COMING SOON: ANOTHER PHONY REFERENDUM ON OBAMA?

Oh crap, I wasn't thinking about this -- a thoroughly predictable election result could soon be spun as a stinging defeat for Obama:

Massa's resignation sets up another Obama referendum upstate

... The stage has been set for another national referendum on President Obama's administration and health care reform, again in upstate New York.

Er, no. Eric Massa's district leans Republican. Even in the wave election of 2006 that ended GOP rule in Congress, Republican Randy Kuhl won, despite the fact that it was known that he'd once pulled a shotgun on his wife at a party, despite his praise for the Bush administration's handling of Katrina, and despite the fact that the increasingly despised Bush and Cheney campaigned for him. If that campaign strategy worked, we're talking a rather right-leaning district. In the even wavier election of 2008, Eric Massa did manage to beat Kuhl, but by only 2 points, while John McCain won the district.

And now Massa is in disgrace. And, of course, Democrats all over New York State are in disgrace.

And yet the right is going to spin this as (a) a surprise win for the GOP in the Northeast and therefore (b) a stinging rebuke to Obamaism, as well as (c) a do-over of the special election in NY-23, with the Doug Hoffman substitute winning this time.

And, alas, the mainstream press will probably retransmit that spin completely unedited.

FOX DOUBLES DOWN ON CHENEY/KRISTOL McCARTHYISM

Here's one of the lead items at Fox Nation right now:



The link goes to this excerpt, approvingly quoted from a Washington Independent story:

Would You Hire a Klan Lawyer for the DOJ Civil Rights Division?

Hans Von Spakovsky, a former counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Bush administration aligned himself with Cheney. "I don't think it is unfair or somehow improper to criticize those lawyers who have volunteered to help the enemies of the United States who are dedicated to killing as many innocent Americans as possible and destroying our country," Von Spakovsky told TWI. "I certainly don't think those same lawyers should be in the Justice Department directing policy and making decisions on prosecutions of those same terrorists. That would be like hiring Mob lawyers in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force or hiring someone who volunteered to defend the Klu Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Division. Those lawyers who all come from big firms have a wide choice of who to help on a pro bono basis and their choice of terrorists says a lot about them –- I would not hire them to represent my company either if I were still a corporate in-house counsel, because I would not want my company's money subsidizing that kind of legal work."

I can't find any Klan defenders in Holder's Justice Department, but I can certainly find Klan defenders whose work I think Holder would approve of.

How about Eleanor Holmes Norton, currently D.C.'s non-voting member of the House of Representatives, who, as a young ACLU lawyer, defended the free-speech rights of Klansmen, George Wallace, and the National States Rights Party?

Or Anthony P. Griffin, who defended a Klan Grand Dragon in the early 1990s and won the 1993 William J. Brennan, Jr., Award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression?

Or David P. Baugh, who defended a Klan cross-burner in 1998 and subsequently received the Virginia State Bar's Lewis F. Powell Jr. Pro Bono Award?

All three of these lawyers are African-American, by the way.

This is a disgraceful argument. Attempting to secure due process for terrorism defendants, or free speech rights for racist haters, is not the same as waging jihad or fomenting a race war. It's about maintaining a society with the rule of law.

But, of course, we're dealing with the modern right wing. The righties aren't going to let it go, and they're going to keep making the same argument relentlessly until conventional-wisdom-mongers think it's reasonable and not scurrilous.

WOW, THAT'S SOME THOROUGHGOING RESEARCH YOU'VE DONE THERE, STANLEY

You know, maybe the right-wingers have a point about the academy. Here, blogging for The New York Times, is Stanley Fish, one of America's best-known academics -- and take a gander at the careful research he's done to support his argument that a Bush revival is taking place in America (emphasis added):

I know you're not supposed to, but I just love to say I told you so.

What I told you back on Sept. 28, 2008, was that within a year of the day he left office George W. Bush would come to be regarded with affection and a little nostalgia....

Well it's a bit more than a year now and signs of Bush's rehabilitation are beginning to pop up. One is literally a sign, a billboard that appeared recently on I-35 in Minnesota. Occupying the right side (from the viewer's viewpoint) is a picture of Bush smiling genially and waving his hand in a friendly gesture. Occupying the left side is a simple and direct question: "Miss me yet?" The image is all over the Internet, hundreds of millions of hits, and unscientific Web-based polls indicate that more do miss him than don't....

Wow -- people clicked on the image, so every single one of them (including me) must agree with it! And polls confirm Fish's belief -- "unscientific Web-based polls"! Hey, that's all the proof I need! Q.E.D.!

