Merry Merry

The Way it Is

Memorable quotes from the first week of the great Bush/Cheney rewrite:

"While there's room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made — and there's plenty of debate — there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe," Bush said.

"I was aware of the programme, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," he [Cheney] said.

"And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

Look, whether it is over the decision to go to war on what turned out to be a bevy of lies, the decision to inflame the hatred of a billion Muslims and turn the entire international community against us, or the explicit approval of the use of illegal and immoral torture against captured prisoners, it is important that you realize that Bush and Cheney simply do not give a shit what you think. Just get over it.

Just go.

Two short clips from the first few exit interviews with Bush perfectly illustrate just how amazingly unreflective and obtuse he is in the face of the destruction he has brought to this country, our reputation, the economy, and the lives of millions of Americans and Iraqis.

First, he comes to the conclusion that he has "abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market"



Unlike Alan Greenspan, who finally came to the conclusion that his Randian belief in a self regulating free market was an absurd and childish notion, Bush simply does not understand that his free market fundamentalism hasn't been abandoned, it has failed.

Next, he farts out his true thoughts on the disaster in Iraq. In the face of all of the information that has come forward over time, the misguided decisions made that dragged us to the place we find ourselves today, the flawed intelligence, the outright lies and the human tragedy that he has unleashed, his response is a chilling, "so what?"



Socrates said that the unreflective life was not worth living. Apparently that message didn't resonate with the cheer leading squad at Yale.

and another thing....

...that I learned from Joe Scarborough this morning:

It is very suspicious that the sitting Democratic State Senator in Illinois would support the election campaign of the Democratic candidate for Governor in 2002.

Truisms

Some things I learned from watching CNBC today

1. The auto industry is in trouble and the bailout failed because the auto workers get paid too much and wouldn't budge on negotiations regarding future wage concessions.Their problems have nothing to do with the fact that GM sells less cars than Honda but has 10x more dealerships. Furthermore, the fact that the Republicans in the Senate think it's a good idea to forcibly legislate the wages of working Americans is in tune with their belief in a free market economy.

2. The SEC failed miserably in the last decade not because they have been starved as an organization by successive Republican administrations, but because they've lacked a strong leader.

3. Nancy Pelosi is really to blame for the fact that the Treasury has poured a trillion dollars into banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms. She said that the Democratic Congress would be more frugal than the Republican one.

4. Larry Kudlow thinks that Mitt Romney should be the car czar because his father ran AMC, and he used to live in Detroit.

5. Nobody in Detroit has even lost their job, like on Wall Street. It's been like a big party out there.

6. Sen's Corker, Shelby and McConnell did a great job because they were tasked with brokering a settlement. The fact that they failed at this should not in any way get in the way of Corker being named by MNBC as a new "star". Their failure also has nothing to do with the fact that they each represent states with large non-union plants for Toyota, Mercedes, Nissan and BMW.

Meanwhile, read Joseph Stiglitz' article in Vanity Fair if you'd really like to understand how we reached this point. I'll be wrestling my neighbor for a dead squirrel in the street.

Universal Health Care, Round II

Thomas Frank lets the cat out of the bag in today's WSJ...

He points out that the GOPs visceral reaction to any proposed plan to provide universal health care is based upon two bedrock beliefs, one of which they have proven to be quite willing to cave on, namely big government spending. Conventional wisdom tells us that the GOP opposes universal health care because they can't stomach the idea of big government programs and favor the magic of the free market. This is a bit tough to swallow considering the debacle we are wading through at the moment.

The other, more critical opposition comes from a much deeper place, however. As Frank points out

Still, conservatives have always dreaded the day that Democrats discover (or rediscover) that there is a happy political synergy between delivering liberal economic reforms and building the liberal movement. The classic statement of this fear is a famous memo that Bill Kristol wrote in 1993, when he had just started out as a political strategist and the Clinton administration was preparing to propose some version of national health care.

"The plan should not be amended; it should be erased," Mr. Kristol advised the GOP. And not merely because Mr. Clinton's scheme was (in Mr. Kristol's view) bad policy, but because "it will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

Historian Rick Perlstein suggests that this memo is "the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics" because it opens up a fundamental conservative anxiety: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."

Frank's piece places this thought in the context of the Clinton administration's failure to realize that embracing a "liberal" approach to the issue would not only be popularly accepted, but could become a game changer for the Democratic party, but perhaps that was another time and place. At this point, it is irrefutable that the country resoundingly supports a comprehensive universal health care plan, and that the GOP understands the existential threat that such a plan may represent.

Deep thought of the day

Am I the only one that thinks it odd that Goldman and Morgan Stanley are issuing government-backed debt?

Whoa.

This, by the way, is not a parody.

ziggy

Don't forget that at one time, David Bowie ruled the pop music world like few others ever have.

Michael Lewis on the end of Wall Street

Great read.

Blowback on the Treasury..

We are really in uncharted waters in terms of reacting to the conflagration that is running through our economy and the markets, and the great fear is that opinions will swing wildly one way or t'other. Digby, who's writing I enjoy, has been at the far end of the reaction to the bailout efforts of the Treasury, basically getting the pitchforks out and lighting the torches.

I think at this point, stripping Henry Paulson of his authority to spend more cash, with Ben Bernanke thrown in for good measure, isn't an option but a duty. And Chuck Grassley's call for the newly minted oversight board to investigate conflicts of interest among all the Goldman Sachs execs serving as the ladlers of corporate cash during the bailout is absolutely warranted. However, this oversight is coming at the END of the process, not the beginning. With four trillion already passed out, it's not like putting the brakes on the giveaways is going to make much of a difference today. This is not to say we shouldn't be investigating and scrutinizing what amounts to theft, as well as building a new regulatory structure for the future (yes, listen to Eliot Spitzer on this one - setting aside his personal life he's probably the most knowledgeable person in America about what needs to be done).

I don't share the abject fear of the Goldman-led cabal that is wildly flailing about, throwing our money at the problem in any and every way that they can come up with. But I do understand the suspicion, the cynicism, and the outrage that Digby shows. In my estimation, the systemic problem facing us, the painful de-leveraging of the economy itself, is truly unprecedented, and like the 1930s requires creative and disruptive ideas and approaches. Those are by nature unsettling and scary.

What I do fault Paulson and the Treasury on is their incredible tin ear as it pertains to the process. His immediate response, in which he said: "give me the 700 billion and don't ask any questions" was an obvious non-starter in a politicized environment. His refusal to move quickly away from the flawed idea of repurchasing troubled assets from the banks rather than investing directly into the institutions themselves looked bad as well. But the appointment of Neil Kashkari really sealed his doom, I think. He could have picked from any number of smart and competent candidates to head up the TARP program, and in fact, Kashkari may be the smartest and most competent candidate. But he is 35 and he's from Goldman, and that wasn't going to play in DC.

