Epiphany

So perhaps the secret to keeping down the blood pressure is simply this: get all news in written form. News outlets, blogs, doesn't matter. Also NPR, NPR is fine. The only thing that matters is that one avoids, at all costs, television news.

Because as soon as you turn on the cable, you will see and hear the incestuous paid anchors and analysts and assorted denizens of the echo chamber that is "I get paid to talk about this" TV news, and they will always- always- offer some tidbit, some SURPRISING observation, which will drive up the damn blood pressure once again.

So yesterday, after I had blogged about not having the capacity for shock, outrage, or snark these days, I turned on MSNBC for a bit and got to hear Pat Buchanan (and who isn't surprised that he's on TV at all?) say that we are in a "near 1930 situation in the financial sector, and hoping it doesn't spill over to the larger economy".

What fucking planet does he live on? Why is he ever on my teevee?

So that was, perhaps, my first surprise! for the new year. And the accompanying epiphany: If I need something to get angry about (because anger is often a prime inspiration for action), all I need to do is spend a bit of time with cable news.

Sarah!

I'll be as thrilled as anyone when you run for president in 2012, believe me. But for the time being, just for a few months, maybe, could you just...

GO AWAY?!

"Breathtakingly Hairbrained"

Yglesias:

There are very few members of congress with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to discuss a substantive matter of public policy. But as it happens, one of them — the one with whom I’ve had the second-longest exchange — is Mike Pence (R-IN) who I’ve seen on television today repeatedly discussing the Republican Study Group’s “plan” for the financial crisis. And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television.

Ah, but not only is not working for cable, he's proposing "crisis" legislation. Let's see what Wonk Room has to say:

The phrase “breathtakingly hairbrained” comes to mind when considering the apparent tax cut proposal. We know that for the group authoring this proposal, tax cuts for the rich and corporations are the answer to every problem. But even the administration, which has relentlessly imposed that agenda for eight years, has recognized that the well was dry on that front for this crisis. But it gets worse. Not only is this another tax cut for the rich, it appears to be one that is dead-aimed at doing much more harm than good — abolishing the tax on capital gains.
[snip]
The idea of insuring mortgage backed securities almost seems like a cynical ploy to pretend to be doing something when actually doing nothing. The idea is that the government would sell holders of mortgage backed securities insurance against losses—and that it would charge such premiums that the government wouldn’t lose money on the deal. That’s akin to selling homeowners insurance in New Orleans after the dikes broke.
[snip]
What they propose on deregulation isn’t clear, but the fact that they’re even still talking about “deregulation” when it was slipshod regulatory oversight that got us into this mess shows a profound misunderstanding of what’s going on. One rumored target is the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations which, in fact, impose accountability on Wall Street — not something we want to do away with right now.

The whole thing is well worth a read.

I can't decide what the stupid to evil ratio is here. I suppose it depends on the member. Boehner, for instance, is 99% evil, with a touch of stupid to get him through the door.

Sarah!

The writers devised some good, witty lines, and Palin, for her part, delivered them well. Much of the red-meat portion was lies and misrepresentations, of course, but it's a political speech, made at a rather desperate time.

The thing that nearly drove me over the edge was the cheering and screaming over her standard issue economic lines. Dems will tax you, Dems will make you lose your jobs, Dems will spend all kinds of crazy money.... and people eat that shit up.

I realize we are looking at THE Base here, the 27-30% of Americans who still think Bush is a GREAT president.

But my God, it is so obviously demonstrably patently WRONG to suggest that this country's economy is in better hands under Republicans.

Pop quiz: which two modern presidents have busted the biggest budgets and left office with the biggest deficits?

GWB and RONALD REAGAN

And under whose administrations does the middle class stand a chance at growth, while income inequality shrinks?

DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATIONS.

I mean jesus, you fools: it's numbers. Why are they so hard to understand?

Update: It is true that when I graded her delivery, I didn't consider presidential points. I do think that anyone who came away thinking she sounded in the least bit Presidential really needs to examine some deeply personal issues.