In fact, a poll conducted by actual professionals -- the Opinion Dynamics firm, polling for Fox News -- shows that Bush's favorability was 11 points less in February 2010 than it was in January 2009 (and 3 points less than it was in October 2009). Yes, if you scroll down at that link (from Polling Report) you'll see a CNN poll that shows an uptick in Bush's favorability -- but it was conducted about a week after Bush and Bill Clinton teamed up for Haiti relief. And even in that poll, the favorable-unfavorable numbers were 43%-54%. (In the Fox poll they were 38%-55%.)

Hell, even Newsmax, or at least respondents in a Zogby poll conducted for Newsmax, rank Barack Obama far ahead of Bush on the question of which living president "is best equipped to deal with the problems the country faces today." Obama also beats Bush by 10 points in an imagined presidential matchup.

Fish seems to have overlooked the fact that there were always Bush enthusiasts, and, well, they're still out there. Bush's approval numbers during his presidency were low, but they never went to 0%. Even a distinct minority of the country can be a hell of a lot of people. And it only takes one person to get a damn billboard put up.

Fish concludes:

And the judgment of history? Well, I'm not that foolish, but I will venture to say that it will be more nuanced than anything the professional Bush-haters -- indistinguishable in temperament from the professional Obama-haters -- are now able to imagine. He will not go to the top of the list, but neither will he be the figure of fun and derision he seemed destined to be only a year ago. You heard it here.

I love that "indistinguishable" part. It's almost as if there's no right and wrong in being president, no degrees of incompetence or of reckless endangerment of the Republic -- there's only the subjective response of the public. The Iraq War wasn't wrong, the treasury-bleeding tax cuts for the rich weren't wrong, the neglect of financial regulation that led to mass global unemployment wasn't wrong, the contempt for Katrina victims wasn't wrong. It's all just a matter of how we feel, and those of us who feel angry or outraged at what happened from 2001 to 2009 just have bad "temperaments," indistinguishable from the bad "temperaments" of mass-delusion cases who think Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Marxist who is destroying the country deliberately.

In the right-wing stereotype, that's precisely the way a modern academic would think -- that, for presidents, there's simply no right or wrong because, well, there's simply no right or wrong. I don't think that's Fish's point -- I think he's trying to be "politically incorrect" by embracing the same right-centrist dozens of other media bloviators embrace -- but the effect is the same.

IS THE "REPEAL TRAP" REALLY A TRAP FOR REPUBLICANS?

Steve Benen is struck by the fact that Senator John Cornyn, who's in charge of efforts to get Republicans elected to the Senate in 2010, proclaims that the party will run against health care reform if it passes but won't pledge to put repeal in a platform his party's Senate candidates will all run on.

Steve sees this as a sign of weakness. I'm not so sure. This is a big country. In some states, Republicans will want to run as conservative, and in other states they'll want to run as really, really conservative. The truth is, they only need to have a few key beliefs in common across the board: (1) Reagan was a saint; (2) Obama is the Antichrist. There's probably a third one, but I can't remember what it is.

Steve says:

Substantively, repeal isn't realistic. Unless Republicans suddenly get supermajorities in both chambers and convince President Obama and Vice President Biden to step down, making room for President Boehner in 2011, the policy, if passed into law, isn't going anywhere.

But for Republican electoral strategists, that's a feature, not a bug. It means they get to carry this grievance through two election cycles minimum.

But that doesn't explain the mixed message from Cornyn this morning. The problem, which the NRSC chief is loath to acknowledge, is that repeal is a) a political loser; and b) an inconvenient demand from the Republican base.

Popular consumer protections would kick in immediately if reform becomes law -- including a ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, the elimination of rescissions, a ban on annual or lifetime caps, etc. -- and voters will likely be reluctant to give them up. Indeed, Democratic candidates would likely use these new protections to go on the offensive, giving pro-reform Dems something to brag about, and anti-reform Republicans a position they might struggle to justify.

Wait, wait, wait: Democrats are going to "go on the offensive"? Democrats are going to start being good at messaging? DEMOCRATS?

I really have a problem with this argument. It's conventional wisdom on the left that the popularity of HCR will soar after passage, as people take advantage of all sorts of nifty provisions that kick in right away -- but really, how many Americans will either be in a position to take advantage of these provisions or know someone who is? Won't someone still need to persuade everyone else that "hey, this could be you someday, too"? Won't that someone be, um, the Democratic Party? Does that give you confidence that the message will be delivered? Does you really have confidence that Democratic messaging will trump Republican messaging, which will say that those few people getting benefits right away are welfare leeches taking the taxes of hardworking "real Americans"?

