Lemme Get This Straight

Despite having a postponement for the Independence Day recess giving hope to freedom loving bloggers, when the Congress gets back in session the Senate will be proceeding on the FISA revisions that gives President Bush exactly what he wants, no doubt capitulating to his demand that we won't be safe and can't fight terrorists unless the Telecommunication Giants are given immunity for spying on Americans illegally.

This move was in no small part deemed a procedural requirement by the Democratic Leadership, Mr. Ried and now you Mr. Obama (yes you ... ), due to the necessity of getting other business done without more GOP obstructionism:

• like Senator Dodd's housing bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• the new GI bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching Gulf Coast and Midwest flood recovery funds to the usual off-budget War Supplemental (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching an extension of unemployment benefits to the War Supplemental (which will still be vetoed) and,
• fixing Medicare so doctors don't get a pay cut (which might just become law)

We give up on FISA's repudiation of the Fourth Amendment, and in exchange the Republicans will still call us weak on terror and the GOP Congress Critters can blame President 23% for no GI Bill, no relief for flood victims, no more unemployment benefits and maybe see doctors throughout the land re-bill their Medicare patients for lost fees and up their rates to everyone else to make up the difference -- giving what's left of the Republicans in Congress (the few, the proud, the very afraid) a legitimate means of distancing themselves from Still POTUS Bush.

Feh! The Potomac Village is a place where only lies have any currency whatsoever. The powerful and their entourage trading in what can be foisted on rubes who have no clue and zero interest in their world.

You know, for all my frothing at the infuriating way Washington has been so completely ass-backwards about so much for so long, with what's coming down the pike economically it really doesn't matter what those pompous pontificators do, and it's sadly clear that Cheney's oil gambit in Iraq, the one Rupert Murdoch ventured would bring $20/barrel crude has failed, miserably.

We Have Met The Enemy

Get your lobbying resume tweaked, Steny. After we've purged the body politic of the miscreants with "R"s next to their names, we're coming after you.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Discrimination

Now that Hillary Clinton has “suspended” her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, millions of angry, white women are turning their disappointment-led ire toward Barack Obama and assuming that it is his responsibility to heal the party:

Obama is the victor, now let's see what he does. The burden is on him as it should be.

Now let's see if Obama can deliver. He has much to do and undo. Yes, his unfortunate comments "Hillary, you are likeable enough" spoke volumes. He was some work to do.

First, let’s get one thing straight: Barack Obama did nothing to Hillary Clinton or her supporters that he should or could undo.

• One Democratic candidate said that the Republican presidential candidate was obviously qualified to be president and suggested that the other Democratic candidate was not.

• One Democratic candidate repeatedly claimed that the other Democratic candidate might not be able to beat the Republican.

• One Democratic candidate derided the other Democratic candidate’s capabilities (and, by extension, that candidate’s supporters) as nothing more than empty rhetoric.

• One Democratic candidate’s campaign was dismissive of the other Democratic candidate’s numerous state primary/caucus wins.

• One Democratic candidate’s campaign implied that racial bias was behind their successes and failures.

• One Democratic candidate tried to change the party’s rules mid-race to boost their campaign.

• The other Democratic candidate said that candidate one was, “likable enough”.

In fact, Obama only brought up his opponent in response to the most unfair and divisive rhetoric (see above), rhetoric that is dangerous to the party and the country come November.

This TPM reader and Hillary supporter at least gets it half right:

She did so much "just right" and could have won it had she not had the rough treatment from the media.

This person at least understands who was unfair to Hillary. But it is a wild stretch of the imagination to say that she “could have won it” if not for the misogyny and Clinton-animus displayed by a number of prominent media gasbags. In fact, backlash against this unfair treatment may have been a driving force behind Clinton supporters and is widely credited for her late, come-from-behind victory in the New Hampshire primary. Her campaign might have been over many months ago had she not won that contest.

Finally, this Clinton supporter lobs one additional insult at Obama supporters:

If there are those Democrats who still feel it is necessary to denigrate Senator Clinton and her run for the Presidency, I would ask them to think about the change they advocate and the no more politics as usual. The only way to say no to the Washington politics of the past 20 years is to stop hating and start moving forward.

