They Want A Cut

That's the only reason I can think that the recalcitrant House Republicans and John McCain torpedoed the bailout deal, offering instead an 11th hour tax cut/privatization/deregulation scheme (typical). They want a piece of the action in order to line their own pockets and those of their friends.

Comparing the upside of the Paulson plan (as modified by Chris Dodd) to the Louisiana Purchase John Feehery notes that this could be the deal of the century, any century.

I thought of the Louisiana Purchase as I saw Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson defend his bailout plan. Paulson is a smart business guy, and he knows the first principle of finance is to buy low and sell high.

Andy Kessler wrote in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that the Paulson plan may be a similarly good deal for the American taxpayers.

As Kessler says, “My analysis suggests that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson … may pull off the mother of all trades, which could net a trillion dollars, and maybe as much as $2.2 trillion — yes, with a t — for the United States Treasury.”

He goes on to say, “You can slice the numbers a lot of different ways. My calculations, which assume 50 percent impairment on subprime loans, suggest it is possible, all in, for this portfolio to generate between $1 trillion and $2.2 trillion — the greatest trade ever. Every hedge fund manager will be jealous.”

Yeah, I'm skeptical too. The only reason I give this idea that there might be a lucrative upside on this is the way it's been sold -- not with optimism and emphasizing the potential debt reduction angle, but with fear and panic inducing big numbers pulled out of a hat.

Now That We Have Your Attention

So unconstitutionally using a narrow conservative majority of handpicked Supreme Court ideologues to steal the presidency for an unqualified boob who lost the election by a half million votes didn’t do it.

Diddling with their secret plan to invade and occupy a non-threatening, oil-rich country in the Middle East and reading My Pet Goat while terrorists determined to strike in the US finished their plans and killed thousands of Americans and turned the country inside out, didn’t make you mad.

Constructing a system of secret prisons around the world where we tortured and murdered innocent kidnapping victims just to show how tough we are, didn’t upset you at all.

Launching a disastrous, illegal war through a campaign of lies, deception and treason, that has killed thousands of US soldiers, destroyed our credibility and moral authority in the world, inspired unknown millions of Muslims to want see us harmed and will cost at least a trillion tax dollars before it’s done, didn’t stop you from voting for the miscreants.

Viciously and dishonestly smearing decorated war heroes, dedicated civil servants, honest journalists and millions of your countrymen while exposing secret intelligence and destroying CIA counter-WMD-proliferation operations in Iraq and Iran just to keep power for all the wrong reasons, didn’t even get a rise out of you – except perhaps to cheer a bit at their political success.

Conspiring with AT&T, Verizon and Comcast and committing serial felonies designed to shred your constitutional rights to be free from government spying on your private telephone and email communications and internet use, made you yawn.

Filling FEMA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the EPA and just about every reach of the federal government with incompetent cronies to the point that the American people are doomed to suffer the worst from every made-made and natural disaster didn’t distract you from the latest episode of CSI.

But this finally has you royally, righteously angry.

Well, guess what? Republicans have been pissing down your back and telling you that it’s raining since the seventies. If this doesn’t cause you to actually finally manage to pull your head from the elephant’s ass and realize that it is only Democrats who care if government works for middle-class Americans like you, then you deserve whatever another four years of Republican rule brings down on you. Unfortunately for the rest of us, and your children, we’ll be coming along for the ride.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

She's a Witch!

I hope someone else caught the crowd reaction when John McCain announced at a campaign event his personal scapegoat for almost thirty years of “conservative” laisse faire economic policies. Do you suppose that even five of them knew what the SEC Chairman does or who Chris Cox is as they cheered “BURN ‘ER!”?

These people really shouldn’t be allowed to gather in public.


\"She's a Witch!\"


[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

The Next Best Format

So how do you know that you’re an easily manipulated right-wing tool who can be counted on to allow lying Republican guests to “control [their] message”?

Why, you get picked by Republicans to be the willing dupe to be the first to interview the lying, stealth GOP Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Hi Charlie.

