Whereas a woman with a brain

... is an existential threat to the Talibangelicals.

Hey, Harry Reid, how slow are you?  Go fucking nuclear already.

Lessons, learned and unlearned

The New York Times hasn't learned from Whitewater to close its mouth to the puke funnel, lest shady right-wing operatives funded by wealthy wingnuts, force feed them anonymous bullshit from web sites with no integrity:

The inquiry began with an incendiary tip — unproven and vehemently disputed by Mr. Menendez — that Dr. Melgen had helped procure prostitutes, some of them underage, for Mr. Menendez, after flying the senator repeatedly on his private plane to the Dominican Republic, where Dr. Melgen has a home at a seaside resort. This information was put forward by an odd array of self-interested characters, including the right-leaning Web site The Daily Caller and someone — his identity remains a mystery — who claimed to be an American citizen who frequented the Dominican Republic.

Remember the Arkansas Project, Richard Mellon Scaife, and Drudge?

The VRWC, for its part, has learned. Spice up your libels and slanders with sex, and the media will line up on their knees for a taste. (Remember Media Whores Online? "The site that set out to bring the media to their knees, but found they were already there.")

The combination of allegations, of misuse of public office and of sexual misconduct, helped propel the story into the headlines and onto television, and set tongues to wagging at cocktail parties across Washington.

Do we really give a shit what tongues wag at Washington cocktail parties? Reporter Eric Lipton cares. It's not good enough that he reports the sourcing. The content doesn't meet any standards of responsible journalism.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-idle threats) hasn't learned that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-fuck Reid) can never be trusted to honor the spirit of a deal. I mean, seriously, after all these years. Reid and President Obama should refrain from giving each other negotiation tips.

McConnell, for his part, has learned that his continued douchebaggery has no adverse consequences for him or his pasty band of obstructionists:

In the spirit of the bipartisan, but toothless rules reforms the Senate passed last week, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell and over 40 of his members are vowing to block confirmation of a permanent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director unless Democrats agree to pass legislation dramatically weakening the agency.

Yet here's something that will never ever happen:

McConnell’s renewed filibuster threat seem to have caught him by surprise somehow. But if at some point later this year it becomes clear Republicans will continue to block Cordray past the end of his recess appointment, Reid could in theory revisit the filibuster reform fight.

Stop negotiating. Use the power you have. Impose your will.

Na ga happen.

Sleep of reason

Robert Reich has it right:

Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he no longer trusts that Americans will hear him. Whatever the reason—that he’s embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy-making, or intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message—he doesn’t try. ...

[H]e allows himself to be trapped by situations (the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently) within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start. He cannot mobilize Americans around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. That’s not what Americans thought they were getting when they elected Obama president.

Politics is always disappointing, always filled with compromise. But it's not always like this. Barack Obama and Harry Reid wasted 2009. They should have killed the filibuster, told Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to go fuck themselves, and passed a truly Democratic program - $1.5 trillion in stimulus with a much higher proportion of public works and infrastructure spending, a much more progressive income tax, an end to hedge fund managers only paying 15% on their income, inheritance taxes, major banking reform (motivated by a drumbeat of prosecutions, perp walks, and prison for the Wall St. abusers), health reform that at least included a public option and started right away, faster withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and more.

We need more Democrats who'll stand up to Republicans and their teabagger mainstream. Extreme conservatism is not sweeping the country. It swept the 2010 mid-term election because American voters lashed out stupidly in the wrong direction - or stayed home while the wingnuts voted their favorite  ignoramuses into office.

If you're going to be a one-term President - a fate that I think awaits Obama in 2012 - you should at least govern on behalf of the people who elected you.

Sharron Angle's libel

I get letters. They ask for money. I throw them away recycle them.

But for yuks I sometimes pick out a good wingnut letter and read it, just to see what's making them piss their britches. Or at least what they think will make their supporters piss their britches - and open their wallets.

Socialism, usually. Obama and his "loony left agenda." (Where? Would love to see that in action.) The conservative fundraisers almost never call Obama President Obama. I guess their heads would explode. Nancy Pelosi is another boogeyman of the right. OK, boogeywoman!

Most of the letter I got yesterday from Sharron Angle (R-lunatic fringe) is standard Republican boilerplate. Since I'm not in Nevada, the letter tries really hard to nationalize Angle's contest with Harry Reid so that I'll supposedly be convinced to sign up as a "Friend of Sharron Angle." Yah, sure.

It's odd that she thinks a potential contributor would need to be convinced that the Nevada Senate race has national implications. Maybe the mailing list is supposed to be for, um, less engaged (o.k. stupid) conservatives. The fact that she's trying so hard suggests to me some desperation.