Every man that has lived with a woman knows about resentment built on perceived slights. And it isn’t surprising that this Clinton supporter should project her resentment on Obama supporters. But the truth of the matter is that most Obama supporters seem heartsick (perhaps I’m projecting somewhat here), not hateful, about what the Clinton campaign did to the Clintons and yearn for the party to unite against our common enemies.

And, incredibly, this last Clinton supporter seems to think that saying “no to the Washington politics of the past 20 years” requires Democrats to “stop hating” when it should be obvious, particularly to a Clinton supporter, that the politics of the past 20 years has been all about Republican hatred of liberals and Democrats and the abject failure of the corporate media. It will take everything liberal Democrats can do to overcome this deep ignorance and mass media turpitude and teach even many Democrats who our real enemies are.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Obama, Large And In Charge

Absorb this. One day after clinching the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama informs Howard Dean can keep his job then tells the entire country that his rules against accepting lobbyist and PAC money will now be the policy for the entire Democratic Party.

Boom. He laid down the law. Have you ever seen a politician keep a campaign promise before he got elected.

You might wonder whether McCain will follow suit, literally putting his money where his mouth is despite hypocritically being up to his neck in lobbyist running virtually every aspect of his campaign. It certainly looks good from a PR standpoint anyway.

The real answer is that even if McCain wanted to tell the RNC to stop funding itself through lobbyist funds, he can't. He's not the head of his party.

McCain would have to get permission from George and Dick first -- and those two would probably laugh him out of the room.

From his late night meeting with Hillary, reaching out to his chief rival consistent with his reputation and ditching the press in the process impressed me as well. Taken together with organizing a 50 State grass-roots organization integrating traditional self-important high rollers, a true grass-roots presence and a buzz on every college campus, plus utilizing online folks better than anyone else (even though us Edwards supporters owned D-Kos up until February, the Obamacons gave us fits, and no one could match them on FaceBook and the other social networks) -- the guy's management abilities are exceptional.

I was at best a skeptic, but his fundraising prowess, unheard of numbers of doners, huge crowd that were never disappointed, all speak to one thing for me: if he can run his campaign this well, motivating so many people of all walks of life, the nation and the world will be in good hands if we elect this take-charge guy as our boss.

Don't Sweat It, uh ... Sweetie?

Avendon reminded me of one of the Raisons d'Entre for the continuation of Hillary Clinton's campaign:

"I think she's running all the bases," I said. "She's the first woman in history to win a state primary, and she's won a lot more. She's running pretty close to the front-runner. It's a major historic moment." And the more I think about it, the more I think it has to be part of what's driving her. There's a bit of climbing the mountain because it's there, and wanting to be able to stand up in the end and say something like, "Never let it be said that a woman can't go the distance." It doesn't matter if someone else breaks the tape, just as long as she finishes the race. (And think how she'd feel if something did happen before Denver to tank Obama and she hadn't.) I've been unhappy with a lot of things about Hillary, but there's a part of me that kind of admires that. Because she wouldn't just be doing that for herself - she's doing it for every little girl who was ever told she can't.

Now that reminded me of something awkwardly pointed out by her husband -- Barack Obama wasn't the first black man to win a State's presidential primary; and this historical situation was elaborated upon by an even blunter instrument in the form of Chris Matthews -- black men we granted the vote via the 15th Amendment fully 50 years before women were enfranchised via the 19th Amendment.

From an historical perspective, Hillary has already accomplished more politically than any woman before her. There will be more, a lot more who follow the trail she's blazed. Obama has done more than any black man who came before him, but only marginally unless and until he accepts the nomination at the Democratic Convention. At that point, it can be said that both reached threshholds of truly historic proportions.

And that's saying something folks.

And we're going to do a lot better than that with the assclowns the GOP has put up for the sacrifice.

Did The House Of Representatives Just End The War?

Not quite, but this is certainly movement in the right direction.

Today, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting 'present'. They are trying to hand off the war to the Democrats, but even Democrats were able to increase their 'no' vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed. In a separate bill, Republicans also voted against timelines, for torture, and accountability for military contractors, including various elements of a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. This bill passed with 227 votes; last year, it passed with only 218 votes, for a gain of 9.

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs. This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans.

It's nice to know that Congress has finally discovered it controls the
purse-strings, even if it hasn't figured out how they're supposed to
use them.



We've been assured by Matt Stoller that the Senate will put money for Baghdad bullets back in the bill and give the C+ Augustus enough cash to pay for more mayhem in Mesopotamia. I'm not sure how that works since the Constitution states that all revenue bills must originate in the House, not the Senate. But who pays attention to that quaint old document anymore.