[UPDATE:] Credit where credit is due: “Charlie” gave a far better and tougher interview than I, for one (and the McCain Campaign for another, I’d bet), ever imagined. Maybe he found her smarmy use of his name unpleasant. Perhaps the “best platform” will remain MTP. Tom?

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

I Know That eBay Plane Is No Big Deal

But I need to get this thing untwisted from inside my brain.

We know that Yukon and Yoda are on the campaign trail bragging about one of the GOP VP candidate's greatest accomplishments -- putting up the governor's $2.7 million executive jet on eBay.

We also know that McNasty said she sold it on eBay for a profit even though Ms. Nasty couldn't get a buyer at the price they were asking and ended up selling it for $2.1 million through a broker instead. News has also arrived that they still owe another $50 grand for repairs or maintenance or some such nonsense.

This is the problem. They sell the thing at a loss, costing the State a Six Hundred Thousand Dollars write off plus commission and this maintenance thingy, and brag about it claiming they saved the State money.

"And eventually...a broker came in. We brought the broker in and said, 'Find a buyer.' We found a buyer. It went for 2.1 million bucks. And we did save the state dollars. And that jet, she never stepped in. And we got rid of the symbol of corruption in Alaska."

Huh?

No wonder these dickheads ran the economy into the turf. Must be some kinda supply-side thingy where you piss away over a half a million bucks and call it bargain. Yikes.

What Lies Within

I’m feeling rather dumb that this has just struck me but notice what animates the Republican Convention crowd (at the moment I’m watching Giuliani work the faithful). In stark contrast to the Democrats’ riotous approval of Obama’s lofty calls to non-partisan, policy-based leadership and fair-minded politics, the Republican delegates look like they’re sedated until some perceived enemy is attacked (especially if it's a Democrat/liberal) – the more savage the attack, the greater the glee. And no affirmative statement about the Republican elicits such outright excitement and joy.

[UPDATE: worked the same for Palin. It’s a consistent behavioral response]

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Miss Congeniality (No, Really) For Attack Dog?

Seriously.

But the former beauty queen is known as Sarah Barracuda, so this dog has teeth. Not that she's a dog or anything -- she's purrty, yep. As long as Biden remains the gentleman he is, there should be no worries at their debate. I hope.

Meanwhile, I continue to marvel at how out of left field Talk Left's Armando (BTD) continues to be this election cycle. Breaking with co-blogger Jeralyn Merrit (who doesn't really prove she's over her feminist blind-spot by staing the obvious -- that Palin simply isn't qualified and helps Obama more than McCain) Armando can't accept the ridiculousness of the Palin pick, thinking instead this is a calculatedly inspired attempt to strategically remake McCain's message.

Nor is he content to leave us with his, uhm ... interesting opinion. He sites approvingly fellow Klinton Kool Aid drinker Ed Kilgore with this nonsense:

I have to admit some significant disagreement with how most Democrats (including the Obama campaign) are reacting to the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running-mate. Many are simply deriding Palin as a lightweight or someone obviously unqualifed to be commander-in-chief--another Dan Quayle. Others watched the event in Dayton and found the whole thing laughable.

. . . [W]hat I saw in Dayton was (1) the "maverick" GOP presidential candidate introducing his "maverick" running mate, even though Palin, even more than McCain, is actually a conservative ideologue whose selection thrilled both cultural and economic factions of the Right; (2) a direct appeal by Palin to HRC supporters to consummate Hillary's campaign by shattering the splintered "glass ceiling;" (3) a compelling personal story of a woman who (a) has one son with Down's Syndrome, (b) another who is being deployed to Iraq on September 11; (c) is married to a Native American (at least technically) union worker and athlete; and (d) has bravely defied her party and oil companies in Alaska.

Let's regroup a bit here, shall we. McCain left his last bit of Maverick Manhood on the alter of the Christian Right's demand that they be relevant; that they remain powerful enough to hold a veto threat on Mccain's choice of running mate.

