"Climategate" scientists cleared

You won't be seeing this in CrazyCon Land until they figure out how to somehow spin it in their favor. Dashing the deniers' favorite myth, a British government inquiry found the scientists whose emails had been hacked did not manipulate their research. In other words, yes Virgina, climate change is real.

I posted on this at DetNews but John Cole did it better. It's a brilliant post and as they say in Twitterville, I co-sign. I can't excerpt it because I don't want to give away the punchline. Just go read it.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Just drill a hole in my head why don't you...

My first reaction to President Obama's announcement that he wants to open up more places for offshore drilling is -- WTF? As Matt says, I just don't get the strategy here. Judging from the reaction of the GOP and in Wingnuttia it doesn't look like he's winning any converts in Crazyland and he's pissing off a lot of people that have been defending him.

What happened to developing alternative, non-toxic energy sources? First he is going to reopen nuclear plant construction and now this? As I've said all over the internets today, unless they can guarantee no offshore rigs will ever spill any oil, it's not worth the environmental risk and any source that produces byproducts that remain dangerously toxic after hundreds of years is not effin clean energy. Gah.

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My pretend internet boyfriend

This this profile of Mark Knoller in the Wall St. Journal makes me love him even more. And there's a fun little interactive trivia quiz embedded in box in the piece. I got five wrong, but I've never been good with numbers.

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Queer the Census

Best census ad ever. [Via Balloon Juice]



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Shouting at clouds

Internet Adage: Slow news cycles cause blog wars.

Thinking that this is only going to get worse since it's Easter break and Congress is out on recess until the 12th. It's inevitable. Whenever the news gets slow, bloggers start spatting. Of course, the intercine battle against FireDogLake has been going on for some time and I've pretty much tuned it out myself but this is interesting if it's true. How Jane Hamsher spends her PAC money. I'd advise taking it with a grain of salt until it plays out further, but I suspect we'll be seeing more about this story over the next few days.

The perennial question: McCranky McCain, liar or early Alzheimers? Boggles the mind to think of the mess we would be in if he had somehow won in 08.

Wondering what's President Obama done for you lately? Don't agree that the Afghan escalation was a good thing, but otherwise it's a pretty impressive list.

This is aging but timeless and Billmon is always worth a read. Obama and the dark arts of the GOP spin machine.

And not without feeling a little guilty do I rejoice that Beck continues to cost Fox revenue. Apple removes all ads from Fox, not just Beck's show, but because of Beck's show.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

CNN ratings keep spiraling down

Who could have predicted that if they try to grab the wingnut demo by hiring right wing hosts and pundits like Erik "Restate Strike Force" Erickson, CNN's ratings would drop? Besides everybody except the CNN execs, I mean. Sadly I remember when CNN was a real news station that you could depend on for factual reporting. Those days are long gone.

I haven't joined the CNN boycott movement that sprung up when they hired Erik the Red. I figure it's a lesson they have to learn on their own. Nobody can out-crazy Fox and Fox viewers aren't going to switch stations no matter how many wingnuts they hire. Meanwhile, the rational viewers are going to tune out in disgust at the pandering to that delusional crowd. News was so much better when the stations cared about good reporting instead of good ratings.

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White House slaps down insurers

We all make fun of the Democrats and their "sternly worded letters, but this time it appears to have worked. After HHS Sebelius sent one to the insurance corps telling them to quit trying to weasel out of covering kids with pre-existing conditions in 2010 as the law mandates, they agreed to do it.

Of course, this is unlikely to be the last time they try to go the narrowest interpretation possible route, but it is good optics for the White House to win the first battle coming out of the gate. Actually was surprised to see the insurers challenge it in the first place. Seemed like a ridiculously bad PR move to test the law on kids' coverage. I mean how much more heartless could they look?

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

What goes around, comes around

Adding a little more context to some previous posts, it seems Sean Hannity said "his 'one mission' is to defeat Obama's agenda and all those who voted for it" shortly before the RNC used its mailing list to urge Republicans to buy a his book.

This would appear to be a case of bad timing on the RNC's part since today, CREW announced it filed an FTC complaint asking for an investigation into his Freedom concert charity scam that I posted about earlier. You'll recall that story was broken by Debbie Schlussel, who by the way showed up in the comments to defend her research. This on top of the Michael Steele lesbian bondage bar fiasco, is making for a very bad week for Republicans.

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Billy Kennedy makes me very happy

I love the Democratic candidate who is challenging my crazy Congressperson Virginia Foxx. Check out Billy Kennedy's live chat at GOS and his website. Who would have thought a real progressive would emerge in this district? Feeling all hopey changey about it.

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GOP believes its own propaganda

This link is bit aged, but it's timeless enough to archive and it makes a point I've been thinking is true as well. The party has gone nutty because the GOP started believing their own hype. Read the whole thing but here's an extended quote:

My hunch is that over the past few months, the right-wing media, along with self-adoring Tea Party members, made the mistake of believing their own hype. They convinced themselves that not only did 2 million people take to the streets of the nation's capital last September to protest Obama (a number that was off by 1.9 million), but that "millions" more had marched coast-to-coast over the past 12 months (a number that was completely fabricated). They fastidiously constructed their own parallel universe and convinced themselves that last summer's mini-mobs at local town hall forums had defeated health care reform. They thought their rowdy show of force, complete with Nazi and Hitler posters, and even some protesters parading around with loaded guns, had changed the debate.

Listening to Limbaugh, they thought they were dictating the agenda. Watching Fox News, they though they reflected the mainstream. And reading right-wing blogs, they thought they had killed health care reform.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they'd spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we've seen play out in recent days. It's the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn't think we'd ever witness from a major political movement.

As the saying goes, who could have predicted it would ever come to this level of purely mean and completely false goofery by one of our major political parties? Certainly I never expected them to sink quite this low.

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Spittin' Image

One of the most pervasive memes that went around Wingnuttia last week, with Andy Breitbart leading the charge, was that the Congressman who claimed he was spit on by a protester was lying about the incident. Video has now surfaced but unfortunately for me, it's at HuffPo and my old computer freezes every time I try to view anything at the site. Too many damn scripts running at once there I think.

Anyway, if anyone has a better computer and wants to watch it, I'd appreciate it if you would leave a comment and let us know if the footage does indeed show the spitting.

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I came not to praise Obama, but...

I love Steve Hynd of Newshoggers and really respect his opinions. When I'm confused about some point on foreign policy, he's my go-to guy. I rarely disagree with him, but today I disagreed with this:

If recess appointments were wrong on principle back in 2007 when Bush was President, then they're still wrong on principle now - and Obama just made a buttload of them.

A bunch of Democratically-leaning pundits are writing that Obama is perfectly justified in doing this - and those who wrote back in 2007 that recess appointments were simply wrong and a perversion of the rule of law are now revealed as hypocritical partisan hacks. They know who they are. ...

