Rare glimpse of the truth

Every once in awhile, if one pays close attention, Republicans give us a glimpse of the truth in terms of their ultimate motivation. And it has nothing to do with core principles, or philosophical differences, or what they truly believe to be the best governance, or what they believe to be best for the American people.

It's about power, folks. Just power. Keeping it and wielding it on behalf of those they serve -- who are not the bulk of citizens of this country. From U.S. New and World Report:

Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry's trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn't interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

Got that? No debate about the impact on the uninsured or the insured -- just a fight to protect the power base of the GOP.

It was ever thus.

Final FUs

Having already shredded the Constitution, destroyed the U.S. reputation in the world, and decimated our economy, the Bush Administration continues its scorched earth strategy to cement its reputation: a little midnight rulemaking. Propublica has set up a page to track the damage.

Good for you

Give some hits to a lonely sane voice in the reddest of red states.

False Patriots

From Veteran Bob Geiger to Republicans on Veterans Day: "...shove it."

It starts

Let us not forget what our President-elect is up against. Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

AN ADVANCE LOOK AT THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION.... It's only been a couple of days since Barack Obama was declared the president-elect, but it's hard not to notice that congressional Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Take these ridiculous comments from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R).

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven't been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don't exist.

What the hell.

Finally

I haven't written because I couldn't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said by someone else better (and sooner!) about Obama's victory. I smile every time I here someone say "President-Elect Obama"; MY faith in the American people (which was virtually non-existent) has been restored (mostly), and I don't have to pick out somewhere in Europe or Canada to live.

This, finally, was something I hadn't seen before, something worth passing along that says it all. Once again, my friend Mary gets the best stuff from her circle!

Funny

These articles from The Onion are very funny. And the second.

Relax

Relax. Any polls that tell you this election is going to be anything other than a blow-out for Obama are fixed and purposefully misleading. If you want to know why and how, check out Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com

Instead, let's all have another laugh on the moosehunter in chief before she slinks her expensively-wardrobed self back to Alaska.... hopefully never to be seen again:

It's Enough

My oldest daughter challenged me the last time we discussed her reactions to this blog: "You spend a lot of time shooting down the McCain campaign, Mom," she said, "But I almost never see you write positive things about Obama."

She is right, of course. Truth told those who have read this blog from the beginning know that I have deeply ambivalent feelings about Obama. And not for any of the reasons given my McSamiacs or false independents, but because of my deeply leftist mistrust of anyone who claims to be avowedly anti-partisan in his approach. I fell out with Bill Clinton when he played conservative animosity toward the poor to his advantage (read: welfare reform), and when he reversed himself to pander to conservative hatred of gays and lesbians through DOMA.

Obama lost me early in the primary season when he hosted the cancerous Donnie McClurkin as his front early in N.C., and it is not lost on me and other gay and lesbian commentors that he has studiously avoided weighing in on Proposition 8 right now in California.

Make no mistake, people: Obama is in it to win it and if you happen to be one of the people thrown under the bus in the process you are supposed to understand and forgive.

Civil rights? FISA? Not so important until maybe after the election, when we may or may not have energy for a defense of the constitution. There will no no one held to account for the complete lawlessness of the Bush Administration. That cancer will lie dormant until some future President or Supreme Court is forced to confront it.

And still, Esquire makes its first endorsement in 75 years, and speaks in the voice of many of us as it does so:

In truth, though, Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose.

It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for.

After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin.

Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.


Barack will not spend a penny of political capital indicting the war criminals, nor may he succeed in effecting meaningful healthcare reform, but he will return dignity and grace to the Oval Office, and to America's standing in the world and, today, that is enough.

The REAL Redistributors in Chief

John McCain is a firm believer in a philosophy of governance that's been responsible for the most dramatic redistribution of American income and wealth since the New Deal. For the past 30 years, the conservative movement has focused relentlessly on redistributing income, but always upward, toward the top. It's a great irony of the 2008 campaign: Nobody is more dedicated to redistributing wealth than adherents of the ideology that McCain represents.

Read it in AlterNet.

Then send it to any wingnuts you know.

Since Nixon or Before?

John Dean (remember him?) has made courageous and insightful statements regarding the
Bush administration's unconstitutional assumption of near-authoritarian power vis-a-vis the division of power between branches of government, the tension between civil liberties and national security, etc. He has also written two books on the subject:

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Read the whole thing.

Batterers Anonymous

This is a post I should have written a long time ago, and the fact that I didn't stands as embarrassing evidence that I have tried too hard to keep my own background and experience somehow separate from the political perspective I reveal in this blog.

John McCain is a batterer. I know that in every fiber of my being because I worked around batterers -- and their victims -- for twenty some odd years. I don't have to see bruises on Cindy McCain to know it (although the evidence that he called her a "cunt" in front of numerous reporters who didn't know how to report it is ample evidence in and of itself: You can bet your house that a man who would say something like this in public is WAY WORSE in private.)

