A Year Later

We have a President in the White House, who, like the editorial writers and Sunday morning talk show hosts, refuses to call the GOP out for what it is, a batshit insane caucus of religious fanatics, economic fantasists, and shills for an elite that they can't even begin to understand. Krugman, who's Nobel prize in economics for some reason disqualifies him from intelligent discourse in modern American political discussion, cites Elizabeth Drew and says quite simply, that the man has lost the thread:

Even more alarming, however, is her window on what the White House is thinking:

It all goes back to the “shellacking” Obama took in the 2010 elections. The President’s political advisers studied the numbers and concluded that the voters wanted the government to spend less. This was an arguable interpretation. Nevertheless, the political advisers believed that elections are decided by middle-of-the-road independent voters, and this group became the target for determining the policies of the next two years.OK, I’ve never won a tough election. But neither has Obama! The 2008 race was looking close until Sarah Palin and Lehman came along. And as far as I can tell, this assessment both of what 2010 was about and what matters for 2012 is just ludicrous.

As I recall, two things happened last year: voters were angry about the weak economy, and older voters believed that Obama was going to take away their Medicare and send them to the death panels. And so the way to win those voters back is to cut Medicare and weaken the economy?

A further point: even if Obama really does cut spending, will anyone notice? Even people who are supposedly well informed believe that there was a vast expansion of government under Obama, when in fact there wasn’t. So we’re supposed to believe that independent voters will actually be able to cut through the fog — the deliberate fog of Fox, the he-said-she-said of most other media organizations — and give him credit for spending cuts? Remember, whatever he does Republicans will claim that the government is getting bigger — and news organization will report only that “Democrats say” that this isn’t true.

What a disaster.

The real tragedy in all of this is not laughing Boehner, et all, out of the room. There is no crisis, of course, only a manufactured one that allows the poseurs on the Right to position themselves for their cynical political motives. All the while, the safety net is torn, and Obama misses the opportunity to call them out for what they are. They should almost be commended for their shamelessness, and Obama will and rightly should pay the price for giving them the air they need to survive.

That is all

Howard Beale is Looking Sane...

In all honesty, the rodeo clown is slipping into another dimension. Won't be long now....

War Without End

Jesus. Bring these poor kids home. What in the world are we hoping to accomplish?

Many of the soldiers are in the remote valleys of eastern Afghanistan, forested slivers where outsiders—even those from elsewhere in Afghanistan—have never been welcome and the government's writ never really existed.

"If you don't understand the dynamics, you have no chance of getting it right," Gen. McChrystal said.......

The valley never became one of those places in Afghanistan where the coalition could measure progress in schools and clinics and irrigation projects built. Whatever they built, the Taliban destroyed. There is no local Afghan government here to work with.

"Everybody hates them in the valley," Haji Nizamuddin, a tribal elder in Korengal, said of the Americans. U.S. forces "shoot at people, they raid our houses and kill our women and children." Mr. Nizamuddin stressed that he wasn't pro-Taliban. He, like many people in the valley, simply wanted to be left alone, he said.

Serious Matters

It's hard to believe that these people are serious, but I can assure you, they are.

Obama is the loyal son of a left-wing anthropologist mother who sought to expiate her white guilt by going to bed with Muslim Third World men. He is a Third World anthropologist studying us, learning our culture and our customs the better to neutralize what he considers to be a malignant American influence in world affairs.

C'mon.

The lies of the Right

Crooks and Liars has a good rundown of the lies that surround the GOP's attacks on lower and middle class Americans, in the form of a number of clearly misleading and wholly inaccurate talking points. First among these is the widely held belief of Glen Beck and Newt Gingrich fans that 40-50% of all Americans 'pay no taxes'. Read the C&L post, as well as this one, which runs down the top ten lies that the right uses. It is the type of crap that the Teabaggers spew constantly, and it has absolutely no basis in fact.

Heed the Apostate

When you are really looking for the most scathing indictment of a particular religion, such as modern american Republicanism, it's always best to seek the opinion of the apostate, the lapsed believers who feel most ashamed of their formerly held beliefs. David Brock at MediaMatters, the recent comments by David Frum, etc.

and, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, of course. Formerly one of the most fervent supporters of Bush, Cheney, and the criminality of their administration, he now sees the GOP for what it is and has been for years: a party that is "proudly ignorant", trafficking in lies, distortions and fear, devoid of ideas but laden with hate. He quotes approvingly from an article that appeared in The Atlantic:

Senior editor for The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it all in a nice neat package: Proud Of Being Ignorant.

