Populations

Well, this is a timely reminder that 1. ISIS is not the greatest existential threat the United States has ever faced, and 2. useless rhetoric like "bomb the shit out of them" and "make the sand glow (with some limits)" once had real meaning.

For the first time, the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States’ potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China.

It lists many targets for “systematic destruction” in major cities, including 179 in Moscow (like “Agricultural Equipment” and “Transformers, Heavy”), 145 in Leningrad and 91 in East Berlin. The targets are referred to as DGZs or “designated ground zeros.” While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated “Population.”

“It’s disturbing, for sure, to see the population centers targeted,” said William Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University that obtained the target list in response to a request first made in 2006. Mr. Burr, who specializes in nuclear history, said he believed it was the most detailed target list the Air Force had ever made public.

Outrageous

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For Clint Eastwood

Gran Torino?

John Cole sums up my feelings about last night's Open Mike Night at the RNC.

Did this really happen or did I hallucinate the whole thing? Is this what an acid flashback feels like? I almost feel obligated to put on the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah and go into the bathroom and stare at my face in the mirror for ten minutes while the four different cigarettes I lit in different rooms all burn out. Am I supposed to start giggling now and spend a half hour looking at my hands? I’m so fucking confused.

A GOP rising star demands tolerance

If Romney isn't perceived as being phony enough, his campaign's leader in Arizona is forced to come out.

“All of the allegations are false except one, I am gay,” Babeu said.

The nationally renown Pinal County Sheriff called a news conference to address the explosive story by The Phoenix New Times that he pressured a man only identified as “Jose” into signing an agreement to conceal their relationship or face deportation. The piece, posted late Friday, also includes text messages Babeu exchanged with the man and pictures he posted on online gay websites.

Babeu repeatedly sidestepped questions about his personal life but acknowledged a relationship with the man in question.

“What I do in my personal life and private life is my business,” he said.

Couldn't agree more, what he does in his personal life is his business...but I don't think he'll be welcome at too many Republican events any time soon.

At another stop in Ohio on Saturday, Mr. Santorum waded into what he called the “phony theology” of Mr. Obama’s agenda. 

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.”

In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are “a lot of different stripes” of Christianity, he believes that “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”

“I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. 

And by "bipartisan," he means "bipolar"

In the world of Mitch McConnell, words have no meaning.

“President Obama needs to decide between his goal of higher taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit,” Mr. McConnell and Mr. Kyl said in a joint statement. “He can’t have both. But we need to hear from him.”

In fact, addressing our deficit will require raising revenue. And a "bipartisan" plan would require something known as "compromise," in which "both" sides give up something -- Democrats agree to painful spending cuts in discretionary spending and Republicans agree to eliminating tax loopholes (note how far the debate has already moved in Republicans favor when we are talking about "loopholes" and not "marginal tax rates").

'Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines

As we head, reeling, into the November mid-terms, thoughtful Reader, one can turn ones eyes to the old poets. Yeats, of course, comes to mind, but I think that for our purposes we'll be turning more and more to The Dunciad by Alexander Pope. Though written in 1729, it is eerily prescient with its cast of Dunces in the Kingdom of Dulness. This comes from Book 4, where the goddess Dulness ascends her throne.

Yet, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half veil, the deep intent.
Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restor'd I sing,
To whom time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.

Now flam'd the Dog Star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry brain, and wither'd every bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bow'r.
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,
In broad effulgence all below reveal'd;
('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.

Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic , gagg'd and bound,
There, stripp'd, fair Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality , by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle finds it square.
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye:
There to her heart sad Tragedy addres'd
The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,
And promised vengeance on a barb'rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:
Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse,
Thou weptst, and with thee wept each gentle Muse.

Sure, I'm an east coast elite. You can be one, too.

Shakedown Street

By pretty much any measure, the agreement at the White House in which BP agreed to set up a $20billion escrow account and got nothing in return from the president would seem like a big success for Obama and the people affected by the "spill" and its after effects.

Not to Republicans and their media reps who saw this as another example of a Chicago-style shakedown and another example of wealth redistribution. These guys...

Would you buy a car from this man?

Combining both greed and arrogance in his quest to win the votes of his fellow Ohioans.

Jim Renacci was just a simple, ordinary American entrepreneur who bought a GM dealership in 2007 from a guy who was about to go to prison for laundering drug money. In those heady go-go times, GM seemed like a world-beating company to hitch one’s star to; thus, it came as a total shock a couple of years later when the commissars assigned to run GM for the good of the proletariat came down hard the kulak Renacci, shutting his precious dealership down. That’s why Renacci wants to be northeast Ohio’s new Congressman, to undo these sorts of terrible injustices.

