Stephen Colbert

"The healthcare bill is so complicated I got a headache just thinking about it. And my insurance company said that is a pre-existing condition."

The Colbert Report, Sept. 29, 2009

Dana Gould wonders: 'Is Obama literally Hitler?'

Dana Gould was on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday and showed this clip in which he visits some town hall protesters and a Remote Area Medical station in Inglewood, CA. Compare and contrast:



In case that clip gets pulled you can watch it here as well.

There was so much 'Hitler'...And this one guy I was talking to, I said like 'Why Hitler?' and he goes 'Well Hitler also wanted to restrict medical care for people." But was that what he was the most known for though?

Oh and in case you didn't already know, Obama Is Literally Hitler.

James Dobson, fortune teller extraordinaire!

Check out James Dobson's (of Focus on the Family) "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America" (PDF) which includes premonitions that Obama will somehow fill the Supreme Court with liberals, fund international terrorism, quash conservative radio, let Iran nuke Israel, Russia expand like Nazi Germany, and make it such that "our freedoms have been systematically taken away." Worst of all, dear alarmists, he will help... the gays!

Suddenly, homosexual "marriage" was the law of the land in all 50 states, and no state legislature, no state Supreme Court, no state Constitutional amendment, not even Congress, had any power to change it. ... The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

That's right, the Supreme Court will soon be forcing gay men into tents with young boys, oh the horror!

The Great Dictator

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible—Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, "the kingdom of God is within man"—not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Jon Stewart on "socialized medicine"

"God forbid someone replace the health care plan I had before I was 32 and actually qualified for real health care, I believe it was called Excedrin PM and Colt 45."

Bill Maher on Californian ballot initiatives

"We votes yes on gain and no on pain. This is why America's founders established a representative democracy, because they knew if the average Joe had the chance he'd vote for a fantasy world with no taxes, free beer and vagina trees."

Real Time With Bill Maher, May 22, 2009

James Carville

"Republicans just don't understand comedy...it's like me talking about nuclear physics, I mean I just don't have the background to talk about it; they just don't understand comedy. If they did they wouldn't put Dick Cheney out all the time."

on Real Time With Bill Maher, May 8, 2009

"Hey! I'm tired of Gibbs screwing this thing up."

President Obama making an impromptu appearance at the daily White House press briefing last Friday to detail the announcement of Justice David Souter's retirement. This is how you make an entrance:

Obama could nominate Souter's replacement as early as the end of this week according to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, member of the Judiciary Committee. Signs point to the selection of a woman justice since Ruth Bader Ginsburg was left the lone female on the Supreme Court when Sandra Day O'Connor retired in 2006. You might recall two weeks ago during a case about the strip search of a 13-year old girl. Ginsburg let loose on Justice Breyer for suggesting that girls, like boys, shouldn't have an issue being naked in front of an adult of the same sex because of the similarity to a locker room:

According to NPR's Nina Totenberg, who was in the room, Ginsburg's eyes "flashed with anger" at Justice Breyer's question. "She seemed to all but shout, "Boys may like to preen in the locker room, but girls, particularly teen-aged girls, do not."

Souter will retire in June and his replacement should assume office when the court reconvenes in October.

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence

On the CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques" scandal:
"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

(via First Read)

Hey, 1999. What the fuck?

Back in the late 1990s Citicorp and Travelers Insurance merged to form Citigroup, currently known as Citi. Citycorp was the successor of the long line of banks started by City Bank of New York in 1812, and Travelers a consortium of insurers and creditors. The merger was unprecedented in its time because those two financial animals—bankers and creditors—were prohibited from sharing assets by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. That act separated bankers and brokers in order to prevent the wild speculation that inflated the stock markets leading to the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

The act was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, in large part to allow for mergers such as Citigroup to stand. Well guess what:

The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 then the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities. It is believed that the repeal of this act contributed to the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009.

You can actually go back and read the coverage from the New York Times, including former Treasury Secretary and current White House National Economic Council director Larry Summers's pronouncement that "this historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy." But the most significant part of the report is this small prognostication:

"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. "I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness."

Now here we are.

Real Time with Sarah Silverman

This is the first frank interview with Sarah Silverman I've seen. She talks about her finances and the economy, The Great Schlep, her show, divas, the Playboy Mansion, and the art of being a comedian.

My douche sense is tingling...

Holy shit! Ex-President George W. Bush is down my street visiting former Ambassador Mel Sembler's place. There are cops and Secret Service everywhere and passers-by gawking at the commotion.