... Democrats are going to ask, "Are you really going to fight to repeal protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions? Are you really going to take coverage away from 30 million middle-class Americans?" ...

Well, I sure hope so.

Yeah, the president sounded feisty today. But that's today. This is going to require a sustained fight Democrats have had an exhausting fight to pass HCR, but they're going to have to fight just as hard after passage, if passage comes, to win the propaganda war. Remember, these are Republicans we're dealing with. They're still fighting the Civil War, fer crissake. They never consider any battle lost.

YES, BEN SMITH, THE PALINS DID GET HEALTH CARE IN A SOCIALIST HELLHOLE
(updated)

You're probably aware that Sarah Palin revealed that her family got health care in Canada's Yukon Territory when she was a kid:

"My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not - this was in the ‘60s - we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn't that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."

Politico's Ben Smith blogged the story, then issued an update:

ALSO: Socialized medicine apparently only kicked in in Yukon in 1972, post-Palin.

He cites this Canadian government Web site, which says:

1972
Yukon creates medical insurance plans with federal cost sharing, April 1.

(Palin was born in 1964.)

Ah, but go to "Inventory to the Records of the Yukon Government, YRG 1, Series 12, Territorial Treasurer Records, 1951-1969" (PDF). As we learn on pages 5 and 6:

The Yukon Health Insurance Service (Y.H.I.S.) came into existence on July 1, 1961 to provide hospital insurance for all residents of the Yukon Territory. Its three objectives were: to relieve territorial residents of the burden of hospital costs; to assure hospitals of payment for services rendered; and to raise standards of hospital care.

Y.H.I.S. provided hospital insurance for Yukon residents without cost, as long as they had lived in Yukon for ninety days. The Yukon Government administered the plan. The federal Department of National Health and Welfare took responsibility for the standards of nursing, equipment, and medical aspects for the Yukon's three hospitals (Whitehorse, St. Mary's in Dawson, and Mayo)....

During the fiscal year 1961-1962, the Y.H.I.S. passed from its developmental stage to full operation as one of the twelve plans (provincial and territorial) which together formed the framework for a national plan of health services....

Long story short: Yukon didn't have fully federalized health care when Sarah Palin was a child, but it did have socialized hospital care. I'm assuming that when Palin's brother was "rushed over" to Whitehorse after an accident, he went to a hospital emergency room. And yet the quality of care was, bafflingly, not so horrific that Palin's brother was killed instantly, after which cackling socialists danced over his capitalist corpse.

****

UPDATE: The folks over here, as well as a couple of commenters, think they have me dead to rights because (a) the Yukon health system wasn't fully socialized in the '60s and (b) the Palins were using it as U.S. citizens.

Um, aren't these the same people who think even a minimal amount of additional government intervention in the U.S. health care system will turn our hospitals and doctors' offices into hell on earth? Would they be prepared to say, "Oh, it's only a little socialism, so it's OK"? I don't think so.

And if big bad evil socialism, even in embryonic form, ruined health care for Canada, as these people firmly believe, then the system was in horribly degraded form even if you paid for your care with U.S. cash money, no? Isn't that what the people who criticized this post believe. That socialized medicine is a cancer? Are they suddenly in favor of just a little cancer? (Oh, you know, besides Medicare, the VA system, and Medicaid?)

DICK MORRIS REDUX

Dick Morris helped Bill Clinton stage a comeback after the '94 midterm elections, but Morris fell, or was pushed, when it was revealed a few months before the '96 election that he'd been visiting a hooker. within short order, the right wing flipped him, and he became a scourge of Democrats on Fox News, in online wingnut periodicals, and in a series of hastily written books, which seem to come out at the rate of several a year.

Eric Massa seems to be heading in the same direction. I don't know whether or not he's genuinely guilty of thoroughly unacceptable sexual conduct, but his notion of where blame should be placed for his downfall sure seems to have changed a hell of a lot since last Friday -- in a conveniently pro-GOP direction -- as Time's Jay Newton-Small notes:

Gone is the contrite politician who said in an open letter Friday on his website, "I own this reality... My difficulties are of my own making. Period."

Apparently, Massa now believes his difficulties are of the making of the Democratic leadership. In his weekly WKPQ radio blog on Sunday he lambasted House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for informing reporters of the ethics case, about which Massa says he wasn't even aware....

And, of course, he's called Rahm Emanuel "son of the devil's spawn" and "an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote."