Well I was one of those who criticized Bush, particularly over the Bolton recess appointment, but I don't see supporting Obama in this now as hackery or hypocrisy. As I commented at Newshoggers:

To be fair Steve, the current level of GOP obstructionism is far beyond anything the Founders envisioned or I imagined that even GOPers were capable of. There does come a point where the functioning of the government justifies the act for the general good of our country.

I'd remind you for instance in Bolton's case, the Dems were allowing debate on the floor and publicly disclosing their objections to a clearly disastrous nominee. In that case, Bush purposely circumvented an ongoing process because he thought he'd lose the vote. In the instant case, the GOP is blocking the process altogether so I'm not sure it's a fair comparison.

I admit I've become more of cheerleader for President Obama than I ever expected but it's partly because the "criticize from the left" beat is so well covered. The man isn't perfect, far from it, but he's the hardest working and most honest President we've had in my lifetime. Given the turmoil in the world and the toxic political climate, I just think it's far more productive to focus on his positives unless he does something really egregious. Otherwise I'm willing to cut him some slack because he is making many postive changes that would have never occurred under a different president.

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Frum was right about Fox

Steve Benen catches a letter to the RNC mailing list that totally validates David Frum.

Just to be clear, this wasn't a personal endorsement from Steele. The email was sent to Republican donors, through the RNC, as part of an official RNC message. The email notes that it was "paid for by the Republican National Committee."

Isn't this a little odd? The RNC is using its list to urge Republicans to buy a book from an independent media personality?

I'd quibble a bit about calling Hannity "independent." It's clear he's been a GOP hack for many years. Of course he's supposed to be independent of political influence as a member of the media but we are talking about Fox. They might as well call that station GOP Spews.

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Why the tea party cons hate us

To the extent that he goes, Frank Rich makes an apt comparison. The rage around the passage of the health care reform bill bears an eerie resemblence to the reaction to civil rights laws and desegregation of schools. But as Steve M points out, it's not as simple as that. This goes beyond racism and sexism.

The cons hate everything about liberals and Democrats beyond any reasonable thought or logic. Decades of GOP wedge politicking has conditioned them well to accept absolute hate of "the other" on every level as normal and acceptable conduct.

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Obama takes charge with recess appointments - Updated

A lot of us have been waiting for our President to make this move. The White House just announced President Obama is making 15 recess appointments who have been "waiting an average of 214 days for Senate "confirmation." And he called out the Republicans for their obstructionism

"The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis," said President Barack Obama. "Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate. At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government."

Of course, that's only a fraction of nominees still outstanding. The President "has a total of 217 nominees pending before the Senate. These nominees have been pending for an average of 101 days, including 34 nominees pending for more than 6 months." I kind of wish he had just recess appointed all of them. It would have caused a total wingnut meltdown but it would only have lasted until the next shiny outrage came along and it would have better illustrated just how deep GOP obstruction goes.

Besides, we need to get these Democratic appointees into position to overcome the holdover Bush loyalists still in power. You may recall Bush seeded the bureaucracy many layers deep. As far as I know, Bush still holds the record for "Plum Book" appointments.

[More here from TPM and the White House.]

Update: A couple of facts to push back on the inevitable outrage over what the cons are terming "Obama's arrogance." From markknoller:
"Bush(43) made about 140 recess appointments over 8 years, Clinton 140; Bush(41) 77; Reagan 243." And from pwire: "Eisenhower used recess appointments to name three SCOTUS justices: Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart."

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Taser Madness

In a sane world everyone, of every ideology, would be on the streets protesting the ever escalating and unneccessary use of tasers in routine law enforcement encounters. Today's edition, 9th Circuit upholds tasering a pregnant woman for refusing to sign a traffic ticket.

If the Tea Party tantrum throwers were really concerned about losing their freedom, this is what they should be holding up signs about. Their tax dollars pay for this brutalization of the citizenry and anyone could be next. And what the hell happened to the 9th Circuit? They used to be rather reliably on the side of civil liberties. If they've gone over to the authoritarians, they we're lost.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

GOP says "Hell No" to civility

Kind of in the "water is wet" category but it's useful to archive that the DNC asked the RNC to co-sign a joint statement condemning the death threats and violent acts being committed after the reform bill was passed and RNC chair Mike Steele effectively said Hell No.

[DNC chair Tim Kaine said the statement called for] “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry.”

“We also call on all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior,” read the proposed joint statement, which came at the end of a week that saw acts of vandalism and threats of violence directed at members of Congress from both parties, but mostly aimed at Democrats who voted yes on the health care bill.

Steele's response was, “we don’t need to do anything on their schedule or on their timetable.” Or in other words, if Democrats are for it, we're against it. The Democrats responded to the refusal noting in part:

“It’s very disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that Chairman Steele, who authored a fundraising presentation that depicted the president as the Joker, the speaker of the House as Cruella de Vil, raised money online showing the speaker on fire and said she should be put before a firing squad would refuse to do a joint statement with Chairman Kaine to ratchet down the rhetoric and condemn the violence and threats which Republican supporters have engaged in since the passage of health reform,” Woodhouse said.

Hell, stoking the anger is all the Republicans have left and it's filling their war chests. If it destroys civil society -- well -- for the GOPers that's apparently just collateral damage. As long as there's one penny left to be bled from the rubes or the national treasury, via any means possible, they're going to use any dirty trick they can think of to gain control of the purse strings and fill their coffers.

[Thanks to Mike Finnigan at Crooks & Liars for the link.]

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Hopey Change in the Senate

This is why we worked so hard to elect a Democratic majority. Now, we just need to elect more Senators like this:

Faced with what they're calling a "broken" system, a band of Senate Democratic newcomers is vowing to change the way the world's greatest deliberative body does business. These "young turks" -- young being a relative term in a body where 60 is considered middle-aged -- are pushing to revamp the decades-old rules that govern the Senate. Their targets include long-held senatorial courtesies such as the "hold" and the seniority system that awards chairmen's gavels solely on tenure. Ultimately, some want to modify or eliminate the most potent of all senatorial weapons: the filibuster.

"The more the American people understand the system's broken, the more the people are going to support rules reform," said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a relative whippersnapper by Senate standards at 51, who was elected in 2008. "The real issue is, let's get the Senate to do what the American people said it should do in the last election."

Amen. Make it happen. Needless to say the old guy Dems and the Republicans aren't impressed. Which is why we need to dump the incumbents and get some fresh faces on Capitol Hill.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Good week for Obama

President Obama is heading to Camp David for a much deserved break. It's been quite a week. This morning he agreed to a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and of course last night the health insurance reform bill finally passed its last hurdle. Less mentioned is the college financial aid reform that took big banks out of middleman position for student loans and some good progress was made on re-regulating the financial industry.

There was also some forward movement on Don't Ask Don't Tell, a jobs bill passed that includes funding for infrastructure projects, there's a strong proposal to improve aid to struggling homeowners fighting foreclosure and he pretty much put the Israeli PM in his place after Israel's slap in the face to Biden during his tour of the middle east.