No, it is this line, which McCain has repeated every single time he is confronted about how slimy and negative his campaign has become:

"Look, I asked Senator Obama to come with me around this country to have Town Hall events in front of the people. If he had agreed to do this, we would have had a very different kind of campaign."

Tonight, on Larry King, he repeated the same justification for the slime, and I finally decided to respond:

Only batterers reason this way. And all batterers reason this way:

"If you had only listened to me.... If you had only done what I wanted you to do... If you only hadn't defied me the way you did....... I wouldn't have had to beat you."

So you see, it's never the responsibility of the person wielding the weapon or the fist or the slime..... the responsibility lies elsewhere...... in the person who, by their defiance, "forced" the batterer to become physical.

John McCain is a batterer. It's as simple as that.

WTF

The right-leaning media has gone bat-shit crazy. Now they're quoting "Joe the Plumber" on Foreign Policy and Economics! One can only conclude that no rational or credible person will any longer associate themselves with this campaign, so they have resorted to trying to burnish their support with the testimony of a small-time, unlicensed plumber from Florida.

This is beyond parody, and I can hear the writers from SNL sharpening their pencils as I type.

This is a "cleansed" screen shot taken tonight from a section on Memorandum. I've actually removed the links because I refuse to give these people any oxygen or traffic. But look at the sources: This is Fox and AP -- which has dramatically damaged its brand with the new editor's obvious bias toward McNasty.

Fox News: ‘Joe the Plumber’ Backs Claim That Obama Would Bring ‘Death to Israel’ — Joe Wurzelbacher, on his first campaign trail appearance for John McCain, says he agrees that a vote for Barack Obama would be “a vote for the death to Israel.”

Discussion: The Reaction, Political Machine, Early Returns, Political Radar and Atlas Shrugs,

Philip Elliott / Associated Press:
Joe the Plumber says Obama would make US socialist — COLUMBUS, OHIO (AP) - “Joe the Plumber,” the small business aspirant and overnight media sensation, endorsed John McCain's presidential campaign Tuesday and said Barack Obama would make America a socialist nation.
Discussion: Tom Watson, Gateway Pundit, The Heretik, Washington Times and Hot Air

This is hysterically funny, the natural, logical sequence of nominating the First Moosehunter of Alaska to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Why not? Let's put Joe in charge of Foreign Policy, and Tito the builder over HUD. Tammy the child-care worker can be put in charge of Education, and Fred the Farmer can have the Agriculture Department!

BTW -- Memeorandum is a site that tracks link traffic as a way to measure whatever topics are "the buzz" on the net. They over-sample the right, and typically only make discussion links to any blogs on the left (TPM seems to be an exception.) Their bias is clear. Yet it's a perfect way to keep track of the insanity on the right without actually having to read any of the garbage.

The Closing Argument

Obama today in Ohio. What a stirring contrast to Mr. McNasty.

Say it Sistah!

Everything that could go wrong

The new cover story on Time is a pretty comprehensive examination of how this coming election could wind up being a complete clusterf*ck.

I can only pin my hopes on the ability of our side to turn out such a landslide that even the most insane of Repukes won't dare to be so brazen as to steal yet another election.

But if it happens, it will be a clear lesson about accountability. We all should have been in the streets when the Supreme Court handed Bush the election the first time, and -- short of putting in a Democratic Secr of State in Ohio -- nothing was done to address the obvious manipulation and suppression that took place in '04 and stole the election again.

Dems keep trying to rise above my NOT making an issue out of what is ACTUALLY a threat to the democracy, and if it comes back to bite us this time there will be no one to blame but ourselves.

This one is for my Sister

Character

A beautiful piece in the NYT about Obama's trip to see his grandmother:

She underwent a corneal transplant to see him on television. She reluctantly agreed to film a political ad when he needed to urgently reassure the voters about his distinctive American roots. She told him during one of their frequent telephone conversations that it might not hurt if he smiled a bit more.

And on Friday, Senator Barack Obama spent the day saying goodbye.

Mr. Obama came to the Punahou Circle Apartments here, a place of his own childhood, where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lay gravely ill. For weeks, he has talked to doctors and tracked her condition. After she was released from the hospital last week, he received word that he should not wait until after the election to make what he believes could be his last visit.

Having said too many goodbyes myself recently, I want to comment here on what extraordinary emotional grit and courage this man is showing with his return to the campaign trail so quickly after this one. Of course he doesn't have a choice, but this display of character -- both in the leaving and in the return -- is something that should be noted more and isn't.

Speechless

But, of course, the tone of the McCain campaign is in no way responsible for this, right?

Fun Bits and Pieces

Great article from Dana Milbank at WaPo. Glad to see everyone is keeping a sense of humor about this.

Apparently, Obama is a Fantasy Football fan!

And even the Russians are having a little fun with Sarah. (h/t Aravosis)

Marxism, Socialism, and the Right Wing

The Party of McCarthy just loves to wave the red flag, and all the ugly demons of the conservative right are coming out to play at the end of their era.

