Oy

The Dog-Slayer Lady gets roasted, Elise Stefanik sees her opportunity to do some big time sucking up, and she pounces by going full toady.

WTF, Mitch?

Mitch McConnell is a lot of bad things - dumb is not one of them.

But he'd have to be pretty dumb to endorse Lord Commander Apricot at a time when Trump can't really do anything to hurt him if he doesn't.

McConnell has announced that he'll be stepping down from his leadership position, and it's more than just a bit likely that he'll be out of politics altogether pretty soon. So - WTF, Mitch?

I think maybe Mitch knows (or is confident) that Trump's going down in flames this year, so he's being cagey and strategic. He'll endorse Trump as a seeming gesture for "party unity", so that when Trump does crash-n-burn, the old guard Republicans can reclaim what's left of the GOP, and resume the plutocracy project in their usual, sneaky, underhanded, fuckery-dependent way.

Or, he's just bailing on another chance to be a leader - same as he's done before - hoping the voters will do his dirty work for him.

Just a wild guess.

On Shitty Politics

Republicans have been working hard to deny going all-in on Replacement Theory, but then they pimp it just as hard in their attempts to 'win' elections.

This has to be the apex of cynical manipulation. Their "platform" - the effects of their constant dabbling in Stochastic Terrorism - threatens them as well as the rest of us. But somehow they think they can stay in front of it without being trampled themselves.

And it's not just the monster they've created that they have to be wary of - there's this whole angle too:

You can prove yourself to be very effective at stirring up trouble and pointing it at your political targets as a means to disrupt and overturn a government - which makes you quite useful to the ones who will ultimately take power. But once they're in those positions of power - when they become the government - they can no longer afford to have revolutionaries in their midst, and you'll be among the first ones eliminated.

Why do you think the founders of this joint - having won their new nation through violent insurrection - why did they then set about designing and engineering a new form government very specifically intended to avoid the need for revolution?

CNN looks at some of the weird shit going on in the GOP

And I really wish the Press Poodles would dig deeper for the people and the dark money that we know has to be working behind the scenes.

Coin-Operated & Corporate-Owned

Joe Manchin has a real problem.

Common Dreams: (very "leftie", but good record on accuracy and sourcing)

Manchin Has Received $1.5 Million From Corporate Interests Attacking Biden Agenda

Report Large corporations "have given Senator Manchin over a million reasons to avoid paying their fair share," said Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig.

Sen. Joe Manchin, one of a handful of Democratic lawmakers threatening to tank President Joe Biden's legislative agenda, has received at least $1.5 million in campaign donations from the businesses and trade groups leading corporate America's lobbying blitz against the Build Back Better reconciliation package, a new analysis by Accountable.US reveals.

The watchdog group's report, provided exclusively to Common Dreams, shows that corporate powerhouses including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the highest-spending lobbying firm in the U.S—and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have donated a combined $1,525,700 to Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key swing vote who is currently working to lop as much as $2 trillion off his own party's popular legislation.

"Senator Manchin knows big corporations managed to make billion-dollar profits despite the pandemic as everyday families fell further behind," Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, told Common Dreams. "Manchin now has a golden opportunity to level the playing field for working people by backing investments and tax relief aimed at them for a change—investments that will lower health and childcare costs for most in West Virginia."

"Rich corporations may have given Senator Manchin over a million reasons to avoid paying their fair share—but is it all worth it if he has nothing to show for the families he actually represents?" Herrig asked.

The Chamber of Commerce—whose members include such corporate behemoths as ExxonMobil, Pfizer, and Facebook—has promised to do "everything in [its] power to ensure" the reconciliation bill fails. Earlier this year, the lobbying group said it would financially reward Manchin after he voiced opposition to some of Biden's domestic policy initiatives.

According to Accountable.US, the Chamber's political action committee has given Manchin $10,000 since 2011. Big corporations on the business organization's leadership boards—including Shell Oil, Microsoft, and Honeywell—have donated a total of $565,700 to Manchin through their political arms, the watchdog group found.

Accountable's report also spotlights campaign cash the West Virginia Democrat has received from the Business Roundtable—"whose board is stocked with CEOs from 12 corporations that have given $245,500 to Sen. Manchin"—and the National Association of Manufacturers, "which gave $7,500 to Manchin as its leading corporate members gave him $487,000."