Paulson lame ducked himself, and the fallout is ugly. He gave his opponents all the ammunition that they needed to paint him as a Wall Street guy taking care of his Wall Street buddies. He's exiting, stage left, but can't do it soon enough.

Tom Friedman Recants

Wow. The confessionals keep rolling in. Here's the column that we all wish that Tom Friedman would actually write. It's fun to imagine, though:

But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform.

In any case, I have made a decision: as of today, I will no longer write in this or any other newspaper. I will immediately desist from writing any more books about how it’s time for everyone to climb on board the globalization high-speed monorail to the future. I will keep my opinions to myself.

The importance of Sarah P

Andrew Sullivan, former editor in chief of the New Republic, who literally destroyed his reputation as he went into the tank for Bush and the rush to war in Iraq in 2003, has seen the scales fall from his eyes over the past five years and admirably called out the McCain campaign for the travesty that it was. He reaches his boiling point in this post where he explains why the nomination of Sarah Palin continues to be a shocking and important thing.

The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring.

There is a bit more piling on that follows, but the post is worth a read. I truly never thought that we as a nation could be more insulted by a candidate than we were by W, but I'll admit that Caribou Barbie took it to a new level. And Sullivan makes a good point, in that we need to understand why this could happen and in particular why a near majority of our electorate would support such a potential President. It is disturbing indeed.

Fast Forward..

Man, I know that we just finished a grueling death march, but with the prohibitive favorites for the Republican nomination lining up, I almost want to fast forward to 2011, when the recession will presumably be over and the race for the White House will resume.

I mean, c'mon, really?

Holy Joe

Here's as far as I would reach across the aisle if I were President Elect Obama....







Chuck Hagel for SecState, bitches...

by the way, as soon as the Senate races are settled, Holy Joe should be stripped of his committee chair and relegated to the back benches of the Senate. They won't forbid him from caucusing, but they darn well should.

John McCain Will Win

Alabama.

Worst campaign ever.

A generation of voters will never consider the Republican Party because these idiots listened to Karl Rove and Bill Kristol and stirred up this ridiculous culture war. They fell back on their old canards because they couldn't find anything better or more relevant to talk about. They will be rightly drubbed, and the collateral damage will be great.

Good riddance to the lot of them.






UPDATE: An enlightened commenter at Townhall.com gives his opinion on unfounded reports of a Republican election official being removed from a polling station in Philadelphia:

Bring it on
Start the rioting. I know my neighbors and we are ready for battle. We have seen this before. Every time blacks don't get their way, they riot, killing innocent people and burning down businesses. It's never that I lost this time, and I will try even harder next time to succeed. It's the evil white man. The bright side is they always burn down their own neighborhoods, knowing full well that a 12-gage is waiting for them elsewhere.

What it's all about.

Daughter of slave votes for Obama
109-year-old Bastrop woman casts her vote by mail.

By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 27, 2008

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Republican-leaning Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.

It's Friday.

Deep Thoughts on the Economy

You knew this was coming, that it wouldn't be long before the right pointed out that the broad destruction of wealth caused by the global economic meltdown happened at a very interesting moment...

Why the crescendo of economic collapse right before the election? Why didn't the media and congress act just as concerned some time ago or wait until sometime after the election to go into crisis mode? The timing of the current financial crisis seems too planned and calculating to be just a coincidence. Polls show that people's number one concern right now is the economy and that for the most part, voters believe Democrats are somewhat more likely to help with the economy. Could it be that the liberal media and those in Congress, knowing that, is blaring the bad economic news from the rooftops in order to manipulate voters into voting for a Democrat? If so, it won't be the first time.

AHA! It's a conspiracy of the lefties.

And we'll know the real story just as soon as the election is over and B Hussein Obama is safely ensconced on Pennsylvania avenue, I suppose?

My guess is that if Obama gets elected, the true facts of the economy will come out. Suddenly, our economic outlook will look much brighter after November 5th. In the coming months and years after the election, we will be told how Obama has managed this crisis and overcome it

Indeed.

On another note, a proposal that I helped Bill Hambrecht put together was highlighted at Joe Nocera's blog yesterday. We've actually put together four white papers on the recent financial meltdown, they can be accessed here.

Seeing through the now

One thing that worries me a bit about the inevitable rout of McCain and the ascendancy of an Obama administration (aside from the enormous task that faces that administration) is the propensity of our press and pundits to quickly spin the "meaning" of the election and explain the results in real time. This focus on interpreting the results of great public exercise of an election tends to run to the near term and skews towards the ahistoric.

On November 5th, when we wake up after having elected this nations first black President in a landslide, the recriminations will run deep and the punditocracy will look for the usual suspects. My hunch is that the deepening and rolling economic crisis will be indicated as a key reason why the McCain candidacy failed, and in some ways it is one. Further, the absurdity of McCain, his inept and lurching strategy, his muddled and plainly contradictory messages and his bizarre and frankly irresponsible choice of Caribou Barbie as his running mate will also be cited.

But those are all derivative. What cannot be ignored and cannot be forgotten is that the election of Obama and the rejection of McCain is part of a larger statement made by the Republic. It is a repudiation of the failures of George Bush, a complete rejection of the man, his character, his words, his actions and his smug entitled philosophy of governance. If the economic troubles that the Second Bush Recession are the near term causes of our discontent, let us not forget that these troubles are his failure. The "MBA President" proved to be as incompetent and unsympathetic as Richard Fuld at Lehman, or Kenny Lay at Enron. When he speaks of the crisis he is unconvincing and seems blissfully unaware of the nuances, inevitably glossing over the differences between liquidity and insolvency, proving over and over again that he has not matured from his days as the failed CEO of Harken Energy. The aggressive effort to leave the credit default markets as unregulated and opaque as possible, led by Phil Gramm has much to do with where we find ourselves today, and it is an attitude towards regulation that springs directly from this President's head. The disdain for institutional oversight and the petulant disgust for our system of checks and balances pervades Bush's worldview, is something so grand even exists.

His foreign policy has been flatly rejected by all but a desperate few dead-enders, who lust for Arab blood and flatly consider "the other" a threat to our white, heterosexual, male-dominated protestant culture. The blatant fear-mongering and manipulation that this administration has wielded like a club on the American public has left the majority of the country weary, and as the slow moving disasters in Mesopotamia and Afghanistan grind on, the scales have fallen from the all but the most paranoid and angry jingoists.

For Bush's approach to government is in no way "conservative" and certainly not laissez faire. Thousands of signing statements directly undermining signed legislation is hardly "hands off", rather, it points to an aggrandized and obnoxious belief that the unitary executive should be unfettered, that the will of the people, expressed through our elected legislature is to be ignored, and that the wishes of a small group of privileged insiders should be paramount. This, and a cynical and opportunistic appeal to the inherent fear, racism and homophobia of a portion of our electorate has corroded and destroyed the Republican Party in America, and the inevitable result is McCain, an almost comical candidate that carries their standard today.