This is why I get impatient with people who question his motives. Sure most of this stuff is to some extent going to benefit big business in one way or the other, but jebus, being President is a complicated job. You're the guy everybody goes to with their hand out and everybody bitches out when they don't get exactly what they want. Looking back on previous presidents, I still think we're getting better policy than we have in a long time. I don't think I've ever seen a more attentive and engaged President in my lifetime. The man works hard, every day, with barely a break. He deserves some big props for that, not just relentless criticism.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Best justice money can buy

I've been wondering what was going to happen to pimp impersonator James O'Keefe and his fellow serial smearers. It looks like a plea deal for a misdemeanor. That's our justice system. It's good to have a deep pocket guy like Breitbart paying the legal fees and of course it never hurts when one of your co-defendants is the son of a US Attorney. Would love to see the elocution to the court on this one but I'm guessing the boys won't bring their hidden cameras for it. Still I suppose someone will dig up the final disposition of the court -- so there's that.

Meanwhile, wingnut declaration of their "exoneration" to commence in 5..4..3...

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Frum fails purity test

I saw on twitter that the guys who weren't fired are denying any pressure to avoid the media, but David Frum thinks he was fired for his recent blog post.

EXCLUSIVE: David Frum told us last night that he believes his axing from his $100,000-a-year “resident scholar” gig at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was related to DONOR PRESSURE following his viral blog post arguing Republicans had suffered a devastating, generational “Waterloo” in their loss to President Obama on health reform.

Matt thinks it's clear that it's because Frum failed to stay on the rigorously enforced messaging system of the conservative right and it's pretty weird because Frum was simply offering a tactical analysis of why the GOPers failed to kill the reform bill.

Having read about Frum's interview, I'd have to agree. In case you missed it, here's a snip.

"Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox," Frum told ABC's Terry Moran. "And this balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party."

Frum laid the blame for the anger of anti-health reform protesters not with the GOP, but with talk radio and Fox News, which he said was the "real leadership" in setting the terms of the political debate on health care.

"The anger trapped the [Republican] leadership," Frum said, and "the leadership discovered they have no room to maneuver as a result of the anger."

Guess Frum forgot that telling the truth is simply not allowed in the conservative tent. Or maybe he just cracked under the strain of having to defend the indefensible since 2003.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

GOP voted yes for Cornhusker deal

I just posted this at DetNews but want to archive it here for future reference since I'm sure that the GOPers are planning to use their ridiculous list of defeated amendments to the reform bill in attack ads. John McCain introduced an amendment that would remove the side deals made earlier in the process, but as you know, the reconciliation bill already did that in the fixes. So the Republicans effectively voted yes on keeping both the Cornhusker and the Louisana Purchase deals intact.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

One vote away from health insurance reform

Despite the Republicans' best efforts to delay and derail the process with the introduction of 29 amendments and a few rule challenges, the Senate passed the reconciliation bill this afternoon on a 56-43 vote. Three Democrats, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor and Ben Nelson joined the GOPers in voting no. I see primaries in their future. Addtionally, the Republicans did succeed in one parliamentary victory which will require one more vote in the House.

Meanwhile, I didn't get around to posting this picture of President Obama's 22 pen signature on the House bill that was passed on Sunday and signed on Tuesday. I saw some snarking about it, and it really doesn't look at all like his regular sig, which I saw recently somewhere, but I think it's beautiful and remarkably smooth considering how many pens he had to use in order to provide enough souveniers for all the people who were instrumental in getting this thing through. I watched him sign it live and expected it to look much worse.

But in any event, putting aside my superstitions since it looks like everyone agrees the last House vote is going to be pretty pro-forma, and although I'm sure the Republicans will take the opportunity to grandstand one last time with incendiary characterizations of the bill, I think we can say we did it. We're about to witness the single biggest advance in the social safety net in many decades. I'm already thinking fondly of my favorite moment of this whole ordeal, when Joe Biden was caught in that celebratory exclamation. Whoever made this graphic to commemorate that occassion wins the internets forever in my book. That's one of my all time favorite Schoolhouse Rock segments.

Needless to say for those who have been following the tortuous process for the last year, this is far from a perfect bill that gives away far too much to the insurance and pharmaceutical industry but it's just the beginning. This is the merely the foundation on which we can now build a truly universal health care system. It probably won't happen in time to make a difference to me. I'm likely to qualify for Medicare by the time we get that far, but I could go to my grave in peace knowing I did everything I could to ensure that future generations won't have to suffer the same anxiety as I have experienced over medical care.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

The Demonstration You Didn't See on Sunday

While the major tradmed and just about everybody in the new media were busy covering the couple thousand crazy tea party protesters, and their resident thugs, there was a peaceful demonstration that drew between 200,000 - 500,000 people who rallied in support of immigration reform and were virtually ignored.



Democracy Now has extended coverage, but otherwise, although it appears the rally was practically within walking distance from the riotous but sparse tea party tantrum, not one mention in the tradmed and barely noted by the new media. Disgraceful fail all around.

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Tom Shales = Fail Whale

I'll admit when I first heard that ABC hired Christiane Amanpour from CNN to become the new host of their Sunday bobblehead show, This Week, I was a bit puzzled by the hire. For one thing, I think of her as a foreign policy journalist and for the record, consider her analysis and work in that field rather brilliant. But I just couldn't imagine her presiding over the weekly Villager bitchfest, much less indulging in the vapid discourse there that pretends to be serious analysis on domestic politics. It also seemed a somewhat demoralizing move by ABC when only a few weeks ago they did a major buyout, dumping at least a couple hundred of their long time employees. I was surprised they didn't promote from within the ranks and I thought for sure Jake Tapper had the lock on the job.

However, Tom Shales' hit piece on her demands a response in defense of Christiane's creds. She's smarter, braver and better looking than Shales or most of the potential guests on the program. I feel certain she can hold her own on domestic issues and perhaps she can provide some international context within which to frame them. In any event, the thoroughly unwatchable Shales should look in a mirror before he starts disparaging Christiane's looks or her hairdo. What a jerk.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Tea Party Terrorism

The far right crazies are kicking it up several notches. In the newest incident of domestic terrorism in Virginia, a Congressman's brother was targeted.

POLITICO reported on Monday that Mike Troxel, an organizer for the Lynchburg Tea Party, posted on his blog what he thought was the congressman’s address, encouraging tea party activists to “drop by.” The address has since been posted on websites of at least one other local tea party activist.

Law enforcement authorities are investigating the discovery of a cut propane gas line at the Virginia home of Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was targeted by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill.

Think Progress has more as do I in a series of posts at DetNews. These posts earned me a pretty serious threat. I'll spare you the repetitive Liberal Socialist Communist Marxist rhetoric, but here's the money quote.