Brokaw is, mercifully, reminding us that Republicans have held the power of the government for the past 8 years, with Dems holding a meager obstruction advantage for the past 2, so it's a bit cheeky for McCain and Co to run on any kind of reform agenda.

And I can't resist this, from the site of the Great Orange Satan:

A Moment of Silence for the GOP

The party is over.

The party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, even Ronald Reagan, but most especially George Dubya Bush, is dead.

Let us bow our heads in a moment of silence.

Okay, moment's up.

Remember when we were afraid of them? Remember when Karl Rove was the most brilliant man ever conceived? Remember when Democrats voted for war, condemned Moveon.org, and made Harry Reid Senate Majority Leader for fear the almighty Karl Rove would smite them with his evil genius?

Remember the permanent Republican majority?

Well, that's all over now.

The GOP has been in critical condition for some time. Republican Congressman Tom Davis admitted as much, way back in May, when the traditional media was still distracting itself with concern that Democratic Party might disolve into an all-out Civil War because we had two extraordinary presidential candidates and a bit of option anxiety.

Said Davis:

The Republican brand is in the trash can...if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.

No doubt today's Republican Party looks back fondly on those days, when the GOP brand was merely in the trash can instead of the coffin.

Last week, we witnessed the rebirth of the Democratic Party. It was a week of all-stars laying out a bright, bold vision for America's future.

Michelle Obama gave us the picture of the all-American family of the 21st century.

Hillary Clinton gave us a history lesson of women's suffrage and the Democratic Party, culminating in that moment when we could all celebrate 18 million cracks in a glass ceiling that surely will be shattered in my lifetime.

Bill Clinton reminded us of all that is possible when a Democrat who believes in science and education and civil rights and equal rights sits in the Oval Office.

And Barack Obama gave us a reason to be proud again, to hold our heads up high and say, "You're damn right I'm a Democrat."

And then, the next day, John McCain gave us Sarah Palin.

The jokes write themselves. In fact, it must be difficult to be a writer at The Onion or The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. What could you possibly say that's any funnier than the headlines?

The Republican Party is so desperate this week that President Bush would rather pay attention to a natural disaster than play politics at the Republican National Convention.

That's pretty damn desperate.

In one weekend, 100 issues surrounding Governor Palin emerged. Read Bobo2020's comprehensive list.

And that was just the weekend.

The Republicans have become so desperate they are now accusing the Democratic Party of sexism.

Carly Fiorina, the disgraced former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, had this to say:

[I am] appalled by the Obama campaign's attempts to belittle Governor Sarah Palin's experience. The facts are that Sarah Palin has made more executive decisions as a Mayor and Governor than Barack Obama has made in his life. Because of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the Presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Governor Palin.

She further condemned Obama for daring to compare his responsibilities as the head of a national presidential campaign with Palin's staff of 50 when she was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

In other words, the Democratic Party is sexist for telling the truth. The party that supports equal pay and reproductive freedom is sexist because it dared to suggest that Palin's "executive experience" as the mayor of a town of 8,000 -- a town that apparently she left in worse shape than she found it -- does not compare with the national and international experience of the Democratic ticket.

That's pretty desperate.

And, as noted by ksh01:

CNN is reporting that John McCain has canceled today's scheduled interview on Larry King due to Campbell Brown's interview with Tucker Bounds yesterday! Holy Shit. This is imploding.

Remember when John McCain called the media his "base"?

This is the end. This where the Republican Party dies. All that is left now is the small group who believes the earth is flat, global warming is a hoax, oil drilling will save our economy, and, oh yes, abstinence-only education works.

Or not.

There will be no permanent Republican majority. There will be no continuation of Reagan's legacy.

Even if Governor Palin removes her name from nomination to spend more time with her -lawyers- family, is there any Republican in the country who would volunteer to be the sacrifical lamb who was second choice to Governor Palin?

I think not.

Goodbye, Republican Party.

Rest in peace.

Cross-posted at DailyKos

I want my habeas back

The AG thinks the FBI needs broader surveillance powers, and he's fixin' to do something about it. From NYT:

WASHINGTON — A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.

