reports that the GOP are blaming Senate leader Nancy Pelosi for their own people voting against the bill – on the grounds that she was excessively “partisan”, Justin had this to say ::

Who can really blame them? Faced with helping to save millions of jobs and homes (if not lives) who amongst us wouldn’t put our bruised pride, our eggshell egos first? I remember the time I let that little kid drown. He’d called me ‘fat privates’ the day before. It’s the Republican way and we should follow their lead.

It’s something you see quite often from quite a few right-wingers and not just in America. I call it the Withnail Syndrome. One minute they’re all roaring ‘WHICH FUCKER SAID THAT?!’ and the next, when confronted, it’s all ‘I have a heart condition… I have a heart condition. If you hit me it’s murder’.

*clap clap clap*

The GOP fightback

“Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted… as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice.”

-Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabe

Gitmo

Journalist Andy Worthington has a great piece over at LC looking at the way the presidential campaign has all but forgotten about Guantánamo Bay.

The disappointment, therefore, is in Barack Obama’s unwillingness to tackle the administration’s crimes head-on. His team has presumably discovered that neither the plight of prisoners held beyond the law nor the executive’s dictatorial power grab is of paramount importance to voters, but this is lamentable for two reasons: firstly, because Obama clearly both knows and cares about the law, and secondly because it is the Bush administration’s quest for unfettered executive power that has led to almost all the ills that currently plague the United States.

In a two-hour debate on foreign affairs the candidates mentioned Guantánamo once. The issue of torture was only skirted around.

Read on…

The irregular quote of the day.

There are no new ideas coming out of “new” Labour. It is no wonder Compass seem so appealing.

[…]

For a party that likes to claim that fairness is in its DNA these days, it is clear that they are all too comfortable with the idea of arbitrary authoritarian state control.

James Graham at Quaequam Blog!

Gaunty: Comedy Genius

I’m really busy this week, what with the US elections and editing Liberal Conspiracy, but somehow I still managed to find time to write up Jon Gaunt’s latest column for The Sun – Tabloid Lies blog.

It’s a constant and relentless stream of rightwing talking points. It’s exactly what keeps highly paid columnists like Gaunty busy. He knows he can rehash the same tired memes every week, and he knows that the salivating editors at The Sun will lap it up. I just wish I had thought of it first (I guess being a principled liberal blogger is what I have to do to get some sleep at night).

But this week it wasn’t the tired old anecdotes or the barrage of memes that made me bristle, it was Gaunty’s utterly appalling attempt to insert humour into his piece. The guy just isn’t the comedy genius he thinks he is.

Read the entire post at The Sun – Tabloid Lies.

The first debate

NYT: Candidates Clash on Economy and Iraq

Watch the debate
CNN videos of debate – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

More Analysis
TIME: Grading the First Presidential Debate
WashPo: Temperature of Debate? Lukewarm.
Politico: The Mac is back
HuffPo: Who Won The Debate? Reviews Go To Obama
NRO: McCain Takes It

Blog reaction

Daily Kos – Did McCain’s constant trashing of Obama’s experience and judgement lower voter expectation, to the Democrat’s advantage?

RCP – Tom Bevan is confident that McCain won, but does it really matter?

TPM – Why didn’t McCain make eye contact with Obama? Was it embarrassment, contempt, anger or maybe fear?

Oliver Willis – It’s an easy decision really: the cool cucumber or the furious tomato.

Michael Tomasky/CiF – The actual debate is over. Now let’s see how the campaigns spin it.

Politicising a crisis

HuffPo has a report on yesterday’s White House meet between Bush and leading congressional and senate members to reach an agreement on the $700bn bailout of Wall Street.

You’ll remember this is the meeting that Sen. John McCain “suspended” his campaign over. McCain climbed up on his high horse, threw off his partisan hat, and threw his talents behind the American people. Yeah right.

Anyone who has been watching the McCain campaign closely, will not be surprised to find that this was yet another McCain stunt. McCain, in stark contrast to the animated and informed discussion around him, remained quiet and was unable at any point to offer any specifics or give his support to any agreement.

Later McCain even admitted he hadn’t read Hank Paulson’s plan. That’s right. The crisis was so important that McCain felt the need to cancel an appearance on David Letterman (and lie to the host, BTW), “suspend” his campaign, and then attempt to delay tonight’s Presidential debate in Mississippi. Yet it never occurred to McCain that the crisis might be important enough for him to know what the hell he’s talking about.

Then just as everyone thought they’d reached a tentative agreement on a revised draft of Paulson’s plan, McCain finally woke up and mentioned a counter-proposal that a few House GOP’rs had offered. Not that McCain was backing that one or anything. He just needed to be seen doing something. Reports are rife that those present at the meeting are furious that McCain could have derailed an agreement, just because the GOP candidate wasn’t sure how his support of any deal would go down in the polls.

Sen. Chris Dodd, via. HuffPo ::

“What happened here, basically, if you want an honest appraisal of the thing, we have been spending a lot of time and I am tired. I have spent almost seven straight days at this in trying to come out with a workout plan for our economy a rescue plan,” said Dodd. “What this looked like to me was a rescue plan for John McCain for two hours and took us away from the work we are trying to do today. Serious people trying to do serious work to come up with an answer.”

So much for putting country before politics, eh?

Wingnut infighting

You’re going to love this…

Blowhard and Fox News star Bill O’Reilly loses it live on his talk-radio show, turning against his fellow conservative colleagues with a “populist” rant on the financial crisis ::

The response came in the shape of another talk-radio hack, Mark Levin – who really goes to town on O’Reilly’s ass, bringing up one of his many misdemeanours and slating his shoddy ratings, finally claiming that Bill-O’ The Clown is “jealous as hell of Rush Limbaugh”. Glorious stuff ::

Could this be the first salvo in a civil war between O’Reilly and the conservative hackery? If so, it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

via. Political Byline

McCain’s latest ad

Click Here.

The irregular quote of the day

It’s been a while since I did one of my irregular quotes of the day, but I have just listened to Sean Hannity’s softball interview with Sarah Palin for Faux News, and something Hannity said made me bristle.

I have to move to Alaska. New York taxes are killing me. ~ Sean Hannity

Hannity’s earns $20m a year from his talk-radio show, not to mention his TV and book commitments. Times must be very hard.