The complete failure of the Bush presidency cannot be forgotten, and cannot be ignored. There were too many people who were derided as unpatriotic and whose reputations were besmirched by this band of fools for stating the obvious, that this man is more than an incompetent buffoon, but rather a plague upon our country, a dangerously incurious vessel that happily acceded to the nefarious advice of a group of cynical, disdainful and ultimately wrongheaded advisors who brought shame and tragedy upon our heads.

This is why we have McCain and Palin, cartoon characters both. Don't let us forget that their failure is Bush's failure.

Posted without comment

Hugo!

Hard to argue his point, actually.

"Bush is to the left of me now," Mr Chavez told an audience of international intellectuals debating the benefits of socialism. "

Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks."

Mr Chavez, who has insulted Bush in the past as a drunkard or the devil, called him clueless.

He accused him of simply parroting the words of his aides without understanding the new policies that rely on heavy state intervention.

"I am convinced he has got no idea what's going on," said Mr Chavez, who has nationalised swaths of the OPEC nation's economy in recent years and is in negotiations to take over a Spanish bank in Venezuela.

The GOP falls all over itself....

Digby points out that the conservatives who are suddenly having second thoughts on the question of whether or not Sarah Palin is a blithering idiot aren't really being that consistent.

I actually feel sorry for McCain on this one. He had every reason to believe that the conservative intelligentsia would support putting a functional incompetent on the ticket. After all, people like David Frum wrote glowing books called The Right Man about the current functional incompetent in the White House. How was McCain to know that these rats would scurry over the side squealing about "competence" and "intelligence" all of a sudden?

David Frum had the audacity to point out that Sarah Palin isn't quite up to the task of stringing three coherent sentences together, and apparently the knuckle-draggers at the National Review aren't too happy with him stepping out of line. Digby points out that

Frum is getting slammed by his own side for being an inconvenient truth-teller about Palin's incoherence. How could they?

I suspect it may because Frum was positively giddy about the man who said this:

"Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."—Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

Billy Kristol is a Comedian

It's hard to read Bill Kristol and not burst into uncontrollable laughter these days, but sometimes he outdoes himself. The basic premise behind today's column is that McCain needs to take a complete mulligan on his entire campaign efforts to date, and get back to some state of grace in which the American people can get to know the real McCain/Palin ticket as a couple of Happy Warriors who is amenable to bipartisan rule and willing to govern reasonably and competently from the center.

William the Bloody:

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

It's a lovely idea, but ignores the reality that this campaign will end up exactly where we knew it would all along. The campaign is McCain, it is unfocused, erratic, angry, incoherent and nasty, even a bit addle-brained. At the time McCain was ensured the Republican nomination, I predicted that he would "bring on the nasty", and I've not been disappointed. Pundits like Kristol have in their mind a version of McCain that not only doesn't exist, but has been proven to be demonstrably wrong time and again. From his well documented temper to his long history of erratic swings, both in policy and in approach, McCain is less a maverick and more of an angry old coot. The American people have come to realize that the more that they know of McCain, the more they dislike him.

UPDATE: Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly piles on Kristol a bit more:

This is, of course, the same Bill Kristol who devoted his column just seven days ago to urging McCain to do the opposite, attacking Obama with guilt-by-association smears. Kristol said he was looking forward to McCain taking off the "gloves."

McCain's strategy coincided nicely with Kristol's previous advice, and most evidence suggests the tactics failed. So, Kristol is now arguing that McCain should disregard all that advice from last week, and take his new suggestions to heart.

And if you want to get right down to it, Kristol was banging the table for Palin for veep months before anyone had even begun to experience her profound absurdity.

all the kids are doing it...

Hehhhh?

2008 Tom Waits Stuff

Great version of Tom Traubert's Blues....

Feel the Meme.....

It is bubbling up underneath the bailout analysis and discussion, and it will rear its ugly head in all of the dank corners of the rightwing blogosphere. The meme is that the credit crunch, the collapse of the ridiculously levered banks on Wall Street, and the severe decline in the value of your home is not due to rapacious bankers, lenders and brokers, but because of.....blacks!

The general thought process is that because Clinton (of course) and the Democrats insisted that home ownership should be available to those who had been traditionally left outside of the lending process, and often explicitly discriminated against, the banks were forced to begin reckless lending to lower income and lower credit borrowers, in particular, minorities and, gasp, blacks.



Here's a taste of the meme:

Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.
Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.
The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.
Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

We can argue all that we want about the chicken and egg here, but the chicken and egg are the boom in securitization that Wall Street led and the artificially low interest rates that Chairman Greenspan left in place after 9/11, not the absurdly racist notion that black and minority home ownership are to blame. Keep an eye on this, it will enter the conversation over and over again, until it meanders towards conventional wisdom on the right.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin gives it a little twist, and blames it on the other dark skinned culprits....

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave - Loudoun County, Va., California’s Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters - also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal-alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Snark.

Finally, a coherent analysis of the bailout:

The Bailout Plan...

I'll give you two posts that point out the inanity of the bailout scheme that Hank Paulson, Helicopter Ben, and the Bush Administration have proposed. The first, from Glenzilla, analyzes the bailout from the higher level, noting that it is the most naked example of Republican hypocrisy that we'll see in our lifetimes, perhaps.

Second, whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.
What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.

The second is from Krugman, in this blogpost here, who points out, quite succinctly, why this thing just won't work.

Here’s the thing: historically, financial system rescues have involved seizing the troubled institutions and guaranteeing their debts; only after that did the government try to repackage and sell their assets. The feds took over S&Ls first, protecting their depositors, then transferred their bad assets to the RTC. The Swedes took over troubled banks, again protecting their depositors, before transferring their assets to their equivalent institutions.

The Treasury plan, by contrast, looks like an attempt to restore confidence in the financial system — that is, convince creditors of troubled institutions that everything’s OK — simply by buying assets off these institutions. This will only work if the prices Treasury pays are much higher than current market prices; that, in turn, can only be true either if this is mainly a liquidity problem — which seems doubtful — or if Treasury is going to be paying a huge premium, in effect throwing taxpayers’ money at the financial world.

And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving.

I hope I’m wrong about this. But let me say it again: Treasury needs to explain why this is supposed to work — not try to panic Congress into giving it a blank check. Otherwise, no deal.

What Krugman is correctly noting is that we are at cross purposes here. It is in the interests of the taxpayers to pay the least amount possible for the shitty loans on the books of the banks (broadly defined). If we overpay, we receive no potential upside and simply own a trillion dollars of garbage. It is in the interests of the banks (and the bailout, by the way) for the taxpayers to grossly overpay for those loans. If the government (ie, us) doesn't overpay for the loans, the bailout itself does no good.