The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.

On Tuesday, I listened to a really great Fresh Air with Terry Gross segment with Michael Beschoss, on his book Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964.

A couple of bits of the original tapes from October 1964 are fascinating and have topical relevance. LBJ is on the eve of a reelection campaign, and his private conversations with a couple of key figures kept me in my car. Listen to his conversation with Billy Graham (about 9 minutes in at the link above) if you think that using evangelical leaders to cover one's political ass was invented in 1980.

The segment that I'm thinking about this morning, though, was a conversation toward the end of October with J. Edgar Hoover.

LBJ is worried, because there are rumors of a pending "October Surprise" planned by the Goldwater camp. Specifically, he's worried that Goldwater's team may have found and will name secret homosexuals within the administration, or photos of Johnson himself with a woman of ill repute. A Republican operator has scored a point earlier in the month, discovering that close Johnson aide Walter Jenkins was arrested at a DC YMCA having sex with a man. The press was tipped off, and Johnson suddenly feels vulnerable on the "morality" issue.

On the one hand, this tape has a comic edge: Johnson is aware of the rumors about Hoover's sexuality, so he is probably taking some real pleasure in pressing him about how one might know that someone was "queer". It's amusing if disgusting as they discuss the ways men part their hair, "walking funny", mannerisms, and the like.

But this conversation is only one part of a broader narrative. Johnson was on the phone with The director of the FBI a lot during these weeks, for one reason and one reason only: to put a stop to any opposition research hitting the press in the run up to the election.

Beschloss makes the point that this was in no way atypical presidential behavior. That the FBI should be used to silence potential scandal doesn't appear to have been questioned. We talk about the "hands off" approach that the press took with FDR's disabilities or JFK's private life, but I wonder how much of that had to do with the presidential ability to call out the goons when needed to squelch gossip or unflattering information.

The Nixon administration's grasping paranoia brought an end, for a time, to the use of the FBI as a private security force and the DOJ as a political shield. But since 9/11/01, new fears and paranoia have given strength to the expansion of executive power and the lessening of restrictions or oversight with regard to the practices of the military, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ. The agencies and institutions which could wreak the most damage to a constitutional republic have been steadily freed from restrictions designed to protect the country and its citizens from constitutional abuse, while the institutions whose role it is to provide oversight and correction have seen their influence steadily usurped (congress) or undermined through political maneuvering and deck-stacking (the courts, the free press). All under the undying zombie meme that they need all these "tools" to prevent another major terrorist attack.

But. It has been extensively documented that the failures of the FBI and intelligence agencies prior to 9/11/01 were due not to a lack of information, but a lack of action. The FBI had plenty of dots to connect, plenty of actionable intelligence. The lack was in leadership. Anti-terrorist investigation was not given priority, and key information was not shared up the chain of command.

The idea that 9/11/01 would have been prevented if only the agencies had better tools is false. But it's prevalent, and it has lead to the destruction of law and order, and of constitutional protections. While I'm sure that Bush and Mukasey really just want to keep everybody safe, they are creating tools which can -and will, given our history- be used as political bludgeons, and undermine the integrity of our criminal justice system.

Quite a legacy.

Mukasey, for his part, says that the new guidelines are intended merely to assist poor, confused agents, who cannot seem to figure out the rules as they are (this is the same reason Mukasey gives for the politicization of Justice under AG Gonzalez). He has agreed not to sign the new guidelines until after a congressional hearing on 9/17.

Let's hope the congress shows some spine. That would be a nice change.

Weirdness

I had an interesting experience Friday night, which I've been meaning to write about since. My brain is such a jumble these days, I hope I can do justice to the experience and my perceptions of it.

Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist held a public discussion forum on "Evolution, Creation, and Intelligent Design". The speaker was John Suarez, who has for many years been active in church/state issues. On the side of separation, I mean.

Suarez started out with a simple question for the audience. What, he asked, are the differences between the scientific terms hypothesis, theory, and law?