Bill Kristol contributed to this meme early, but it never took off. He and Rover tried to paint Obama as a Marxist through the “religion as opiate of the masses” loop early in the campaign to no effect.

But with a new opening provided by Obama’s “spread the wealth” comment, the desperate puppeteers of McCain’s campaign are willing to give it another go.

And with nothing else to write about except Obama’s growing lead in the polls, the MSM is giving it oxygen. What an insult to socialists!

Not only is Obama not a socialist, he’s not even a great liberal, if his votes on FISA, his modest health care reform proposal, and his silence on Proposition 8 are any examples.

So if this cautious and careful man is labeled as Socialist, then the entire concept of liberalism is un-American and socialistic.

I have labeled a radical feminist by people trying to silence or diminish my arguments, and always laughed to think of what the accuser might do if ever confronted by a real radical feminist, as I routinely was! It’s tempting to shrug off the ridiculous face of the label.

But we shouldn’t. The Republican Party has successfully shifted the center of this country dramatically rightward through just such successful branding. A growing aristocracy was said to be over-burdened by “death taxes”; tax breaks for the rich became “economic incentives”, and “big government liberals” have been the bogeymen preventing us from joining the rest of the developed universe in providing health care to our citizens.

‘

Power doesn’t give up easily. And we must push back on these memes before they strangle what hope there is for a truly different tomorrow.

Just because you're paranoid....

They are perfectly willing to steal another election.

Don't think it can't happen.

Big Lies and Little Lies

It is said that history gets written by the conquerors. A very post-modernist thought for an old saying, isn't it?

In my lifetime, I have watched the manipulation of history by those whose fates were ascendant: So Ronald Reagan was credited for the fall of the Soviet Union and neo-conservatives are now claiming Vietnam could have been won if we'd only been willing to spend more lives. Those are Big Lies. They affect our understanding of our own past, our ability to learn lessons provided.

I have also watched the power of the little lies: the Clintons had people murdered; Gore was a perpetual liar, and Kerry was a weak wimp. The little lies can change history, too, and have in devastating ways. But they are still little lies.

Obama is being besieged by little lies: He pals around with terrorists; he's non-christian and somehow exotic while at the same time being a typical Chicago pol, "a guy of the streets." I'm not even going to bother finding you links. You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard it.

This time, because of Obama's incomparable grace, the little lies will not change history.

So I'm getting ready to leave town for a few days and I wanted to leave you chewing on a couple Big Lies floating around this season, lies directed mostly at poor people and those working on their behalf.

The first Big Lie is that poor people are responsible for the housing crisis and, by extension, the collapse of the entire global economy. Heard anyone mention the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)? The conservative talking heads are all over it. All the way back to Carter go the roots of the crisis in the storyline of this Big Lie. Too many poor people being given mortgages for houses they couldn't afford.

That is a ridiculous pile of crap. Look at where the highest rates of foreclosures are: Las Vegas? Miami? California? These are not houses that were bought by poor people.

And look at who issued the original paper behind most of this crap. Did neighborhood banking institutions issue the bulk of sub-prime mortgages? No, they did not. It is Countrywide and other non-bank lenders who peddled the garbage we now have to clean up.

We are compelled to educate ourselves so that we can smack this shit back. Instead of a bunch of links giving you the facts behind this Big Lie I give you one really good one.

The assault on ACORN is another Big Lie, just the latest in a long line of GOP voter suppression tactics. I can't believe the MSM is giving this so much air. (OK, yes I can.)

There is absolutely no evidence that voter fraud is a significant problem in this country, while there is plenty of evidence of GOP-erected obstacles designed to prevent poor people and minorities from voting. Go read this about that.

Traveling most of the next several days. Posting will be sketchy.

100 Days and Counting

Begin the countdown. Only 100 days left!

Rather laugh than cry

Lighten Up

If you can stand it:







And from my friend Mary via her friend Judith!


Friday night funnies.

Why Bother?

Sarah Palin certainly accomplished one thing in her debate with Biden: she established a new norm in which it is perfectly acceptable for those purporting to engage in debate NOT to answer the questions posed. Yes, I know that this has been an emerging phenomenon, but this cycle has taken it to a new place altogether.

Both candidates were guilty, and I was frustrated to see Obama pass up stellar opportunities to make very good points and instead revert back to stump speech rhetoric that most of us have heard many times before.

If the candidates have no intention whatsoever to answer the questions asked, and the moderator, as restricted by current "rules" can't take them to task, haven't the "debates" been reduced to seeing two candidates giving their stump speeches from the same stage?

Who is Scary Sarah Palin?

This, from Salon, is a must read. A must-read and a pass-around until it makes its way into the Inbox of every wingnut in America.

So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin' around with?

Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, "When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die."