And thirdly, a question that cuts to the heart of the flailing about that has defined the past two weeks...namely, what do we do if the bailout doesn't work? Again, what is plan B here? I hate to draw specious parallels to our misadventures along the Tigris and the Euphrates, but didn't we all agree that we needed to do a bit of "postwar planning" next time?

Jackson

Goin down to the Tower to see JB tonight. Betcha he doesn't look like this anymore...

The Challenge Ahead

Russ Feingold nails it right on the head in his special comment for Constitution Day. You can read the entire statement here.


The money graph is here:

Our next president will face a difficult challenge. He must repair the wreckage the current administration has left, which means renouncing some of the powers the current President tried to amass as he turned a blind eye to the rule of law and separation of powers. No president will want to limit his own power. But if we are to be the nation our founders envisioned when they gathered in Philadelphia more than two centuries ago, we must work together — across party lines and at all levels of government — to protect and defend our Constitution and restore the rule of law.

The assault on the Constitution by Cheney, Addington and Bush (through his general disinterest and disdain for the concept of government itself) is perhaps the most corrosive legacy of this failed administration. (That said, the havoc we see in the financial world is not far behind, as it represents the logical conclusion of the Bush Presidency's incompetent fiscal policy).

Another one that doesn't do nuance....

As Wall Street lurches through the painful de-leveraging that is necessary to deflate the bubble that has provided 60% of the revenue and 40% of the pre-tax profit for investment banks over the past five years, the big question is exactly how the GOP will spin this, particularly the mouth breathing right. It seems a meme has emerged, namely, that this is all Congresses fault. I'm not quite sure how this squares with the reality of the last eight years of disdain for any sort of government regulation or oversight, but clearly a theme is emerging that someone, perhaps Chris Dodd, should be arrested.

John McCain added this to the conversation:

"We're going to need a '9/11 Commission' to find out what happened and what needs to be fixed," he said. "I warned two years ago that this situation was deteriorating and unacceptable. And the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved, and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we're in today. And I know how to fix it, and I know how to get things done."

McCain has made no secret of the fact that he doesn't understand the economy, doesn't particularly care about it, and doesn't have the predilection to spend the time to look into it, as it is complicated business. As Digby notes, this is the man that intends to solve the centuries old conflicts in Western Asia this way:

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,’” said Mr. McCain.

So, we probably shouldn't expect too much from Grampy McCranky when it comes to an enlightened or nuanced examination of the current tectonic shift in business models that is occurring on the Street. In my own personal opinion, we are reaping the result of eight years of unfettered capitalism, which grew out of the utter disdain that the right has for the notion of government itself. Movement conservatives hold as religion the thought that any regulation, any bureaucracy, any oversight, or any safety net that government would put in the way of the free hand of the markets is anathema, and that any discussion of the appropriate role of our government in checking the excesses of our systems is tantamount to treason.

And where have we ended up? The litany of Bush failures are underpinned by this broken calculation. Katrina, Freddie and Fannie, the subprime debacle, AIG, Lehman and Bear, the misery of the bankruptcy bill, all of these are part and parcel of the anti-government bent that drives their worldview. Along the way, they've been forced to bail out the very markets they swear by, ironically. So you and I will take on the mortgage responsibilities of Freddie and Frannie, we'll lend $50b to AIG, and we'll backstop Bear's losses on behalf of JP Morgan. If GM comes hat in hand to the Fed next week, how can we say no?

Thank goodness he's got Palin on his ticket to work through the complexities.

Ahh, whatever....Ronnie Drew Passed in August...

Passed without comment....

McCain criticized Democratic contenders for offering what he called costly universal health care proposals that require too much government regulation. While he said he had not studied Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan, he said it was "eerily reminiscent" of the failed plan she offered as first lady in the early 1990s.

"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," he said of her proposal.

link

WSJ on Palin's lies...

What's with these two radical liberals who've invaded the hallowed spaces of the WSJ?

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government "thanks but no thanks" to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.....

But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere....

Why is this one issue such a big deal? Sen. McCain's anti-earmarks stance has been paramount to his campaign. The Arizona senator has blamed everything from the Minneapolis bridge collapse to Hurricane Katrina on Congress's willingness to stuff bills full of pork barrel spending.

As such, Gov. Palin's image as a "reformer" is part of the storyline the McCain campaign needs to complement the top of its ticket. Her quip about passing on the bridge and "building it ourselves" has been a staple of her stump...

At a rally today, Sen. McCain again asserted that Sen. Obama has requested nearly a billion in earmarks. In fact, the Illinois senator requested $311 million last year, according to the Associated Press, and none this year. In comparison, Gov. Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor -- which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation.

Another word for what Gov. Palin is doing is, of course, lying.

Once again, her comical performance isn't the issue; of course she's a travesty as a national candidate, and the next six weeks will be filled with one gaffe after another, at least as far as the GOP allows her to speak openly. The issue, as it has always been, is McCain's decision to include her on the ticket. He vowed that the person he ultimately chose as his running mate would be the person best able to fulfill his responsibilities should something happen to him. He had months and months to find that person, and when the time came, he picked Palin. This is about judgment. This is about temperament, and this is about erratic behavior on the part of the man the GOP has chosen as their standard bearer.

UPDATE: Careful, some on the right are already wishing and hoping that the 72 year old four time cancer survivor doesn't even make it that long..

Hockey Guy, You're Famous!

Apparently, Grampy McSame is a big fan of reality television. I suppose he has his pudding on a TV table watching the latest version of Biggest Loser or Wife Swap. Appropriately, he's now got a supporting role in the latest hit, Baby Daddy, in which a 17 year old boy from Alaska is whisked off to the Twin Cities to meet the man who in six weeks could be the President of the United States! And what great feat did he pull off to win this great honor? He knocked up his high school girlfriend...



The cameras were rolling, the world was watching. Fox News complains non-stop about the MSM's shameless attacks on the Palin family, the gross invasion of privacy that has taken place because the liberal media has pried into the sanctity of this family matter. In other words, keep the family out of it, and never mind the fact that we leaked the story and have shamelessly used the family as props all week. Oh, and who's turn is it to hold the little special kid?

Ten days ago, he was a high school dropout, drinking beer and smoking weed in Alaska, and today, he's being lauded by the fundamentalist right wing as a symbol of strong "culture of life" family values.

What a strange world.

This....

Beyond the Palin

The Palin nomination is a complete fiasco, of course. McCain's judgment has proven once again to be shaky and erratic, and it will take months to figure out just who called the shots on this one. Bill Kristol has been banging the table for Palin for months on Fox News, so this hardly came out of the blue. James Dobson and the religious fundamentalists clearly vetted the choice (just as McCain's lawyers seemed not to have). If Rove and the fundies sank Lieberman as possibility, which is being reported, what exactly does that say about Maverick McCain? So many unanswered questions.