A lot of you have e-mailed me to note that Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has decided to honor those who fought to preserve, and extend, white supremacy. I don’t really have much to say. The GOP is, effectively, the party of willfully unlettered Utopians. It is the party of choice for those who believe global warming is a hoax, that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs, and that homosexuals should work harder at not being gay.

That the party of unadulterated quackery also believes that Birth Of A Nation is more true to the Civil War than Battle Cry Of Freedom, is to be expected. Ignorance does not respect boundaries. It is, at times, qualified and those who know more, often struggle to say more. But people who believe that the Census is actually a covert attempt to put Americans in concentration camps, are also likely to believe that slavery was incidental to the Civil War.

This is who they are—the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn’t “have had all these problems,” this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.

Well said. The GOP is the party of creationists and climate change deniers; nearly every major GOP politician is anti-science, because they know they won’t get any votes if they don’t toe the right wing line. And increasingly, the barely suppressed racism inherent in this atavistic world view is bubbling to the surface, as we see today in Virginia.

Obama isn't perfect, in many ways he has failed those who most fervently supported him, who saw in him a truly transformative liberal cipher. On the other hand, the loyal opposition at this point is a calumny.

Coolest video you've seen in a while.....

Cold Here....

Won't see another one....

The Future of the GOP

I had always wondered how someone as clearly insane as Jim Bunning could be returned to the Senate time and again. His grasp of the issues is non-existent, and along with Inhofe, is arguably the most unhinged member of either house.

Well, here's your answer...behold, his constituents. Tea Partiers to the core.

Little bit o' Kate....

The Case for Sarah Palin

A few thoughts on the USPST

A few quick items on the revision of the breast cancer screening guidelines issued this week....

Obama had nothing to do with it. The USPST is a non-partisan panel made up of primary care physicians. Their recommendations come from work that they've been compiling over a two year period. In fact, the administration explicitly disagreed with their findings.

This has nothing to do with the healthcare reform bill. In a quick visit to wingnuttia on my AM dial, it's pretty clear that Rush, et al are working feverishly to instruct their listeners that this is the first salvo from the death panels and that Obama's true nature as a socialist or something has been exposed.

The findings are based upon science. Basically, the panel recommends that women make their own decisions when it comes to this important issue. It also simply states that statistically the amount of prevention may not be meaningful. That is not to say that women's lives have not been saved by early detection or that it is not a good idea to have a mamo at the age of 40. Rather, women should continue to have mamos at whatever age they would like, knowing full well that if they decide that it may not be necessary, the science says that they are not being irresponsible.

Insurance companies are not in any way bound by this decision. Further, with the American Cancer Society, several high profile cancer hospitals, and the administration in vocal opposition, it would be hard to imagine that insurance companies will change their existing coverages. Further still, in a world with a competitive healthcare system, as envisioned by the Reid legislation, insurers would be incented to provide the most attractive options in this regard, wouldn't they?

My gut tells me that part of the reaction comes from the fact that over the past 8 years, we have been led by an administration that has cynically and amazingly ignored and distorted scientific fact. We endured a President who denied that global warming exists. We witnessed a VP candidate who is convinced that Jesus rode on a dinosaur, and we saw a Senate Majority Leader diagnose a woman in a vegetative state over the TV. It is a long way out of the hole that we've been dug into.

Lastly, do a reverse Glen Beck on the issue and look at it from the conspiratorial point of view. If the dusky hewed Kenyan socialist was intent on stripping us of our healthcare options, could he have picked a worse time to announce this? Wouldn't it have made more sense to change the coverage options after the bill was passed?

There was a time.....