All of this is begging another veto by the time it gets to the White House. And of course, that's all part of the game I guess. The sad reality is that this game costs lives every single day it plays out.

Obama Grabs the Megaphone

I found this item from Greg Sargent to be very interesting and perhaps with very large consequences down the line: ...

A few weeks ago, Media Matters' David Brock announced to great fanfare that he was taking over Progressive Media USA, a third-party group that would, he vowed, raise $40 million for ads to soften up John McCain in advance of the general election.

Now the group is quietly shuttering those efforts with barely a whimper.

Barack Obama's fundraising team has been quietly putting out word to major donors that they didn't want any money to go to such third-party groups. Instead, they wanted the cash to go to the Obama campaign, so Obama advisers could be in sole control of the campaign's message.

It's a bold move on the part of the Obama campaign. No guarantee that it'll work to his benefit. On the face of it seems counter-intuitive. But I appreciate the risk he's taking -- it could pay off big.

• It basically reinforces his message that he's not part of the same old politics, e.g., smearing your opponent by standing by the side of the road while someone else does it.


• Also, by giving his campaign all the money to control, it makes his megaphone that much bigger.


• Lastly, it highlights the difference between him and St. John McCain on campaign finance reform. Essentially it highlights the fact that McCain skirting the law that has his own name on it.

P.S. David Brock is probably the closest thing our generation has to producing our own Whittaker Chambers. Look it up and tell me if I'm not right.

Bush Breaks Godwin's Law

UPDATE: Biden calls BULLSHIT!

I don't recall Barack Obama offering Osama bin Laden the Sudetenland (or a slice of the Afghan/Pakistan border). Did anyone catch Obama offering Hamas any Israeli territory in exchange for peace, or Hezbollah their own section of Lebanon to call their own?

No.

The fact is, Obama has said exactly the opposite:

"Obama and McCain have the same position on Hamas —no talks, no recognition, no outreach."

But mere facts have never, ever prevented George Bush and his crime family from creating a myth out of whole cloth and fighting the strawman with every ounce of venom their being.

It's not just that George Bush implied the Democrats are no better than Nazi appeasers with this bit of nonsense (via) before the Israeli Knesset ...

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you.

... it is an outright lie!

Unless the Dickhead in Chief is talking about Ron Paul, no legitimate office seeker in this country wants to break ties with Israel. No one is trying to appease, or psychoanalyze, or give aid and comfort to extremists and terrorists -- unless you count John McCain sucking up to homophobic, bigoted preachers ... or listening to Don Rumsfeld's solution for using terror to increase GOP loyalty.

Bottom Line On Spending Bills

The War Funding Bill

"However, President Bush has announced his opposition to any bill that contains veterans' benefits and unemployment insurance in addition to the war funds."

The Farm Bill

"House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached final agreement on a new farm bill that will spend close to $300 billion on nutrition, conservation, energy and farm subsidy programs over the next five years, but administration officials immediately announced that President Bush will veto it."

What perplexes me is not that the C+ Augustus in the White House hates anything rational or that helps anyone on a personal level -- like tuition in exchange for years spent in a combat zone or increasing nutritional programs for poor kids, or funding alternative fuel programs so someday we won't have to send our emaciated children to fight for oil.

No, what perplexes me is that our so-called representatives would go along with someone 71% of the nation can no longer stand and not laugh at his puny veto threats -- even those dastardly "Blue-Dogs" are still doing Bush's his bidding.

Ugh!

Fat Lady Dress Rehearsal Report

Clinton vows to stay in race "until there's a nominee."

Which apparently will be in about two weeks.

"Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

"It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race."

Democracy is a great thing, and generally that's that's what we participate in when selecting a nominee for a major political party. However, by now even those who didn't pay attention to your social studies teachers understand that the primaries are only an exercise in representative democracy in a pro forma way.

What with "Super Delegates," rules made and broken behind closed doors, campaign finance laws thwarted, "street money," and the inordinate influence of the corporate media, you can't miss the fact that there's a lot more afoot than simply one-person, one-vote.

And that's okay. It's all good because it all moves towards something more important that which candidate "wins." It builds a consensus.

