Birth of a Zombie Lie

Ezra hardly challenges Bill Kristol admonishing his conservative cohorts that now is no time to rest on their laurels "[w]ith Obamacare on the ropes."  The Morning Joe crew at MSNBC (sans Joe) regurgitates this "conventional wisdom" in their continuing effort to shape rather than reflect or report on the state of public opinion.  Politico and the Washington Post also buy into this factless idea (link).

Now maybe this is all part of the grand scheme of 13th dimensional chess being played in D.C. to keep us, the pro-reform, single-payer/public option folks on their toes.  To be sure, complacency when we're "this" close to the end of a 30 year struggle to restructure and replace our profit-based health care system is something we cannot afford.  Maybe we're seeing the Obama Ropa-Dope at play one more time and Kristol & Co. are just playing along.

Maybe.  Or maybe the GOP is still as clueless as always.

Mind you, the media's infatuation with horse-race, right-vs-left coverage of politics at the expense of actual policy analysis plays a large part in this perception -- or rather attempt to frame this perception.  The Village seems to want a story-line to take them into August and beyond, filling the newsless void until Congress reconvenes in September with speculation on the success/failure of the Obama administration and the ramification of that expectation on the rest of his term, the 2010 Midterm elections, and prospects for Obama's reelection in 2012 based on his ability to get a health care bill before Congress splits.

Mind you, this whole "sky is falling" and the "future of everything is at stake" meme sits on the premise that in the first 7 months of this new president's term he can fight back the most well-funded lobbyists in Washington (who have killed every public health care plan since FDR), and rally a Democratic Party which has always been the very definition of fractiousness.

Now there are some who will try to run with the even more specious argument that the whole endeavor will be a failure -- thus again leading to ruin of all things Obama, his "Waterloo," if there isn't bi-partisan support for Obama's public plan.  As if he needs it.  As if he can get it.  As if ...

These myths won't disappear any more than the predictable over-the-top coverage of Justice Sotomayor's confirmation hearings delving into sturm und drang minutia despite her confirmation being all but assured the instant she was nominated.  The Village needs it's story.  They will milk this, even as they raise the bar for Sotomayor's confirmation on whether she gets more than 70 votes (which InTrade puts at a 90% probability), not just a seat on the court.

With a huge majority in the House, and 60 Democrats in the Senate, a popular Democratic President should be able to smite the earth and magically produce a Volvo in every garage.  But the Village needing a story will trump up controversy.  Coupe or Sedan? Why not a Mercedes option?  It's all the same with arbitrary pre-recess deadlines, bi-partisan support or 70 plus votes.  We get process and conflict instead of policy and results.

So, in case you're worried, especially in light of bogus numbers that Obama's popularity is plumeting even though he's done nothing unpopular, remember these few salient fact.

We do have a huge majority in the House.
We do have a filubuster-proof Senate.
We do have at least one GOP Senator willing to support a public plan, Olympia Snowe.

All the rest is posturing and dance routines played out for and by the Courtiers of Versailles on the Potomac.

Franken, Always Serious

MyDD's Jonathan Singer has the video of Al Franken during the racially charged confirmation hearing of a Supreme Court Justice.



And you can see his performance yesterday at the Sotomayor hearing at D-Kos.

IOKIYAR Part 4,792

Atrios is fond of saying that all news is good news if you're a Republican.  Shockingly today on Morning Joe, Time Magazine chief Mark Halprin notes that there is one thing out there that is bad news for the GOP -- Sarah Palin sucking up all the oxygen away from all the other conservatives.  I smell a rat, but that's another madeningly annoying issue.

Today we are informed that if you're a Republican, your political rivals are the ones who should be afraid if you are subject to a criminal investigation, at least if you're Dick Cheney and the current President wants to keep his ambitious agenda intact. 

I'm really not sure what they're trying to accoplish with this theme.  Do the conservatives want to scare the administration off, threatening health care reform if a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate Cheney?  Or are they daring the Attorney General to go after the previous administration, hoping that does indeed throttle Obama's plans? 

As usual, I'm getting a headache trying to apply logical analysis to Repubican antics.