Barring the possibility that she will be dropped from the ticket quickly, a possibility that I find highly likely at this point, it will be interesting to see how our opinion of Sarah Palin changes between now and November. The reaction that I got from various conversations over the weekend was that the choice was puzzling, desperate, insulting and a bit creepy. All of the information that has emerged in the past two days has done nothing but reinforce the idea that this is perhaps the greatest gaffe that a Presidential candidate has ever committed. We've learned that her bold declaration of opposing the 'bridge to nowhere' is complete bunk, we've learned that she's lawyered up for her own "troopergate" scandal which calls into question abuse of executive power, and we've learned that she has links to a bizarre secessionist movement in Alaskan politics. The timing of the revelation of Bristol Palin's pregnancy will trickle out over the next few days, and my guess is that it will lead to many more questions than answers about who knew what and when.

Whether or not the mainstream press, the spinmeisters and the talking heads on Fox, MSNBC and CNN will be able to transform that impression will be fascinating to watch.

Can they convince us that this is a wise choice?

Joe Lieberman and John McCain

Glen Greenwald points out that the foreign policy advisers closest to John McCain are of the most rabid strain of bloodthirsty neoconservative ilk. In an editorial in the WSJ, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham talk tough on Russia's recent border skirmish with Georgia.

The idea that we are going to somehow assert ourselves militarily against Russia, while at the same time fighting two wars and after having made ourselves an international pariah would be laughable if it weren't so utterly scary. Lieberman, in particular, who yearns dearly for war in Iran and Syria, represents the most extreme vision of neoconservatism, a view shared by a rogue's gallery of discredited fools, such as Bill Kristol, John Bolton, and Paul Wolfowitz.

The foreign policy team exerting chief influence over John McCain is truly more extremist -- in a purer and more deranged form -- than the foreign policy team of the Bush administration. They're not only the most extremist faction in American political life, but also the most delusional. These aren't just the people who led the U.S. to war in Iraq -- though they are that -- but they're also the ones who actually believe that the Bush administration has been far too meek in its assertion of U.S. military force and too passive in its interference in the affairs of other countries. They want to accelerate -- massively intensify -- virtually every one of the polices that has brought the U.S. to such disgrace and near ruination over the past eight years.

This is McCain's worldview as well. It is jingoistic and dangerous and tinged with unreality, even a bit of madness. This is what the election is about, for me. An Obama presidency is going to be a difficult one, as the damage that has been done to this country is substantial. A huge amount of any political capital that Obama will bring to the White House will be spent trying to reestablish ourselves as an honest broker and true beacon of democracy. The international audience that he will face will be a tough one, and the enmity will be real and intense.

The fact that McCain chooses to be associated with the Lieberman/Graham camp (and actually to be a proud member of that camp) is more damning than anything else about that man.

man o' the people...

It's officially stupid season. The next two months are going to be painful. Just keep two things in mind: Obama is a muslim, and McCain was a POW.

TBogg has a great rundown of the wingnut's response to the McCain house kerfluffle here. My personal favorite is this one...

My third reaction was, hey, how many houses do I own? The answer, it turns out, is pretty complicated, what with property held in trust for my benefit and controlling interests in investments and such. It is either two -- the house in Princeton that we live in and the house we are trying to sell -- or some larger number up to six, including three houses in the Adirondacks held in a trust among all the descendants of my grandparents and a dual residential/commercial property that we rent.

So, if you put that question to me and I were unprepared for it, I'd probably have to get back to you too. And if I really did not want to be wrong and had a staff with an official position, I would refer you to it. Neither diminishes one iota my love of eating at Applebee's, the joy I feel walking a boardwalk "down the shore," or my identification, such as it is, with the average Joe.

HEH: A reader emails, "I just want to know if Obama has 'experimented' with more illegal substances than McCain owns houses... Then we'll decide."

Careful....getting into dangerous territory when we start making innuendos about illicit drug use....

The Real McCain

Kevin Drum is absolutely correct that the idea that the American public will sour on John McCain because he is rich and white and a belligerent warmonger is fantasy. America has shown time and again that they are just fine with rich white playboy warmongers.

The far more powerful approach is to focus on McCain's demonstrable flaws, which he lists thusly:

McCain is old and gets confused occasionally.

McCain is running an ugly, smear-based campaign.

McCain has a legendarily short fuse.

McCain is annoyingly self-righteous.

McCain's straight talk has evaporated in the face of his need to win evangelical votes.

McCain, who says that he is hesitant to speak about his time in the Hanoi Hilton, or his war service in general, demonstrated this sanctimonious streak last week:

On Thursday, Walter Isaacson was the latest pundit to publicly call out the Mama Mia-loving presumptive Republican presidential nominee during an interview at the Aspen Institute in Colorado.

"If there is anything I am lacking in, I've got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life," McCain said in his own defense. "I've got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again."

and it bleeds over to his staff, who drop the POW card any time McCain is questioned, for anything:

Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview. A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain said he was en route to the church.

Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions. “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Aside from that, he has confused Sunni with Shia, imagined the existence of Czechoslovakia, and relentlessly confused the geography of Western Asia, imagining a border between Pakistan and Iraq.

As dozens of articles have pointed out, McCain has flipped on just about all of his "maverick" positions in the past four years, including the use of torture, the Bush tax cuts, immigration reform, timetables for withdraw, wiretapping and FISA,gay marriage, affirmative action, ANWR, and so many more, that the mere notion of describing him as anything other than a Bush clone is absurd.

In many ways, he represents the worst of the last three Republican Presidents, he's as old and confused as Reagan, as dim and unimpressive as Bush I, and a vindictive and short tempered bully like W. This is where Obama should hit McCain, by calling him out on his "maverick" bologna, his age and mental acuity, and his general temperament.

UPDATE: As dday points out, another manifestation of the McCain character is a wee bit of a problem with telling the truth:

So Many Half-Truths, So Little Time

by dday

Just because I want to keep track of this stuff, here are some more stories providing strong evidence of John McCain's growing problem with telling the truth. Both relate to Saturday's Saddleback Forum but are also anecdotes and excerpts he habitually brings up on the trail.

In the first question of the forum, he was asked to name three people he would "rely heavily on" for advice and counsel. One of the three he named was the great civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). McCain has no relationship with Lewis despite serving in Washington with him for 22 years.

Later, McCain told the story he often tells on the campaign trail, a little joke about how the federal government spent $3 million dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana. At the time, he never sought to remove the earmark appropriating money for the bear project, despite seeking to reduce funding for other projects in the same bill; and he voted for the final bill.

And, he claimed that he would never have nominated Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, though he voted to confirm all three of them.

Quote of the Day....

One of the Russian commanders, Gen. Vyacheslav Nikolayevich of the Pskov Airborne Division, said Russian soldiers would remain on the outskirts of Gori but not enter the city. “People can get back to their lives,” he said.

Asked whether Mr. Bush’s relief mission made him nervous, he scoffed. “What can the Americans do to us?” he said. “A big country like Russia doesn’t fear America.”

