When Teapublicans say this is a republic, not a democracy

This is what they mean:

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Yeah, for them, it's short for they get all the power.

Where've you been the past three years?

A lot of people hate politics, but politics is how we get decisions made without guns. The President is never above politics. The President is always a politician and should embrace the role. Here, Barack Obama does. I'm glad he's back. I've missed him.

Who is Mitt Romney for?

Enthusiasm abyss

In politics, as in any genre of entertainment, you always want to size the room so that your crowd just overflows it. That shows you're popular and yet realistic and leaves your audience demanding more. Mitt Romney in Detroit? Epic fail - a whole domed stadium for a few hundred people at most.



This is what a campaign looks like when it has more money than people. This is doom. Even in that tiny audience in that huge venue, the smell of flop-sweat must have been pungent. This is an off-off-off-off-Broadway show whose financial backer is so in love with the star that he can't grasp that there's no audience beyond the one-percenters interested in seeing this flip-flop revue.

Even if Rmoney gets the Teapublican nomination, the only campaign he'll be able to run is a B-52 campaign - scorched earth from 50,000 ft. at tremendous expense. Knowing Rmoney, he'll keep running the TV and radio and Internet ads until even his handful of ardent supporters are nauseated by their noxious smarmy gee-whiz omnipresent ugliness. The rest of the Teapublicans, less enthused to begin with, will depressively resign themselves to four more years of impotent misplaced anger for President Barack Hussein Obama.

Update: A still-shot comparison that's even more graphic:

Thumbnail used under Fair Use, but if you own this image and object to my use, I'll shrink the thumbnail further.

How America dies

Anti-democratic Republicans, this time in Michigan, vote it out of existence:

In a party line vote, and despite impassioned speeches of protest by the body’s Democratic minority, the Michigan Senate approved legislation that threatens to take over and even dissolve local governments that refuse to balance their budgets by breaking labor contracts.

According to the law, which has already been approved in the House, the governor will be able to declare “financial emergency” in towns or school districts and appoint someone to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services.

Under the law whole cities or school districts could be eliminated without any public participation or oversight, and amendments designed to provide minimal safeguards and public involvement were voted down.

An amendment to require Emergency Managers to hold monthly public meetings to let people know how they are governing was rejected by Senate Republicans, along with proposals to cap Emergency Manager compensation and require that those appointed to run school districts have some background in education.

Gov. Rick Snyder (R-lust for all the power) will sign this.  It's his bill.

If a Democrat ever did anything as radical as this, wingnuts everywhere would be talking about their Second Amendment remedies.

None dare call it fascism

Except maybe me...



(h/t Balloon Juice)

See you in four years, Michigan

Sarah Palin thought bubble: People tell me I sound like I'm from Michigan, so I know I can compete up there. They'll vote for me in 2012. And, heck, yeah, the UP is just like Alaska, right next to Canada, cold in the winter, and hardly anybody lives a-way up there. They even have some moose for me to shoot. Now that would be a photo op.

The truth is: So what, so Palin wouldn't leave Michigan. Who cares about that level of disagreement with John McCain? If she couldn't defend McCain's healthcare plan or his tax plan or his Afghanistan policy or whatever, that would matter. Oh, right...

Chaos or conscience

Always fun to scoop CNN, which today posts the membership of the DNC Credentials Committee. Though the exact membership has changed a little over the intervening three months, possibly as a result of rearrangement of committee powers, I had this story nearly three months ago.

The composition of the panel still favors Hillary. Of thirty members, 12 are committed to her and only 8 to Obama. One of Obama's is from Florida.

Will they vote to win or vote for principal?

If loving you is wrong

I'm not happy to be proven wrong except in one situation - when my fear and cynicism are disappointed. I have a bit more hope now for the probity of the DNC Credentials Committee (not the Rules Committee, unless the DNC web site is out of date).

Jim Roosevelt is saying all the right things in a public way that is not easy to back down from. And I say thank you and hooray. Oh, and I'm sorry, too, for my earlier skepticism.

Tallahansing Michirida

The campaigns shouldn't have to pay to repair the knowing mischief of Florida and Michigan, but they probably have to to make this nettle go away. You know that Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida would never offer the slightest effort to fix any problem that Democrats have. Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm in Michigan? Maybe.

Even if the campaigns do effectively pay the $30 million cost of this fiasco, they should set up separate funds that don't affect their further fund-raising ability (assuming there's a legal way, probably via the DNC).

Click image for full Steve Lait/Oakland Tribune cartoon.

Florida and Michigan

What will the DNC do about Florida and Michigan? They ran their unauthorized primaries, and Hillary won both in a walkover, while Obama stayed away, perhaps naively.

A revote has been mentioned in Florida, and that might be the right approach, though the Clinton camp would never agree to it willingly.

If the nomination contest gets to Denver unresolved, I would expect a floor fight to determine how to seat these delegations. If that happens, I think Clinton wins, but democracy and the Democratic Party lose.

The real question is who is on the Credentials Committee. The chairs are Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt Jr., and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo. Herman was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, and I've never heard of Roques-Arroyo before, but a little googling shows that he worked in the Clinton White House. Buzzflash, too.

That leaves Jim Roosevelt, who also worked in the Clinton Administration, and I'm not optimistic that his rulings will reflect anything but his desired outcome. I only have two experiences with him, but they were both warnings.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party Convention had passed a rules change about the number of delegates allowed each town, and the language wasn't completely clear, so Roosevelt had to make a ruling. Fair enough. The problem was that his ruling was impossible to reconcile with the passed language.

The second case involved a challenge from the floor of another state convention to a ruling of the chair, Phil Johnston, about a voice vote that was clearly not fairly callable. Roosevelt backed Johnston's call, which just happened to be what the party apparatus wanted.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Obama had better win 2208 delegates instead of just 2025 if he wants to be the nominee. I expect the sub rosa Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated.

Update: Close to 500 people have seen this page, yet no one has left a comment!

Update (3/21/08): Could have a happy ending yet!