While Manchin has publicly been cagey about what specific programs he wants to cut from the emerging reconciliation package, recent news reports have indicated that the senator—a major ally of the fossil fuel and a coal profiteer—opposes some of Democrats' green-energy proposals, Medicare expansion, and other elements of the sprawling reconciliation plan, despite their popularity in West Virginia and across the nation.

Last week, Axios reported that Manchin has been "telling colleagues that progressives need to pick just one of President Biden's three signature policies for helping working families"—the expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, or child care subsidies—"and discard the other two," an approach that progressives quickly rejected as a non-starter.

"Responsible governing isn't about pitting women, children, and families against each other," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.). "We have the resources to uplift everyone and leave no one behind. It's absurd to say that we don't."

And we (ie: people who want the Dems to get with the fuckin' program) have a problem too.

We can and should pressure Manchin and Sinema to support the big things progressives are trying to do, while also understanding that all they have to do to thwart our efforts is hint that if we get too pushy, they just might have to cross the aisle and join with the other gang - at least for a while.

And of course, that's kinda what's happening now anyway, so we're back to reading tea leaves and trying to sleuth out the sausage-making process at any given moment.

It's annoying and frustrating and I'm real sick of feeling like we're constantly at the edge of the abyss, balanced on the knife's edge, waiting for an announcement that the apocalypse is here now and we're all gonna fucking die because the shit's gonna hit the fan no matter which way we decide to go.

We should be doing a lot better than this. After 15,000 years of bloodshed and conquest and superstitious paranoia, we should be living our lives in a civilized world of genial accommodation among people of good faith and common reason.

Who do I have to kill to get that?

Just A Thought

It's pretty likely that the GOP's apparent big push to toss Roe v Wade in the shitter is actually what some "conservatives" have been angling for these last 50 years (Occam's Razor, dontcha know).

But the "smart guys" in politics know that they need the issue a lot more than they need the "policy success". They've worked the issue to great effect, keeping the rubes distracted form their real agenda (IMO: pushing for a top-down authoritarian plutocracy).

So if they succeed in overturning Roe, then they lose that issue (that distraction), which means they lose the donations and the support and the motivation to turn out the vote, and that means they lose even more elections than they've been doing the last few cycles.

It also means an awful lot of consultants, and ad buyers, and polling pimps, and foundation runners lose whole big bunches of particularly lucrative business.

They'd keep some of it in place, of course, because they just turn it around a bit and make the pitch about maintaining control over those slutty Democrat women and blah blah blah.

Here's a weird wrinkle that keeps popping into my fevered little brain though:

I think it's possible that the old guard GOP - the guys we used to call "moderate" - the guys I used to be able to vote for - guys like Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsey and Bill Weld and Poppy Bush. Having been ignored during the aftermath and supposed introspection following Romney getting crushed in 2012, and then getting completely wiped out by the Trump steamroller, those guys have to be gnashing their teeth and rending their garments at a level that makes Mad Dog Vachon look like the very soul of serenity.

So maybe those smart guys aren't resisting - maybe they're actually egging on - the push for this horseshit abortion thing in an attempt to lash the bible-thumpers to the issue and throw the whole thing overboard - which obviously cuts the GOP down to a much smaller slice of the electorate, but ends up being worth it if they can finally shed themselves of the crazies who are scaring off most of the voters in the big squishy middle - the ones who decide elections.

We could be seeing the demolition of the GOP in preparation for a bigly serious rebuilding effort.

We can hope anyway.

Like I said - just a thought.

About That McQarthy Guy

Kevin McQarthy is as close to being a two-faced, cynically manipulative ass as anybody's ever been.

We know he's playing Trump's Mini Me every chance he gets, which means this latest little emotional outburst is probably about 90% bluff-n-bluster.

But he's becoming more vehement at every turn. So we have to stop a minute and make our calculations:

1. Does he think he's genuinely at risk?
2. How serious can he be about this when his future in elected office depends on support from the people he's threatening?
3. How far is he willing to go if he really believes he has the stroke to extort those corporate supporters?
4. He's a toothless tiger right now, but is he as rightly confidant of gaining the power to punish them as he seems to be, or is it just the usual Trumpian High School Fuckaraound?
5. Is he just playing both ends from the middle? (he should have some popular support because he knows the rubes hate the big tech companies - just as they've been conditioned to do by him and other Trumpublicans - and so he's using that as leverage against the big guys)

Pretty fuckin' sick of this shit.