There's a bit of Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch in their tone, but when three-forths of the country insist that something must be done about the Bush Administration's transgresions AND want public option for health care, President Obama carries a pretty powerful weed-whacker.

I'm also reasonably certain that the Wall St. Journal's is blowing smoke in its report that the program the CIA didn't tell Congress about (on Cheney's orders) was an assassination squad that never went beyond the planning stage.  Considering the source, the lack of anything extraordinary, that it wasn't supported by the President or Dick and the all too agreeable targets -- al Queda leaders -- I smell a cover story. 

Marcy Wheeler thinks there's another shoe waiting to drop here too -- and pieces together some interesting factoids to flesh out the situation.

We Got Links

It's back!

• SCIENCE!!! http://is.gd/1uWWu

Q: No word from the Cheney's since Dick got his book deal on 6/24. Was media blitz about cashing in? Current silence about lawyering up?

A: Yes.

• Dick Cheney Now Linked To C.I.A. Concealment, Is Officially The Shadiest Dick Ever http://gawker.com/5312633
  
• Yes, Ed Schultz tweets: @WeGotEd: NYT: Cheney linked to hiding of CIA project http://ow.ly/h3cB
  

Crunch Time, now or never on making the rich and powerful pay for my hemorrhoid treatments -- or I end up being a real pain in the ass.

• Want a Wall Street Bankster deciding whether it's in HIS interest whether a Dr. treats you? Do Nothing. http://is.gd/1vqNT
  
• Med Insurance Exec sees the light (& long lines of uninsured). Concludes "Sicko" was right. http://is.gd/1vr78
  

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Ethics, Morality And Palinaide

(Yes, "Palinaide." It's that tasty beverage best consumed ... luke-warm, like spit ... when you just can't get enough Palinfreude.)

Sweet Sarah, Patron Saint of the Dangling Participle has revealed her true self, at least according to Tbogg and the papers he reads. 

Most quotable take was Sully:

That's the dog-whistle behind "If I die, I die." It's a quote from the Biblical figure, Queen Esther, who rose from being a Beauty Queen to being the champion of the Jewish people in their battle for survival. Now imagine if McCain had won, had to resign because of illness, and we were facing an international crisis with Iran. Now take a Xanax.

Make mine a double.

She is a martyr, sacrificing herself on the alter of media stardom like the original beauty queen turned Empress and savior of a misfitted minority, Esther (which fittingly means "star" in Persian), who saved the Jews from genocide ordered because of their eccentric devotion to their deity.  Scorned, they just didn't fit into their world, just like the the 72% of the GOP who dig Sarah.

Of course if you do the math, since only 26.5% of adults identify as Republicans, that means 80% of the country have little or no use for the media whore from Alaska.

Sarah Palin, last seen wearing fisherman's waders (which are well known to be the Alaskan version of sack-cloth and ashes) is poised to become Empress of all Media after her sacrificial act of walking away from the glory that is the Governor's Crab Shack and General Store in Juneau.  Nears as anyone can tell it's so she can save the Fundamentalist Christian Conservative Whackadoodles from the modern-day equivalent of political genocide -- which according to the American Taliban means not getting their damn way on every fucking thing.

Her moral code drives her.  Unfortunately, few if any of us mere speakers of the English language can crack that code she speaks ... or rather, Tweets:

Talk in DC of a 2nd "Stimulus" Pkg: Impacts on AK? We'd be partaking in even more Big Govt largess & immoral natl debt accumulation when...
...NO ONE can measure DC's 1st attempt @ growing debt to "fix" prob. AK seeks development, industry, jobs for econ recovery vs growing govt

Her world view as it affects her governing style and decision-making process is revealed in between the word-salad.  She makes "moral" judgments regarding what is arguably a purely economic policy decision -- what to do to fix the broken economy.  Being a nation of laws, not men (or women); running a government according to a moral code is problematic at best and in extreme cases, like we see in Cleric-run Iran or Taliban controled Afghanistan, is nightmarish.

Morality and ethics are very different sides of the same coin.  Ethics can be codified without regard to any specific religious doctrine, which is likely as not to be in conflict with a competing sect's interpretation of scripture.  We know Sarah has a problem with ethics rules and was found to have "unlawfully abused her power as Governor."  However, this does not conflict with her notion of morality. 