And if that wasn't punchy enough, a guy no one outside his district had ever heard of until last week also unloaded another pitch-perfect (and Drudge-perfect) soundbite:

"I was set up for this from the very, very beginning," he added. "The leadership of the Democratic Party have become exactly what they said they were running against."

(And I almost forgot the story about the angry encounter with Emanuel in the shower.)

So Massa's the new Morris -- the new wingnut Whittaker Chambers, an apostate hero to Drudge and Fox Nation -- and what do you know, he's going to be on Glenn Beck's radio show for a full hour tomorrow.

The vast right-wing conspiracy doesn't let opportunities like this get away. Talk about not letting a crisis go to waste. Talk about always being ready with an anvil when your political enemy takes on any amount of water.

TEABAGGING: WORKING LIKE A CHARM -- FOR THE GOP?

Politico's Alex Isenstadt notes that the tea party movement isn't achieving its electoral goals:

From Texas to Illinois to upstate New York, a string of lackluster showings for tea party-linked candidates have highlighted a central question about the group's future: Can an organic and fledgling movement that lacks the institutional grounding and top-down organizational strength of either major political party transfer protest-oriented grass-roots energy into tangible success at the polls?

In Tuesday's Texas GOP primary, ... [g]ubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, who closely aligned herself with the grass-roots conservative movement, picked up just 19 percent of the vote....

In last month's Illinois primary, tea party favorite Patrick Hughes won just 19 percent against GOP Rep. Mark Kirk in the Senate primary....

Well, yeah -- but Medina lost after the winner of that race, Rick Perry, became even more tea party-friendly than he'd been -- invoking secession and the 10th Amendment and all that -- while Kirk took

a rightward turn in the primary campaign: vowing to reverse an earlier vote in favor of controversial cap-and-trade carbon emission regulation; using heated rhetoric to oppose housing Guantanamo Bay terror suspects at a little-used prison in northwestern Illinois; and even trying to encourage former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to say good things about him.

I was thinking about this as I read Carl Cannon's latest article at Politics Daily, "Six Reasons Barack Obama is Still the Odds-on Favorite in 2012." There's something to Cannon's list of reasons (a few of them: Obama is still the candidate of younger voters; Obama could bounce back from big losses for his party in the midterms just as Reagan and Clinton did) -- but there's also this:

In a recent Gallup Poll, Obama was losing by 14 points among these swing voters in a 2012 matchup to something called the "generic Republican."

[But] in a "binary" general election campaign, voters won't be choosing between Obama and any idealized view of a "generic" Republican.... by the time the Republicans have chosen their standard-bearer, that candidate will almost certainly have staked out policy positions well to the right of the country as a whole. The upshot is that generic Republican numbers in 2010 are higher among independent or moderate voters than a real Republican's would likely be after surviving the cauldron of the primary season.

But see what's happening in primaries? Tea party candidates are running. Non-tea-party candidates are tacking to the right (or, in Perry's case, further to extreme right) to meet them partway. Then the tea party candidate loses ... and the winner looks reasonable. The winner looks like the good cop. The winner has absorbed the tea party's ideology to a greater or lesser extent, yet is appealing to swing voters. General election success is in sight.

Maybe it won't work that way -- this year or in 2012. But don't rule it out.

And why assume that the tea party energy won't still be there when the establishment Republican wins the primary? As Politico's Isenstadt notes:

And even if it isn't winning races, the tea party movement is impacting the broader electoral landscape as it brings vocal and active grass-roots energy to the conservative cause.

"They are the energy force for Republicans right now," said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "They are the people that will help drive turnout, and they have a message that will resonate with voters who have been disenfranchised over the last few cycles."

Maybe that's overly optimistic. But the tea party movement is much more an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat force than it is a purist movement about ideas, no matter what the conventional wisdom says.

We'll know in November, and two Novembers after that. But I'm sticking with my theory that Republicans are using the tea party movement as a Judas goat to lead voters their way.

BUBBLE BOY BAI

Here's the first sentence of Matt Bai's article in today's New York Times Magazine:

Plaintiffs' lawyers must be holding their heads a little higher when they walk into P.T.A. meetings and neighborhood parties these days, knowing that corporate lobbyists have overtaken them as the most despised professionals in America.

Is this really true out there in the heartland? Does people truly despise plaintiffs' lawyers as a class? Were they actually the most despised professionals in America until just a little while ago? Maybe I'm culturally out of touch with the real America, but I don't see it. If lobbyists weren't the most despised professionals until recently (which I don't buy), you're telling me plaintiffs' lawyers were more despised than hotshot corporate lawyers? Or health plan executives? Or, um, politicians?

