Governor Sanford *should* resign

Generally speaking, I wouldn't say infidelity necessitates an elected official's resignation (unless they support DOMA or something like that), but the AP reports that the governor spent nearly $40,000 on air travel for five flights to Brazil, sitting in first/business class while he aides sat in coach. And that is grounds for resignation.

Most underreported story of the week?

I'm on vacation and keeping it short.

Victory?!

An exclusive club.

From The Warren Times Observer, a Pennsylvania paper:


(In case you cannot read it, the ad says, "May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy!")

Waterboarding is torture.

Well, Hannity is too filled with hot air to follow through with his offer to be waterboarded, but Christopher Hitchens and conservative radio host Erich 'Mancow' Muller have each undergone the treatment. Both lasted less than ten seconds and have reversed their positions, stating that waterboarding is unequivocally torture. Check out the videos (and the associated articles) below (the sound on the Mancow videos is terrible).

Hitchens: "Believe Me, It's Torture"


Mancow: "Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It's Torture"

"[...] Give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour [...]"

Some really hilarious quotes come from this interview with former wrestler and Minnesota governer Jesse Ventura, including, "[Water-boarding] is torture... It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Ventura also rips on Bush 43 and Norm Coleman, the man Ventura defeated in his gubernatorial campaign.

A fascinating look at some banks.

Update: The link to the WSJ graphic is now included. Sorry about that.

The Wall Street Journal has posted a great "interactive graphic" that compares the 19 stress-tested banks on a number of criteria including new capital needed, tier 1 common capital ratio, and amount of TARP funding received.

A related aside: I love complex graphics along these lines and don't think that the value of such graphics can be overstated when one considers the graphics' ability to convey different depths of information for those of different intelligence and interest levels. Nate Silver does a great job with his graphics, for example "A Starry-Eyed Look at the 2012 Republican Field." The most cursory glance tells you nothing more than which candidates are present and which candidates might be similar to one another simply because there is little distance between them (basically the level of focus shown by someone who just wants to pretend to be smart around others, e.g. "I'd say Huckabee, Romney, Jindal, and Palin are the favorites."). The next level of information gets into actually looking at those axes and understanding what they imply. The third level takes into account the size of each bubble: the larger the bubble the greater the public support for that candidate. Finally, one can, as Nate suggests, consider the implications of the political 'gravity' exerted by each of these 'planets.' That is, one can imagine that when one politician gains support (that is, his planet grows) it must be pulling that support from elsewhere (that is, exerting a political gravity on the supporters of the other planets, pulling them away).

Honestly, this post did begin as a quick post only focused on that banks graphic; it spiraled out of my control once I started talking about the always riveting topic of graphics! I hope it all made sense.

Honorary Charlie Sheen award.

Some of us had quite a good laugh way back when we discussed Charlie Sheen's amazing life. Well, I would like to doff my hat to a newly recognized member of the Charlie-Sheen-founded "Surprisingly Popular Macho Assholes" club: Silvio Berlusconi!

Although he is known for his ridiculous lifestyle (ranging from plastic surgery to the appointment of models to important government positions), only this week did Berlusconi truly take his act to the top. After his wife publicly threatened divorce, Berlusconi demanded a public apology! In fact, he went so far as to say, "Veronica will have to publicly apologize to me. And I don't know if that will be enough." Well done, asshole.

Jeb Bush will never be president

You almost have to feel sorry for the guy; he is, after all the less incompetent of the two famous Bush brothers, but the name has tarnished his political aspirations forever.

Well, now none of that matters. To be a Republican President you have to be a Republican nominee for president, meaning you have to win a Republican primary.

And if you say it's time to leave Reagan behind, you will never win a Republican primary.

WTF moment of the day: Specter switching parties

Update: Sorry about the size of the original picture.


The Huffington Post reports that Sen. Arlen Specter (R.- Pennsylvania) will switch parties and compete in the Deomcratic primary during the 2010 election cycle. Specter said,

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

They just don't get it.

Apparently sarcasm and satire are too indirect and subtle to be understood by those who live in a strict black vs. white, good vs. evil, dichotomous world. Research has now shown, "[...] individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."

In other words, conservatives don't get the joke.

Socialists are running the country!

Representative Spencer Bachus (R- Alabama) is saving America. Bachus has been working on a secret(!) list of the socialists in the House of Representatives, and he has come up with 17 names! Hmmm...somehow this seems so familiar. Ah, yes, this is the second coming of the (crazy) right-winger Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the (in)famous House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA)! [note: McCarthy was in the Senate and thus was not involved with the HCUA.] Let's hope Bachus is a little less successful than McCarthy and the HCUA.

Prescience bites us in the ass yet again.

"There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other."
-John Adams (1790)

In other news, I highly recommend the book John Adams by David McCullough.

Approval Ratings

A website called PoliticsHome selected "informed Americans" to participate in a series of polls. I don't remember exactly how I got involved, but it definitely involved reading electoral websites a lot.

