Good Thing It's Only a Starting Point

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Friday November 12, 2010 · 2:54 PM PST

2010/11/12 · 14:54

The Simpson-Bowles report: I don't know what to make of it. Would it be better used for toilet paper or for firewood kindling?

quibblingpotatoes

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Wednesday October 27, 2010 · 6:29 AM PDT

2010/10/27 · 06:29

There is only one week until the election, and this is usually the time where I start investigating the races that are maybe a little bit under the radar to me, down-ticket from Jari Askins or Mary Fallin. They're usually full of names I've heard of from yard signs and maybe the occasional NPR local news brief: Corn, Lamb, Baressi, Paddack, Priest. But I took notice for real when I read a news story about a particular attorney general from Virginia coming to the Sooner State to campaign for Republican attorney general candidate Scott Pruitt.

quibblingpotatoes

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Friday April 17, 2009 · 11:43 AM PDT

2009/04/17 · 11:43

Fox News has learned that it can bolster its role as red America's megaphone, a role that necessarily takes it even farther away from the realm of objective journalism. They have focused their manufactured anger at a report released by the Department of Homeland Security on rightwing extremism, specifically a passage that notes that military veterans tend to make more receptive targets for recruitment. But this artificial umbrage is at best misplaced and probably should be called out for what it is: lying.

quibblingpotatoes

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Friday February 06, 2009 · 8:18 AM PST

2009/02/06 · 08:18

Since the election in November, both the state House and state Senate of Oklahoma are now controlled by Republicans for the first time in roughly forever. And while the House and Senate have only been in session for one month, they've already started kowtowing to corporate interests, especially in regards to health care coverage.

First up on the chopping block: the autism mandate "Nick's Law".

quibblingpotatoes

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Tuesday January 13, 2009 · 7:27 PM PST

2009/01/13 · 19:27

A very interesting question from Monday's press conference with outgoing president George W. Bush:

One of the major objectives that the incoming administration has talked frequently about is restoring America's moral standing in the world. And many of the allies of the new President -- I believe that the President-elect himself has talked about the damage that Gitmo, that harsh interrogation tactics that they consider torture, how going to war in Iraq without a U.N. mandate have damaged America's moral standing in the world. I'm wondering basically what is your reaction to that? Do you think that is that something that the next President needs to worry about?

The still-president responded, "I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged." He went on to list Africa, India and China as regions that still cling to a generally positive view of the United States. The problem is with those "elite" Europeans.

quibblingpotatoes

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Tuesday December 16, 2008 · 10:03 AM PST

2008/12/16 · 10:03

It's hard for a lame duck president in his final days in office to make the big headlines he used to get, and short of an assassination attempt or a random shoe-throwing attack abroad, the president is typically treated with quiet disinterest by the media. This is a shame, because one of the most widespread department-wide displays of corruption and scandal is playing out right now in George W. Bush's Department of the Interior.

quibblingpotatoes

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Thursday December 11, 2008 · 3:22 PM PST

2008/12/11 · 15:22

I'm against bailouts. I don't like the fact that public taxpayer-funded money could go to private companies if said private companies are huge, dying and poorly managed. But I'm warming to the auto industry bailout precisely because the final version of the bill will be dispensing loan money with tight controls, unlike the $700 billion in mostly free money with little control that the House and Senate passed in October. It's also less of a big deal because of the math involved: $19 billion is much much less than $700 billion.

But many Republican senators and representatives don't see it that way. Here's a sampling of the hypocrisy just in Oklahoma:

quibblingpotatoes

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Wednesday December 03, 2008 · 1:46 PM PST

2008/12/03 · 13:46

Allow me to be the 80 millionth person to put in my two cents against the proposed U.S. automaker bailout. This is one of those issues where I strip off all my Democratic/Socialist clothes and swim in Ron Paul's kool-aid. But I'm completely in agreement with all the most curmudgeonly conservative politicians on the issue of federal bailouts. If a business is about to fail because it can't adapt to the current market, because it made poor choices in the past about how to spend its capital to yield the greatest profitability, or because it's in deeper debt than it can possibly ever pay back, the bad business should just be allowed to fail, regardless of how many people the bad business employs or what percentage of market share it has. People will find a way to replace whatever the bad business produced with something more efficient. This is capitalism doing its thing with its invisible hand. As Ron Paul said, "An essential element of a healthy free market is both success and failure must be permitted to happen when they are earned."

(note: you should really keep reading this and watch as I redeem myself)

quibblingpotatoes

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Tuesday October 28, 2008 · 2:50 PM PDT

2008/10/28 · 14:50

According to almost every news source in America, the Democratic Party will win big on November 4. Presidential candidate Barack Obama is far from the only Democrat who will ride into Washington on the coattails of bad feelings for President George W. Bush. Almost every Democratic candidate for office in America, fairly or not, has enjoyed a bounce in popularity by campaigning on a platform of being anti-Bush, or by linking his/her opponent to the "failed policies of the Bush administration". Indeed, George W. Bush has never had a lower approval rating than right now, partly because of the recent financial crisis. But what these Democratic candidates are not doing is reminding people what it is that is so bad about the "failed policies of George W. Bush" in the first place. If the American public remembers that it can't stand that Bush guy but can't remember why, then the "failed policies" will surely be repeated by elected members of the Government. So to serve as a reminder mostly to myself, I've jotted down 33 "failed policies" that I think have made our country worse off thanks to the 43rd President of the United States of America.

quibblingpotatoes

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Monday September 22, 2008 · 12:03 PM PDT

2008/09/22 · 12:03

Over the weekend the treasury department put forth a bill now winding its way through the U.S. Congress that would allow the U.S. government to buy bad debt from several Wall Street firms in order to allow those Wall Street firms to continue to function. The number put out by the treasury department is "$700 billion". This is a huge sum the magnitude of which probably eludes most people.

$700 billion. That's $2,295 if every single American contributed. If $700 billion of debt was a GDP, it would be ranked 17th in the world behind the Netherlands and ahead of Turkey. We would need at least 12 Bill Gates's selling off their entire holdings to make it up. $700 billion is equivalent to 1,750 bridges to nowhere. If you laid 700 billion dollar bills end to end, the chain would stretch from the earth to the sun. On the plus side, it only adds 7% to our astronomically high national debt.

And this goliath of a sum of money is going from the taxpayers' pockets directly to the vaults of huge banks who are now seeing the downside of risky lending.

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Good Thing It's Only a Starting Point

Scott Pruitt: Another Ken Cuccinelli

Fox News: Defenders of Right Wing Extremism

Private Insurance Makes Nick's Law More Expensive

In George W. Bush's Final Press Conference, a Parting Jab at the Elites in Europe

Bush's Interior Department: Completely Corrupt by Design

Bailout Hypocrisy from Oklahoma's Republican Congressional Delegation

Why Automaker Bailouts are Bad, Except for Maybe the One I Propose in this Post

The Failed Policies of George W. Bush

Let's Bailout Capitalism!