Angle does depart from one commonplace in conservative fundraising. Rather than edging up to the libel cliff and peeking carefully over, she goes for it full bore:

Reid doesn't just use his tremendous power as Senate Majority Leader to ram through Obama's agenda...

...he also leverages it so that millions of dollars in Special Interest money flow [sic] into his campaign coffers.

Every Special Interest that wants a favor, [sic] must first toss some money into Reid's tin pot.

Yeah, sounds as if actual malice wouldn't be hard to prove. She's accusing him of extortion and accepting bribes, not to mention abuse of his position.

---

(Another typical feature of conservative fundraising letters is, ahem, idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization, not to mention the occasional misunderstanding that a number of dollars takes a singular verb, not a plural one. They are proud to be hide-bound reactionaries, but they can't even do traditional English usage correctly. Say, has anyone seen their identity papers?)

Roaches scurry

Political junkie though I am, I had not previously realized that the Senate requires a supermajority vote* - usually dispensed with by unanimous consent - to start debate.

But Republicans are nothing if not endlessly creative in finding ways to say no, in this case, of course, to even talking about making Wall Street safe(r) for America's economy. I have to thank them for exposing to me yet another facet of the brokenness of the Senate.

Part of that brokenness I would also lay at Harry Reid's feet. Finally, finally, he exposed us to the plain fact (which many of us already grasped) that Republicans are a bloc of blockheads. I've called for a long time for the Democrats to make the intransigent two-year-olds on the other side of the aisle pay a deep and visible political price for their tantrums.

Reid made Republicans stand up under the glare of TV cameras and defend the indefensible. They caved. Immediately. And scurried for cover.

The filibuster and its less-known cousins (how many are there?) need to die. The Republicans have worn them out.

Jan. 3, 2011, no matter which Democrat is Majority Leader...


* Actually, I'm still guessing. It's possible that unanimous consent is the only way debate can start, that the hoary old Senate not only lacks its own equivalent of the House's discharge petition, it even lacks a way for the majority's leadership to force a measure to floor. But I can't find out for sure, since all the Senate Floor Procedures I've tried to read from the Committee on Rules and Administration are unavailable.

This climate did change

Lindsay Graham (R-what passes for semi-reasonable, especially in the lunatic politics of South Carolina) didn't bolt from his work with John Kerry on carbon emissions and climate change because of some poisonous and high-handed change in the Senate calendar by Harry Reid. (Note to journalists: The fact that Graham claimed that is, ahem, a lie, though you're all far too whipped to say that.)

Graham found the excuse he needed to go full metal wingnut to appease the ignoramus caucus, now the dominant Republican faction. He had previously pushed to speed up on immigration reform. What he really wants is to regain the good graces of his teabagger constituents. Absent Reid's own electoral need to respond to his neighboring state's new law on driving while Mexican, Graham would have found something else - "Your necktie, Mr. Majority Leader, is an obamanation, uh, abomination up with which I shall not put!"

None of this flanking right will work for Graham. Not only did he once say something agreeable to a Democrat - and you know the Democrat Party is bent on the satanic destruction of the Holy United States of Neo-Confederate America - Graham also isn't married to an acceptably deferential Southern Baptist woman with whom to play hide the salami. Instead, he's a bachelor, so there are three choices, none of them acceptable to the ig-caucus:

• He ain't gittin' none.
• He's a goddamned fornic-, fernicat-, furni-, aw hell, playboy, and that means he ain't p-whipped like me.
• He's one a them other kinds a teabagger, the kind that oughta be stoned - and I don't mean on no pot - stoned according to our lord Jesus Christ the prince of peace's dad, who sure as hell wasn't no damn hippie freak believer in not castin' the first stone at them types a folks.

What changed for Graham was Doug Hoffman, Marco Rubio, and now - incredibly - three even wingier candidates who find Utah's Bob Bennett to be not frothingly extreme enough, at least in part because they would prefer to be living through the Second Great Depression right about now. Hey, they have a year's food stockpiled, right? Graham doesn't want to follow Dede Scozzafava, though she is far more moderate than he is, nor especially Charlie Crist.

Teabaggers and the Republican right - you couldn't pry them apart with a crowbar - want fire and brimstone from their pols. No more laws! The Ten Commandments are enough (even though there are actually 11 or 12 of them, but who's counting?). Not even laws based on Republican proposals, and especially never any real liberalism.

What they want is more of the aptly named Jim Dement, sorry, DeMint. And Republicans everywhere are falling all over themselves to give the crazy extreme wingnuttitude to them.