... we both know that Spencer should have very good purchased healthcare should she decide to visit our local taverns to spew her hate and socialism.

The webmasters have already taken down the comment but I rather hope they don't ban this cretin. I'd rather know where he is than have him wandering around anonymously.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

If the Republicans hold a presser and no one shows up...

...does it still make a sound? This picture really does speak the proverbial thousand words. While President Obama was signing the reform bill, the GOP held a press conference.

Blue Dog Max Baucus, who is responsible for much of the delay on this bill, didn't do much better. Mark Knoller tweets, "Senate just voted to begin 20 hours of debate on the #HCR reconciliation bill. ...Baucus is surrounded by empty seats of other Senators as the 20 hours of debate on the reconciliation bill begins."

The Republicans managed to drag themselves in to propose a string of ridiculous amendments, and they've been madly working the internets trying to keep the base dumb and angry, but one suspects their heart is no longer in it. The Senate bill is going to pass and the GOPers will end up supporting keeping the Cornhusker deal in the House bill that was signed into law today. Rather brilliant strategy on the Democratic side really.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Saying it all: Historic health reform signing

Watched the reform bill signing ceremony live. Swear I had chills and got a little teary. So many, worked so hard, for so long to make this happen. These quotes from the signing say it all.

"All of the over-heated rhetoric will finally confront the reality." ~ President Obama.

"This is a big fucking deal." ~Vice President Joe Biden, *whispering privately* to President Obama at the beginning of the health care reform signing ceremony.

Later, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted, "And yes, Mr. Vice President, you're right..."

Damn straight. Of course the tradmed is tittering over the inadvertent pickup of Biden's remark on the mic but the mood on twitter among reform proponents echoes mine - right on Mr. Vice President. As my new internet crush Ken Bazinet said, "Joe Biden is a master of the simple declarative sentence and speaks my language."

I'm betting Ken is the only one in the tradmed who isn't going to make a big deal of Biden's F-bomb. He doesn't even mention it in his co-authored piece at the NY Daily News.

Update: All teary again. This just in before I even posted. Rep. Patrick Kennedy left a note on Ted's gravesite: "Dad, the unfinished business is done."

[photos WestWingReport]

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Oops, wrong protesters

I don't know why this idiot wingnut Rep Steve King keeps crossing my radar but this was the funniest vignette of reform bill night. Apparently King was all atwitter about the tea party thugs out there hollering to kill the bill. Considering this tweet I think he confused noise with volume.

Wasn't only teabaggers out there. I wonder if these Christian Democrats supporting the bill were the ones that confused him?

Who are not to be mistaken for these very confused Christians.

And most tragic and confusing of all was that 200K people peacefully demonstrated in support of immigration at the same time and the media almost completely ignored them. I don't even have a link to a major news account. Wouldn't have found out about it, except that I saw some chat on twitter and a photo. Lots brown faces doing nothing scary at the pro immigration march. The big, fat, lily-white Bubba types actively trying to intimidate Congressmen got all the attention. Our *liberal media at work. Shameful really.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Thank you Madam Speaker

When I grow up I want to be just as badass as Nancy Pelosi. Seriously, this bill would not have passed without her work and it could have been much worse. To the extent that this bill works at all, is largely because of her efforts. She makes me proud again, to say I'm a Democrat. She's brought some definition back into the party platform. I love this quote from her ABC interview.

"You strive for bipartisanship when you can. When you find your common ground, that's great. If you don't find your common ground, you have to stand your ground," she said.

Her response to the question about GOP whining was priceless too. She said, "Well, you know, some people will do anything for the insurance companies." And I love that it's the first woman Speaker of the House who turns out to be the most effective leader in decades. Via pwire

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Democrats about to make history

I'm too superstitious to celebrate before the final vote but it looks like the Democratic party is going to pull it off and pass health care reform. The bill isn't that great, the process was and continues to be incredibly ugly but the achievement is worthy of applause. This was not an easy victory. It's good to see the Democrats finally stand up to the Republicans and do something. And good for them to see they can do it.

Nancy Pelosi has been a rock in this cesspool of simpering GOP stupidity and deceit. She really doesn't get enough credit for the work she does and neither does our President. I'm told he made 92 phone calls in this last push.

Granted the bill is not perfect, but there were lot of competing interests to balance; don't see how we could have done much better in this climate. It's still the biggest social program in decades and it's a place to start. This is just the first step in a long process. I think President Obama did his share of the work. He has my deep graditude and mad props to all the Dems that got it done. Yeah, even Rahm. [White House photo-Pete Souza]

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Heading for the last roundup

Ended up spending a few hours with my Dad yesterday and have been "whipping the vote" on the reform bill so I didn't get around to blogging or reading the news last night. Not that there's much to read. It's all speculation and wild-eyed reactions from the GOPers at this point. Quote of the day on the "debate" goes to ArrghPaine:

Attn: voters, #hcr hyperbole expected to crest 30 feet above ridiculous, please move to higher ground.

At this point, I'm in my Red Sox theory mode. Just believing it's going to pass and sitting back to witness the far right wing freakout. I missed the Plouffe v. Rove faceoff this morning on the bobblehead shows, but CoT has the translations at Bobblespeak, which are always better than subjecting yourself directly to the original.

President Obama made a helluva speech at the caucus yesterday in support of the bill. Full version of the meeting at the link above or you can watch just Obama's speech here.

And it's been a good week for big links at our humble little blog. No name check at this one, just a "what others are blogging" link, but I believe it's the first time I ever got a link from the Wall St. Journal. Meaningless, but dork that I am, it still excites me to see this stuff.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

The tension is getting to me...

Way too much tension on the internets today and it's gorgeous outside. Going out for a walk. I'll be blogging after dark.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

How the reform bill will break the gridlock on Capitol Hill

It's long been obvious that the basic strategy of the GOP is to run on the premise that "big" government is broken and then once in office, do everything possible to make sure it doesn't work -- at least for the working class. You have to credit the Republicans for being able to pull that off when they're in power, giving away the store to their wealthy cronies while preserving the illusion that this somehow benefits working class Americans.

Since they've been in the minority, the Republicans have doubled down on the methodology of procedural gridlock knowing that most voters don't pay enough attention and will blame the majority party for being unable to govern. However, as Ezra points out today, the real danger of this strategy is it sets up DC for permanent gridlock, as in neither party being able to effectively govern forever.

Which brings us to the health reform bill. I don't know anybody who loves this bill. Yes, it's a giveaway to the corporations. All major bills are and always have been. And who the hell knows if it will make things better, though it's hard to imagine how it could make things worse. But for me, the most horrible part of this whole ordeal has been finding myself at odds with people I know and whose judgement I respect, like Avedon Carol. I read her arguments against passing the bill and they're good ones but on a practical level, they seem to me to be based too much on what should happen, rather than on what can realistically happen.