Taylor Marsh at least has put down the Clinton Crack pipe and tells us McCain thinks women are stupid and want's to mute his geezer quotient with Palin's babe vibe. He also was prevented from acting on his own instincts, choosing a running-mate he doesn't even know.

McCain faced outright revolt Monday in Minneapolis if his choice wasn't anti-choice. Karl Rove warned off his best friend, Joe Lieberman despite his militantly chickenhawk bona fides as way too liberal (read: reasonable) on non-war issues. Condi Rice won't have anything to do with this silly game it seems since the White House has done it's best to take Iraq off the table for McCain, and the tax-cut purists have been successful in making the Maverick buck his own Maverickness, enjoying McCain's about-face on disapproving the Bush/Cheney administration's approach to the economy.

The banking arm of their party had to back off pushing Romney once McCain's "housing problem" came to the fore, but no doubt would have forced McCain to make his bed with an avowed enemy if the rich-guy issue hadn't blown up in their face. Multiple Choice Mitt can dance the anti-choice jig as long as the cameras are on and the nay-sayers could have been bought off. So ... Plan D?

No, make that Plan E for Estrogen. D was Drill, Drill, Drill. This is yet another gimmick!.

Take their consideration of Tom Ridge. Qualified, competent, experienced, well liked and helps land the hugely important swing state of Pennsylvania. Naturally logic goes out the window with this gang. Ridge was completely unacceptable because he holds a reasonable position on reproductive rights. That's it. Since Ridge was sent packing by the folks who have the power to tell the titular leader of the Republican Party what to do, the stack of applications got pretty slim very fast.

Palin is a narrow ideologue: pure on guns, god if not gays, and more like Cheney (but with better aim) than the mythical independent-minded man McCain would like you to think he is despite agreeing with George Bush's legislative agenda 95% of the time. It's almost as if they ticked off resume points on all the potential candidates for VP and she was the only one left standing that would be acceptable to the mob of Christianists, war-mongers and intolerant hate peddlers that permeate the GOP activist base -- the pick's strategic idiocy and betrayal of the nation's security her unfathomable incompetence risks be damned.

Risking Boos on the Convention floor would have made for horrible TV.

To fear this pick, to disfavor mocking it but instead taking it seriously enough because together Palin and McCain represent a some kind of break with the attempt to tie Bush to McCain is to live in another world and ignore the reality that this team represents more of the same old GOP, not a new approach free of the constraints of the DC power elite. Indeed, scorn is exactly what is called for in a "change election" when they again calculate the odds of winning at the expense of competent governing.

Ridicule is not only acceptable, it is required. Heckuvajob Johnny.

One need only watch the wingnuts finally getting off their hands and jumping with joy, emptying their checkbooks in the process now that they have an excuse to walk back all the nasty things they've said about McCain over the years.

This is worse than more of the same, it's spineless. Cowardly Republicans are something we've all had ENOUGH of. Obama's theme has always been about judgment. This doesn't change his narrative and merely reinforces the meme of McCain's pathetic pandering to the power-brokers of the right wing.

I can't help but think that not even McCain thinks he can win this thing, knowing he's a sacrificial lamb. He has to recognize he's a mere tool, a placeholder keeping a dying brand of conservative on life-support. Never in a million years would he let the nation he says he loves be entrusted to someone who's most consequential executive decision was not to buy a bridge to nowhere.

...Shame On You

Mike Murphy, “GOP consultant and former senior strategist for John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign,” was on MSNBC’s panel last night to discuss the effectiveness of the Democratic Convention and Obama’s campaign and choice of speech venue where he was nearly shouted off the stage by the nearby audience for repeatedly stating that Bill and Hillary Clinton were going to vote for John McCain.

That was shortly before publishing more GOP concern-troll hackery on Time Inc.’s blog Swampland (Apropos, no?)

Here’s little piece of news for all of you whiz kids in the nooose bidness: if you want to know something about Democrats, NEVER ASK A REPUBLICAN! They’re stone-cold liars. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

If you want to keep looking like idiots by being fooled time and time again by people who repeatedly lie right to your face (and then laugh at you behind your back), don’t say you haven’t been warned

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

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]

Attorney General Blames Bush Administration for 9/11

by shep

Some people think Michael Mukasey was lying when he stated publicly, “We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for… a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went.”