As in most things in America, it starts and ends with money. It takes millions to even get a foothold in the early primary states, and the first major contest that the media reports on is months before any straw polls are taken. The end of the first quarter financial reporting deadline is examined with a fine tooth comb -- even to the point of documenting just how much a candidate spends on combing his or her hair -- much to John Edwards chagrin.

Until we found out about $400 hair cuts, we also assumed that Hillary Clinton had an enormous if not insurmountable advantage in cash, especially since she was able to transfer millions from her Senate campaign to her presidential run. But when the numbers came out the narrative changed when Obama proved what a formidable fund-raiser he was.

The chattering class chattered, the donors took note, the Clinton machine was vulnerable! At this point many of the super delegates who weren't with Hillary from the start froze and we all watched the back and forth as momentum built for Obama. He won Iowa, Hillary a distant third, and the chattering class chattered about momentum and polls that would crown a new inevitability in New Hampshire.

And they were wrong, and they were burned, and the supers remained frozen, and the battle was on because the people hadn't made up their minds. Burned once, the media discounted Obama's huge South Carolina win. Looking for trends, examining demographics in exit polls for an explanation, not trusting conventional or unconventional wisdom and astonished at how evenly matched the talking heads sounded to each other when they talked to themselves, they froze.

The supers hid, the money flowed, and after Tsunami Tuesday, with only a slight lead in states won and delegates awarded, nobody was ready to come close to declaring an advantage even though half the nation had spoken. By then both Obama and McCain had only won two more states than their second-place rivals. But where Obama only edged Clinton out by 12 delegates that day, McCain claimed 401 more delegates in a Party that only has about half as many at stake as the Democrats select via popular vote. (Oh yeah, they have super delegates too.)

Then as now, with Obama's win-streak prior to their tie in Texas and Hillary's win in Ohio -- a win big enough to freeze the narrative once again about anything being "clear" although even then Obama's lead was formidable enough that we knew she needed a miracle -- there was no consensus among Democrats who we would (or should) get behind.

"Winning" the primaries does not equate to a winning candidate in the fall. A united party is what it takes. If it were simply just about winning and not building a consensus, conventions would still be free-for-alls and not marketing devices. Stage one was the media declaring a victor, giving the supers cover upon coming out even if deciding against the indications of their own constituents.

Now, with more undeclared super delegates than pledged delegates at stake in the coming weeks, the dog and pony shows staged for the benefit of us riff-raff who's only power is our vote, is over. The democratic nomination now lies in the hands of those who always controlled things -- the media (who made up their minds as soon as their Grand Poobah Tim Russert declared Obama a winner), the politicians and the big money folks who are as influential as ever.

The party leaders' new roll, including all of the winning and losing candidates, is to form a narrative that will rally us around the winner and bring the losers back into the fold, to wean the media off the horse-race coverage to a more thematic story before they go back to covering this fall's horse race.

For the rest of us, much as you may hate the process that is so far removed from what they taught you about in grammar school, opting out is not an option.

[You can read more of Mark Adams' work at his blog, Dispassionate Liberal]

TIME Shocks With Hillary Epitaph

Karen Tumulty at TIME documents five mistakes Clinton made, and the blogs are abuzz with the incomprehensible lack of a basic understanding of the system by the campaign's favorite scape-goat, Mark Penn.

Naturally, anyone who is paid millions of dollars as a chief campaign adviser should know a thing or two about how this whole nomination thingy works. For instance, you'd think it would just be expected Mark Penn knew about proportional delegate allocation and that unlike the Republicans, Democrats don't have winner-take-all contests.

You'd think, but you'd be wrong. And Hillary was wrong to ever rely on him, let alone put his ugly puss in front of a TV camera.

Atrios has a hard time believing it. Armando, speaking only for himself, is cheered by the "utter demise" of Mark Penn's political career.

"Astonishing," Obsidian Wings

"Amazing," Tapped

"What a Pennhead," Talking Points Memo

"Anything is possible," TPM Election Central

Ironically, despite the smaryness of the traditional practice of the magnanimous winner paying off the debts of a gracious loser in these things, Mark Penn will probably be paid by the candidate for whom his indispensable advice was most helpful -- Barack Obama.

Playing the Race Card

by shep

In the aftermath of Hillary’s holdout win in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, numerous Clinton surrogates are suggesting that Clinton’s wins in “battleground states” mean that Barack Obama’s overwhelming lead in delegates and popular votes should be overturned by Democratic Superdelegates because… why is that again?

