Jerk-Off

John McCain:

“Of course I am going to misspeak and I’ve done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future,” says McCain. “I regret that when I divert attention to something I said from my message, but you know, that’s just life,” he tells Pelley, adding, “I’m happy, frankly, with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun.”

Sure, John, your consistent lying about a failed war that causes more of our troops to be killed instead of accurately characterizing the situation, which would help get our sons and daughters home sooner, is fun and that's just life and you are happy with it because "otherwise it would be a lot less fun."

John McCain, Jerk-Off.

Easter/Passover/Spring Festival Reading

An argument on faith between Sam Harris and Rick Warren. My favorite bit:

Well, I don't think that the religious books are the source. We go to the Bible and we are the judge of what is good. We see the golden rule as the great distillation of ethical impulses, but the golden rule is not unique to the Bible or to Jesus; you see it in many, many cultures—and you see some form of it among nonhuman primates. I'm not at all a moral relativist. I think it's quite common among religious people to believe that atheism entails moral relativism. I think there is an absolute right and wrong. I think honor killing, for example, is unambiguously wrong—you can use the word evil. A society that kills women and girls for sexual indiscretion, even the indiscretion of being raped, is a society that has killed compassion, that has failed to teach men to value women and has eradicated empathy. Empathy and compassion are our most basic moral impulses, and we can even teach the golden rule without lying to ourselves or our children about the origin of certain books or the virgin birth of certain people.

There is a lot of wisdom in that paragraph, some of which relates to politics. Empathy is the most important value anyone can have and on many levels the golden rule is a reflection of that value. We should all take the time to reflect on our actions as they measure up to these values. Similarly, other people can also be evaluated in this regard. People who have no empathy should be vilified and cast down.

In a way politics is how we try to work out our differences and live together. Policy and law are derived from those imperatives and therefore should be imbued with empathy. To do otherwise would be wrong.

A large part of my dislike for the Bush administration and its conservative cohorts in Congress is engendered by their lack of empathy, which harms many people. These people are psychopaths and must be stopped.

O'Reilly Meltdown

Wow. Geraldo's on the side of reason.

Pony Plans

Atrios.

OK Go!

Cheney:

John McCain is 70, Rudy Giuliani has been married three times and Mitt Romney is
Mormon -- not a problem for being president, Vice President Dick Cheney says.

I would like to thank Dick Cheney for unshackling the right's lip service to values. Now that Biggus has given all of them his benediction, Pat Buchanan et al. will not have to waste any more time talking about family and Christian values.

We can still expect the female, halfrican and trial lawyer to be fair game though.

Big Brother Is Watching You

The Almighty Wal-Mart:

Gabbard said he recorded the calls because he felt pressured to stop
embarrassing leaks. But he said his spying activities were sanctioned by
superiors.
Gabbard said that as part of the surveillance, the retailer
infiltrated an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the
company's annual meeting last year and deployed monitoring systems to record the
actions of anyone connected to its global computer network.

...

"This group is no longer operating in the same manner that it did prior to
the discovery of the unauthorized recording of telephone conversations. There
have been changes in leadership, and we have strengthened our practices and
protocols in this area," the company said in a statement.
Wal-Mart has since
disconnected some systems and an internal investigation of the group's
activities was launched earlier this year, the paper said citing an executive in
the security-information industry.

But they have now turned over a new leaf, right?

Wal-Mart has always had strict limits on what its employees can do while at
work. Store employees are prohibited from using personal cell phones on the job.
And managers receive a list of email addresses and phone numbers their employees
have used as well as a list of Web sites visited, the paper said citing current
and former employees.

All in the name of shareholder value. Hah.

Get Your Global Warming On

Hurricane-style.

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season will be far more active than usual with an expected 17 tropical storms, of which nine will strengthen into hurricanes, a noted forecasting team founded by Dr. William Gray said on Tuesday.

In an updated outlook for the June 1-November 30 season, the Colorado State University team led by hurricane forecast pioneer Gray and Philip Klotzbach raised the number of expected storms and hurricanes from the 14 and seven, respectively, that it had predicted in December.

Why Does the Right Wing Hate Chocolate?

What Digby said.

Know Nothing, Do Nothing

The Bush Administration.

In a defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a U.S. government agency has the power under the clean air law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

The nation's highest court by a 5-4 vote said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "has offered no reasoned explanation" for its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.

Yet another example of conservatives claiming the inability to act when it best suits them. The reason conservatives hate government is because a government that acts in the public's interest will usually clash with conservatives' interests, which represent a very small number of people. These people, however, control an enormous amount of wealth and power and it is only government, therefore, that can provide us with checks and balances on this aristocracy.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

Six U.S. soldiers were killed in roadside bombings southwest of Baghdad over the weekend, marking one of the deadliest periods for American troops since a new security crackdown was launched in the Iraqi capital.

The U.S. military said in a statement on Sunday that two soldiers were killed by an explosion during a patrol on Saturday. Four more were killed when another roadside bomb detonated on Sunday near a unit responding to the first attack.

Remember this?

[3/29/07] Since taking command, Gen. Petraeus has been true to his word. The result? Sectarian violence is down in Baghdad. The radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has fled. The Mahdi Army, which terrorized Baghdad last year, appears to be splintering. And the Iraqi government — its spine stiffened thanks to our renewed support — is taking the critical steps for political reconciliation.

-Joe Lieberman, a Very Serious Person.