Mean Nancy hurt their feelings

That mean Nancy Pelosi lauded her caucus for defending Main St. from the predations of Wall St. This made Republicans pout, so they voted against the bailout, says John Boehner. Waaah! You'd think they'd be ashamed to admit what a bunch of children they are (no slur intended against the majority of children, who are much more stalwart).

Already, I have heard colleagues channelling this bullshit, blaming the Democrats for not passing the bill, when 60% of them voted for it and only 30% of Republicans. While angrily blaming the Democrats, they were incensed that the Democrats would care about who got the blame! It's boggling to me how people who let the GOP manipulate them like this fail to notice it.

Was this a good bill? No. In point of fact, it sucked. The only rationale I've read that made it worth passing is Paul Krugman's: It was needed, and it was the best that the perennially irresponsible Republicans would permit.

As just punishment, the Democrats should now put forward a good bill (Krugman beats me to this, though without repeating his definition) and let it be voted on party lines. A good bill would have:

• a lower price tag, doled out in relatively small chunks
  
• real standards for pricing of bad paper
  
• mandated equity stakes for us citizens, the recapitalizers, mixed with temporary socialization of failed financial institutions
  
• punitive, confiscatory, regurgitative taxes on those who profited from this bubble
  

Then let Duhbya veto it.

Update: Barney Frank noticed the bullshit coming from the ever-oily John Boehner.

Update (9/30): For all the people in comments who are incensed with the Democrats, check out how two-faced, irresponsible, and focused only on politics the Republicans are. They were telling the Democrats they had a deal, but they were busy before the so-called deal failed planning to screw the Dems. Republicans, dishonest to the core. (h/t Americablog via Eschaton)

Update: Michelle Bachman defends her fellow Republicans against Boehner's slur on their toughness:

We are not babies, sucking our thumbs," Bachmann said.

No? In any case, they are just plain sucking.

More balance from McCNN

Conservative Republicans (is there any other kind?) stage a bit of political theater in the House chamber, and McCNN gives the Democratic response at the very bottom of the story from a passing citizen.

"I was not impressed at all," said Sue Miller, from Memphis, Tennessee. "Democrats did not have a chance to defend themselves."

Not that Miller didn't handle the task well, but shouldn't Nancy Pelosi get a chance to make insulting remarks back at the Republicans?

Nah, reporters who would give the Republicans a pass with passive voice aren't going to be fair.

A strange partisan divide evolved during the event. The tourists who were signed up for tours with Republican congressmen and senators were frantically ushered in to fill seats on the chamber floor. But tourists with passes from Democratic offices watched from above, in the balconies.

This partisan divide didn't evolve. It was designed, and any reporter worth the name would have said so.

This just in

Yeah, Duhbya is a worse failure than you, Nancy Pelosi. What a scoop! He finally said something that irritated you enough to attack him. I just wish you had done something about his failure!

Instead, you just barely exceeded the achievements of a disastrous Presidency. Because of you, we even failed to learn the true extent of the clusterfuck of Bushism. Way to go.

Managing a legitimate result

For all the pundits, bloggers, and politicians who called on Hillary to quit, for all the tiresomeness of the endless primaries and their shallow coverage in the media, and for all the ridiculous complications of the Democrats' baroque procedure for selecting a nominee, I've come around to equanimity about Hillary's continuing in the race. It's best to see this process, however imperfect, to its end.

Think of the alternatives:

• The superdelegates short-circuit the process and king-make - either way.
• Either candidate drops out before actually being beaten.

Of course, Florida and Michigan bollixed up what would have otherwise been a clear procedural picture, and the DNC had to improvise. What they did was showcase an open process where everyone had a say. I'm sure there was some choreography behind the scenes, but they made a solomonic decision that didn't smack of one side cheating the other.

Wednesday, we Democrats will find ourselves here: The voters will have finished their say. The delegates they have already chosen are narrowly for Obama. The superdelegates have held back (enough!) from tipping the contest. They have let the voters choose so that the final outcome is legitimate. Based on Howard Dean's, Nancy Pelosi's, and Harry Reid's public statements, I believe that some Democrats in Congress decided to wait so that their votes would ratify the decision of the voters and not overturn it. Quite a restrained decision to be made in a smoke-filled room!