This quote is from "Coming Into the Country," by John McPhee, who traipsed around Alaska's remote gold mining country with Vogler for his 1991 book. The violent-tempered secessionist vowed to McPhee that if any federal official tried to stop him from polluting Alaska's rivers with his earth-moving equipment, he would "run over him with a Cat and turn mosquitoes loose on him while he dies."

Vogler wasn't just a blowhard either. He put his secessionist ideas into action, working to build AIP membership to 20,000 -- an impressive figure by Alaska standards -- and to elect party member Walter Hickel as governor in 1990. Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

The connection between Palin and this whack-nut group of Alaskan successionists has been mentioned but not mined. I think the Iranian connection is rich.



And while our Candidate is doing well demonstrating his character (and I agree that he is) by not joining McCain on the dark side, it is left for us to make the argument.



And it is completely irrelevant to me whether it is fair to the Barracuda and her family to hold them accountable, since she "wouldn't blink."

Palin Flow Chart

This is up at several places, including at Sullivan's blog, which is where I found it. This is the original source.

Very funny.



p.s. Blogging will be spotty. My laptop is still in the hospital.

Pause for a Chuckle

My laptop is headed to the doctor for what I hope will turn out NOT to be major surgery. Send good thoughts.

In the meantime, help push this around, from Sarah Silverman. Very funny.

Progressive Solutions

There have been no shortage of economists who have declared their opposition to the now-failed bailout. Perhaps they helped make some more confident in opposing the measure than I was.

A few have put forward alternative solutions, and at least now they have time to be considered.

This post by Meteor Blades as DKos is a good place to start. He's done his homework and it's full of authoritative links.

The Leadership of John McCain

Where to start?

At the beginning, where the drama queen of the campaign pulled one of the most notable political stunts in history to place himself in the center of negotiations -- and had no small hand in causing them to fail?

Or in the middle, where he gave himself premature credit for having revived the deal he screwed up (via Politico).

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.

“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”

McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.

“That's not leadership. That's watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.

Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior policy adviser, told reporters on a conference call that McCain "dedicated the past week" to addressing the problem but made "a conscious decision not to attract attention to John McCain."

Why not just start at the end, this afternoon, after the complete and abject failure of the Republican candidate to deliver on his brag. The master of chutzpah himself:

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to fix the problem."

Doesn't it just make your head spin? Only a Republican could deliver lines like that. Blame everything on your opponent and then admonish your audience not to assign blame!

Or maybe I just misunderstood. Maybe the "don't blame" time doesn't begin until all his campaign's press releases blaming Obama have been sent, or until after this:

(Warning! You are about to encounter the most nauseating pile of shit passing for spin that I have ever seen. Those taking high blood pressure medication may want to pass.)

Chickens Home Roosting

I have been unable to blog this week because I didn't even know what to say. Like many on the left, I have been outraged by this extortion of the US taxpayer by the fat, greedy pigs that created this mess, yet unsure if this so-called bailout wasn't, in fact, necessary.

Right or wrong, however, it's clear that the Bush Administration's chickens have come home to roost. The only rational explanation for what happened today is that the American people, and the majority of Congressional members, simply do not believe Bush when he declares a crisis.

This is the natural fallout from having shredded one's own credibility through eight years of lies.

Things You Need to Read

On this financial bailout proposal:

This from Krugman.

This from Chris Bowers.

I'm Back and Pissed

I have been on a self-imposed moratorium from the news for a week. Other than a quick glance at the NY Times front page at Starbucks one day, which sent me into immediate shrieks of rage, I refused to allow the outrage that masquerades as our government interfere with a planned vacation with the womenfriends of my life. My aforementioned reaction to what I did get a glimpse of only reinforced that decision.

So I leave gasping about the bailout of AIG, which came on the heels of the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which came of the heels of the bailout of Bear Stearns, and I come back to THIS?!



The legislation being moved forward by the Administration is breathtaking in the scope of power being shifted to the Secretary of the Treasury. The bill essentially undermines the entire "power of the purse" granted to the Legislative branch and cedes it to an Executive Appointee!

I will definitely have more the say about this when I've had a chance to catch up.

Taking a break

I will be traveling for the next week and postings, if there are any, will be sporadic. Check back on the 25th.

Hostage Taxpayers

I only occasionally post on economics, because I consider myself generally unqualified to have an intelligent opinion. And whenever I do, I always start with that disclaimer.

But the latest bailout of AIG, announced just tonight, has sent me over the edge. We are all standing around like deer with our eyes caught in the headlights while this Administration, on behalf of taxpayers for several generations, turns the economy of this country into some twisted kind of socialized capitalism: privatized gain and socialized risk.

Those 5%, who have gotten fat at the trough of the Bush Administration (the ones McCain will continue to favor,) are like terrorists standing in the middle of our public square wrapped in suicide vests. “Too big to fail” are the words on the suicide note. “You give me your money or I will kill you all.”

This really pisses me off.

Because of course we have to give in. And of course we can have no impact on these decisions because our Congressional leadership has abdicated all of that decision-making to the Treasury and Wall Street. And we are supposed to accept this because we aren’t qualified to have an opinion.