WaPo: (pay wall)

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is threatening telecommunications and social media companies that comply with a request by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, declaring that Republicans “will not forget” their actions.

McCarthy spoke with then-President Donald Trump on the day of the attack and is a potential witness in the select committee’s probe.

The panel on Monday asked 35 companies to retain phone records and other information related to the attack as it ramps up its investigation ahead of the return of Congress next month. Several of the companies indicated this week that they intend to comply with the panel’s requests, while only one so far has publicly said it will not do so.

“Adam Schiff, Bennie Thompson, and Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to strong-arm private companies to turn over individuals’ private data would put every American with a phone or computer in the crosshairs of a surveillance state run by Democrat politicians,” McCarthy said in a statement Tuesday night, referring to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the chairman of the select committee and the House speaker.

“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,” McCarthy said. “If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”

It is not clear what law McCarthy is asserting the companies would be breaking if they comply with the panel’s request. McCarthy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the select committee, said Wednesday that the panel “won’t be deterred by those who want to whitewash or cover up the events of January 6th, or obstruct our investigation.”

“The Select Committee is investigating the violent attack on the Capitol and attempt to overturn the results of last year’s election,” Mulvey said in a statement. “We’ve asked companies not to destroy records that may help answer questions for the American people.”

Mike Stern, a former lawyer for the nonpartisan House counsel office, said there are probably laws that bar phone carriers and other companies from turning over records voluntarily. But if a subpoena is issued those companies would be legally obligated to respond.

“Even if there is arguably a competing legal obligation or privilege that might trump the subpoena, I know of no principle that requires any subpoena recipient to risk contempt in order to protect the interests of their customers,” Stern said.

Some Democratic lawmakers and legal experts, meanwhile, accused McCarthy on Wednesday of trying to obstruct justice by threatening the companies.

“Every day we enter new uncharted territory,” Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “Last night, the House Republican Leader openly threatened subpoenaed parties to undermine and impede the historic probe into January 6. His threats are treasonous.”

Norman Eisen, former White House ethics counsel in the Obama administration, argued that McCarthy’s action “meets the elements of obstruction.”

“It’s Orwellian. If these telecom companies fail to comply with the requirement to preserve these records, if they did what Kevin McCarthy wants … that would be a violation of law,” Eisen, the executive chairman of the States United Democracy Center and a senior fellow at Brookings, said during an interview on CNN.

“So this is absolutely unjustified by law, and it raises serious questions under the House ethics rules and other laws for Kevin McCarthy himself.”

In June, House Speaker Pelosi announced the formation of a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol after Senate Republicans blocked an effort to form an independent, bipartisan commission. McCarthy opposed both the bipartisan commission and the select committee.

The panel is charged with investigating the facts and causes of the insurrection and will provide recommendations to help prevent similar attacks in the future.

The select committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), recently said his panel would not shy away from investigating lawmakers as part of its inquiry, highlighting the remarkable nature of Congress investigating an attack on itself.

The committee’s plans have drawn criticism from Republicans, most of whom have opposed investigating the insurrection and Trump’s role in inspiring the mob with his false claims about Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election.

The request that went out Monday was sent to tech and social media companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Signal, as well as telecommunications companies including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The panel is asking the 35 companies to preserve “metadata, subscriber information, technical usage information, and content of communications for the listed individuals.”

In its letters to the companies, the committee asked for the preservation of material from individuals who were “involved in organizing, funding, or speaking” at January’s “Stop the Steal” rallies, as well as individuals who were “potentially involved with discussions of plans to challenge, delay, or interfere” with the electoral certification process.

In recent days, some of the companies have indicated that they intend to comply with the panel’s requests, including social media platform Reddit and Snap, owner of the video-sharing platform Snapchat.

Reddit spokesperson Cameron Njaa said in an emailed statement to The Washington Post that company executives have “received the letter in question and are fully cooperating with the Committee on this matter.” Snap spokesperson Rachel Racusen said its leaders “plan to comply” with the requests. In an emailed statement sent by a communications firm representing the Discord instant messaging platform, chief legal officer Clint Smith said the company’s executives “intend to cooperate fully as appropriate.”

Other companies, including Facebook and Google, said they plan to work with the committee but would not say whether they will comply specifically with the recent requests.