Sad state of affairs

My guess is that the Russo-Georgian conflict is a situation fraught with intrigue that involves the highest level of the Bush administration, which is completely understandable. At this point, the key question seems to be around just how strongly we encouraged Georgia to push for the recovery of their breakaway republics. Clearly, we were playing a dangerous game, and it looks like we may have mishandled the situation badly.

The real issue, though, is the upshot of it all. Once again, we've been exposed as a toothless enforcer, threatening all sorts of actions that the Russians and the rest of the world know that we can't back up. McCain's highly inflammatory statement that "we are all Georgians now", is truly irresponsible, as Matt Yglesias points out, and President Saakashvili called him out on it:

“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

There is no denying the fact that we have lost a great deal of leverage on the international stage. Leave aside the fact that we can no longer hold ourselves out as a beacon of morality, as the stain of Abu Ghraib hangs heavy on our mantle, the larger result of the eight years of the Bush fiasco is that we've been exposed as "all hat and no cattle", as they say in Crawford. Fredrick Kagan, Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney can rant and rave about Russia all they want, the world now knows that our words are hollow slogans, and that there is little that we can do to change events on our own. There was always wisdom in the notion that collective action is imperative in international affairs, and it will take an Obama administration to return this country to that sort of sanity.

Doug Feith Just Won't Go Away

The utterly loathsome Doug Feith, famously referred to as "the stupidest fucking guy on the face of the planet" by Tommy Franks, may have been Dick Cheney's go-to guy when he came up with the brilliant idea of forging a letter linking Saddam to 9/11:

The American Conservative’s Philip Giraldi argues today that “an extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community” told him Suskind’s overall claim “is correct,” but that it was Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans — not the CIA — that forged the letter:

feith.jpgMy source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq.

If five thousand kids weren't dead, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, this administration's shenanigans would almost be laughable. Unfortunately, the damage that these people visited on our country will never be a joke.

Joe Lieberman Makes My Head Hurt

Joe Lieberman, today:

LIEBERMAN: That’s why Senator Graham and I are introducing a resolution recognizing the strategic success that the surge has achieved in a central front — the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01, and expressing our thanks to our troops who’ve made that success possible.

This is McCain's "go to guy" on Iraq. God help us.

WTF?

Ben Stein, former Nixon speech writer, and all around putz, vomits this out on the Glen Beck horror show:



What is the matter with these people? Because Obama has energized the electorate (as well as enthusiastic Europeans) he is a Nazi? A Mussolini or a Hitler? Is he trying to be funny? Honestly, I'm at a loss to explain exactly what his point may be.

Splints Win! Splints Win!

Defying the very laws of nature, the Splendid Splinters, the world's most self destructive beer league softball team, won their eighth Villanova Summer Softball league championship last weekend, braving 100 degree temperatures and oceans of Budweiser and undercooked bratwurst on their way to the trophy. Improbable is the best way to describe the triumph of this motley group of now middle aged clowns.

Little Tuesday Snark.....

I was listening to Rush (I know) on that way back to the office this afternoon and the dittoheads are having a heck of a time getting their heads around the controversial New Yorker cover that is the talk of the town today.

The callers, one after another, kept insisting that the cover was the MSM's warning to Obama that if he continues to move towards the center, they will use all of their liberal superpowers to destroy his campaign with inflammatory attacks like the one shown here. Rush, in vain, attempted to explain that the cover was meant as satire, and that in fact the target of the satire was the right wing itself, and even the callers themselves. This notion, not surprisingly, was met with mouth-breathing and confusion from the adoring callers.

The dittoheads like their messages a little more straightforward, it seems. This billboard in Florida succinctly captures the worldview the way they like it....black and white, if you will:





Now that's some straight talk, my friends. The group that paid for this billboard also has a Youtube hit single, you'll be happy to know, and I'm happy to highlight this little ditty here:



Not exactly Masters of War, I understand....

Flippity.....

John McCain, yesterday:

ABC News’s Bret Hovell reports: Sen. John McCain responded late Tuesday to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s call for a drawdown in foreign troops from Iraq as a prerequisite for a security agreement with the United States.

McCain said he was not concerned about the call for a "timetable" for withdrawal, a concept McCain has consistently criticized.

"I know for a fact that [troop pullout] will be dictated by the situation on the ground, as it always has been," McCain said Tuesday evening at a stop for dinner in Pittsburgh, Pa.

"Since we are succeeding, then I am convinced, as I have said before, we can withdraw and withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable," he said. "And I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about, since he has told me that for many meetings we’ve had."

John McCain, 2004:

"Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

Lies and the lying liars....

This post by Glen Greenwald really illustrates the very best of the blogosphere and neatly shows the revolution in news coverage that the rise of bloggers has wrought. The chronology is really telling. Mara Liason goes on Fox News Sunday and makes several statements about Obama's plan to leave Iraq, and emphatically juxtaposes the Obama position with what the "American People" feel about leaving Iraq.

HUME: But is [Obama] on the verge of changing on his long-stated promise that says, "The mission is to get out and I'll have them all out, all the forces out, in 16 months?"
LIASSON: I think the 16 months -- he is trying to get himself out of that box. Look, Samantha Power got in a lot of trouble . . . where she said, "Well, of course he's not going to just stick to some campaign promise of 16 months. He's going to look at the facts on the ground."
Well, that's what the American people want a commander in chief to do. That might not be what his left-wing base does. The question for Obama now is what kind of Iraq does he want to leave behind.

In the old days of a few years ago, that's where punditocracy ended. Mara Liasson is an expert, well informed, and her statement would have stood as fact. Brit Hume, frow burrowed, would nod approvingly at this wisdom, comfortable in the fact that the radical left-wing base of the Democratic Party was being counterbalanced by the power of the national media.

Except that it is all bullshit.

As Greenwald points out, in near real time, Obama's position clearly reflects the desires of the majority of the American people, and Liasson's assertion is pure, unadulterated crap.

How much clearer could that be? The truth is exactly the opposite of what Liasson said. Americans want to withdraw from Iraq in accordance with Obama's timetable (if not faster) regardless of circumstances "on the ground" -- not conditioned on those circumstances. But because that's not the view Liasson and her establishment colleagues embrace, they just lie and claim that the majority view is the one held only by the "left-wing" fringe, while their own actually fringe view is the one embraced by "the American people" and thus defines the "Center."

As Greenwald concludes:

The fact that Mara Liasson feels perfectly comfortable going on television and baldly uttering a clear-cut falsehood -- that only "the left-wing base" favors unconditional withdrawal while "the American people" only want to leave Iraq when "facts on the ground" allow it -- demonstrates how pervasive this deceit is. She likely isn't even aware that what she's saying is false. The establishment class is so self-absorbed, so inculcated with faith in their own wisdom, that they automatically think that whatever they and their comrades believe is, by definition, what "the American people" believe, even when all empirical data proves that the opposite is true.