Sure the Democrats should have started with single payer. They didn't. That's the reality. Our politicians are bought off. Killing the single biggest attempt to change the system, even if only at the margins, won't change that dismal fact. Further, I just don't see how killing the bill won't help the Republicans who have made it their mission to destroy it. Not to mention it only encourages the Tea Party types to believe they really are in the majority and will reinforce the whole meme that the government just doesn't work. If the bill passes, these newly minted activists will get discouraged when they discover just making noise isn't enough. But Steve Pearlstein articulates the point I'm trying to make better than I can.

Most of all, enacting health-care reform would be a desperately needed victory for a political system teetering on the verge of breakdown. Years of polarization, partisanship and stalemate have led to a widespread and cynical belief that Washington is simply incapable of solving any major problem. Passing a health-care reform bill would restore not only a measure of trust and confidence in our political process but also, more significantly, trust and confidence in ourselves.

In the end, I fail to see how working to give the Republicans the victory in killing the bill in order to punish the Democrats for failing to move far enough to the left, is going to advance progressive causes.

As for the argument that once the bill is passed it can't be fixed, doesn't that imply that progressives think they can't elect more progressives to office in the future? I mean, if progressives were all that powerful, wouldn't we have had enough legislators in office already to have advanced single payer on this go around? And if the theory is kill the bill now and make a better one later, why can't we pass the bill now and make it better in the future?

It breaks my heart to find myself at odds with friends, but you can't have progressive policies without the progress and passing this bill would constitute progress. Bad, good or indifferent, this is still the single biggest attempt the Democrats have made to challenge the system in decades and for good or ill, a political victory matters. I'm willing to work to give it to them. If that makes me a bad liberal or gets me drummed out of the progressive community, so be it.

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Doctor, doctor, give me the news

Think this is really the end of the reform bill. I got the news first from Ezra who posted the CBO report this morning. As he said later in a follow-up piece, no one has an excuse to vote no after the numbers came out.

Democrats got the score they needed, and now they can go to their liberals and say that this is closer to universality than we've ever been, and they can go to their conservatives and say this does more for deficit reduction than has ever been done, and both things will be true.

Meanwhile the Republicians, far right wingers and sadly some "kill the bill" progressives have been melting down. The level of panic is awe inspiring and I expect it will only get more frantic right up until the vote on Sunday.

I finally saw the clips on Obama's Fox interview. Cleary Baier is a ill-mannered jerk, but as I said at DetNews, I wasn't that impressed one way or the other. Our President handled him well.

Speaking of Fox, I found this account of how two guys at Slate put an ad on Glen Beck fascinating. Apparently anyone with a few hundred bucks can design their own ads and get a million views on national TV.

Meanwhile, CSPAN puts their entire archives on line. I didn't realize it wasn't already there until now but people have been playing with it, digging out old footage.

And if politics is driving you crazy and you think you need to escape to some remote exotic location, havepack.com is the place to go for tips on trips. Great blog even if you're just an armchair traveller.

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Big Name Far Right Grifters - Updated 2X

This is coming from far right hate jockey Debbie Schlussel so who knows how reliable it is, but if it's true it should be a bigger story. She claims Sean Hannity is running a charity scam.

For the last several years, Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance “charity” have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across America. They’ve told you that they are raising money to pay for the college tuition of the children of fallen soldiers and to pay severely wounded war vets. And on Friday Night, Hannity will be honored with an award for this “Outstanding Community Service by a Radio Talk Show Host” at Talkers Magazine’s convention. [...]

According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.

The 2007 returns aren't much better. Seems Sean has a taste for flying to the concerts in a Gulf Stream and bringing a posse that's chauffered around in a fleet of luxury vehicles and crashes at high end hotels. The amount of money they actually give to the vets and their families is insulting to their service to our country. These people have no shame.

Update: I see Debbie has already killed the link, which suggests she may have embellished the storyline. I suspect when Media Matters caught the story she got nervous and took it down.

Update Two: Well the Schlussel link appears to be working again. I didn't reread it to see if she changed anything, but I found it on Memorandum so I guess that means she's standing by her allegations. As Media Matters pointed out she didn't have a lot of source links, so I'm still not convinced it's true, but if it gets enough steam she and Hannity may have a showdown. Could get interesting.

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Name Checked at The Atlantic

Not entirely flattering, actually not flattering at all, but still cool to get quoted at the Atlantic Wire for my CNN Death Watch post. For the record, I don't spit.

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Enrichment Activism of the Far Right

Building on yesterday's post there appear to be more of these conservative PACs that exist pretty much solely to enrich the organizers who put them together.

A California-based PAC called the Republican Majority Campaign spent nearly all of the $1.7 million it raked in from conservative donors last year, but less than 2% of the money went to supporting candidates or independent political spending.

The rest of the money raised by the group went to operating expenses, salaries for the PAC's top officers, and back into fundraising appeals -- which often ask supporters for as much as $144 in exchange for sending faxes opposing health care reform to members of Congress.

Most of the money went to "a murky Arizona telemarketing firm that goes under the name Political Advertising" that engaged in questionable conduct in the past. And seeing a trend here with the overpriced fax scam. The Fooled and their money...

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The difference between liberals and conservatives - Part Three

Didn't expect this to become an ongoing series but today brings yet another illustration of the difference between the liberal and conservative mind set. This is a video of an ugly confrontation between the pro-reform and anti-reform activists in Ohio. At about 51 seconds in you can see the tea party types "mock and scorn an apparent Parkinsen's victim telling him 'he's in the wrong end of town to ask for handouts,' calling him a communist and throwing money at him to 'pay for his health care.'"

It's short and worth watching the whole thing. Again it's the liberals chanting health care for all and the cons shouting kill the bill with the implied subtext of keep your hands off my money. The best part was actually at the end when they got a person from either side to say something calm and coherent. The anti-reform person looked like a nice lady that I probably wouldn't mind having lunch with but she was so seriously deluded on the facts of the bill. I blame the media for that.

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Jobs bill passes on bi-partisan vote

No really. Granted it's not much of a bill, it's too small and it doesn't do enough but the latest Jobs Bill passed with 11 Republicans crossing over to vote yes.

One of those GOPers was my normally useless Senator Burr. Thinking he made the shift because his Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham has been hammering him on the issue for weeks now. One strong opponent does more than one thousand activists sometimes.

I'm a bit conflicted about Cal. He's the party machine candidate with DNC and DSCC support and I know I'm supposed to be supporting the woman who I'm told is more progressive but I really want to get rid of Burr and Cal is out there working it every day. He's gladhanding all over the state and his social media presence is very strong. I've seen so little of the other candidate, I can't even remember her name off the top of my head. Elaine something I think.

On the other hand I'm told by a GOP operative I made friends with that Cal can beat Burr and she can't win in the general. Not sure I should believe him. Keeping my options open but I'm leaning towards Cal at the moment.