Democratic primary elections are decided by, um, Democrats. The Clinton campaign’s argument rests on the premise that if Clinton’s Democratic supporters can’t vote for Hillary, they’ll vote for a Republican.

I hope that the Clinton supporters and the Democratic Superdelegates aren’t as stupid as Hillary Clinton seems to think that they are. Fortunately, so far, they seem to be much smarter.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

A League of Their Own

by shep

”Bowling is a game in which players attempt to score points by…knock[ing] down objects...”

I hope that most people outside CNN and MSNBC and Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, etc., etc., have finally learned what the game is actually all about. It’s our only chance to spare ourselves of falling constantly in their gutter.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

What’s the Difference?

by shep

I wrote the following comment on a right-wing crap-catapulting blog (you know the one) in response to the idea that: 1) no one should be shocked by the tone of the current Democratic presidential nomination campaign (tragically correct) and 2) that all’s fair in war and politics, including attacking Hillary Clinton (mind you, this blogger is a woman) for her gender:

You’re right about the venom in this campaign relative to historical politics – and wrong about just about everything else. This may come a huge shock to you but some political attacks are true and relevant (rational people call them criticisms) and others are not. For example, Hillary Clinton’s female gender may be true but it isn’t relevant. Likewise, what the pastor at Obama’s church said. John Kerry’s windsurfing and “Frenchness”: not relevant. John Kerry’s military record: relevant but completely untrue as rendered by the Swiftvets. What John Hagee, Pat Robertson and other evangenlical nutjobs have said: true but not relevant. John McCain's pandering flip-flop on "agents of intolerance": true and relevant.

I understand that this stuff is way over your head but the important point is that this is not a fucking party game. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed and millions more have had their lives destroyed by American soldiers because of Al Gore’s brown suit and lies about what he said about Love Story and the Internet. Irrelevant and untrue crap catapulted by people who don’t care about the difference for consumption by people who are too stupid to know the difference (you know where you fit in here) has brought this country – the world for that matter – to the brink of catastrophe.

If your point is that mindless partisans are always going to create this sort of corrupt politics and the tragic consequences they may lead to, then: 1) the only responsible reaction for lucid, humane people is to call their bullshit immediately and in no uncertain terms and 2) you are constantly on the wrong side of that particular fence. You’ve made a blog around it.

The reason I’m posting this comment here is that, when I reread it later, I realized something quite sickening: I could easily have been addressing it to practically every major media outlet and gasbag in our entire decrepit Fourth Estate. Take out the word “blog” in the last sentence and replace it with the word “career” and it would work just as well for people like Tim Russert and Chris Mathews. Put in the words “news network” and it applies just as well to CNN or MSNBC. Replace it with “News Program” and it describes FOX News.

You get the ugly, inescapable picture: not only is our mainstream political dialogue gripped by people who refuse to or cannot distinguish between what is true and relevant or irrelevant and false but those people and media are indistinguishable (at least in that regard) from the right-wing propaganda machine. Explains quite a bit, doesn’t it? And none of it very good for our politics or our world.

Update: The reprehensible Chris Matthews spends a significant amount of two segments discussing Barrack Obama’s not-macho enough for Chris bowling form, not what Obama is saying in his campaign or the policies he is proposing as a presidential candidate, and finishes his moronic analysis by basically calling Obama a nappy-headed ho. What a horror show.

[E Pluribus Unum]

Depends on What the Meaning of the Word “Journalist” is.

by shep

The partisan use of the word “bi-partisan” never ends:

“A Senate version of the bill, negotiated with the White House, includes retroactive immunity for telecoms. It passed by a bipartisan vote of 68 to 29 on Feb. 12.”

“The House bill proposes an alternative fix for telecom companies facing big lawsuits: to allow a judge to determine whether the executive branch's claim of the state secrets privilege is legitimate. It passed by a partisan vote of 213 to 197, with all Republicans and 12 Democrats voting in opposition.”

So when all Republicans and some Democrats vote for FISA with all of the president’s fondest wishes, it is “bi-partisan.” But when all Republicans and some Democrats vote against FISA without everything the president wants, it is “partisan.” Got it."

What, oh what, would our ever-serious and professional watchdog journalists do without the White House press release?