And therein lies the sea change. Print media dies each and every day. Even bold commentators who speak truth to power like McClatchy struggle in this digital age. The mainstream network press will follow right behind. Information and analysis is ubiquitous and immediate. Leave aside the ridiculous profile of Rush Limbaugh that appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine this weekend, as he is as much "mainstream media" as Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather. Lord knows, reading between the lines of that article, he sat up nights crying himself senseless because Brokaw and Rather considered him a low class drug addled fatty, and wouldn't let him cocktail with them at the Waldorf. The truth and the future lies with the bloggers, like Greenwald, who in a few short keystrokes dispel the myths and outright lies of the lazy mainstream press.

Things will never be the same.

media matters for america...

Everything that you need to know about the Wes Clark brou ha ha is right here.

It is an absolutely shameful performance by the DC "villagers", and one that has already entered the discourse in this country. If you take five minutes to read Jamison Foser's recap of this, you'll understand what is wrong with our media today. I suppose the good news is that more and more people will get their news and analysis from people like Foser than people like Andrea Mitchell, but in the meantime, we're stuck with the Village Idiots. Foser concludes:

Let's pause for a moment to review. According to the news media, if you call John McCain a "hero," but say that heroism doesn't qualify him to be president, you have dishonorably attacked his military service. (Feel free, however, to say the same thing about John Kerry.) And if you criticize McCain's Iraq policies, you are participating in "an organized campaign against John McCain's military service."

But wait! There's more!

The media's knee-jerk defense of McCain doesn't stop at their use of his military service to rule criticism of his Iraq policies out of bounds. It extends to (things having nothing to do with) his age, too. See, if you criticize John McCain for ignoring his own pledge to avoid negative campaigning, the media will quickly announce that you're really attacking his age. That was ridiculous, of course, but McCain aide Mark Salter told them to say it, so they did.

You get the picture: the media is on the verge of declaring any criticism of John McCain off-limits -- even when it isn't really criticism. Even when you call him a "hero," but not quite enthusiastically enough.

One of the hallmarks of the Karl Rove era of GOP politics is that the Republicans aren't particularly subtle about their tactics. They tend to clearly telegraph what they intend to do, though often with the slight wrinkle of accusing the opposition of doing what they plan to do themselves.

That is certainly true of the McCain campaign. In the very memo in which Salter convinced the media to pretend that Obama's criticism of McCain's negative campaigning was an attack on the Arizona senator's age, Salter wrote: "Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race."

Yes, that's John McCain's senior adviser complaining that the media has formed a "protective barrier" around Barack Obama.

Let McCain be McCain?

Peggy Noonan, who has been certifiably senile for years now, attempts to capture the lighthearted wit of John McCain in her bizarre commentary this weekend in the WSJ. Her column, entitled "Let McCain Be McCain", is ostensibly organized around the idea that certain forces in the McCain campaign are keeping him too reigned in, holding him back, and in doing so, hurting McCain's chances because the real John doesn't come out. Peggy wants us to understand that McCain's real personality is funny, mischievous, witty and lovable. As an example of the real McCain, she tells us

The most interesting thing about Mr. McCain has always been the delight he takes in a certain unblinkered candor. There is also the antic part of his nature, his natural wit, his tropism toward comedy. All this was captured wonderfully by Mark Leibovich last February in the New York Times. Mr. McCain had taken the lead in the primaries and had gone from being "one of the most disruptive forces in his party" to someone playing it safe. In an airplane interview he said things like, "There is a process in place that will formalize the methodology." Then he couldn't help it, he became McCain:

"[He] volunteered that Brooke Buchanan, his spokeswoman who was seated nearby and rolling her eyes, 'has a lot of her money hidden in the Cayman Islands' and that she earned it by 'dealing drugs.' Previously, Mr. McCain had identified Ms. Buchanan as 'Pat Buchanan's illegitimate daughter,' 'bipolar,' 'a drunk,' 'someone with a lot of boyfriends,' and 'just out of Betty Ford.'"

Wow. I may be a bit old fashioned, but lovable and witty don't seem to describe that little bit of charm. That seems to veer a bit towards the insanely nasty, disjointed and vicious ramblings of an addled old man. Sounds like old Johnny may be a bit off his meds, actually. McCain's reputation as a cranky and hot tempered senior citizen has been well documented, and I'm sure that the McCain campaign knows a bit better than Peggy why they need to keep gramps under wraps.

An angry Rove....

One of the things that really appeals to me about Obama and to a lot of people, I'd guess, is his quiet confidence in the face of the Republican smear machine. Unlike Kerry, who's brow would wrinkle up, and who seemed almost apologetic in the face of the attacks, Obama seems supremely confident in his ability to deflect the mud that is and will continue to be inevitably slung his way. Obama's clear and concise support of the Boumediene vs. Bush decision was based upon his background as a constitutional lawyer and it clearly showed that he will not be swayed by the fearmongers on the right who equate anything short of outright torture of brown skinned foreigners with complete capitulation to the terra-rists. He simply pointed out that the decision is well reasoned and backed by precedent, and never shied from calling out the current administration's excesses in the face of the "Scariest Threat Evah". Kerry, who correctly noted that the logical and most effective response to the threat of Islamic extremism domestically was to beef up our law enforcement capabilities, backpedaled furiously when Rove and the right wing accused him of being a French speaking windsurfing traitor.

You can tell that Obama's confidence really irks Karl Rove, and has taken him way off his game and way off his message. Yesterday, he let this one slip:

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said... "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

That's real seething hatred, and it shows that Rove is off his game. The problem with it is that Rove and the GOP have been working tirelessly to paint Obama as an oriental, an outsider, an exotic, and of course, a Muslim. They want their base, and whatever portion of the center that may still be listening to them to fear his "otherness", which of course is dog whistle for their thinly veiled racism. Subtle it aint. But the Rovester is off the reservation on this comment, he's lost the script, because as Greg Sargent points out, that description only fits one man:

It should also be noted, of course, that Rove took a man who actually is a country club denizen who makes "snide comments" about others -- that would be George W. Bush -- and turned him into a regular Joe. Meanwhile, the guy who would struggle for admittance to some of these exclusive enclaves -- Obama -- is now "the guy at the country club." Rovian up-is-downism at its finest.

These guys are so turned around right now that they can't even follow their own playbook. Maybe the GOP will get it together before November, and it will be an ugly summer if they do, but for now, if the Rover is that far out of synch with his own GPS, things and looking good for Old John.