Anyway, most of their polls have been unremarkable, but here's an interesting one: approval ratings for many notable political figures.

A quicker set of links

Sorry for all the posts that I have been making that are not much more than lists of links. I will work on cutting back, and not just by making fewer posts with more links. That will start right after I give you a few links:

• Dr. Grammar's Frequently Asked Questions - I have only clicked on a handful of these, but I agreed with the answers to all of them. A good resource for our debates, though I think it should be used only after an argument based on prior knowledge;
• "15 Amazing Yearbook Photos of U.S. Politicians" and also "12 Amazing Celebrity Yearbook Photos" - Jimmy Carter is terrifying.
• "5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy" - My personal favorite of the group, this article is exactly what it sounds like, describing each of five men in the categories "Who was he?", (where the fuck does this comma go?) "The best Hollywood could come up with," and "Why it doesn't compare." My only problem with Cracked.com is that I get sucked into reading fifteen different lists with titles like "7 Historical Figures Who Were Absurdly Hard to Kill."
  

WTF?

From a political perspective, why would a guy whose middle name is Hussein and has (in some ways) an image problem at home give his first presidential interview to a network whose name sounds no different than that of a terrorist organization to most Americans?

Here's an article I haven't yet read.

Update: Okay, I read the article. Seems this interview with a network that is a voice of moderation in the Middle East will serve our nation's actual interest at the cost of its petty obsessions.

I'm sorry I doubted you, O Great One.

Gillibrand

Thoughts?

I don't really know anything about her (I have a new goal to become a little more informed about NY politics), but she seems qualified - which is more than I could say about Caroline K - and this article endears me to her a bit - the partisan flexibility, the "Sunshine Report," etc. Do you guys know more about her?

Obama's first act as president

In his first official act as president Barack Obama issued the following statement declaring a national day of reconciliation (My source was the White House blog):

NATIONAL DAY OF RENEWAL AND RECONCILIATION, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As I take the sacred oath of the highest office in the land, I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders, renewed by the courage and decency of the American people, and fortified by my faith in an awesome God.

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright -- it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

Many Random Thoughts and Articles

Iowa representative Steve King, who predicted an Obama victory would lead to al-Qaeda "dancing in the streets," now says that he doesn't know why Obama will be using his middle name Hussein in the inauguration, but that his given reason - historical consistency with previous inaugurations - "could not be the reason."

UPS delivered 30 pounds of marijuana to a Texas resident last Tuesday. Two side thoughts: One, I don't know anything about the prices of drugs, but even with my suspicion that marijuana is cheaper than other street drugs out there, I'm surprised at the article's valuation of the delivery at $350/pound. Two, thank goodness that guy didn't have an accidental arrest warrant out.

Last night was Bush's final presidential address. Mostly it's not worth watching, but if you're willing to be overly-nitpicky you can find humor in a couple of spots. At 4:37 he describes, without naming, the two sides of the war on terror. If you pretend the descriptions apply in the opposite way he intended them it's sort of funny. At 6:38 - and again, this is nitpicky - his phrasing leaves me wondering if there were more Supreme Court appointments that I didn't know about. Finally, though his phrasing is technically accurate given his intention, at 9:00 it sounds as if he's using a rather glaring tautology.

The inauguration security force in Washington DC will consist of 42,500 personnel. By comparison, this is roughly nearly 30% of the total number of US troops currently serving in all of Iraq.

Do the results justify the actions? Don't look too much into me mentioning this - I'm in awe of this guy, but it's worth pointing out that yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson brought a damaged plane within 900 feet of the GW Bridge - for reference, that means it was essentially at the same altitude as the top of the Empire State Building when it passed over the bridge. And that's without considering what would have happened had he missed the river and landed on the island ... On the other hand, I can't really think of any better options, and it's not like the pilot is going to be like "well, there's a chance this may not work out, so I'm just going to crash us in a field for the greater good." Just an observation.

Found this slideshow of "right-leaning celebrities." It's just funny because of how deep they had to dig. And one of their best example, Dennis Hopper, campaigned for Obama anyway.

Finally, a take on Pinky and the Brain that would be funny if it weren't true.

It always warms my heart when one of my home-state representatives refers to the governor as a "freak show"

Blago impeached, duh


UPDATE: this photo, for obvious reasons.

Well that didn't take long ...

"Hey, you think we've waited long enough? Can we start calling our opponents un-American now that we've got the power?"

"Long enough? Jenny, we just won the election. Like, barely a month ago. I mean, hell, we haven't even taken office yet. There's still only 51 Democrats in the Senate and there's still a Texan in the White House. I'm not sure that counts as 'waiting'."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But this auto bailout thing - I really want it! I can't believe I have to wait even longer. This is totally unfair!"

"Dude, you can just wait a month and then we'll be in power."

"But I want it now! You know what? Screw it, I'm calling the Republicans un-American."

"No! You can't do that! That'll make us look just like those oth- ... too late."