Ivy Choi, a spokesperson for Google, which also owns YouTube, said they “have received the Select Committee’s letter and are committed to working with Congress on this.”

“The events of January 6 were unprecedented and tragic, and Google and YouTube strongly condemn them,” Choi said. “We’re committed to protecting our platforms from abuse, including by rigorously enforcing our policies for content related to the events of January 6.”

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement, “We have received the request and look forward to continuing to work with the committee.”

Rumble, a YouTube rival popular with conservative influencers, said the company “complies with all valid law enforcement and investigative requests,” but it did not say whether it considers the committee’s requests as such, nor whether it will comply with them.

Only one company appears to have publicly indicated it will reject the committee’s request so far. A spokesperson for the Switzerland-based Proton Technologies, the parent company behind the encrypted email service ProtonMail, said it could not comply with the request due to Swiss blocking laws that restrict the sharing of evidence from the country with foreign authorities.

“Our use of zero-access encryption means that we do not have access to the message content being requested,” U.S. communications manager Matt Fossen said in a statement to The Post.

Under Swiss law, Fossen said, “it is also illegal for us to share data with U.S. authorities so we would be unable to comply without breaking Swiss law.”

Spokesmen for Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter declined to comment. Spokesmen for Apple, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, TikTok, Slack, MeWe, 4chan, Signal, Parler, and Twitch did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday and early Wednesday about the panel’s requests and McCarthy’s remarks. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have been the recent subjects of questions about which members could be called to appear before the select committee.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) described what McCarthy told her about a phone call he had with Trump on Jan. 6 in which he asked the president to help calm supporters who had broken into the Capitol.

“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” Herrera Beutler said in a statement in February, referring a to a loosely knit group of far-left activists.

“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”

Today's Charlie

Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

I try. Lord knows how I try. I try to maintain a certain equilibrium about all of my fellow citizens. We're all in this great democratic experiment together, after all. I think we have an obligation as a self-governing democratic republic to make government work best for all our people. I believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, and in the political commons to which we all have a right and in which we all have a stake. Economic anxiety in de-industrialized America is very real and it is a real danger to all of what we can achieve together. It is now, and it was in 1980, when I drove from Youngstown to Toledo to Flint to Grand Rapids as we wound into the election that brought us Ronald Reagan.

(So, by the way, is the intractable poverty of people, working class and otherwise, who are not white.)

So, I try. Lord knows how I try.

But what am I supposed to do when so many of my fellow citizens guzzle snake oil by the gallon and call it champagne?

I think what hangs us up the most is that we're all clinging rather desperately to the Presumption of Regularity.  We need something that looks and feels more like normal. So we project that need onto an awful lot of what's going on.  Especially with 45* making such forceful and deliberate efforts to vacate the norm.

Add it all up and we're danger-close to a charge of False Consciousness, but what else we got?

The Exodus

I realize this could come under the general heading of That's What Bloggers Are For, but I don't think I wanna put in the kind of work it's prob'ly going to take to stay up with the potential stampede of Repubs as they start to understand how important it is to get the fuck away from Donald Trump.

But I think somebody should be keeping some kind of scorecard on this.

One of the House's top conservatives now says he cannot support presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump after the real estate mogul questioned whether a federal judge could be fair given his "Mexican heritage," according to CNN political reporter Manu Raju.

Raju reported on-air Wednesday that Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), a chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said he "was incredibly angry" at Trump for attacking U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel's integrity based on his ethnicity. Curiel is presiding over lawsuits against Trump University in California.

--and--

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signaled Tuesday that he may not support Donald Trump unless he renounces his attacks on a federal judge's ethnicity before being formally nominated at the GOP convention in July.

--and--

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she won't endorse GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump until he starts behaving more "presidential."

--and--

Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk on Tuesday said he "cannot and will not support" Donald Trump as the GOP's presidential nominee, citing the real estate mogul and former reality TV star's "past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me."

"It is absolutely essential that we are guided by a commander in chief with a responsible and proper temperament, discretion and judgment. Our president must be fit to command the most powerful military the world has ever seen, including an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons," said Kirk, who suffered a stroke in 2012. "After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world."

The Atlantic has a fair piece on this subject - I only hope they can keep it updated.