John Boton's Idea of Intelligent Discourse

Of all the knuckle-draggers, vacuous ideologues, and downright evil characters who have soiled our nation's discourse and fouled the government of this country over the past eight years, perhaps none rises to the level of vileness as John Bolton, Bush's recess appointment to the United Nations, and the former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control. His resume is typical of the closeted pantywaists that inhabit the Federalist Society and the American Enterprise Institute. He was intimately involved in the lies regarding Niger's production of yellowcake uranium, and throughout his disgraceful career, spun intelligence to fit his agenda, and hid intelligence from Condi Rice and Colin Powell when the facts proved inconvenient.

He reputation as blunt and unforgiving is, as any schoolyard bully shows, probably best explained by his own insecurities and lack of intelligence. In a disgraceful interview with the almost subhuman John Gibson on Fox yesterday, Bolton solidifies his bona fides as a complete cretin by barfing out the following:

GIBSON: The Obama team is going back to some of the old complaints about the war and the war on terror…that the left has been articulating for a long time now, and not really coming up with anything new.

BOLTON: Yeah I think honestly that’s an optimistic view of it, that it will simply be a replay of the Clinton administration. It will simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks. That would be the best outcome from that perspective.

Imagine.

Leave aside the fact that 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch. This man, who furiously pleasures himself to the notion of bombing 75 million Iranians into oblivion, who looks at the horror of the needless destruction throughout the cradle of civilization and smiles, and who wears his bloodthirsty lust as a badge of honor was deemed by the Idiot Dauphin an appropriate appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations. Cheney and Bush's utter contempt for this country was never manifested so clearly as in his appointment.

The Vulgarity of the Neocons

TBogg lays into the vile Michael Gerson, who finds Al Franken, and not the handiwork he helped to create in Mesopotamia "vulgar". It may be heavy handed to lay the responsibility for the needless death and dismemberment of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis at the door of a small group of people who ginned up this ridiculous war, but as McClatchy points out today, the decision to abrogate our nations laws and ignore two hundred years of precedent with regard to the treatment of detainees was essentially hatched and executed by five lawyers:

The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.

It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.

And so it went with the run up to Iraq. PNAC was a small group, made up of a handful of neocons like Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Gerson and William Kristol, a group convinced of their rightness who refuse to this day to admit that the decision to launch this disastrous war was anything but correct. Their astounding arrogance and hubris knows absolutely no bounds, and their academic enablers, the Kagan family, continue to defend them and their work in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Like the five lawyers who squandered our good name and forever sullied the principles upon which our international reputation was built, these men should be considered War Criminals. They should be shunned by men of good will, left alone to be tortured by the screams of the Iraqi children who they are directly responsible for butchering. Instead, they sit comfortably in leather chairs on Fox News, smugly asserting their omniscience. Until we decide that they should be shunned and ignored, they will remain supremely confident in their rightness, and urge us on to greater folly in Iran.

To assume that these ghouls would have the conscience to admit their own errors is the highest folly indeed.

Republican Recidivism

What Digby says.

Read the whole post. It will make you a better informed person.

The Idiot Prince

In (Former Commander of the US Forces in Iraq) General Ricardo Sanchez' new autobiography, he recounts a profoundly disturbing and confused "pep talk" that Bush gave the Joint Chiefs in a teleconference call. Tom Tomorrow recounts:

According to Sanchez, Powell was talking tough that day: “We’ve got to smash somebody’s ass quickly,” the general reports him saying. “There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power.” (And indeed, by the end of April, parts of Fallujah would be in ruins, as, by August, would expanses of the oldest parts of the holy Shiite city of Najaf. Sadr himself would, however, escape to fight another day; and, in order to declare Powell’s “total victory,” the U.S. military would have to return to Fallujah that November, after the U.S. presidential election, and reduce three-quarters of it to virtual rubble.) Bush then turned to the subject of al-Sadr: “At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone,” he insisted to his top advisors. “At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out.”

Not long after that, the President “launched” what an evidently bewildered Sanchez politely describes as “a kind of confused pep talk regarding both Fallujah and our upcoming southern campaign [against the Mahdi Army]”…

“Kick ass!” [Bush] said, echoing Colin Powell’s tough talk. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.

“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

Stay strong. Stay the course. Kill them.

It reminded me of this cartoon



It's just sad.

The Unbearable Seriousness of Doug Feith

Peggy Noonan, village idiot of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, reads Scott McClellan's astonishing book on the lies of Rove and Libby and the mendacity of the Bush administration in selling this disastrous war and concludes:

What's needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books, like Doug Feith's. More "this is what I saw" and "this is what is true." Feed history.

That would be Doug Feith, famously referred to as the "stupidest fucking guy on the face of the planet" by Tommy Franks, one of the architects of this war, who oversaw the Office of Special Plans, a shadow intelligence organization which took as its mandate the very straightforward goal of linking terrorist organizations to state sponsors, and which came to the none too startling conclusion that Iraq was a key sponsor of Al Queda, a conclusion that was unfortunately completely unsupported by any facts. Here he is feebly defending the main tenets and conclusions in his very "serious" book:

Tommy Gun

I SEE ALL THE INNOCENTS, THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
AND IF DEATH COMES SO CHEAP
THEN THE SAME GOES FOR LIFE!

Scottie comes clean.

I always thought that Scottie looked a little peaked at the daily presser, particularly as time went on. He had a brother, Mark, who was head of the FDA, and also headed Medicaid, and was generally considered a true wonk in DC. As such, Scottie was a bit of the younger idiot, who was forced to justify the obvious bullshit that came out of the administration on a daily basis, and truth be told, he looked pained doing it. My most vivid memories of McClellan were of a pasty white and sweaty man, pretending to be in control, but actually quite unsure of himself, a bit of a chickenshit, truth be told.

Certainly, in contrast to Ari Fleischer, he looked like he was going through the motions, particularly as the lies became so transparent that the proud 28% became the only folks left even pretending to follow the storyline. Fleischer, who possesses no conscience, had no such qualms.

Tony Snow, who followed Scottie, was a Fox anchor, and therefore was and is bereft of any soul, so he pulled the gig off just fine.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that Scottie is out with a breathless tell all, in which he lets us know that

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

The chickens continue to come home to roost, but on this Memorial Day weekend, it should not be forgotten that the blood of 4000 of the best that we could ever offer is on these ghouls' hands, and no confessional could wipe it clean.

little teeny president.....

Remember that big speech that W gave in the Knesset oh so many days ago? You know, the one warning countries against negotiations with terrorist supporting nations, equating diplomacy with appeasement?

Ummmm. Somebody wasn't listening:

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Israel and Syria have had indirect
talks for more than a year that are being mediated by Turkey and
are aimed at reaching a peace agreement, their governments said.

See. Nobody cares.

William the Bloody, Crayon in hand.

Oh, and by the way, Bill Kristol continues to be an idiot, and the NYT continues to embarrass themselves by publishing him.

Given Kristol’s recent history of obvious factual errors in his printed columns, did it not occur to the Times to consider fact-checking his pieces before they go to print? Kristol has already had to run two corrections, and this should prompt a third. How many more chances does this guy get?