Perils of moderation

For three decades now, three facts have been true:

• Republicans have been determined to have no adversaries to their right.
• Democrats have been willing, sometimes eager, to take any shit-ass deal that they can spin as half a loaf, even if it's really just a moldy crust of bread that no one in his right mind would eat, lest he get ergotamine poisoning and suffer Republican accusations of witchcraft.
• The village media of provincial Washington D.C.has made a fetish of calling for bipartisanship.

In response, Republicans have continually moved further and further to the extreme right.  If the press is going to call for a Solomonic division of the baby and the Democrats are going to cave and go along, why shouldn't the Republicans stake out an extreme position?  It's rational - in the feeble sense that economists use.

Democrats need to stop playing along.  Republicans are our adversaries.  They can't be reasoned with.  They can't be bargained with.  And they will not stop until they kill the New Deal.

Don't bother to read this

It's in TAPPED. Atrios linked to it. It doesn't need my small propagation to gain an audience. But I just have to quote this, apropos of the Washington Post hiring yet another neocon torture apologist:

There's really no limit to what you can achieve in Washington as long as you leverage your efforts towards helping the powerful escape culpability for their wrongdoing. It's like the mob. You show loyalty to the right people, eventually you get made.

Liberal media. No amount of repetition can make that particular forkful of bullshit true, and yet Palindrones still think it forward and backward.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Land of opportunity

America, where every plutocrat can rework his (or her!) image to wear a flannel shirt, drive a good ol' pickup truck, and act real folksy - while the cameras are on, anyway.

The newsreader on WUMB this morning related Scott Brown's claim that the people of Massachusetts voted to end partisan gridlock in Washington. Huh!?

If so, they bought a pig in a poke, which wouldn't be surprising given their eagerness to buy into the obvious bullshit of political image-making. What they're going to get for their well-earned and better-fanned outrage is sand in the gears. And those gears weren't working very well already.

Bullshit on bipartisanship

Steve Benen nails it:

Look, much of the political landscape has changed over the last year, but if there's one thing that's been consistent throughout, it's that congressional Republicans aren't interested in working with Democrats on bipartisan policy solutions. Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, & Co. have a list of priorities -- destroy the Obama presidency, block the legislative process by any means necessary, undermine confidence in American leaders and institutions, rally the right-wing base -- but "getting things done" isn't on it.

What is it about Washington Democrats that makes them lose the will to fight their, ah, adversaries?

(h/t Atrios)

Man up, conservatives

The Fox-pimped anti-tax protesters didn't dump their ridiculous tea bags in Lafayette Park because they didn't have a permit! Man up, guys, and get arrested. That's how civil disobedience works.

Instead, defeated by the National Park Service! That's gotta leave an owwie.

Laid the groundwork

Howard Dean did yeoman's work to put the Democratic Party in a position to run the table in 2008, and it's well worth remembering that the lily-livered Washington Democrats didn't want him to be DNC chair.

The insurgent activists in the grassroots carried the day. No one should ever think that all procedural votes are piddling little things that don't matter. This one was big.

Now, we're ready to share power

Jack Cafferty tacks back away from his flirtation with the non-Republicans to ask this stupid question:

Why can’t the Democrats and Republicans work together instead of against each other?

When the Republicans held power, they told the Dems to piss off on a daily basis. And everything went straight to hell.

Now, though, the Republicans want a piece of that good ol' bipartisanship. As long as the Democrats get all the blame for the things that inevitably will go wrong and the Republicans get credit for things they are only peripherally involved in...

I'd smile sweetly at the GOP and let them be peripherally involved. Very peripherally.

We don't work with them well because they believe all sorts of truly nutty things about government, the economy, and the world. Their solutions are more of the same bitter and unhelpful nonsense that got us here. Why would any sane person want to compromise with that!?

I'd let them go on TV all the time with their gripes. I'd get tape. Then when the Democratic plan does work out, I'd smack the Republicans around for the true fact that they only wanted to obstruct the Democrats, but we wouldn't let them and America is better off for that.

But then I'd be a Democrat with backbone even in Washington.

Me and my Wall St. homies

... gunned down you mortgage suckas!

Or wasn't McCain in Washington the whole time, advocating the deregulation of the financial system? If only he were running against himself, he might have a chance. Now it looks as though he's trying that.

And I thought all he had left was fear. I forgot about absurd ridiculous bullshit that counts on the inability of those last witless undecideds to remember Monday, much less the cowboy economics leading to our current crisis.

Who's credible

The left blogosphere, especially Atrios, had it in for Mark Penn all along. Hillary Clinton's choice of him to lead her campaign confirmed their worst fears about her captivity to the Washington insider narrative and culture. Besides, they said, he was a vicious slimy swine and far too friendly to the Bushists and their friends. He has no convictions he wouldn't barter or sell, they said.

This story proves they were right. To the traditional media, these were strengths. Who got it right, again...

Filler

If you're going to write for the public, shouldn't you at least believe what you write?

Joe Biden? What tactical need would he fill?

He would make Beltway journalists like Joe Klein happy - no new personality to learn.

Of course, after the zillion veep stories from McCain, at least this puts Obama's name into pixels.

Truth comes out

Dana Milbank makes the mistake of believing his own paper's reporting. What he reveals is that the Washington press corps is oh-so-tired of trying to keep up with Obama's full schedule. And some of the vain and fickle reporters are starting to not like the work. Poor babies.

No fear

Obama is not afraid that strong people will outshine him. Good thing, too, because he's going to need Al Gore for more than just global warming.