And also too - at some point in the post-Trump period (assuming Trump does cause the near-fatal splintering of the GOP that lotsa people are expecting), we should anticipate the spinmeisters stepping up with "Donald Trump has done a great service to our party ... blah blah blah ... strengthening ... blah blah blah ... reminding us of our core values ... blah bah blah ..."  

And the translation will be "What an asshole that guy was - but at least when he left, he took an awful lot of those other assholes with him".

Fly paper.

The Party Of No Fucking Way Am I Votin' Fer These Pricks

If past is prologue, then there will come a time when a buncha Repubs will start revising the history of these last coupla weeks. I figure it oughta start just about June or July next year once they've safely lied their way around or thru their primaries, and have to start the 2014 campaigns proper.

They will spin all manner of yarn about how they didn't really vote to fuck over hungry children and homeless veterans and anybody trying to eke by on a few bucks invested in T-Bills - and they're going to go to the ends of the Earth trying to tell us we didn't actually watch as they all took a giant shit in each other's hats.

These people voted to go on wasting 12 Billion Dollars of the US economy (per week).

And they voted to make the world's Big Market Players so antsy that a fuckload of investors are looking to put their money in just about anything, just about anywhere but here in USAmerica Incorporated.  So I hafta wonder: if the GOP is really "the party of business", and if they really want the US to be run like a company, then why the fuck are they working so hard to make America unattractive to our investors?

Senate

Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)
John Cornyn (R-Texas)
Mike Crapo (R-Idaho)
Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
Mike Enzi (R-Wy.)
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
Dean Heller (R-Nev.)
Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
Mike Lee (R-Utah)
Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
James Risch (R-Idaho)
Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)
Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
Tim Scott (R-S.C.)
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)
Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)
David Vitter (R-La.)

House

Find your Critter here: Daily Kos (How every Congresscritter voted on shutdown & default (w/spotlight: Georgia)

It's A Sucker Move

Obama says if Assad uses Chemical Weapons, it's a game-changer.
Intel says somebody's used Sarin in Syria.
John McCain immediately hits TV saying we gotta make a move.

There's a lot to it, and I don't claim to know enough to make the definitive call, but remembering that it's never all about what they say it's all about, here's what I hear some of these guys saying:

The Neo-Cons - and the Neo-Liberals too - (for lack of more accurate identifiers) are pushing hard again for another entanglement in the Middle East.  And one of the benefits of pushing Obama into a war would be that it suddenly becomes a lot easier to play the Equivalency card.

So it starts to sound like, "See? Obama is no different than Bush or any Repub or anybody else - so you should all just throw up your hands, walk away from politics altogether, and be sure to stay home on election day because it's all just too weird.  It's ugly and they're all stupid and you're busy with your own shit anyway.  Just stay away."

That's one thing I hear.

Here's Chris Hayes breakin' it down:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And here's the next segment:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh, Willard

Willard's team decided they'd try to make it look like they had any fuckin' clue on what to do about the problems thrown at us by Superstorm Sandy, so they dressed up a campaign rally to look like they give a rat's ass about anything but themselves.

Too typical.  But it points up (again) the simple fact that the Repubs are always trying to substitute these empty gestures and photo ops for real policy and helpful action.

Balloon Juice takes 'em down.

But Romney is shameless. He wants to use Sandy’s destruction as a media hook, so he re-branded his rally for the stupid and gullible members of the press as a “storm relief’ effort. To underscore the stupid deception, Mitt asked attendees to bring can goods to the rally, as if random truckloads of unsorted can goods flooding a disaster area are useful. The Red Cross is pretty specific that these kinds of efforts produce piles of supplies that cannot be used and cause real problems for relief efforts:

Does the American Red Cross accept donated goods?

Unfortunately, due to logistical constraints the Red Cross does not accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items. Items such as collected food, used clothing and shoes must be sorted, cleaned, repackaged and transported which impedes the valuable resources of money, time, and personnel.

Something else it points up - Romney is another silver-spoon legacy puke who doesn't know the first fuckin' thing about the lives or the problems of real people, and apparently he knows even less about any of the mechanisms in place that actually work to help real people when they need it.

Theatrics

We can look at National Security and think in terms of 'stupid' or 'farcical' or 'tragic' or 'melodramatic' or whatever - all of those things are pertinent if trivializing, but even if we're trying to apply more clear-eyed, bang-for-the-buck criteria, we're still losing.  We've thrown trillions of dollars at the War On Terrorism, and we've stripped away every meaningful protection for citizens' rights under the US Constitution, and we've accomplished nothing but the illusion of security.  And in fact, we've established a state of order in which our liberties are guaranteed only as long as a cop is feeling generous at any given moment.

from James Fallows:

The British couple, shown below in a photo via ABC, got in trouble for a slangy use of the word "destroy" in a Tweet.