We are only qualified to pay the bill.

And maybe the “experts” are right. Maybe we are currently faced with no options, but I am sick of picking up the freaking bill while other people get rich. Where does it end?

This is going to cost us some of the best hopes for any upcoming administration. On top of the enormous financial pit dug by the current administration, and not even counting the “off books” cost of two wars, how in the world ANY next administration going to be able to afford to do anything?

And another thing……

Do you notice that another result of this debacle is that the companies that have survived are getting bigger?

So we can have even more companies that are too big to fail?

WTF?

Palin as a Feminist Nightmare

I have not always been a fan of Rebecca Traister, but her recent nightmares feel very familiar to me and many of my friends. A taste:

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

In this "Handmaid's Tale"-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we're witnessing "a new creation ... of the feminist ideal," the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it's now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: "put a skirt on." "I want her watching my kids," says Deutsch. "I want her laying next to me in bed."

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party's nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

What's at stake

It's easy to forget that it's just the soul of the country at stake here.

First in a WaPo series into the 4th branch of government under Cheney:

The command center of "the president's program," as Addington usually called it, was not in the White House. Its controlling documents, which gave strategic direction to the nation's largest spy agency, lived in a vault across an alley from the West Wing [7] -- in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the east side of the second floor, where the vice president headquartered his staff.

The vault was in EEOB 268, Addington's office. Cheney's lawyer held the documents, physical and electronic, because he was the one who wrote them. New forms of domestic espionage were created and developed over time in presidential authorizations that Addington typed on a Tempest-shielded computer across from his desk [8].

It is unlikely that the history of U.S. intelligence includes another operation conceived and supervised by the office of the vice president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had "no idea," he said, that the presidential orders were held in a vice presidential safe. An authoritative source said the staff secretariat, which kept a comprehensive inventory of presidential papers, classified and unclassified, possessed no record of these. [emphasis added]

Get it? The Office of the President had NO RECORD of a Presidential Order authorizing the most sweeping expansion of domestic surveillance authority in history.

This is the danger of electing Presidents who are essentially tools of the neocons and wingnuts who wield them. Dick Cheney was, for all intents and purposes, the 43rd President of the United States.

Even the Supreme Court didn't choose him.

[UPDATE]

McJoan at DKos reviews a new book by James Pfiffiner with more on the subject of this dramatic expansion of Executive authority, and why it so threatens our Constitution:

--He created military commissions entirely within the executive branch and in doing so ignored U.S. laws that provided authority and procedures for establishing military commissions;

--He used the term "enemy combatant" to exempt the government from granting persons so labeled legal and constitutional rights;

--He denied the writ of habeas corpus to U.S. citizens as well as other detainees suspected of terrorism;

--He suspended the Geneva Conventions, which, because they were agreed to in a treaty, are the "supreme Law of the Land," according to Article VI of the Constitution;

--He authorized the interrogation of detainees using techniques that most of the world considers torture, and which violate the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law;

--He ordered the National Security Agency to monitor the communications of Americans without a warrant as required by FISA; and

--He asserted the sweeping right to ignore more than 1,000 provisions of public law because he deemed them to be in conflict with his authority as president.

A Day to ACT

Here are two items I am asking you to help spread around today. As part of a DKos campaign, the idea is to send these to people you suspect of falling victim to the lies and deceit of the McCain campaign. First, a video:



Then, here is The NY Times calling McCain out. A taste:

Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his “Straight Talk” image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

“I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that’s where they have the best advantage to win,” said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who has since had a falling out with the White House. “If they stay up at 10,000 feet, they don’t.”

Up is Down

I have always loved Garrison Keillor:

So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

Pork and Pork

This from Josh Marshall is very, very good. Let's help pass it around.

Don't Elect Liars

It has been almost amusing to listen to reporters from venues as diverse as NPR and CNN acting surprised that Sarah Palin continues each day to repeat the same lie ("I said to Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks'. If we want that bridge we'll build it ourselves.")

But these are today's Republicans. Because the press has repeatedly confirmed that the statement is untrue (some have even used the "l" word!), they seem to expect Palin to do what past spinners have done: use different phrasing, tighten the boundaries, do something to create some wiggle room for herself instead of continuing to repeat bald-faced lies.

But not these Republicans. These Republicans have figured out that they can completely subvert the traditional power of the press by just going around them. They have figured out that at long as they have powerful enough marketing and enough corresponding echo chambers to amplify the message, it doesn't matter if the entire message is built on lies. They have been perfecting this for at least 20 years and the Iraq war is only the bloodiest consequence so far.

Hunter at DKos is one of my favorite writers on the web. Always spot-on; always insightful. You should read the whole thing, but here is a taste.

For Republicans, there is no longer any moral taboo whatsoever against lying outright. The only relevant question is whether the lie is effective -- not whether it should have been done in the first place.