Immoral behavior is subjective and can be rationalized by transgressors who invariably justify their actions as blessed by a higher authority or necessitated by a greater good.  Ethics laws are not so flexible or easily forgiven. 

Indeed, some of the most pious in our government profess a repulsively twisted morality which can justify all sorts of offensively craven behavior, twisting the Christian mandate of fighting poverty into a might-makes-right justification of protecting the wealthy and powerful from some of their most scandalous deeds -- so these "chosen ones" can bestow their blessed largess on the most well-connected no-bid contract recipient.  Sarah Palin fits right in with Washington's "Family," most recently seen smoothing the scandaled waters for Senator John Ensign and Mark Sanford when not fixing pancakes for presidents at their National Prayer Breakfasts.

The group’s approach to religion, Sharlet says, is based on “a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism,” which holds that the wealthy and powerful, if they “can get their hearts right with God … will dispense blessings to those underneath them.”

In practice, it's a glad-hand society who praise each other for how in-tune they are with God as they fuck each others' wives and steal each other's money -- and yours.  And yeah, this group formed initially as an anti-New Deal Christianist Cult has been Putsch-ing Palin from day one.

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, and Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a Washington Post columnist, were among two groups of arch-conservatives who visited Gov. Palin in Alaska in the summer of 2007, bringing back to Washington, D.C. rave reviews of the then barely known governor as potential v-p material.

Both Barnes and Gerson are high-profile members of the so-called Falls Church Anglican, the name the defecting members gave themselves after voting to leave the Episcopal Church in December 2006.

In that congregation, they are closely aligned with a highly-secretive right-wing Christian fundamentalist political activist network known as "The Family," or "The Fellowship," many of whose leading members are active among the Falls Church Anglicans.

***

But the connection of the Palin selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate with Gerson, Barnes and the right-wing schismatic efforts within mainstream churches, generally, finds its broader expression in the mission of The Family, which has had as its objective since its founding as an anti-labor movement in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, to influence the political corridors of power in Washington, D.C. and globally.

Its core motive, as reflected in its activities over more than 70 years, is the intermingling of a shallow, unquestioning Christian fundamentalism with radical free trade, anti-New Deal, anti-trade unionist and anti-liberal passions. It has worked overseas to prop up dictators and mass murderers in support of big oil and other American multi-national corporate enterprises, as Sharlet documents in his book.

For all the world these folks look like the religious wing of the neo-con Project for the New American Century.  Small wonder Weekly Standard Founder and arch neo-con Bill Kristol has been her media Defender in Chief even before he pushed John McCain to foist this monster on us. 

She's less educated, less experienced, less comprehensible, yet more appealing than George W. Bush, in a: "politician I'd rather do beers/shoot moose with" sort of way.  A dangerous empty vessel they hope to again fill up with hallucinagenic policy theories and backwards talking points who is even less likely even than "W" to catch on to their nonesense ... like Bush seemed to after six long years of embarrassing cock-ups.

Palinfreude Overdose

My apologies to everyone for neglecting my blogging duties.  Now I realize, too late, that the seemingly endless source of pleasure derived from watching the GOP implode may disappear in one ginormous explosion of fireworks and Palinfreude (Yes, Skippy, I coined that word.)

Other than getting elected to the Senate, just what will comedians do with the Queen of Alaska getting out of politics? This is the first time I've seen only one story on Memeorandum.com.  From the moment we all heard her name for the first time, Sarah Palin has been one big bag of jaw-dropping whackadoodle.  Her exit from official duties (jury's out on continued meida abuse) was no different. Her resignation speech was as incoherent and void of logic or facts as anything she ever said on a national stage.

Naturally, this is good news for John McCain (who should be ashamed for letting this woman get anywhere near the White House). 

Rachel Sklar has a nice rundown of L'afarre Palin and her 10 months of WTF, as does just about everyone, everywhere.  My sense, however, is that now that she won't be distracted by the pesky duties of governing Alaska, she can now devote her time to what she and her family really believe is imporatant -- faux outrage and scathing screeds against trumped-up delusional crap, 24/7.