There's now a context in which to unite. That's still not guaranteed to happen. Whether it actually does hinges on Hillary's generosity and that of her core supporters. But to come out of the primary season in early June with a narrow but legitimate victory by one candidate is about all we could hope for.

Of course, all bets are off if Harold Ickes and Hillary take their beef to the floor of the convention.

Hillary 2012

Someone should ask these high-dollar, Terry-McAuliffe-style donors whether they'd rather have Obama lose in 2008 if it keeps the door open for Hillary to run again in 2012 before she ages out of contention. Because it seems to me that this is exactly the sort of hostage-taking they are threatening.

The initial criticism of Nancy Pelosi in the letter is this:

None of us should make declarative statements that diminish the importance of their voices and their votes. We are writing to say we believe your remarks on ABC News This Week on March 16th did just that.

This is just bullshit. Pelosi is telling the superdelegates to listen to the voters.

Balance at CNN

Well, the headline, "House challenges Bush on surveillance", is both tart and accurate. The story, not so much. So, the defects:

One member voted present.

They think we love one-sentence paragraphs. Who, dammit? Inform me! Update: Lincoln Davis (D-TN).

The Democratic plan would allow telecommunications companies to be sued for their role in the administration's much-disputed warrantless surveillance program.

First, the surveillance program is clearly and objectively illegal. It's not "balanced" to refrain from noticing that fact. Further, this sentence omits the fact that standing to sue already exists and that the Democratic bill would not eliminate that standing ex post facto.

Then we hear fatalism. The Senate will never pass the House bill. The President will never sign it. Fine! Then telecom immunity, bastard of the current fascism, will not become law.

After Duhbya's argument, we are privileged to hear from GOP members, from the administration's flunkies in the DOJ and intelligence with multiple quotes and paraphrases.

When we finally - finally - get to a Democrat defending the bill, we hear that the estimable John Conyers has an "angle":

"We are not going to cave into a retroactive immunity situation," the Michigan Democrat said. "There's no law school example in our memory that gives retroactive immunity for something you don't know what you are giving it for. It just doesn't work in the real world or on the Hill either."

Then we hear from Duhbya and from Tony Fratto before Nancy Pelosi gets to give a rejoinder and to speak about the secret session sideshow with help from David Obey, but at no point in the entire story is the substance of the Democratic argument presented.

Update: Important to remember that the Bushist surveillance was already going on before 9/11.

I say the moon's made of green cheese

The Bushists simply arrogate to themselves any power they want. Now it's the unilateral power to make treaties. Congress and the Democrats do nothing.

Here's what Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the former Constitution says on the subject about the President's power:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;

In reply, the Bushists - one Jeffrey Bergner this time - say that "Congress already endorsed such an initiative through its 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein." Oh, right, that exception is right there in the text - if you're hallucinating from boosting glue.

They don't actually believe this bullshit is valid. They know it's bullshit. They know that we know it's bullshit. They're just saying, "Stop us if you have the nerve."

Nancy and Harry don't. The Democrats continue to pretend this hasn't been happening since the get-go:

Bergner's letter, said Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), "creates the basis for a constitutional confrontation."

Ya think?

It's a shame. The old Constitution wasn't perfect, but it was a damn sight better than Duhbya making up new dictatorial powers as he goes along.

Bullshitter in chief

Duhbya claims against all facts that the Democrats in the House are endangering the country, and even with his long record of self-serving, fear-mongering bullshit, he gets the headline "Bush: Inaction on FISA endangers U.S."

The CNN story is terrible - it puts three Republicans and unnamed intelligence sources up against one paragraph from Nancy Pelosi, and not even her strong paragraph. It also pushes this Bushist lie:

The current laws are set to expire at midnight Saturday. The nation's intelligence agencies then will have to go to court for warrants to listen in on conversations between suspected terrorists overseas.

No warrant has ever been required for overseas surveillance. Yet apparent Bush stooge Adam Levine puts it out under his byline, though I'm confident it came from the White House. (He couldn't possibly be this Adam Levine, could he?)