[E Pluribus Unum]

Time to Choose

by shep

I don’t envy Hillary Clinton. If you assume, as I do, that she wants what’s best for the country as well as for the Democratic Party she has a tragic choice to make. She has to concede the Democratic nomination for president to Barack Obama.

The simple fact is, there is no way for Hillary to win the nomination without fracturing the Democratic Party and alienating vast numbers of young and independent voters who are ready and excited to pull the lever for a Democrat for their first time. In the process, she will dramatically weaken the Democrat’s chances to win the presidency against John McCain, which is why Republicans such as Rush Limbaugh and Charley Crist and much of the McCain-worshiping, Clinton-hating corporate media is working so hard on her behalf.

And, in the end, even if she were to defeat McCain, her governing coalition would amount to little more than half the Democratic Party, against Obama Democrats, Independents, Republicans and the mass media gasbags.

If she cares for the good of the Democratic Party and the country and the rest of the world, Hillary Clinton has only one choice to make and she has no reason to delay that choice and inflict additional damage on the likely Democratic nominee. Even though this is a relatively bloodless campaign, certainly compared to the nasty, dishonest shit we’re used to seeing from Republicans, and it’s actually (historically) quite early to settle on a nominee, for her to choose otherwise would be a tacit admission that the thing that ultimately matters most to Hillary Clinton, is her own ambition to be president.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

It's A Party For The Party

Super Delegates, Schmooper Delegates. The convention is a long way off.

Please spare me from any more drivel about the public acquiescing to the whims of a party elite being somehow equivalent to Soviet sheeple bowing under pressure from some Politburo:

[...] once the people at large have internalized the notion that it is okay for an elite group of philosopher kings to make decisions for them, then the people have internalized and institutionalized their own oppression.

Yes, just what I need more of, some wise sage explaining why super delegates are so seemingly powerful -- and how it will be the end of us all. Spare me, mm'kay?

Governors, Senators, Congresscritters and members of the DNC (and yes, former Democratic Presidents) get to vote at the party's convention because they ARE the face, the leadership of the Party. They represent the heart and soul of the Party.

They earned it. They get their ticket punched because they did more than you or I did to get a Democrat in office. They did more fundraising, made more phone calls, showed up for more votes, did more organizing and campaigning and spent more time on it than anyone -- because they did it for themselves. It's a perk of office, something to be expected.

How they vote, just like how you vote, is their choice.

If you want that kind of influence, put down the laptop, get your ass down to the board of elections, and run for something. It's a free country -- pretty much anyway.

The Media and Public: You’re Dead to Me

by shep

Ever since Super Tuesday, The Village Gasbags have been so gleeful their faces looked like they might split open over their narrative that moderate, Straightalker McCain, the all-but coronated Republican nominee, was going start his campaign against the silly, confused Democrats who were going undecided all the way to a *gasp* brokered convention where Howard Dean and the Super Delegates would retire to a “smoke-filled backroom” (every idiot in the asylum used the same stupid cliché) where some sort of secret process involving a dead chicken and the severed head of a frog was going to thwart the will of Democratic voters and cause Democrats to lose the election.

Trouble is, nobody bothered to tell Barak Obama, Mike Huckabee and the churlish American voter. Huckabee inexplicably refused to be properly ignored and bow out gracefully and went on to big primary wins over McCain. Obama practically slaughtered Clinton in every region and every imaginable demographic in the Party and continues to build momentum and disgrace the gasbags’ conventional wisdom in places like Washington State and Maine with nothing but clear skies ahead of him for nearly a month.

So once again we see the media gasbags telling the public what the media gasbags want to hear, picking the candidates, writing the history and telling the public what to do in hilarious contrast to what the public actually thinks and does. Perhaps they simply got too full of themselves with their success at trashing Al Gore and John Kerry and thinking they had ignored John Edwards’ populist campaign into oblivion.

But, just like rightwing nutjobs Limbaugh, Hannity and Ingram, who told their listeners to vote for Mit Romney and not to vote for McCain or Huckabee, their audiences basically told them to go Cheney themselves. It may be too much to hope that the public has finally come to fully reject the elitist, self-serving, immature and simple-minded nature of our national press commentators but it is clear that each has never had greater disdain for the other. The public, certainly, has very good reason.

[E Pluribus Unum]

Never Trust a Republican (Part 78)

by shep

Remember when Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey testified that he would resign if the president were to violate the Constitution?