Headless Thompson gunner

Fred Thompson, vacuous stentorian, deliberately and stupidly mistakes a statistical fact mentioned by Harry Reid for an inevitable cause:

In a posting on Twitter, Thompson wrote, "Reid: Jobless men = domestic abuse. Is he saying we should be worried about Mrs. Reid after the November elections?"

Republicans never let honesty get in the way of using bullshit to imitate a joke. Playing ignoramus is what they do.

Oh, and look, here he is using a teleprompter:


Probably making a gibe at President Obama for using a teleprompter...

Insurance principle

CIGNA, whose Senator scuttled the last vestiges of reform in health care "reform", just sent me an explanation of benefits. There's quite a little bit of corporate bullshit in that misnomer. For one thing, it's not about a benefit. For another, it's not an explanation. It says, as cryptically and indecipherably as possible, that the previous EOB that didn't abuse the word 'benefit' was wrong, that I would indeed have to pay $3400. I suppose non-explanation of non-benefit would be too ... honest.

I'm sure it was just coincidental that this happened within a month of my signing up again for another year of their health insurance.

Hint: The Democrats (my Democrats) are not going to change this at all. I can't wait to see their bullshit EOB.

Updated 12/16.

David Vitter watch, day 608

Vitter suggested Wednesday the report was overblown.

It's not the only thing. That girl sent by the DC Madam accidentally fell on him mouth first.

How he set off the jetway alarm doesn't matter that much to me. After two prostitution scandals, both of which involved the use of his wife's name by the paid talent, he still represents himself in the Senate as a social conservative in the anti-sex party. And the Republicans still press him to their breasts. That matters.

Hypocrisy is inextricably woven into Republican DNA. It's a legacy of their one true conviction and interest - that rich people should have an easier life, and that the very, very rich should have it very, very easy. To win with that, they have to hide from day one their real platform, and it makes them as comfortable with the stinkiest bullshit as a coprophagous hound dog.

If you need an example to illustrate, there's a particularly appropriate one from David Vitter. He used parliamentary maneuvers to try to scotch the spending bill in the Senate with a poison pill vote to maintain automatic Congressional pay raises. When Harry Reid responded with a separate measure that agreed with Vitter and stopped the pay raises, Vitter said this:

"Pure partisanship for partisanship sake and political games and a cynical approach," he railed yesterday morning on the Senate floor. "Maneuvering and cynical political games," he repeated, looking into the C-SPAN camera in the gallery. "It's a cynical maneuver. . . . What's swirling around my amendment is a cynical political game."

This is a guy who could fuck you and then pillory you for adultery.

Final vote still to come

Harry Reid's canvassing for more Republican votes for the stimulus. Great, though it's not great that it's in the news. It's clearly not a deal that the Republicans have stopped fighting, and it's good the Democrats are still engaged in defending it against betrayal.

The real story is what the Republicans are doing. Just because Tom Delay is gone doesn't mean they're not twisting arms and hammering their three turncoats (believe me, that's how they see them).

The GOP got to Judd Gregg, after all. What he said two days ago about continuing to serve in the Senate makes no sense set next to what he said yesterday - his probable retirement in 2010. What he's saying now makes no sense in light of his pursuit of the job of Commerce Secretary.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell welcomed Gregg's withdrawal.

"Sen. Gregg made a principled decision to return and we're glad to have him," McConnell, R-Kentucky, announced. "He is among the smartest, most effective legislators to serve in the Senate -- Democrat or Republican -- and a key adviser to me and to the Republican conference. It's great to have him back."

What did the Republican enforcers tell him to make him end his political career?

Please sir, may I have another

The idiot Senate Democrats let the fox back into the chicken coop, without even an insincere apology. My party needs a few people that everyone knows you can't fuck with without paying a steep price. Instead, the weak Reid caucus tells the world: Screw us again; we like it.

Who has to make a choice?

Joe, make your choice. That's what you did for McCain. Make your new choice now. Which caucus do you want to be in? Do you want to sit next to Jon Kyl? Your seniority lapsed when you went out on your own.

Harry, it's going to be 58-42 without Lieberman. The path to 60 runs through Maine (and other places), not Connecticut. Let Joe make his choice, no strings. Of course, you'll want to string him along until Georgia reelects Chambliss, the invidious jerk.

There have to be consequences

Harry, tell Joe Lieberman he can start rebuilding his Democratic cred by keeping his mouth shut and voting with you until 2010. Otherwise, he can go kiss Mitch McConnell's tobacco-stained ass.

Oh, and change the filibuster rule to 55. Put McConnell in the position of needing to win support across the aisle instead of simply saying nyet to everything.

At every moment, remind the Republicans that they are the ones who screwed collegiality. But don't let them screw you, too.