All the current authorizations to surveil whoever survive the expiration of the Dissect America Act. There are still easy ways to obtain more approval for surveillance orders. Corporations are still immune if only they get certifications from the Justice Department that their actions will be legal - even if those certifications are, like everything else from this lawless regime, transparently bullshit.

So:

• No less current surveillance
• New surveillance orders are easy to obtain
• Immunity going forward is easy to obtain

Are the Bushists really this lazy? Probably. But even I don't think that's why Duhbya is fighting this battle.

What I think:

• They cry Chicken Little every chance they get so that they can blame Democrats when another attack comes, never mind whether there's any real connection.
• They failed to immunize the telcoms for their illegal spying, and they fear the telcoms will roll over on them.
• They are surveilling all of us much more extensively than has been reported so far.

This is the Bushists' idea of a win-win-win.

Finally, the Democrats (go Nancy! go Harry!) have not cowered in the corner. Finally, they have counterattacked instead of arguing with Duhbya.

Democrats immediately said that the expiration of the temporary law would have little, if any, immediate impact on intelligence gathering. "He has nothing to offer but fear," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after Bush's address.

"I regret your reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis over the reauthorization of foreign surveillance laws," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a letter to Bush, in defense of his colleagues in the House. "Instead of needlessly frightening the country, you should work with Congress in a calm, constructive way."

As ever, I wish they would counterattack even more fiercely.

I would say (over and over and over again) that Duhbya has again lied to America for craven political reasons, that he and his party are untrustworthy, and that the politics of fear are disgraceful and un-American. But, hey, I'm an extremist, obviously.

The impeachment remedy

Impeachment is a political remedy. It has due process trappings and procedural analogies to criminal procedure, but its only authorized punishment is removal from office and disqualification from eligibility for office, and it is specifically exempted from the prohibition against double jeopardy.

Impeachment was intended to be an extraordinary remedy, and that's why the Republicans were wrong to pursue it against Bill Clinton. If lying about blow jobs in Washington were extraordinary, we'd all know that the country was run by lesbians - and they'd be doing other things that the likes of Ken Starr would find unspeakable (but would document and footnote with prurient glee anyway).

The wimpy Washington Democrats have failed to make this distinction, too, or they would be able to distinguish between the Constitutional abuses of the Bushists and the marital abuses of the Clenis. Instead, Nancy and Harry let the conventional post-Democratic Beltway narrative and their own preference for playing it safe to bollix them.

Ironically, the Bushists' transparently bogus Constitutional interpretation of the Presidency constrains them to accept impeachment as political. If the President is immune from the law, as they have repeatedly claimed in a reprise of Nixonian defenses, impeachment is the only remedy between elections for an Executive run amok.

But logic and law don't work on these guys. Need an example? All the Republicans who pursued Clinton on grounds that no impact on government now blithely accept Duhbya and Darth's blanket claims of immunity.

The only goals the Bushist Republicans (practically speaking, all the party's officials) pursue consistently are their own power and tax cuts for the wealthy. When they have those, they don't need logic or law.

Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.

Politics 101

Harry Reid has not been as big a disappointment as Nancy Pelosi, simply because I didn't expect much from him. I had great hopes that she would bring some liberal sanity to Washington and, more important, that she would have the guts to make some things stick. Reid, I hoped, would at least tame the Bushist penchant for appointing extremists to Federal offices. Even with those low expectations, he has been underwhelming, though I was thrilled at his pro forma sessions.

Now, Mitch McConnell is dictating budget terms to the Senate Democratic majority! McConnell says:

I think we are being consistent here against higher taxes, consistently against greater regulation, consistently against creating new causes of action in bill after bill after bill...

Consistently against democracy, I'd say. Doesn't he remember who lost in 2006? Doesn't he remember his own anti-filibuster rhetoric in the previous years. Of course he does. His principle is winning, not consistency. He's playing hardball, while the Democrats play blind man's bluff.

The proper response to McConnell is not quite a Cheneyism, "Mitch, we're going to let you f--- yourself on C-SPAN every evening until you're too sore to go on. Have at it."