Hands shot up all over the room. Most people suggested that the difference between theory and law was one of degree; law presumably having been more thoroughly tested, and even absolute. No, Suarez explained, law and theory are really the same thing. We shouldn't even have two words, actually.

Hands shot up again. "What does Webster's say?" "I don't have Webster's here." he replied. A man with a determined look on his face insisted that law referred to an absolute, observable thing, like gravity. To demonstrate, he held his pen up so we could all see it, and dropped it.

No, Suarez explained: gravity isn't absolute, as you'd realize if you were on an airplane that suddenly lost altitude. And the Theory of Relativity disproves more than one element of Newton's Laws. So law is neither absolute nor consistently observable.

Arguing ensues. From various corners of the room, disagreement with Suarez's first assertion. Look, he says, all I'm saying is that there is no practical scientific difference between the two terms. You can toss one of them, pick whichever one you like.

He goes on, giving us a political history of the debate, beginning in the 1920s. He covers the Scopes trial, and some other state-by-state attempts to insert young-earth creationism into the classroom, one by one defeated. Eventually a few creationists with big degrees after their names came up with ID. Through the Discovery Institute's Center For Science and Culture, they have steadily organized a debate (see
The Wedge Strategy) intended to confuse, using negative arguments in place of positive theory. And, sadly, it works a lot of the time. And I experienced it in spades on Friday night.

Hands shoot up, again, from various corners. Lots of pseudo-scientific posturing. Evolution can't be proven. Look at the beaks on the Galapagos birds. Changes in petri dish cells aren't adaptations, they're deficiencies. The Cambrian Explosion doesn't explain enough, the pocket-watch argument, irreducible complexity, you name it, they trotted it out.

There were, of course, plenty of hands shooting up to answer these debunked ID arguments. Some of the people answering were scientists, some were not. I think I can say that all were surprised that what we thought would be a casual discussion turned out to be nothing of the sort. One woman said, "I am a microbiologist, and I wish I had all of the answers to what you've said in the front of my mind, but I don't right now. But there are answers. What you are saying is wrong."

See that was the problem: we didn't know we were supposed to have done homework before coming to the forum.

I have kept up with the ID movement's claims, court cases, etc over the years. But I don't keep all that data in the forefront of my skull. All of the minutiae, every debunked claim- it's not my job.

Here's what I do- what most of us do, I'll wager. A controversy arises. ID proponents make their arguments. I think, hm. Wonder what the scientific community says. I look it up. Science answers. Science has made a much better argument. I get a beer and watch another episode of
Deadliest Catch.

Here's what they do. A group of them get in a van. They drive to an event. They get out of the van and pray together. The enter the event separately, and take seats around the room. They have spent (according to one of them) two years memorizing CSC talking points. The forum begins, and they fire out talking points like shotgun pellets, fast, fast, fast, and if you aren't prepared, you haven't a chance at answering them fully.

I made a direct response to one of them, who'd asserted that there was no scientific consensus on evolution and many scientists support the theory of ID, blah blah blah. I'm not a scientist, I said, but I do know that for a concept to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be tested. The work must be peer-reviewed. I know that there are smart men with impressive sounding science credentials who are trying to advance ID as a theory, but it is not testable, none of them has ever produced a piece of data for peer-review, and ID is not science.

Another of them responded to me with the
Richard Steinberg BS that Ben Stein pushed in his (thoroughly debunked) movie. No, I said, I'm sorry. It never happened.

I mean- ok, something happened. What did not happen was a guy getting fired for trying to get ID scientific paper peer-reviewed. (Follow the link above to the full story)

I got up to go outside for a bit. I wanted to smoke, and get my thoughts together. I couldn't recall the particulars of the Steinberg affair, for instance, and I wanted to try and remember details. One of them followed me out. He wanted to discuss science in the Bible (which most people don't know, he said, even ministers). I refused to discuss the Bible with him. We had, I suppose a cheerful conversation, but a frustrating one. "How many mammals are in the fossil record?" he demanded. I don't know, I said. I am not a scientist, I don't keep that data in the front of my head. And you are not a scientist, either.