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Take the Socialist Quiz

Steny Hoyer put together a terrific quiz on Republican rhetoric when Social Security and Medicare were being passed in contrast to the present day GOP wailing about health care reform. I only got 10 out of 20 right. Really couldn't tell the difference on most of them. Try it and see.



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CNN Death Watch

In a move unparalleled since the WaPo hired Ben Domenech to be their conservative columnist, today CNN announced Erick Erickson will join their team as a political "analyst." If memory serves Domenech lasted only a few days before it was discovered he was a plagiarist. I suspect Erick son of Erick won't last long under the scrutiny of the internets either.

CNN is touting the hire as a way to reach the small town "real 'Murkins" that Erick rubs elbows with every day. Except Erick lives in a city of 100,000, doesn't really hang out with "the little people" and has a long history of idiotic posts at his RedState site. Steve Benen runs down some of his recent gems in the link above and it's only a matter of time before some industrious bloggers start unearthing the comedy gold in his archives. In fact, it's already beginning.

Thinking if Ted Turner was dead, he would be turning in his grave about now. As it is, I'm guessing he's just wishing he were dead so he didn't have to witness the self-inflicted humiliation of the station he built. Sad to see what was once a truly great source of news fall so low. And as Steve notes, this is not about giving a right winger a voice at the station, Not they need more of them since they already have Joe Scar and Pat Buchanan, but if they wanted to bring a blogger on board, there are so many smarter and saner choices.

[Ed. note: Just remembered Joe Scar + Buchanan are at MSNBC. Hard to keep these "liberal" media straight. Meanwhile, John Cole has the rundown on CNN's stable of wingnuts. And how did I forget Lou Dobbs?]

[Thanks, (I think), to Atlantic Wire for the link.]

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Why get it for free when you can pay?

Southern Beale isn't sure how she got on the AmeriPac mailing list but she notices a disgusting scam in their latest "Conservative Action Alerts." They are urging their members to send faxes on the latest faux threat to the Republic. The thing is they're charging significant money to do it. In other words, these people are preying on the computer illiterate like elderly tea partiers who wouldn't know that there are many commericial sites that will fax for free. And of course free faxing has been a staple on activist sites of the left from the beginning.

If you think about it, every conservative activist group has turned out to be little more than a scam to fleece the rubes in order to enrich the "organizers." What's truly ugly is the people they prey on are the very ones who can least afford to spend the money and they only send the cash because they've been deluded by lies about liberal programs that would actually benefit them.

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The difference between liberals and conservatives - Part Two

Building on my last post on the differences between liberals and conservatives, Nate Silver catches an interesting twist to Gallup's lastest health care poll. They provided "the verbatim responses (.xls) of the rationales given by people who would tell their Congressman to vote for or against the current health care bills, respectively."

Nate ran it through some software that created word clouds for the pros and cons. In essence, the pro-reform cloud said, "Healthcare for everybody." The con cloud said, "Government takeover of my healthcare," or in other words, "I am a Glenn Beck zombie."

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Grayson lays it out in black and white

Whatever you think about his politics, no one could disagree that Alan Grayson has balls of steel. Quote of the day from that long harangue.

“I look forward to an honest debate with Governor Palin on the issues, in the unlikely event that she ever learns anything about them.” ~ Alan Grayson

Via Rumproast. Seriously. Read the whole thing.

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Health Care Cacophony

Small wonder that the *debate* over health insurance reform is so muddied. I've been seeing these ads from anti-reformists for weeks now. This week has been especially brisk. This is why.

The coalition of groups opposing the legislation, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, is singling out 27 Democrats who supported the health care bill last year and 13 who opposed it. The organizations have already spent $11 million this month focusing on these lawmakers, with more spending to come before an expected vote next weekend.

Estimated spending by the end of this week, when a vote is expected to be taken is $30 million in advertising. This would explain why the television media is so enamored of horserace coverage that allows the misinformation to breed. If they did their job and posted facts in context, all that advertising money wouldn't be spent.

This is a cash cow for the networks. I live in very red GOP district. The no votes here are a given, yet I've seen at least a dozen anti-reform ads in the last three days and I rarely watch TV.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Broadband for all

I've been worried for a long time about internet neutrality. It's one of those wonky issues that is so complicated to explain, too many people don't understand how important it is. I don't pretend to understand it that well myself. The technical issues go way over my head, but I do know that we don't want the telcoms to become the gatekeepers of the intertubes.

Fortunately, I don't have to explain it, because Balloon Juice has the latest developments. The good news is Obama put some savvy technocrats in charge of developing policy and as far as I can see, this new Broadband for All is a good start towards keeping the internet freely accessible to all comers.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Rest in Peace Peter Graves

Sad that Peter Graves died. I loved Mission Impossible with Peter Graves. Loved the whole cast really but Graves, Landau and Bain were my favorites. This is a great compliation of all the opening shots of the show.



[h/t to hudsonette for the vid]

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Yet another dopey "Conservajoke"

Not sure why this didn't post last night as scheduled, but I'm posting it now.

Alan Colmes is putting on the hits today. He's unearthed yet another of member of the Wingnut Wimmin Haters Club, an idiot state rep in North Carolina. He was invited to a women’s history event at the state Museum of History and this was his RSVP:

“Thanks for your kind invitation. However, I must regret for I have promised to be at the organizational meeting of the ‘White male’ history society. Sincerely, WAC.”

Unfortunately, that WAC-y fella hit reply all and sent it the entire State House. When confronted on his incivility he claims it was supposed to be funny. Think the only people laughing are himself and his kindred pseudo-macho men.

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Coffee, Tea or...?

I'm not really getting the point of this new Coffee Party group that apparently is supposed to act as some kind of counterweight to the Tea Party madness. Doesn't sound like they have much of a plan and I don't think I like adopting the meme of the nutty cons anyway. The left is more creative than that and we already have lots of organizations to counter the TeaPees. Plus, I get the feeling they might be just as likely to punch hippies as the cons and the Villagers already do.

On the other hand I guess I might be interested if someone creates a "Cocktail Party" but only if they have snacks.

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Mrs. SCOTUS throws a tea party

This is not only bizarre, but it's hard to believe it's legal. The conflict is obvious. She calls herself "an ordinary citizen from Omaha" but Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has "launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court."

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

Coincidentally, that "Citizens United" decision was decided by her husband who was "part of the 5-4 majority in that case." Not that this is the first time a decision by her husband's court intersected with her work life.

In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.

The woman is a kook who loves Limbaugh, is "intrigued by Beck" and now thanks to Citizens United her new little quasi-PAC can spend unlimited money on influencing elections and not even have to disclose their donors. This really should not be legal. I mean, you can't even enter a contest to win a tshirt if you're related to someone who works for whoever is giving away prizes, so how can this not be a conflict. Don't get it.

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The difference between liberals and conservatives

I was reading about the Republican National Committee paying for Tea Party signs last night and had an ephiphany of sorts. I've been trying to distill the difference between these crazy Tea Party cons and liberals into a few words for a while and I think I finally have it. Conservatives care about "me" and Liberals care about "everybody."