Then Reid has to do something besides sending tallies to the press about how many things the big bad mean Republicans have filibustered. He and the Democrats have to provide the media with pictures and sound bites. Make the smug and doughy face of McConnell represent the GOP's intransigence. Make them vote against cloture on TV every damn day. Put together a cogent video press release about it every day. The media are about as lazy as Duhbya - you've got to give them something that goes down easy.

Have a Democrat make a reasonable but obviously frustrated speech every day. Make the Presidential candidates do some of them. Tell them all to keep it short so you can control the message that winds up in the news. Podcast and Youtube the speeches. Tell the American public that the Democrats have a bill ready to negotiate but that the Republicans' position is that they'll hold their breath until they turn blue unless they get everything they want, even after losing in 2006.

If you have to twist some arms in your own caucus, do it. Tell Joe Lieberman his fucking furniture will be out on Constitution Ave. if he defects.

What's amazing is that the Democratic "leadership" has spent their adult lives in politics and yet have managed not to learn even the most basic facts about it. When your opponent is playing a vicious game, you have to show the electorate that in colorful, memorable, and sometimes vicious ways.

Let the Republicans shut down the government again. Just make sure the voters know who's doing the shutting. What you want is for Duhbya to veto the omnibus spending bill because it has something in it he doesn't like. That's what McConnell is protecting him from. So, tie the two of them together and pin the blame on them. They deserve it.

Shit, this is politics, not needlepoint.

Acquiescence to torture

Is there anything the Washington Democrats won't allow the Bushists to do?

Nancy: You're not tough if you cave every time someone questions your toughness.

It is possible that the Bushists are claiming consent by silence when in fact there was none. That's a completely consistent pattern, too.

Transparent bullshit

Anyone older than about six should be able to see through Samuel Bodman's lame "It is wrong to single out an industry, the oil industry or any industry" for new taxes. So, it's perfectly fine to single out the oil industry for sweetheart tax breaks but immoral to repeal them?

The Bushists still count on Americans to be idiots. For a long time, they got away with it.

I'm not a fan of ethanol, however...

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

Harry and Nancy, this newspaper gets delivered to your office every damn day. Today would be a good day to pay attention.

Unthinkable

Duhbya can't think of anything to change except his slogans. So, the Boston Globe tells us:

President Bush will endorse the broad outlines of a plan to bring home 30,000 troops from Iraq by the middle of next year if conditions are favorable, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Is it just me, or is this the same bullshit we've been hearing since the "end" of major combat operations in 2003, four years ago, stripped only of "stay the course"?

The media also can't frame this story any other way. Nancy Pelosi has a juicy quote that gets right to the heart of the dispute. It should have been paragraph 3, but instead it is relegated to the last paragraph. All seven of the quotes or paraphrases on the web front come from Republican - except the one from Joe Lieberman. Now that's balance!

Farah Stockman and Bryan Bender have done good work in the past, so I'm guessing this story's Republican slant comes from the ever credulous Peter Canellos, the Globe's DC bureau chief.

For Duhbya and the media, any other narrative is unthinkable.

The usual suspects

Let's hope that readers only read till the jump. The first part of this is pretty much on target. The base (e.g. me) is outraged at the Washington Democrats' willingness to compromise pretty much everything away. How is it that the Republicans can stop anything they want in the minority while the Democratic majority can't stop a leaky faucet?

I'm sorry, but nothing positive is going to come of the next year and a half. Pelosi and Reid aren't going to have great legislative accomplishments to point to. Duh! Anyone who has ever watched the Republicans bargain in bad faith - the only way they negotiate - can see this. Why can't Pelosi and Reid? Restoration of habeas corpus is not going to happen.

What to do then in the sixteen long months before Duhbya and hopefully a whole bunch of other Republicans have gone the way of the dodo? Politics!

• Turn over every rock in the executive branch.
• Force the Republicans to filibuster publicly. Every time they block a good idea privately they win. Show the voters that they are working against the national interest.
• Block any judicial appointment to the right of Stephen Breyer.
• Hit the media every day with messages that separate us from the GOP.
  

In other words, don't think that politics means exclusively fund-raising.

