Author Archives: xstryker

About xstryker

X Stryker is also the proprietor of the currently-dormant poll analysis blog Election Inspection.

Comment Rescue from Roadkill

If it did come down to civil war, I don’t think your average anti would fight. They’d leave it for some uncivilized knuckledragging marine or policeman to enforce their wims.

By “anti”, he’s referring to people who support “well-regulated” gun control. And by “wims”, he’s referring to “whims”. And by “enforce” such whims, he’s maybe talking about “defeat the armed insurrection against the American Government”?

Your thoughts? Are marines or policemen uncivilized knuckledraggers or defenders of our safety and security? I think calling them “knuckledraggers” is disgusting. I also think it’s absurd for a person contemplating armed insurrection to refer to anyone as “uncivilized”.

And Roadside, speaking for myself only, if people like you staged a coup and took over the government, my programming skills would be more dangerous to you than a hundred armed men.

Deep Thought

  1. Bush declared that “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
  2. Two-thirds of Republicans approved of Bush in Gallup’s final poll
  3. 60% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Rush Limbaugh (Gallup again)
  4. Rush wants America to fail
  5. Al Qaida wants America to fail

So, how long before the Beck/McVeigh brigade start collaborating with the jihadists? They’re all conservatives after all.

Customer Service

Nate Silver writes:

Anyone who’s ever had to deal with Dell customer service knows that, indeed, there IS a company more desperately terrible than Comcast in this department. Conservatives would say that in theory the market would replace those horrorshow companies, but for anyone who lives in the real world and interacts with American customer service knows that the day when market forces push private sector companies asymptotically toward customer service quality is a future day well after every conservative who holds that belief will have been long dead.

It’s true. Dell and Comcast highlight everything wrong with believing that the market is always right and that magic market forces fix everything.

Comment Rescue: Love!

David Anderson:

I love President Bush

Love!

Never mind the fact that he goes on to criticize Bush. He only does so with love in his heart.

Tell me, Republicans, though you may have many criticisms of your former president, do you still love him?

(let’s be adults here – obviously we’re talking about admiring love, not romantic love)

Vote to get a poll in Delaware!

Democratic pollster PPP is letting the internet decide which state to poll next: Delaware, Connecticut, or Kentucky.

Go vote for Delaware right now.

They will poll both our Senate and House race, testing Beau vs. Castle (Senate) and Carney vs. Castle (House), if Delaware wins out. I think all of us, liberal and conservative and everything in between, would like to know how they match up.

Republican Myth Exploded: Taxes and Reagan Edition

Take the time to read this article in Forbes magazine by Bruce Bartlett. I am serious, you need to read this before you fall prey to another Republican myth. How many times can they be proven wrong on the exact same issue before people wise up?

Bartlett’s conclusion, after his analysis (READ IT!) has laid bare the truth:

…When Republicans claim that higher taxes will destroy the economy, they should be reminded that they made the same argument in 1982 and 1993 and that the actual economic results were the opposite of what they predicted. And when they denounce Obama’s health plan for expanding the size of government, they should be asked how they voted on the Medicare bill in 2003.

On Reagan and taxes:

Reagan signed into law major tax increases every year of his presidency after the first. By the end of his presidency, he took back half of the 1981 tax cut in the form of higher taxes. And it should also be noted that when confronted with a crisis in Social Security in 1983, Reagan endorsed a rescue plan drafted by Alan Greenspan that consisted almost entirely of higher taxes.

Would you take medical advice from this man?

Golly gee wilickers, Bobby Jindal sure has some strange ideas about how medicine works.

He’s also extremely careful and calculated, personality traits that come out during even the most mundane activities, like taking pills. Jindal, who has a background in biology, medicine and public policy, never follows the directions on prescription medicines. “I always just take half the dose,” he says. “I’m very cautious.”

Cautious, in Jindal’s book, means only killing half the bacteria when he’s got an infection. Taking on the other half might… wait, f*** it, this guy’s CRAZY! What? This guy has a background in medicine? What? He’s not even remotely rational in his own areas of supposed expertise.