[snip]

So what of it, if Sarah Palin says crooked things with a straight face? Name me one Republican who will object. Name me one -- just ONE -- diehard conservative who will be angry at the lie, instead of praising her for it. To hell with facts, there is another election to be won.

This is why I consider the Republican Party to be, at this point, a wrecked party. There is no self-consistent philosophy other than the acquisition and protection of their own power: there are certainly no moral or ethical boundaries that the party will internally enforce. … You can lie, you can staff your government with morons and ideologues, you can give a speech saying one thing while doing the exact opposite (a Bush specialty, in his State of the Union speeches.) We bemoan constantly the Democrats' failure to keep a unified front, in order to pass a more meaningful agenda -- but you would be hard pressed to find even a single, lone Republican in Washington willing to buck the moral collapse of their own party. Such people once existed: they were voted out of office.

Don't elect liars.

Shameful and Shameless

Reaction is already starting to the Repubs shameless exploitation of 911 tonight. Via Hunter at DKos, a media post that will set the tone, is my prediction.

A Question of Temperment

A Requiem for Moderate Republican Women

With all the talk about glass ceilings these days, and with the Republicans having achieved something the Democrats did 24 years ago, I think it is time to extend our formal condolences to those fine Republican leaders who have had their place in the universe demonstrated so unequivocally: Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe, Christie Todd Whitman, and others -- all Republican women with much better qualifications than Palin who happen to be pro-choice moderates.

The Republican party has become dependent for its survival on the army of the religious right, and no pro-choice candidate will ever be considered viable as long as this is true. The party will continue to marginalize itself in that way (are we really going to elect someone who wants to teach creationism next to science?!) And so be it.

So to all those moderate Republican women out there -- we welcome you aboard should you decide to play in an arena that has no ceiling.

The Mommy Wars

Interviewed on NPR today, David Brooks responded to questions about Gov. Palin by saying "Oh, I thought we were over the mommy wars."

Once again progressives, and feminists in particular, get to choke till we vomit on the hypocrisy of the Republican right. It appears that all the Christian wingnuts are rallying around Gov. Palin, and suggesting that anyone who criticizes her, her choices, or her qualifications, is sexist. This is a logical extension of the enormous outcry on the part of Christian Conservatives at the media treatment of Hillary Clinton.

Or did you miss that?

So we have Phyllis Shafley, founder of the Eagle Forum, “Patton” in the mommy wars, the woman who led an entire battalion of preachers and pundits and psychologists in the second-wave assault against any woman who had the audacity to suggest that women were equal to men, making a statement for the NY Times today defending Palin’s ability to juggle her particular family’s need with her skyrocketing career.

“It changes your life and gives you a different perspective on the world,” said Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative organizer who helped defeat the equal rights amendment nearly three decades ago.

“People who don’t have children or who have only one or two are kind of overwhelmed at the notion of five children,” Ms. Schlafly continued, mentioning that she had raised six children and run for Congress as well. “I think a hard- working,well-organized C.E.O. type can handle it very well.”

But Phyllis, for years (and YEARS) you told any woman wanting to have a career (like yours, perhaps?) that they should wait until after their children were grown, just like you did. You charged any of us who lacked the freedom or inclination to be stay-at-home moms with the utmost selfishness – putting our careers ahead of our family.

And you claimed great backup: Teen pregnancy, the divorce rate, and any number of other social ills were laid at our feet – all the fault of those uppity women – by countless Dobsons, Fallwells and Reeds. And these are not the judgments of three decades ago, they are the same judgments levied today. Remember the reaction when Jamie Lynn Spears became pregnant? If women learned to take responsibility for every stupid decision made on the part of a teenage child, it’s because the Christian conservative right spent the last 25 years telling us it was so.

So I know that we are all progressive feminists, and have evolved beyond using the weapons of the right against them as is their due.

But I would like to figure out how to make them choke as much on their own words as I choke hearing them.

Bleeding a Crisis

It makes me sick to see John McCain making every political advantage of today's hurricane in Louisiana.

First of all, his mere presence is posturing, made even more disgusting because of his record of actual behavior during and after Katrina. (Thanks to Bob Geiger.) He has no role there. Talk about presumptious?!

Then has a campaign event to accuse Obama of putting politics ahead of the country by having a campaign event.

Then Bushie actually lets him be in on a conference call of all affected governors! Has any other sitting President put himself in the middle of a campaign this way?

The Republicans are whores and hypocrites (with apologies to any actual prostitutes.)

Problem Solved

(CNN) – A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms.

"So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime," John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.

"The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Vegan Terrorists

Apparently, the Minneapolis Joint Task Force on Terrorism recruited people last spring to go underground at vegan potlucks.

No one could make this stuff up.

And the inevitable result of this sort of bat-shit craziness becomes ugly pretty quickly.

The Republicans can't have it both ways: They are either using the weapons of war against a group of political opponents, or they actually believe a hippie peace group poses a serious terrorist threat.

On an individual level, that kind of thinking would be labeled as paranoid-schizophrenic.