RuffTuffCreamPuffs

The incoherence of the Right appears pretty consistently these days, but maybe no more starkly than in the pants pissing that is going on concerning the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The immediate and reflexive response to the Administration's decision to try KSM in our legal system proves conclusively that not only do these small minded bigots have no sense of historical perspective or understanding of our system of government, but their blinding hatred of Obama overtakes any semblance of consistency in their arguments. As Glenn Greenwald points out

the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

And here is rightwing nutbag and coward John Shadegg (R, AZ)



The various ridiculous arguments against a trial by jury for KSM in New York are as disingenuous as they are puerile. They treat these terrorists like they have Super Powers worthy of a Marvel Comic, for chrissakes. As Greenwald says, it is a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation, and it runs through their worldview. Whether it is Beck tearfully wailing that Obama and his dusky hewed African minions are Nazis, or whether it is Lou Dobbs wailing about the brown hordes spilling over the borders, these faux tough guys appeal to their pathetic follower's fears of losing control of their white, male ascendancy. Like the Irish Question, time and generational change will roll over them like a tide rising slowly, but before this country becomes a place where a culturally diverse majority is abundantly clear, their death cries will be increasingly shrill and violent.

Joining the xenophobes and Beck's legions, of course, are the bloodthirsty ghouls of the last administration, who have a separate fear...that their misdeeds and illegal goings-on will be exposed in a court of law. As Digby says:

But the possibility is what's got the rufftuffcreampuffs on the right quaking in their booties, that American law will actually shine a light on the murderous, torturing, incompetent, insanely frightened, paranoid, corrupt, and completely out of control Bush/Cheney regime.

It is going to be quite an ugly fight, once these trials start.

Dead...

Behold the Teabaggers

As John Stewart said a while back about the teabaggers, they seem to be confusing tyranny with losing. From Crooks and Liars, a quick ten point reminder for the confused opposition:

President Obama Cut Your Taxes
The Stimulus is Working
First Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt...
...Then George W. Bush Doubled It Again
Republican States Have the Worst Health Care
Medicare is a Government Program
Barack Obama is Not a Muslim
Barack Obama was Born in the United States
70,000 Does Not Equal 2,000,000
The Economy Almost Always Does Better Under Democrats

Post 9/11

With no offense to anyone, this really sums up my thoughts on the eighth anniversary.

Shortly after (or maybe during) that day, our president at the time, a little fuckhead no one liked, handed over the reins to the most psychotic elements of his administration. In the vast national wave of jingoism, paranoia, dread, and fear that followed, he and his friends led us into an unrelated war they'd been planning beforehand, allowed the CIA to wiretap and torture anyone they liked (and encouraged the CIA to wiretap and torture even more than they were comfortable with!), and regularly insisted that our memory of that day should not be sullied with critical thinking or expressions of anything other than still-palpable fear.

and, this:

On 9/12, people in New York (and DC) did not feel as "great" as Glenn Beck. They just felt like shit. They felt scared and confused and depressed. Many of them were drunk. And only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01. And eight years later, normal people, with brains and souls, have decided that some emotional distance from that disaster is healthier and wiser than trying to recapture the dread.

So thank fucking christ that the Commander in Chief is no longer subjecting the nation to death porn.

No, this year it's limited to a nutty little cult leader on basic cable who is encouraging his radicalized band of fanatical followers to invade the cities where the tragedy actually happened in order to shock the populace back into fear.

Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America.

Glenzilla, Digby on Torture

Glenzilla takes apart Peter King, but more broadly, indicts the Right for assuming that their beliefs even have a passing familiarity with those of the founding fathers.


Money:

Few things are more repellent than watching the contemporary Right in America invoke the principles of the Founders -- in general -- to justify their warped and lawless authoritarianism. But nothing is more repulsive than watching them pretend that Thomas Paine -- of all people -- has anything to do with them (Glenn Beck actually wrote his most recent book based on the explicit pretense that he is the modern day Paine). Any casual reading of Paine makes clear that, today, he would be so far on what is deemed the "left" side of the spectrum that you'd be unable to find him. Paine is nothing but what Joe Klein refers to as a "crazy civil liberties absolutist" and what Rush Limbaugh similarly calls "far, fringe, lunatic kooks, far left radical lunatic fringe."
The Right today argues that condemning torture is wrong because the people who were tortured were just Terrorists -- barely human -- and they deserve no defense, not even the force of law. Thomas Paine argued as a first principle that those devoted to liberty "must guard even his enemy from oppression." Could the contrast be any more stark?

Maybe even more importantly, Digby points out that the constant "restarts" on the torture revelations are dilatory and hurtful to the ultimate goal. All of this has been revealed over and over again. Not only did we torture, we tortured innocents, we murdered and disappeared captives held without trial, and it was all approved from the highest levels. The notion that there is anything more or new to reveal is simply wrong. The Holder investigation is good news, but it is long overdue and needs to now move forward unimpeded.