What sparked that thought was the sign that the RNC provided to the event said, "Listen to Me!" If you think about all their rhetoric, it's incredibly self-absorbed. "I want my country back." "Keep your hands off my health care." "The government is stealing my money for taxes." Dan Riehl in the post below calling to euthanize Mrs. Reid says, "I can’t recall her ever doing anything for me." These people have no apparent social awareness, nor any desire to contribute to the communal good.

Liberals on the other hand talk about healthcare for all. Equal treatment for all. Civil rights for everyone. Save the planet for the next generations. There are of course exceptions, but generally, it's demonstrably true.

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Dan Riehl really desperate for traffic

Long time wingnut asshat Dan Riehl is desperately seeking attention with a link-trolling post telling Harry Reid to "pull the plug" on his wife who was badly injured in a car accident.

It sounds to me like she’s pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren’t we at least going to get a vote on it? [...]

I don’t see that she’s worth it at this point, frankly. I can’t recall her ever doing anything for me. [...]

Come on, Harry – do your civic duty. The nation’s broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work.

His sewage sucking commenters think it's hilarious "satire." Not surprising that a bunch of cretins who clearly don't have ten working brain cells between them don't know that satire is supposed to be subtle and -- you know -- funny. Riehl's post is about as subtle as a pudgy 8 year old bully on the playground shouting, "Oh yeah, well your mother wears combat boots." Only his posse of cackling idiots, who believe Palin's "death panels" are real, would think it's funny.

[Big thanks to Mike's Blog Roundup for the link]

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Strange Days

Just got off the phone with a friend. He asked me what the hell is going on in the world right now. I can't figure it out myself, but there's surely no lack of crazy out there. For the second time in a week, we have another white middle class American woman who has gone all jihadi. She seems to have been kind of a normal person from Colorado who ended up getting arrested in Ireland for recruiting assassins.

Meanwhile at The Swash Zone they seem to have recruited a few new writers and are chronicling the crazy like mad. Octopus looks at the first JihadJane from Pennsylvania and wonders why we're criminalizing clearly crazy people instead of treating them for mental illness and using our crime fighting resources for real terrorists.

Capt. Fogg visits Glenn Beck's LaLa Land and tears the Krazy King of Vaseline the proverbial new one. He also takes a crack at SCOTUS' twisted take on religion in the public square.

Meanwhile, Rocky is glad to see those crazy hippies are back.

Hart schools us in Unreality 101, keeping an eye on the Gateway Dundit, who's fishing for hits with liar's bait.

And Dan spins the hits in another Week in Tyranny with a depressingly large collection of wingnut extremism. Dan also climbs the social ladder to look at the strange signals from Village elites on those too big to fail banksters. He's hoping to see somebody figure out they've become too big to save. I'd like to see that too.

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Crazy Conservatives - Double Standards Edition

I really do try not to talk about him but the patron saint of the Tea Party party is brewing up a kettle of crazy in Becksylvania. The man clearly needs an intervention.

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism.

Seriously. If he was some schmuck hollering this stuff on a street corner in NYC, he'd be in Bellevue on the psyche ward by now. In any event, as you might imagine, the truly compassionate Christians are pushing back on that crazy meme.

Rove has been on a road trip pushing his personal rewriting of history with a book release tour. He made the mistake of rewriting Jake Tapper's dialogue in one of his rose colored vignettes and Jake destroyed him with an impeccably polite but deadly debunk. Worth reading in full if only for the delightful review of Rove's really dirty tricks.

Then there's the perennial question, why is it that "family values" Republicans have sex scandals and not only suffer no censure but are often reelected, while Democrat ones end in resignation?

And Walmart sucks. Kid with sinus cancer and a brain tumor fired after 5 years because he was using prescribed medical marijuana as a pallative, so he could do his job so well that he was named associate of the year. And they're contesting his unemployment benefits.

Sounds to me like the kid's wages were getting up there and they wanted to get rid of him so they could hire someone at a lower rate. Just heartless. But according to SCOTUS this monster corporation is a person. Trying times.

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They "disappeared" Thomas Jefferson

Well the crazy fundies on the Texas Board of Education officially rewrote history for their social studies cirriculum. As I noted yesterday, the religious zealots on the board wanted to Christianize the public school textbooks in order to "counter liberal bias" in the schools. One Hispanic board member -- whose own suggestions for including more historic Hispanic references were shot down -- said, “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

These fundies are clearly insane. "They made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution." Disbelief in the church/state divide seems to be the latest pet hobby horse for these American Taliban. Hence the reason they cut Jefferson out of the textbooks for using the phrase. An amendment from one of the sane board members suggesting students "study the reasons 'the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others'" was shot down.

In the internet age, this may not be as disastrous nationally as it might have been in the past since reality-based school systems can either refuse to buy these books and use on-line resources, or the textbook companies could issue different editions. But if I was a parent with a kid in the Texas school system, I'd be suing these maniacs for mandating stupidity in the classroom.

Update: John Cole finds the ultimate graphic to go with this story.

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The wolves own the henhouse

You know we can bitch till the end of time about the failure of individual politcians, or even the parties generally, to "change the way DC works" but in the end what seems to be the root of the problem is the damn revolving door.

The same Washington lobbyist who led the sub-prime mortgage industry's successful bid to shoot down government efforts to curtail risky lending is now helping pay-day lenders to water down the financial-regulatory reform bill currently before Congress.

Wright Andrews has developed a niche representing some of the least sympathetic and most predatory players in the financial industry. A veteran lawyer-lobbyist and one-time aide to Democratic senator Sam Nunn, Andrews has lobbied extensively of late for a trade association for pay-day lenders -- which offer short-term, high-interest loans to the working poor, often triggering a cycle of debt for their customers. During the last decade, Andrews ran three different trade groups for the sub-prime mortgage industry, whose home loans defaulted in massive numbers to set off the financial crisis.

I don't know how it could be constitutionally possible, but I don't see any way to permanently solve this part of the problem unless we could ban any former office holders, or their staffers, from lobbying Congress -- ever.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

The Rich Man's Burden

I've been posting on income inequality and the tax rate for the top tier wealth holders at DetNews. My tweep capecodgirl found the perfect chart to illustrate the point.

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Fundamentally Insane

Living in the south you see the blurring of church and state in many ways, but this push by religious zealots to rewrite textbooks for public schools is the most frightening development yet in their war on liberalism. The NYT reports:

Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.

A look at the particular changes these fundies are demanding to counter "liberal bias" in schools is astounding in its scope and unreality. One amendment states that the civil rights movement "created 'unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes' among minorities. ...The amendments are also intended to emphasize the unalloyed superiority of the 'free-enterprise system' over others and the desirability of limited government. One says publishers should 'describe the effects of increasing government regulation and taxation on economic development and business planning.'"