Well, Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Bayh, Carper, Landrieu and Nelson, you’ve been punked again. That is, unless you indended to put the United States of America in the same company as Stalin’s Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Democratic Response To SOTU

In a word: Pathetic.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius of course walks a tightrope as a Democratic Governor of a Red State ... but Come. On. Her response was a study in High Broderism, the Kumbayah nonsense that worries me so much about the only person who got a Presidential welcome in the House Chamber this evening -- Barack Obama.

This is closer to the proper response,

"Mr. President, how dare you? How dare you pretend to be a leader on Global climate issues? How dare you claim fiscal responsibility, or any kind of responsibility with the management of this nation that you and your administration have displayed?

How dare you blame public schools and the hard working teachers that staff them for your failure? How dare you claim to be a leader for the humanity of African nations and leave the legacy of New Orleans, the gulf coast, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in your own nation?

Mr. President, you are a failure and will go down in history as the worst President ever.

Let this speech tonight be a reminder of why it is so important to have a Democratic President and a massive majority in Congress! Never again ALLOW THESE PEOPLE Control of anything. Please, for the good of the nation, leave not one of them standing in a position of government."

My respectful response to this joke of a President: Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass, Dickhead -- and take your pet troll Cheney with you.

I mean, really Governor Sebelius, even Obama himself had a much stronger response than you offered. She talked of the President joining the new majority of Americans. As if, lady.

Did I miss the memo? Did we win something. Congress is hostage to the GOP's record number of Senate filibusters and the Blue Dogs in the House. The C-Plus Augustus who talks of making health care affordable still wields a veto pen dripping blood-red ink from canceling medical coverage for kids.

John Edwards reminds us that now is no time to be complacent, to simply wait out this destructive man with nothing to lose. We have to take the fight to George Bush and all he represents. So far, we've only taken a first step, or maybe two with a shuffle backwards.

"And in the chamber of the House of Representatives where the president speaks, even though this Congress stopped listening to him a while ago, they will still applaud and cheer him. The truth is that Washington is out of touch with what's happening across the country. Between now and January of 2009, Democrats must stand up to this president, stand up for what's right, so he does not continue to forget about the middle class in this country."

Whether Edwards wins the nomination is immaterial to me at this point. He's right, I agree with him. I like his style (and I'm not talking about his hair), because he recognizes that the struggle to right the wrongs in our nation is a fight to the death.

Obama did have his Kumbayah moment at the end of his response:

We see half the country tune in to watch, but know that much of the country has stopped even listening. Imagine if next year was different. Imagine if next year, the entire nation had a president they could believe in. A president who rallied all Americans around a common purpose.

However, at least Barack got in his digs in the beginning, a slap across the face of the Miserable Failure that stood petulantly as usual at that podium where so many of his betters have spoken -- including the guy who tests the microphones.

Tonight was President Bush's last State of the Union, and I do not believe history will judge his administration kindly. But I also believe the failures of the last seven years stem not just from any single policy, but from a broken politics in Washington. A politics that says it's ok to demonize your political opponents when we should be coming together to solve problems.

Sadly, as far as I'm concerned, as Paul Rosenberg said, "It's not a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight, it's a case of brining a plastic yogurt spoon to a nuclear war." Barack just doesn't get the simple fact that the ideology epitomized by the Bush regime can never again be allowed to have any influence whatsoever in our foreign or domestic policy.

Hillary, I have to say, hit it out of the park.

Domestically:

President Bush had one final chance tonight to acknowledge what the American people have known for years: that the economy is not working for middle class families. Unfortunately, what he offered was more of the same - a frustrating commitment to the same failed policies that helped turn record surpluses into large deficits, and push a thriving twenty-first century economy to the brink of recession.

On Iraq:

The Administration brandishes many numbers. The one I'm most focused on is that 2007 was the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Iraq. And the humanitarian situation remains devastating.

President Bush isn't satisfied with failure after failure in Iraq; he wants to bind the next President to his failed strategy by unilaterally negotiating with the Iraqi government about the future of the U.S.-Iraq security relationship, including the possibility of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.

And she nails the real problem, George Bush just doesn't give a shit about anybody.

After seven long years of this Presidency, I am committed as President to solve problems, not ignore them.

Thank goodness no one's ever mentioned Kathleen Sebelius as a possible presidential candidate. Unlike Hillary and Edwards --- and to a lesser degree, Obama, the Governor just doesn't have any balls.