And yeah, that pretty much explains Lobby Bobby Jindal’s approach to the economic recession, also. “Let’s only fix half the problem, and let the rest spiral out of control! Because we’re cautious, see?”

Fun tidbits from the article:

The branding of Bobby Jindal started in 1996, when former Gov. Mike Foster plucked his Republican protégé out of virtual obscurity—Jindal was contemplating a career in law or medicine—and appointed him secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals. Foster had been hearing good things about Jindal from members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation who had reviewed a Medicaid proposal written by the young go-getter. He was only 24. Two years later, which is the average amount of time Jindal has spent doing anything since entering public life, he was appointed by members of Congress to be executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.

After a year of working with the feds, Foster lured Jindal back to Louisiana in 1999 and made him president of the University of Louisiana System. Word of Jindal’s work traveled through upper circles again, this time reaching the White House. In 2001, President Bush tapped Jindal to be assistant secretary for planning and evaluation of Health and Human Services.

Oh, so Jindal’s made a career of being ill-informed and underprepared. Now it all makes sense. This is the natural career path of the Young Bush Republican – get politically promoted without accomplishing anything until finally you can run for president.

There are two votes in particular where Jindal supported killing ethics investigations related to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

So much for “Mr. Ethics”.

He currently supports a veto override if Bush tries to kill a water bill for Louisiana, voted in favor of a Democrat-heavy farm bill, endorsed the populist minimum-wage hike and rejected a Bush-backed trade bill early in his congressional career. “I’m happy to agree with my party when they’re right,” Jindal says. “But party doesn’t come first.”

Still, Jindal has supported billions in funding for the war in Iraq, and he has also been known to vote against his own measures to stay in step with the GOP. In June, Jindal attached an amendment to an interior appropriations bill offering an extra $2.5 million for the Gulf of Mexico Program, which was short on money for research. The following day, Jindal joined the Republican House delegation in voting against the bill that contained his amendment. “I was pleased to get the attention for the issue and the funding, but I couldn’t support the overall bill because of its pork-barrel spending,” Jindal explains.

Like many Republicans, Bobby defines “pork barrell spending” as “spending which does not further my future electoral prospects”. Except when KBR spends billions to give our troops diseases; that’s how he and the GOP define “patriotism”.

Dow Up 236, Republicans Blame Obama

Seeing as how Republicans believe the market acts rationally and is the only barometer to measure policies, obviously they’re going to to pin a 236 point rally on Obama. Wall Street always behaves rationally, after all.

Ha ha ha, I crack me up. I look forward to comments below from the wingnuts telling me how a one day rally means nothing – arguments that will be long forgotten when the Dow inevitably plunges tomorrow or a few days from now.

PS: Remember all the Republicans who talked about bailing out Main Street, not Wall Street? HA HA HA HA HA, the hypocrisy is priceless!

Carper still favors capitulation

h/t Politico:

“The majority has to be inclusive,” Obama told about 150 legislators and expert gathered at his accountability summit, “But the minority has to be constructive… The minority then has to come up with… ideas, and not just want to blow things up.”

Later, when Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) implored him to continue reaching out to Republicans, he quipped: “I’m going to keep on talking to [House Minority Whip] Eric Cantor and some day he’s going to say Obama had a good idea.”

Cantor and the rest of the crowd laughed.

Shut up, Tom. They want Obama to fail and they aren’t going to budge. It’s not “bipartisanship” if only one party makes compromises. Even your buddy Mike Castle stabbed us right between the shoulder blades. Wake the hell up.

RNC To Crush Dissent

h/t Politico, although their title features the hilarious typo “disssidents”:

RNC Chairman Michael Steele has threatened to withhold party funds from three GOP senators who voted for the stimulus package.

: “Will you, as RNC head, recommend no RNC funds being provided to help them?” Steele was asked on Fox News.

“Oh, yes, I`m always open to everything, baby, absolutely,” Steele said.

All Republicans are hereby on notice: Depart from conservative orthodoxy and the party will disown you. Moderation will not be tolerated. Constituents are irrelevant. Limbaugh is the light and the way.

Prepare to be assimilated.