The current congressman, Democrat John Boccieri, only won the seat in 2008 after the previous Republican Representative-for-almost-life quit, and he voted for the dreaded Health Care Bill that will benefit thousands of his constituents, so he may be in a bit of trouble this year. This is probably why he’s being so mean and pointing out all the lawsuits Renacci is faced with over shitty cars he sold to people! Renacci also accepted money from the Trotsky-inspired Cash for Clunkers program, but he swears that he was actually opposed to it and that sweet, sweet government cash was physically shoved into his hands.

Clowns, potentially armed

I knew it had been ugly in the Capitol the last few days, but it's hard to remember a time when congressmen themselves helped to whip up the frenzy.

It was one of the ugliest and strangest periods the American legislative process has ever experienced. And Sunday was no different. The day's debate on the House floor was in its early moments when two men, one smelling strongly of alcohol, stood up in the public gallery and interrupted the debate with shouts of "Kill the bill!" and "The people said no!" As the Capitol Police led the demonstrators from the chamber, Republicans cheered -- for the hecklers.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who for the second day in a row had homophobic epithets hurled at him by demonstrators, called his Republican colleagues "clowns" for this display. But the circus was just beginning.

As lawmakers debated their way to a vote on the legislation, dozens of GOP lawmakers walked from the chamber, crossed the Speaker's Lobby, stepped out onto the members-only House balcony -- and proceeded to incite an unruly crowd.

Thousands of conservative "tea party" activists had massed on the south side of the Capitol, pushing to within about 50 feet of the building. Some Democrats worried aloud about the risk of violence, and police tried to keep the crowd away from the building.

But rather than calm the demonstrators, Republican congressmen whipped the masses into a frenzy. There on the House balcony, the GOP lawmakers' legislative dissent and the tea-party protest merged into one. Some lawmakers waved handwritten signs and led the crowd in chants of "Kill the bill." A few waved the yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag of the tea-party movement. Still others fired up the demonstrators with campaign-style signs mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats, to show they wouldn't be intimidated, had staged a march to the Capitol from their office buildings, covering the ground where on Saturday African American Democrats were called racial epithets and spat on by protesters. Pelosi, carrying the speaker's gavel, linked arms with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who was harassed Saturday but is no stranger to abuse from his years in the civil rights movement.

Police ringed Lewis, Pelosi and other Democrats while the conservative activists formed a gantlet and shouted insults: "You communists! You socialists! You hate America!"

The tone was little better indoors. Pelosi, holding a news conference after a meeting with her Democratic caucus, was heckled by a demonstrator. Inside the House chamber, Republicans placed on Democrats' chairs photos of the Democratic lawmakers who lost their jobs in 1994. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) went to the well to say that "freedom dies." Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), sitting in the front row in a way that displayed the Lone Star flag on his cowboy boots, said Democrats were on "the path of government tyranny." Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned of a "fiscal Frankenstein."

"Remember the dignity of the House." Indeed.

The inevitable

How long before we hear:

Know what other head of state wanted the Olympics in his country?

Hitler.

I've got the stopwatch running.

Thnk of the Children...and Oklahoma

James M. Inhofe's (R-Global Warming Crankland) concern for future generations is fucking moving.

Members of Congress from Georgia and Oklahoma, where the jet and the Army project mean jobs, promised a fight. The arguments, which were frequently directed by Republicans against one of their own — Mr. Gates, one of two Republicans in President Obama’s cabinet — were cast in terms of national security and moral responsibility.

“F.C.S. is Army modernization,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said of the Future Combat Systems, a program that links soldiers with weapons, robotic sensors, a communications network and combat vehicles. “Without it, we risk sending our sons and daughters into combat in vehicles that are second-rate and are less survivable and effective in combat. What price should we place on the lives of our children we send off to war?”

Mr. Inhofe had arranged for work on one of eight ground vehicles in the Army program to be done in Oklahoma, but Mr. Gates proposed scrapping that vehicle as well as the seven others. Government auditors have repeatedly criticized the vehicles as the worst part of a project troubled by cost overruns and questions about whether its technology is sound.

Bejeebus. Where does one start? The fact that this is the guy who commended Gates' predecessor, who once so famously quipped that "you go to war with the army you have"? Or the fact that Inhofe did not hesitate to chearlead the sending of "our children" off to war in a land of imaginary WMD? Or maybe the fact that Inhofe withdrew support for Jim Webb's 21st Century GI Bill amendment last year?

Think of the children, indeed.

And remember, this is a guy who quotes himself saying,

Sen. Jim Inhofe tells Newsmax that the stimulus package put together by President Barack Obama and the Democrats is in fact "7 percent stimulus and 93 percent spending."

He's as dumb as a nail, but since he said it: Where does his ongoing support for wasteful welfare for defense appropriations in Oklahoma fall?

Stooges

I have no great hopes for Sean Penn as "Larry," but if you're looking for some laughs, here ya go.

Joe the Republican Strategist

He may not be a licensed plumber, but he sure knows how to revent his 15 minutes of fame.