And if we understood the entire neo-con power structure to be engaged in a collective paranoid-psychotic break, it would help explain a lot.

Hostages for Choice

Carly Fiorina has is backwards when she claims that the Democratic party has held women "hostage" over the issue of choice.

It's the other way around. It's the Republicans -- who have made the assault on a woman's right to choose a central mission for the last 20 years, and who have brought themselves very close to victory with recent Supreme Court appointments -- that have forced any self-respecting woman who wants to maintain control over her own body to vote Democratic.

A Thrill Junkie in Charge?

I spent much of my morning surveying both the MSM, designated “pundits”, and the on-line community vis-à-vis the selection of Palin by McCain. Dems and progressives are generally delighted and having fun expressing outrage (feigned and otherwise,) intellectually honest conservatives are aghast, and –as might be expected – the designated members of the echo chamber (Gingrich and his ilk) are all in false congratulation mode over the “boldness” of his choice.

My thoughts move quickly from the obvious (clearly a political choice from a man who has put the perceived needs of his campaign ahead of governance issues for our country) to the less obvious: what this says about a man who has, indeed, faced death, and who should know better than to taunt the reaper.

As at least one conservative writer commented, the ultimate hubris behind this decision shows that John McCain clearly believes that he doesn’t need a qualified vice-president to serve in any meaningful way the day after the election. He has no intention of making room for even an Al Gore, much less a Dick Cheney. Those advisory roles will no doubt be played by the neo-conservative Feiths and Liebermans in his circle.

But even beyond that, McCain has either never for one moment considered the possibility that he might die in office – or he truly doesn’t give a shit about the future of this country. Those are the only options available for a man who has argued that the U.S. faces some of the gravest threats in its history.

So if we assume that the latter is not true, then we must examine the former: that he has failed to achieve the central benefit available to anyone who has brushed up against their own mortality: the knowledge that life is fragile and can be stolen in a heartbeat; the understanding that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

This fits well with other things we know about McCain: That in addition to his time as a POW, he has crashed at least two airplanes in circumstances that were also life-threatening, and that he likes to “roll the dice” so recklessly that his campaign has barred him from casinos for the duration. What we have hear folks is a thrill-junkie, someone who delights in flipping the bird to the so-called fickle finger of fate.

That may make for a great personal narrative. It might even be amusing and novel on the political stage. But is it really the temperament Americans want in their President? The high-roller may be fun to watch at the table, because none of us has to go home with him at the end of the night when he loses.

But the thought of this man – and that attitude – at the helm of US foreign policy should send shivers up the spine of any thinking citizen.

Best so far

As he did last night on CNN, Paul Begala takes the sharpest knife so far to the McCain campaign over their selection of Palin.

But that's just from the Democratic perspective. Sullivan picks up one of the more intellectually honest Republican reactions.

But I think I like this one best. It's from one of Sullivan's conservative readers, who puts it on a broader landscape. He sees it as the final demise of the whole nasty mess that is movement conservatism.

A Gift for the Season

Lots of what you need to know about the new Republican VP nominee.

There IS Hope for America

From the DNC. These guys are from Missouri!

P.S. Didn't Hillary Rock?!

Deconstructing Stupid

This kind of shit really pisses me off. Enough that I went searching through the archives there, looking back over David Ignatius’ constant bemoaning of partisan politics when they were being played most effectively by Republicans. I couldn’t find anything! Imagine that!

All of this began when the Republicans decided to impeach a President for lying about a blow-job “because we can” as Newt Gingrich explained at the time. That began the era of truly ugly, partisan power politics that Ignatius so bemoans. Nixon may have started it with the racial coding of his campaign and the dirty tricks of his administration, but it has reached its gross and ugly fruition in this Bush Administration. Never in the history of this country has one party so abused the power under its control to achieve its agenda, both at the Executive level through power-corrupted cabinet officials and through its legislative leadership and behavior. And when the American people finally woke up and elected a Democratic majority in 2002, suddenly a supermajority of 60 became necessary to get anything done, because issues from small to large became subject to filibuster. This was a breathtaking change in how our government had ever functioned up until that time and we accept it now as a given standard.

This is what the Republicans have done to our government.

But in the face of the continuing Rovian bile that substitutes for reason in Republican campaigns, Democrats shouldn’t fight back?

The “Get Even” bunch?! You’ve got to be kidding me! The Democratic leadership of this last Congress could easily have drawn up Articles of Impeachment against this President, and even the least informed citizen could have helped to write the list of crimes. Yet stupidly, IMHO, they believed themselves faced with the choice of actually pushing forward some legislation that would benefit real people, or spend their two years trying to hold the Bush administration accountable.

So spare me the post-partisan lullabye. The Republicans continue to demonstrate every day that the only ball they know how to play is hardball.

Game on.

h/t to Glenzilla, who picks it up as part of a larger theme.

Spread it Around

I am finally comforted to see that the Obama campaign has both the skill and will to fight back. The only question I have is: Why only run this in Atlanta?