Eventually I got away from him and back to my friends. The event was over, and we all mingled a bit. A friend said to me, "You'll never get through to those people."

No, I said, you won't. But one of them had a teenage girl with him, maybe 17 or 19 years old. I can see her face clearly right now. And what you hope, as you engage their talking points, is that she will hear you, and get a good education, and eventually reject doctrine in favor of science.

That's what you hope. And you keep hoping, every time you have the opportunity to have another frustrating discussion with another regiment of culture warriors.

Next month the forum will be lead by an economist, topic is the mortgage crisis. I'm looking forward to October, when the issue will be same gender marriage.

Just to be on the safe side, I'll do some homework before I go.

More on happy, happy Pakistan

NY Times:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

But The Surge rocks!

Remember

In the comments, darth someone asks if I remember 9/11/01.

Yes, Mr. Vader, I do.

And that day struck me so deeply that I began to research and gather information from all available sources, and so I am quite confident in my assessment that the Bush admin are a bunch of war criminals and that William Kristol is an asshole.

That is all.

One last thing on Oil

As in "PEAK". Andrew Leonard, quoting NYT's Jad Mouawad:

As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supplies would rise as producers drilled for more oil.

But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy experts are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to suppress global demand or attract new production, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices ever higher.

Aside from the fact that the "basic economics" of supply and demand cannot be blamed entirely for the current price of crude, the idea of peak oil is slowly sinking in to the most sreluctant minds.

ANWR is a dream, predicated on the idea that there will always be plenty to go around. And that just isn't physically possible. And whatever reserves one thinks might be sitting under ANWR, even at the most optimistic estimates, drilling there would not change the fundamental fact that we will run out, and it will be expensive, and we must think bigger about our future than the limiting word "crude".

Sunday morning atrocities

Yes, I know it's a presidential primary. Yes, I know that the Washington press is much more interested in cocktail chatter than news of importance.

Still, after reading all the stories of interest this morning and follow up on the outrages of the week- masses of Vets committing suicide while the VA dithers, Blackwater accused of shredding documents while congress tries to cobble together new oversite of contractors, more administration memos advocating illegal use of torture- as I sift through all of this, I turn on Russert to hear his bobblehead panel humbly admitting that they failed to follow up on.... the Reverand Wright.

We were asleep on the job, they say. EVEN THOUGH THE RNC KEPT EMAILING US about Wright's craziness, we didn't investigate the story. Oh, the internet, that video really caught us unprepared...

Assholes.

Economy- macro

Mack has been busy, busy, busy, writing papers and giving talks and fleshing out his analysis of the problems in our speculative economy.

I love to talk with Mack about these things, because while he goes off into concepts and jargon that I am completely unfamiliar with and cannot directly address (securities, commodities, these are his things), we eventually come to places where I feel solid footing, and we tend to agree on end points.

Anyway: we've been talking a lot about structural problems, and I want to get into them in more depth here, but I have to read and think first. My essential position is what I've written about before: betting the proverbial farm on deregulation and rampant speculation, and this is deeply flawed, and we keep acting suprised every time our bets are called and the bank can't pay.

As we autopsied dead savings and loans, we were absolutely amazed by the number of ways thrift rogues were able to circumvent, neuter, and defeat firewalls designed to safeguard the system against self-dealing and abuse. One of the favorite methods was to link up like-minded thrifts in the daisy chains through which they could circulate inflated assets and hide their rotten loans to each other and to each other's customers from regulators.

Banks that need to get money to a troubled securities affiliate will do exactly the same thing. By linking up three or more banks, each with its own securities subsidiary, a daisy chain will facilitate a round robin of reciprocal loans in times of need. Then, the next time we have a Black Monday on Wall Street, this daisy chain will swing into action as a handful of mega-banks try to prop one another's securities subsidiaries and their customers as the market plummets.

In such a scenario, billions of federally insured dollars will disappear in the twinkle of a few program trades.