Obama is not highly experienced in the ways of Washington, and those ways are tribal, insular, and devastating to outsiders who try to offer something different. In fact, though his relative lack of the taint of Washington attractive, too, I really want for him to avoid the fate that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both faced - the hostility of permanent Washington as exemplified by David Broder dishing to Sally Quinn, "He came in here, and he trashed the place, and it's not his place."

So, it's very good news to me to hear that Obama knows he can't be a one-man show. He may be getting some chagrined advice from Gov. Deval Patrick about trying to break into a tribal, insular political society that would really rather not be disturbed.

Where were you in 2000?

Setting: Interrogation room in the Seattle Police Headquarters.

"So, Huckabee, what were you doing on the night of December 12, 2000?"

"Detective, I told you, it was nearly eight years ago. How could I possibly remember that? What has that got to do with my police report?"

"Think back. It was an important day."

"I was probably Christmas shopping at the local Bible-believing book store. My opponent is trying to steal my caucus right out from under your nose."

"Any witnesses to this alibi? Or had they all been raptured?"

"I don't know about witnesses, Detective, but I expect to be taken when the Rapture comes down upon us. But what about the caucuses?"

"You ever heard of adverse possession, Reverend?"

"What kind of possession? I've never taken drugs in my life."

"Sure. You're not just another Bible-banger like Ted Haggard?"

"No, sir, just a good Christian come to report an election theft."

"What I'm saying to you, Huck - that your real name? - is that the Republicans established adverse possession over election returns, and the Supreme Court approved it in 2000."

"December 12th?"

"You got it buddy."

"So there's nothing you can do for me?"

"I could, but I don't like you, see? Stirring up trouble. I'm gonna send your fingerprints to Washington, and I'll bet we find a match. I got my eye on you, bub."

Republicans pro-torture

House Republicans are still carrying water for the Bushists, in this case carrying it over to the waterboard. The New York Times and the AP still can't bear to call it torture, but anyone whose head is not up his (or her!) ass knows it is.

At least half of Washington has gone drooling, gibbering, Freddy Krueger insane. When will the media notice?

Fire Robin Givhan

The morally bankrupt Washington Post has Robin Givhan assigned to snark the clothing of every Presidential candidate. They'll claim they're balanced, but Givhan is carefully inserting the Beltway consensus narrative into every piece of crap she writes. Here's the latest installment.

Of course, the person who most deserves to be fired is the editor who decided that Givhan could make a useful contribution to American political discourse.

The Beltway strikes back!

The Washington Post despises John Edwards, and that's a good enough recommendation for me!

Rehashing the bullshit

Will Peter Canellos use the death of every old Republican hypocrite (redundant?) to "raise questions" about the Clintons? (You'll notice there's no mention of Hyde's own "youthful" indiscretion - when he was 41.) Well, Whitewater nostalgia is easy crap to write when you're on deadline, so unless the Globe rips him outside the Beltway, I'd guess yes. Then, he'd just audition for Fox.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Seriously, how do I get a job like the sinecure Canellos has?

Not a Reid in the wind

The Senate remains in session to prevent recess appointments. Finally, Washington Democrats give us something to be thankful for!

America disgraced

There is no bar so low that Duhbya cannot go lower. Some - only some - in the Senate care whether the nominee for attorney general, based on facts that the Bushists have acknowledged, can say whether waterboarding is torture.

In Bushworld, the Senate's only role is to consent. There is no minimum standard the Senate can set below which a nominee can be deemed unqualified and rejected. A nominee who can't bring himself to express a non-Bushist (and therefore potentially non-criminal) opinion of thoroughly settled law has no business enforcing any law. In fact, he's not qualified to be a member of the bar, and the ABA should immediately commence disbarment proceedings.

Even the Senate Republican who has himself been tortured has proven his complete moral bankruptcy. John McCain promises to "strongly urge" something or other "once [Mukasey] is confirmed." Yeah, and I strongly urge the North Vietnamese to refrain from torture. Too bad I'm so late on that.

Look, this isn't even a close call. Waterboarding is torture. It's also a war crime. The Bush regime openly practiced it and worse, and they believe they can escape blame and punishment by redefining the word. George Orwell saw this coming from the left. All he missed was the direction. Duhbya and his gang deserve to be punished for their crimes under color of authority.

The Democrats in Washington deserve lesser punishments, but punishment nonetheless, for their weak-willed complicity in and tolerance of rampant official crime.

I am not one of those America-love-it-or-leave-it idiots now stickering their cars with "I'm proud to be an American." I'm ashamed that the country I love has come to this, has abandoned every principle that made it great, leaving only USA number one. Without rule of law, justice, and Constitutional government, we are a shell of what we used to be and of what we still could be.

Update: After a deep breath or two, I should add that not all people with proud stickers are idiots. Some are just overcompensating for the shame.

Katrina hits DC?

Black people are moving out of Washington. White people are moving in. And the only disaster it took was Duhbya, not a class 5 hurricane.

Seriously, this is just the "normal" working of economic forces, as far as I can tell. Even the catastrophic Bush administration doesn't have time to find even more stuff to meddle with.

Some missing context:

• When neighborhoods gentrify, the property owners benefit from higher prices, not residents who rent. Some of those owners are slumlords.
  
• Foreclosure or inability to pay a subprime mortgage may also keep the older residents from profiting from the rise in property values. Poverty is powerless.
  
• There's a whole other story in black migration to the suburbs beyond the loss of a familiar cultural milieu: If they move in next to white people, it's likely the whites are going to flee, some because they're racists, some because they have internalized the fear of the racists, some because all the flight ruins their property values.