The bad part of this article is the insinuation of Republican talking points into the dominant media narrative. I'm so f---ing tired of hearing Stephen Hess and Stuart Rothenberg tell me all the things that the Democrats are not going to be able to do. Boo-hoo, the Dems won't be able cure the common cold! You don't see that narrative about the Republicans until they actually leave office - and still Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich and even the old fossil Alan Simpson keep showing up on TV.

Part of the problem is the Dems themselves. Michael Capuano, a good liberal, nonetheless objects to the "Petraeus" report, not because the damn White House is writing it, but because Petraeus himself supported the escalation. C'mon, guys, get it straight. When the other guy is not credible, you have to kill his credibility.

Cindy vs. Nancy

Cindy Sheehan has never been predictable; grief will do that. I'm pretty sure her quixotic run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi will go nowhere except in the media, and I don't want it to go even there.

Still, I can understand Sheehan's frustration. We put our hopes and cares into the election of a Democratic Congress, and we haven't gotten what we believe we earned, which is an assertive, coequal branch of government that has the will and the spine to bring the Bushists to heel.

Cancel Congress's summer recess

Dear Nancy and Harry,

Please do the right thing and cancel Congress's summer recess. I know that you want a vacation like everyone else, even if you don't want it as much as the Vacationer-in-Chief. But it's the right course to stay in Washington and keep after the Bushists, who are rotten to the core.

Stand together in the Capitol rotunda together and make these points:

• The obstructionism of Republican Senators has stagnated the legislation America needs - SCHIP, stem cells, Iraq withdrawal, a dozen others. When the Republicans give up standing in the schoolhouse door, they can take a vacation, but not until then.
• Investigations into the deep corruption of the Bush Administration cannot wait even a day. If your colleagues across the aisle will pressure Duhbya and Darth to give up their ridiculous claims of executive privilege, they can take a vacation, but not until then.
• The Iraqi Parliament may think it deserves a vacation. We disagree. The Republican Party has influence in Baghdad and should be hammering Maliki and his coalition to make some real progress. Americans are dying on a daily basis to keep Maliki in power. The least he and his cronies can do is work toward something on a daily basis. We can't keep the Preznit from taking August off, but the Republicans in Congress haven't earned a vacation and won't get one until they get something done about this, too.
• Yes, we Democrats would love to have an August break. We have families, too. We need time off to recharge and refresh. But we see the sacrifices that normal Americans make, especially the awe-inspiring sacrifices of our uniformed personnel and their families, and we Democrats believe it is a small sacrifice for us to work through August.
• If the press wants to mail it in from Martha's Vineyard, that's up to them. We Democrats aren't looking for coverage, though that would be nice; we're looking for progress.

And since you control the calendar, I'm sure you can schedule your home-state downtime in big enough weekend chunks to do some good. Just don't let the Republicans know until the last minute.

Of course, an important benefit is no recess appointments!

Best regards,
LL

Justice delayed

A friend writes:

I started the new Congressional term thinking, why bother with impeachment. Now I feel that since Congress isn't doing anything else, at least let's tarnish Bush's image a bit. Is it too late to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra? Conducting a war explicitly banned by Congress was the ultimate act of an imperial president.

I think there was once an impeachment after the fact, though I doubt the defendant was dead at the time, which would run pretty hard against our tradition. Since Ken Lay’s Enron convictions were on appeal when he died, they were vacated by the court after his death. I find that a little extreme, but there it is.

Impeachment is necessary. Unfortunately, it’s probably also impossible. I agreed with Nancy Pelosi that it should be off the table, though I didn’t think it should be entirely out of the kitchen. I hoped instead that investigations would bring a popular groundswell that would put it back on the agenda. Every time the Bushists stonewall – which is really all they have left – make them do it in a way that exposes their brazen criminality.

Then try Duhbya, Darth, Rummy, and Gonzo et al for war crimes (torture, mainly) after they leave office. (Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.)

Too soon

Of course, it's not too soon legally to impeach the criminals of this executive branch, but it's too soon politically. Nancy Pelosi was spot on to take impeachment off the table. Only a groundswell of opinion from ordinary voters, not from Dennis Kucinich, however right he may be, can put impeachment back on the table.

This is especially important if the process might lead to a Pelosi Presidency. To be legitimate, it must be popular.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.