But Michael Mukasey is the Attorney General of the United States, the highest law enforcement officer of the country. He’s also an ex-federal judge who knows that under contemporaneous federal law the Bush Administration could have wiretapped that call and learned where it went and, possibly, thwarted the 9/11 attacks.

Could it possibly be that anyone, even a Republican, would lie about such a thing just to hide the illegal conduct of George Bush, Dick Cheney and AT&T? Any way you slice it, what would you call such traitors to their oaths of office and duty to the public? Oops, I guess I just did.

[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]

Great White Snark

by shep

John Rogers sends the privileged, white (and somehow still incredibly pissed-off) Barrack haters to school on their fear and loathing of the angry black man:

Attention, Fellow White People:

…If Senator Obama becomes President, we will still run everything.

Everything.

Immediately following his Wright Snark, Rogers explains a lot of anger (except for the inexplicable right-wing kind that always somehow misses the mark):

-- Paying $3 trillion dollars for a war started by rich old white people.

-- Sending your kids off to fight in a war being run very poorly by rich old white people.

-- Allowing many of those kids to die thanks to crappy equipment provided by companies owned by rich old white people.

-- Watching media controlled exclusively by a small number of rich old white people.

-- Consuming tainted medicine or bad meat because government regulatory agencies have been gutted by rich old white people.

-- Getting boned on your pension by investment firms run by rich old white people.

-- Watching your house lose value because of financial screw-ups by rich old white people.

-- Losing said house because your kid's cancer treatments aren't covered by insurance companies run by rich old white people.

-- Losing your job because your company's been moved to Belize by rich old white people.

-- Watching government records being blatantly destroyed by rich old white people.

-- Cheering while the Constitution is used to wipe the ass of several rich old white people.

-- etc.

Rest assured, Management has its priorities in place. We will remain vigilant against the words and actions of radical old black preachers in neighborhood churches.

Just the man you want for color commentary as righty, whitey heads explode at the thought of a black man as President.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

29 Down and Counting

Via Political Wire:

Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) "has scheduled a noon press conference on Thursday, and GOP insiders say the veteran lawmaker is going to announce his retirement from Congress, effective at the end of this year," The Politico reports.

Last Republican to leave, please turn out the lights in your caucus room. We won't be leaving a light on.

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]

Excuse me?!

by shep

Mainstream Republicans can spew all kinds of toxic shit about liberals committing treason, Democrats appeasing terrorists, all of them hating America, Islam is a religion of violence, evolution is only a theory, global warming a) doesn’t exist, b) isn’t a problem, or c) isn’t man’s problem but this, said by the pastor of Obama’s church is somehow unacceptable?:

“That’s when Wright blamed the “arrogance” of the “United States of White America” for much of the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.”

“Young African-American men” were “dying for nothing.” The “illegal war,” he shouted, was “based on Bush’s lies” and is being “fought for oil money.”

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. ... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.”

I’m not sure what’s even arguable about those statements. They obviously make white people (deservedly) uncomfortable but they are the words of an African-American preacher to a (mostly) African-American congregation who understand firsthand the unquestionable truth of that rhetoric.

Barack Obama’s politic mistake wasn’t attending that church or listening to Pastor Wright. Think for moment of all of the abominable shit we sit and listen too, much of it called entertainment, and we pay money to hear it. Obama hasn’t saddled up to evangelical icons who say, homosexually goes with Satanism or can ”kill you spiritually” He didn’t go to a bookstore and buy a book that says, “liberals are always against America,” or that puts a Hitler mustache on a smiley face under the title “Liberal Fascism” and includes the quote, "The white male is the Jew of Liberal Fascism".