What's really remarkable about this, besides the fact they want to rewrite history to pretend conservative economic policies worked, is the leader of this effort, Dr. McLeroy, was voted out last week in a primary but he still has 10 months in his term and is clearly determined to do as much damage as possible in the remaining time. If he succeeds, our public school textbooks will be effectively useless for years to come. Kind of makes me wish that Texas secession movement had worked.

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Say what you like...

I haven't really been following Chief Justice Roberts' little temper tantrum about being criticized by Obama at the SOTU, but Glenzilla did do a marvelous takedown of his whine and it's pretty short by Mr. Greenwald's standards. Majestic Petulance.

Also worth reading in full today is former FTC attorney Henry M. Banta's slap at the media failure to deal with economic reality:

Despite catastrophic events, it is folly to expect the suffering of millions and an onslaught of inconsistent facts to wipe out an economic theory whose tenets were and still are so convenient for so many powerful economic interests. At present the defenders of the efficient market hypothesis are engaged in trying to pin the cause of the financial crisis on the government. (If the financial crisis was the result of government policies, then one could still plausibly claim the market to be rational, efficient, etc.)

On the lighter side, via my Twitter sweetie, John de Guzman an incredible gallery of 1930's Gottscho pics of NYC.

Roger Ebert takes us a trip down memory lane with astounding sci-fi covers. Claims he read every word of these magazines.

For Stones fans, I loved these vintage Mick Jagger pix.

And this gallery of Las Vegas carpets amused me. I had no idea the casinos looked like this and after looking at the pictures my first thought was, "They give you free drinks and then expect you to walk a straight line down these halls?"

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Earmark Theater

You can tell it's an election year because the Congress starts fooling around with theatrical "reforms" like banning earmarks. The Democrats and GOPers are presently trying to one up each other on the subject. The Democratically controlled House committee banned "for-profit" earmarks and the GOPers countered with a caucus wide pledge to ban "all" earmarks.

Of course, these dramatics are meaningless. They all will find ways to bring the pork home to their districts but in a way I wish it really was true. Not that I think earmarks are a big deal. In terms of spending, they're a tiny drop in huge vat of money. Additionally, many earmarks are actually for good projects. But I've long believed the horsetrading that goes on to get the earmarks included in bills in trade for votes is what slows the process of passing legislation to a crawl on Capitol Hill.

I wouldn't be unhappy to see earmarking abolished and make that spending a normal appropriations process instead. It would make it all the more transparent and we would be spared the endless, senseless carping on the subject from soundbyte addicted pols.

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America's Worst Sheriff About To Get Shot Down?

Goddess forgive me for taking such pleasure in his misfortunre but it appears the despicable Sheriff Arpaio in AZ is possibly about to be run out of office. It seems he thought he covered his tracks by deleting email evidence of his misdeeds but as we all know, nothing dies on the internets and it appears there are still copies in existence in third party archives.

The sleazy sheriff is trying mightily to gain possession of the damning missives, but if the judge does the right thing, Arpaio could be wearing those pink underpants he's so famous for introducing into the prison system, himself. Hey, a girl can dream...

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Thousands protest insurers in DC - Media yawns

Every time three or more tea party people throw a public tantrum, the major media swarm to interview them, but thousands of pro-reform protesters assembled outside of a big insurance industry confab gets barely a mention. In the major print media, Baltimore Sun gives it a tepid write-up as does the WaPo. AP's three sentences isn't even worth linking to. Otherwise, it appears the coverage was limited pretty much to local metros covering their own residents who participated.

Susie at Crooks and Liars has some video and puts the count at 10,000. WaPo said 5,000 but the main point is the lack of television coverage. The TV news made bare mention of the event in stark contrast to their treatment of the pro-insurance/anti-reform tea party idiots. Maybe people who don't have misspelled signs with illogical slogans or hateful and racist depictions of our president just aren't "colorful" enough to rate air time.

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Glenn Beck: Tickled Pink

I totally succumbed to spring fever yesterday. It was just too nice outside to spend the day in front of the computer. Would have blogged in the evening but then Glenn Beck interviewed disgraced and resigning freshman Congressman Massa. This will surely go down in the history of television as the absolute worst interview of all time. I followed it on Twitter instead of watching live but thanks to the internets, the entire debacle is archived here. If you don't have an hour, Media Matters has the story and a short clip with Beck's seminal quote, "Sorry viewers, I believe I've wasted an hour of your time."

Most honest thing ever said on the television. I plan to watch it in full myself at some point. Not every day you see a Congressman earnestly discussing "ticklefighting" with his staff.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

How to build a progressive movement

As the saying goes, all politics is local. My old friend Dave Anderson from the Newshoggers has the right idea. If you want to make the party more progressive, you take it over from the bottom up and from the inside. Dave is running for office within his local Democratic Committee. I think he's likely to win. If more progressives followed his example, we would be a lot farther in restoring the Democratic platform to its original populist agenda.

I'm exploring doing the same myself but discovering that my county isn't all that well organized. I signed up for their email alerts today but they don't seem to meet very often. The only things on their calendar are a couple of fundraisers over the next three months.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Make Burr history

I'm glad to see the state level Democratic Party in North Carolina is getting its act together. This is good I think.



For myself, I'm preparing to embark on a LTE campaign in an attempt to reach the all too many voters in my part of the state that don't do internets.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Worst Dressed

It's my considered opinion that last night was the dullest Oscar awards show ever. The new format was flat and none of the jokes were funny. Apparently the expansion of the best movie category to ten made it necessary to eliminate the traditional live performance of the best music nominees and they did some uninspired interpretive dance number instead and the dresses weren't all that exciting. This is a good photo gallery that starts with the worst dressed.

Everybody was all agog about Charlize Theron blooming breasts dress. I missed it live both times, but seeing the photo, while I'll agree it was decidedly odd, it was hardly the worst. That honor should have been giving to J-Lo's bubble wrap disaster with an incomprehensible side train. It looked stupid and made her look dumpy. Sarah Jessica Parker's dress looks worse in the photo than it did live, but that another fashion mistake. And the best that can be said for poor Vera Farmiga is the color of that ruffled monstrosity was pretty nice.

Diane Kruger's weird dress inside a flowery tube with a tail was second worst in my estimation. It looked much worse in person. It looked like the tube part was devouring her as she walked and she had to keep flipping the tail out of the way. Miley Cyrus' street hooker thing only escaped complete disaster because she's so young, it's okay to look a little trampy. And breaking from the consensus, Sandra Bullock's silver sheath was widely panned but I thought she looked gorgeous in it. The cut suited her well and it was kind of old time movie star glam without being over-bearing about it.

The only other one that really struck me was Demi Moore. The dress was meh, but I think she chose it to prove that she really is skinny as a rail after the recent flap over whether some cover photo of her was photoshopped to make her look so emaciated. [graphic]