Lieberated

Duhbya used to say that elections have consequences. Now the phrase is all over the left blogosphere.

I'm ready to apply it to Joe Lieberman. If Harry Reid is not, time for a new Senate Majority Leader. (Hillary?)

Holy Joe made his choice. He repeatedly reaffirmed his choice. He made it visibly and publicly and very loudly. We all heard it. It's not as though he didn't know.

Here's what I would offer: Back-bencher with last choice of committee assignments and no committee chairs or subcommittee chairs. No capacity for mischief. You want to be a member of the majority caucus? That's the deal, revocable any time we get tired of your bullshit. Take it or leave it.

Believe me, that deal is way too magnanimous.

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.

True Republican colors

How is it that the Republicans can oppose a responsible, revenue-neutral fix for AMT and expect the voters not to punish them for it? It's been working for years.

When push comes to not even shove but excuse-me, the GOP puts the richest of the rich - a few hedge fund managers and their even better-heeled clients - ahead of millions of middle class wage earners, not to mention fiscal sanity. They know the press won't call them on it.

Really, is there anything that comes out of Mitch McConnell's mouth that's not flavored with bullshit? When he says "a lot of other Americans", he means a very small number of overpaid financial manipulators - many of the same people who gave us the credit crisis.

The Democrats, if they had a lick of sense, would make the Republicans filibuster this openly and visibly and for a long time. Have the Democratic Senators who are running for President come back to D.C. every few days for another cloture vote and issue a zillion press releases about what's at stake.

Update: Of course, the Democrats have already caved again (and the Times has changed the story under my original link).

What Benazir Bhutto has

She actually stands for something, unlike the Congressional Democrats. She shares ambition with them as a character trait, and that's probably driving her insurgency of the human rights lawyers, but she's willing, unlike Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, to take a stand and put herself at risk.

Krugman, national treasure

Although due to my own procrastination I never bought the late, unlamented TimesSelect, I missed Paul Krugman while he was behind the pay wall. If there's another columnist who is as consistently right about everything he writes about, I'm not reading her.

I hate being pessimistic, but the Pelosi-Reid fiasco that lobbyist-friendly Washington Democrats have become suggests to me, too, that President Hillary would not bring me any of these priorities:

• Restoration of transparent Constitutional democracy
  
• Departure from Iraq
• An apt successor to the New Deal

On the contrary, from President Obama or President Edwards, I believe we would get a liberal path, not just the path of a New Democrat.

Update: Krugman's blog, Conscience of a Liberal, added to my blogroll.

No lie too odious

There is literally no lie too nasty, no threat too uncivil, no power too immoral to use in defense of conservatism. Remember, this stuff came out of Rush's own mouth. It's not the interpretation of some liberal. He's proud of it!

Rush's dittoheads (I almost typoed 'dildoheads') have lately been screaming their misunderstanding of freedom of speech because Harry Reid and forty-two other Senators sent Clear Channel a letter criticizing his 'phony soldiers' comment. It works like this: Rush gets to say his piece, but he's not guaranteed a radio show to do it, and he's not immune from the free speech of others about him and what he says.

Will these brownshirts now scream in defense of the unnamed reporter whom Rush threatened with Enemy of the State style victimization, including penury? Yeah, dumb question. Of course not, they'll be screaming their offense that someone would question their favorite lying, drug-addled, multiply divorced, Viagra-to-Santo-Domingo hate talker.

Some of them, given the address of the reporter's children's school, would show up there to menace them. They belong to the conservative movement and the Republican Party, which have failed utterly to keep their own house in order.

Goaded by Rush and Michelle and all the boys on Fox, this angry, vicious band of wingnuts will start America's second civil war. They'll kill a lot of people like me before they're done.

A good case of kiss my ass

So, Mitch McConnell and Tony Snow are outraged, outraged that MoveOn.org would smack Gen. Petraeus around in print. Oh, and John Boehner, too. And, of course, Joe Lieberman (I-I), who never saw a Bushist talking point he wouldn't, caaaww, mimic.

CNN even quotes John Kerry as calling the ad "over the top", and Kerry's a guy who has actually seen over the top. Why he mistakes this slightly juvenile play on words for excess, I can't say. (Of course, now I could be quoted as calling MoveOn's ad "juvenile".)

Yesterday, CNN also had Harry Reid dissing the ad, though they've "corrected" it to say "a member of the Democratic leadership, speaking on background".

What real Democrats need to say is this, "I've looked at the ad, and only a very small child would think there's something wrong with it. No, I'm not going to condemn our allies at MoveOn for unveiling the truth, and tobacco-money bagman Mitch McConnell can kiss my ass."

That last part, maybe not, but a guy can dream, can't he?