That will happen, not might happen but will happen, and when it does these too-big-to-fail banks will have to be propped up with Federal money. In the smoking aftermath, Congress can stand around and wring its hands and give speeches about how awful it is that these bankers violated the spirit of the law, but once again, the money will be gone, the bill will have come due, and taxpayers will again be required to cough it up.

That was testimony given before congress in 1991 by Stephen Pizzo, and recounted recently by Andrew Leonard on his (very excellent) blog, How the World Works.

If you're looking for some homework and you want to stretch your brain, try some commodities reading. Here's Mack.

Friday morning

From the comments:

The only person I dislike more than the Stricklands is Gallegly. I have seriously thought about standing on a corner during the next election with a sign that says, "Anybody but Elton."

I'd put Elton's stupid/evil rating at 60/40, and his static/signal at 50/50.

I'd give Tony strickland a higher evil rate, and a higher static rate.

Gallegly is, in my mind, a remnant from Pete Wilson's California, when state GOP strength was built almost entirely on scapegoating and resentment. If you visit his website and check his "issues" page, you'll see three items: illegal immigration, terrorism, and crime. Nothing about health care, education, economy, etc. I think he's probably pretty honestly presenting the items that matter to him. That still has resonance with a sadly sizable chunk of Californians, but I'm not sure Gallegly weilds much power. He's another vote for Bush in the house, but he's not a big effective battering ram.

Strickland is building a network of influence in the state. He and Audra and their supporters have taken over the local GOP, disaffecting moderate republicans and building the strenght of the crazies. They actively support the taking over of school boards and the county board of education by religious anti-teacher wingnuts. They shift power structures. I don't know that Elton Gallegly has been doing much of that.

So the Stricklands freak me out, and they always have.

The F word

Feminist

Aside from the fact that I consider people of my gender to be...people, there are still palenty of social/legal reasons to continue loudly proclaiming myself a feminist. St. McCain provides us a primer:

NEW ORLEANS — Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

FIRST OF ALL: the legislation in question does not "seek equal pay for women". The legislation in question seeks to clarify filing rules so that women who have been discriminated against can seek legal recourse according to existing law.

Lilly Ledbetter was almost 60 years old and on the verge of retiring when she first caught on that she was being shortchanged at work by what her lawyer called a "good old boys" network.

An anonymous letter turned up out of the blue and revealed to Ledbetter she was making substantially less money than male co-workers at the Goodyear tire plant where she worked.

A federal jury would later find she was owed almost $225,000 in back-pay over her 19-year career.

The Supremes decided last year- breaking with what has been a standard application of the law- that Lilly Ledbetter had waited too long to file a complaint against her employer.

Ledbetter filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission less than a month after receiving the letter, but it was already too late. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights imposes a six-month limitations period on discriminatory acts, preventing her from even bringing the claim to court.

So, unless your employer tells you up front that he pays you less because you're a woman, what are the odds you'll be able to seek recourse within the 6 month limitations period? And note: the 6 months starts the day that the discriminatory practice is engaged in- in Ledbetter's case, that would be back in 1979.

If you're a staffer, how does your employer feel about you sharing salary info with your colleagues? I'd bet there are rules against that sort of behavior, no? Companies I've worked for have all had such rules.

So the Ledbetter legislation attempts to fix the limitation period. That's all.

St McCain thinks women just need more training. That's what he said today.

Clearly, if we all inherited beer fortunes so that we could support the careers of our illogical husbands, this legislation wouldn't matter so much. But we don't. We have to work. And we have to work trusting that we're being paid equitably with our male colleagues.

Word of the day is...

Schadenfreude.

I'm sort of waiting for congressional repubs to send staffers to riot in Washington State. Until then, let us appreciate GOP Chair Luke Esser, who isn't all that big on counting votes, but apparently he does like pigs. Or he did, until HorsesAss updated their blog to remove pig-love references.


And The General has helpfully offered a redesign of the Washington State GOP's website.


If only the Washington GOP had managed to pass really great voter ID laws, I'm sure there wouldn't have been a problem.