And in the end, we're getting a near-exact duplicate (ie; Epic Fail) of the War On Drugs where lots and lots of junkies and casual pot smokers are sent to prison while hundreds of thousands of tons of every conceivable street drug make it to every neighborhood in this country.

In the ten years of Homeland Security, where the fuck is the real evidence that we're under anything close to a level of threat that would justify either the time effort and money, or the abandonment of our principles?

This is horseshit and we need to stop it.

Iran

Sounds plain to me. Iran is not on the verge of getting the bomb. That means all the crap coming from guys like McCain and Lieberman (et al) is meant to focus attention on Iran for other reasons. (ie: this "issue" is in keeping with my basic premise that it's never about what they tell us it's about) So what is it?

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Political Recycling

The Gingrich believes poor kids are in need of some good old fashioned lessons in The American Work Ethic, so he says we should put them to work scrubbing floors and toilets in their schools.  For right now, let's try to ignore the stunningly blatant hypocrisy of Big Government raising children, and just concentrate on the Modified Southern Strategy aspects of it all. (pause to reflect)

OK, now let's take a look at WIllard's latest foray into race baiting (via Wonkette):

Here’s the title of a pamphlet published in 1920 by the United Klans of America, as found in the catalog of Yale’s Beinecke Library:

Why you should become a klansman : of interest to white, protestant, native born Americans who want to keep America American.

None of this is new in any way shape or form. Let the freak speak his mind; and sometimes all you can do is turn your back and walk away, but then somebody who would normally be on his side has to have the balls to shut him down.

Say What?

This is what it looks like when you step on your dick wearin' track shoes.



These guys need us to blame government; to blame Fannie and Freddie; they know they've screwed the pooch in a huge way, and if we don't go along with their bullshit explanations, confidence goes out of the system; and since confidence is what holds up this kind of "modern economy", the whole thing craters in on itself.

One other point: Remembering that it's never about what they say it's about, if Bloomberg is out saying shitty things about Washington, it could mean that there are some very "candid discussions" going on behind the curtains.

Solution Seeks Problem

The need to fight rampant voter fraud is one of those really scary sounding memes the Repubs love to trot out as they try to beat back the tide of Youth and Minority voting that they fervently believe threatens to wash them away at any moment.

Rampant Voter Fraud is also - you guessed it - almost completely baseless.

Here's a good look at the "issue" in The Tennesseean (not exactly a bastion of liberal bias):

“They identified a lot of fraud, but very, very, very, very, very, very little of it could be prevented by identification at the polls,” Levitt said.

The remainder involved vote buying, ballot-box stuffing, problems with absentee ballots, or ex-convicts voting even though laws bar them from doing so. Over the same seven-year time period covered by the cases Levitt reviewed, 400 million votes were cast in general elections.

“If there was evidence of this, we’d know about it,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters. Her organization, which has affiliates in every state, knows voter registrars, attends election meetings, observes and works at polls and is intimately aware of how the election system works.

It's not about protecting the franchise.  It's about keeping people from voting a certain way - in this case for Democrats - and it stinks.  If a big majority (of either party) showed up in some state houses, the electees might grow some balls, step out of line, and then the Lords of Lucre will lose a big measure of control.  And we can't have that now, can we?

It's A Problem

Part of the bigger problem of "they're all alike" and "both sides do it" is Obama's pursuit of the terrorist bad guys, and the use of drones to kill them.  Bush put the program together and now, under Obama, the operators seem to have refined it to a very sharp point.  And that's usually at the heart of this kind of problem.  We develop these deadly capabilities without regard for the legal ramifications, and then we find it almost impossible not to use them in the face of political pressures.

I think we can see the standard political calculation going on here too.  Obama kills terrorists (and sympathizers - and some innocents as well) while ignoring the niceties of due process because he figures he gains more against his political enemies than he loses among his friends.  It's cynical, and I don't like it, and I'm sitting here every day rationalizing it away because I support Obama on most other issues; plus I can't stand the thought of putting any of the current crop of Repubs in power.

This really sucks.