Worse than FISA

My computer is still not back, but I am braving the waters of suicidally-slow response to post a link to HuffPost that you will (hopefully) be hearing more about.

A bit of background:

In case you have not made your living negotiating the sausage-making process of government, you may not realize how important "rules-making" is. Many of the most horrific government policies have come not through the legislative process, but through "rules making" that would never survive legislative review

I live with this each day in my non-profit environment. If you get to write the definition of "homeless" for example, you can instantly erase huge portions of the homeless population! Did you know that most homeless kids are not homeless? As long as they have ten friends willing to let them spend the night three nights over the course of a month they're all good!

But I digress....

FISA was a battle lost. And the almost inevitable consequence of failing to check the erosion of rights is........

more erosion of rights.

And this time, all we get is a hearing, not a vote.

Blog Interrupted

My trusty laptop has become very unstable this week, and is in the process of having herself wiped out in preparation for a reconfiguration (just in case she doesn't survive!)

I hope to be back in a couple of days.

Signing off for the Weekend

I made several posts tonight, and so hope to provide sufficient amusement for the weekend. I'm off to Milwaukee to deliver one Angel and cuddle another.

Calling McCain Out

I think it's self-evident that the on-line left has had a positive influence on the MSM -- to the extent that it has had any influence at all. If nothing else we have called them out on their stupidity, their willingness to be used at tools, and their general abandonment of the public responsibilities of the 4th Estate.

But in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, Joe Klein has decided to morph into someone who has been pretty wonderful lately. Here he calls McCain out.

Great Snark

I have to give Andrew Sullivan full credit for finding this one, and for a post so aptly named.

Unfit for Service

While we all listen to McCain ratchet up the collective testerone level on the issue of Georgia, I think it’s a good time to remind people of the nasty side of this man who wants the power to make war.

This article from April apparently caused a bit of a stir in the McCain camp when it first ran. They were actually afraid it might catch on in the media and cause them trouble. This is perhaps the first time they under-estimated the loyalty of their media base.

I’ll just give you the highlights, which begin with an accounting of the one incident that has been publicized, a 1992 encounter with fellow Republican Charles Grassley:

It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."

McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.

Wow. No punches. I guess that makes it okay. A second Republican weighs in:

Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."

A spokesman for McCain's campaign said he would be unavailable for an interview on the subject of his temper. But over the years, no one has written more intimately about McCain's outbursts than McCain himself. "My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern," he wrote in a 2002 memoir. "I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's."

That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges, does not often serve the pubic’s interest. Ya think?

…"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone who I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life."

He defied authority, ridiculed other students, sometimes fought. The nicknames hung on him at Episcopal mocked his hair-trigger feistiness: "Punk" and "McNasty."

And lest we think that McCain has, as the oldest candidate ever for President, has finally mastered his demon:

In 2007, during a heated closed-door discussion with Senate colleagues about the contentious immigration issue, he angrily shouted a profanity at a fellow Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, an incident that quickly found its way into headlines...

Reports recently surfaced of Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, taking offense when McCain called him "boy" once too often during a 2006 meeting, a story that McCain aides confirm while playing down its importance. "Renzi flared and he was prickly," McCain strategist Mark Salter said. "But there were no punches thrown or anything."

Catch the persistent framing here? McCain must have a reputation for actually coming to blows with people who tick him off, if anything less is just not a big deal.

Salter, who has co-written five books with McCain that, among other things, explore the origins of his feistiness, said he thinks McCain's temper first became an issue after an incident in 1989, during McCain's first term in the Senate.

The nomination of a beleaguered John Tower to become defense secretary was already in trouble when Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a conservative Democrat who later became a Republican, helped doom it by voting against Tower. A furious McCain, believing that Shelby had reneged on a commitment of support, accosted him, got within an inch of his nose and screamed at him. News of the incident swiftly spread around the Capitol….

Part of the paradox of McCain is that many of the old targets of his volcanic temper are now his campaign contributors. Former Phoenix mayor Paul Johnson is one example. In 1992, during a private meeting of Arizona officials over a federal land issue that affected the state, a furious McCain openly questioned Johnson's honesty. "Start a tape recorder -- it's best when you get a liar on tape," McCain said to others in the meeting, according to an account of their "nose-to-nose, testosterone-filled" argument that Johnson later provided to reporters. But Johnson, who once was quoted as saying that he thought McCain was "in the area of being unstable," today says that he has mellowed…

Wow, well that’s a comfort.

And this is the person that polls show more American’s feel confident in trusting our military to than Barack Obama, the cool-headed, never-seems-to-get flustered man of compromise?! Have we lost our collective minds?

If George Bush – who was never more than a cheerleader and a pretend cowboy – can wreak such havoc on the world and the US reputation in it – just imagine what could happen with this hair-triggered bully in charge!

The Democrats need to refresh the mushroom-cloud ad that took Goldwater out of contention – and this time, it would be more justified.