Obama should be asking the hypocritical gasbags in the Village Press whether George Bush and John McCain should be to made to repudiate all of their supporter’s hateful and bat-shit crazy rhetoric or are they applying a double-standard to him. Instead, he repudiated Rev. Wright and his sentiments. That was his political mistake:

”Obama seems to have seen, early in his career, the utility of joining a prominent church that would help him establish political roots in the community in which he lives. Now he sees the utility of distancing himself from that church.”
--Bill Kristol

That is point of this entire exercise, to make the Democrat look like the one thing no Democrat can afford to appear: weak and afraid. When Democrats learn not to be cowed by the outrageously hypocritical and disgusting right-wing smear machine, they will be able to beat Republicanism and the conservative movement thinking back to the dank caves of the lizard-brained where they belong. Until then, here’s one more example of how it’s done:

“I didn’t hear Reverend Wright’s words firsthand but he expresses the upset at the way many African-Americans have been treated which is shared by many people, both black and white. I don’t think that white Christians or Jews shouldn’t be able to listen to their clergy express similar feelings about how those people may have suffered in the past. I understand that Reverend John Hagee has said some scurrilous things about Catholics, Muslims and gay people, does that mean that John McCain shouldn’t be able to stand with Reverend Hagee and say that he was proud to have his endorsement?”

End of sermon. You can wake up now.

[Cross-posted at 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]

Cult of Perspicacity

by shep

David Brooks is just sure that the magic is fading: “…those in the grips of Obama Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if His stuff actually made sense. For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?”

Quite obviously, we’ve been waiting for a leader who, at least, isn’t a sociopathic mental midget. That would be the same sociopathic mental midget whom Brooks once remarked: “[m]any will doubt this, but Bush is a smart and compelling presence in person, and only the whispering voice of Leo Tolstoy holds one back.”

Sorry David, you’re a partisan hack who can’t recognize the difference between an idiot political scion and a genuinely brilliant and dedicated public servant who is inspiring several generations of multi-ethnic, bi-gender Americans of every economic class to reject your tired and mindless partisan bullshit. “The magic” not only continues, it has just turned you into the toad that many of us always saw you for.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

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]

The Beast That Shall Not Be Named

by shep

George Will may have been right after all. He famously contended that apathetic political participation in this country may be simply because people were basically satisfied with their government and society. With the intense grassroots political giving, participation and record primary turnouts we’re seeing at the moment, it seems that may no longer be the case.

So The Village gasbags tell us that the exit polling tells us that people are sick of the partisan gridlock in Washington and they want change. I agree. Many of them claim that unity is the answer. But if this partisan gridlock represents a sort of stasis in the struggle between two diametrically opposed forces – let’s call them Republican conservatism (so-called) and Democratic progressivism – then one of those forces must give way to end gridlock and create change. Unity or bi-partisanship is obviously no solution.

We’ve had nearly thirty years of near constant progress in one of these two forces, to the point that it is now considered the political center by the entire elite class. We’ve warred, tax cut, de-regulated and politically demonized the opposing political force to the point where we find ourselves today: An unsustainable global military empire that is despised by most of the world. A beggar’s economy where we borrow our money from our former (and possibly future) mortal enemy and build their industrial might to feed the mostly mindless material consumption of our middle class, all to create grotesque wealth for the operators of the system. The ever-increasing stripping and burning the planet’s naturals resources at an ever-more unsustainable rate to feed that consumption. Health and safety deregulation that sickens and kills huge numbers of the public, many of whom haven’t the means to get help without bankrupting their families. And last but not least, a public media that isn’t the slightest bit interested in telling the public the truth about how and why we got here.

So, can there be any question as to what the people shall not be told: that one political force needs to give way to end gridlock and create needed change and that force is Republican “conservatism”? And that it is not a governing force anyway, but a set of largely disreputable beliefs, the cornerstone of which is that “government is the problem.” And that to continue more of the same and expect a different result is a form of mass insanity. And that bi-partisan unity, half consisting of Republican conservatism, cannot constitute a way forward from the mess created by Republican conservatism. But the people will not be told because Republican conservatism, the force of corporate greed and political elitism and aggressive militarism and social Darwinism and shameless selfishness is both the beast that shall not be named and the beast that does the naming.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]