Sembler spoke at my middle school way back when. He was ambassador to Australia, Naru and most recently Italy. Guess this is what happens when you live in a neighborhood with a big Republican National Committee operative. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go look suspicious by standing in my back yard while taking pictures... and eating frozen yogurt.

Frank Schaeffer on the Religious Right and the state of the GOP

"This is the drunk on the subway making all the trouble at the end of the car for all the people in the subway. There's a hundred decent citizens on there, there's one ass at the front end who's molesting women. That's the Republican Party now."

Bush and the press

Last month, just before the inauguration WNYC's On The Media aired a farewell piece about George W. Bush's special relationship with the press:

BOB GARFIELD: The Bush Administration ridiculed the press, ignored the press, stonewalled the press, bullied the press, maneuvered around the press, co-opted the press, censored the press, jailed the press, fabricated for the press, lied to the press and, for example, when caught illegally wiretapping Americans without a warrant, blamed the press.

BUSH: It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war.

In short, the Bush Administration perniciously used the press as the screw in their vice made to flatten Americans' heads. The piece is a nice bit of catharsis, listen to it here.

A few notes on the stimulus

So the 2009 stimulus bill (or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or the ARARARARARA) looks like it'll bounce its way out from between the House and Senate soon and actually pass. The Washington Post published this cool infographic showing the distribution of the bulk of those 819 billion little dollars.

The Republicans kept pressing for a 60/40 split in favor of tax cuts, but as you've heard in their fury and can see in that chart the Democrats plopped down big balls of financial distribution split almost 80/20 in favor of spending. Most of those gargantuan fiscal sacks relate to housing, energy, health care, education, food assistance and infrastructure (like highway and bridge repair). In other words, the majority is geared towards investment in programs neglected by the Bush Administration for eight years as it tried to fulfill Grover Norquist's dream of shrinking government "down to the size where [he could] drown it in the bathtub".

Even though most of the bill is stimulative some (relative) pork weaseled its way in as reported today by the Post. Some highlights include funding for clean coal, fish hatcheries and tax breaks for golf carts and electric motorcycles. Still:

Stimulus advocates say the GOP complaints are overheated and generally focus on projects that Republicans dislike for ideological reasons. Chad Stone, chief economist at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, defended the bill. "The overwhelming bulk of what is in the package is effective and well-designed stimulus," he said.

Looking back at that infographic the gray ball all the way on the right ($82.1 billion for "Tax credit payments") constitutes the part of the stimulus people would most likely compare to the rebate checks distributed last year. Instead of a lump sum check that money gets spread out so that starting in June you'll see between $5 and $20 knocked off of your payroll taxes for about two years. So now instead of running out and buying that celebrity-narrated GPS even though you can't afford to put gas in your damn car maybe you'll be able to go out to dinner once every couple of weeks instead. I hear sushi's pretty good.

Boston's police get reckless, treat Shepard Fairey and arts community as pawns

Shepard Fairey (designer of the iconic Andre the Giant, OBEY and Obama Hope campaigns) was arrested in Boston last Friday night just outside of and moments before the opening of his career-spanning show "Supply and Demand" at the Institute for Contemporary Art. The cops nabbed him on two revived warrants for various bits of graffiti, but what's notable is the timing and method of arrest. As they pulled up to ICA:

The driver slowed down to attempt to make the turn but still missed the entrance by just a fraction of a second and we passed it by a short distance. The driver tried to back up or turn around but the unmarked SUV directly behind us was blocking our path. Police officers quickly surrounded the cab, and one of them pounded loudly on the driver's window. "Boston Police, stop the car! Turn off the car!" The officer exchanged words with the cab driver, and one of the officers flashed a badge and asked us each to identify ourselves. When Shepard calmly said, "I'm Shepard," one officer commanded, "Everybody out of the car, now!" We quickly decided to OBEY.

In this account given to Wooster Collective by friends traveling in the cab with Fairey and his wife, it appears as if the Boston Police planned to 'ambush' Fairey at the door of the show in order to stir up the crowd or even provoke a riot but scrapped the plan when the cab missed the turn. They make the case by noting the Boston P.D. had two weeks to arrest Fairey but waited until the show in order to cause a media shit storm for the Mayor, who had been promoting Fairey's visit and feuding with the P.D. on wages and residency requirements. Hell, the warrants were issued the day after the Mayor and the P.D. finished negotiations!

Never forget, and if you're in the arts you may want to avoid Boston like... forever.

2700 x 2100

Dick Cheney on Iraq

Bob Schieffer: "Do you think that perhaps you looked at the intelligence and saw what you wanted to see, rather than make a real logical analysis of what you saw?"

Vice President Dick Cheney: "No I don't, Bob."

Where are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert when you need them...