I think Bai believes what he wrote because -- self-hating Democrat that he is -- he's heard so many Republican politicians bloviate about "trial lawyers," and he simply assumes they're wise and have an unerring sense of what genuine Americans believe. (I agree that they're good at finding and pushing hot buttons, but I think they're wrong on this one. Hell, North Carolina elected John Edwards to the Senate when he was a known trial lawyer and a Democrat, right? And didn't America come close to making Edwards vice president?)

*****

The sentence quoted above is just throat-clearing on Bai's part; he's writing to make the point that lobbyists aren't really a cancer on the body politic. He doesn't do a very good job:

If you know some decent people who also happen to be lobbyists, as I do, then it is tempting to defend their honor against such an onslaught -- to declare, as Hillary Clinton did at a forum with bloggers in 2007, that "lobbyists are people, too." You might point out that industry lobbyists weren't the reason that Democrats in Congress could not get out of their own way long enough to pass health care reform last year; after all, pharmaceutical companies spent something like $100 million in support of the Democratic plan.

Matt, I can't help you if you hang out with trash -- but I will point out that while Big Pharma backed the plan, the rest of Big Medicine has been far less enthusiastic. Lobbyists don't all work in sync all the time.

Bai continues:

The problem with [criticisms of lobbyists] isn't that they are too hard on lobbyists who try to influence the system. It's that they're too easy on the politicians who cave to the pressure....

The flaw here is that if our senators and congressmen really wanted to be ideal public servants, they wouldn't need us to protect them from their corporate patrons. Rather, they would simply do what's right and face the consequences. That is, after all, what most Americans do when our work requires us to choose between our principles and our personal gain. Most of us would sooner leave our jobs than follow orders to defraud clients or falsify records. The guy at the deli counter probably isn't going to sell you contaminated meat just because his boss orders him to, any more than your electrician is going to risk burning down your house by installing faulty alarms.

But politicians don't believe they're killing or harming anyone when the do as their corporate masters ask; they think they're doing right by, well, constituents -- constituents who all just happen to wear Gucci loafers. Politicians think the country will get along just fine if those constituents are disproportionately heeded. They're not like a deli guy selling contaminated meat; they're like a deli guy selling hormone-saturated meat that the FDA insists is perfectly safe, even though he's heard people argue that it isn't, and has wondered occasionally whether they're right, but is choosing not to think about it. I'm not defending politicians, but they're in the same state of denial a lot of people are in when their livelihoods depend on it -- people who just decide to believe the reassurance that they're blameless. Is that defensible on the pols' part? No, not really. But the lobbyists aren't blameless -- the system isn't blameless. A huge portion of the blame lies with those who maintain and defend the system.

(In the latter group of system-defenders is, of course, the Supreme Court, which has insisted in the Buckley and Citizens United decisions that corporate money is speech. Also in that group are right-wing pontificators who proclaim in their op-eds and think-tank papers that the Supreme Court is correct and wise and doing just what the Framers intended.)

More from Bai:

Is it really so outside the bounds of human nature to expect congressmen to serve the interests of the voters, even when their own ­re-elections are in jeopardy?

The political system is imperiled mostly because too many of our politicians just can't seem to imagine any worse fate in life than losing an election.

What I don't understand is what's going on right now with Democrats , whose subservience to the corporate will, instead of guaranteeing their reelection, is threatening their reelection.

But habits die hard. As a Democratic pol, usually you talk a friend-of-the-people game, then serve corporate interests when you're in office -- and the voters reelect you anyway. In a recession, it doesn't work that way -- Democrats actually needed to choose between lobbyists and constituents in the past year, because constituents are really, really hurting. But the Dems did what they always do, and thought they'd win the way they always do regardless. They won't -- and the question is why they couldn't see that coming. Bai wants to know why they're not moral, and why, instead, they're so focused on self-preservation. I want to know why they aren't interested enough in self-preservation to tell the fat cats just once to sod off.

I thought I might be able to get in another post this morning, but there's too much going on (this damn face-to-face contact -- the curse of the blogging classes). I'll be back tomorrow night.

WHY DO THE WEIRD TURN PATHOLOGICAL?

I actually don't think it's appropriate to define John Patrick Bedell as purely right-wing, which is how the Christian Science Monitor seems to want to define him, as does Think Progress. But he's not left-wing either, even if, as Michele Malkin says, he was a registered Democrat, and even though he was (in Patterico's words) an "anti-Bush nut case and 9/11 truther."

Obviously, as we see from the Texas gubernatorial field, 9/11 trutherism shows up on the right as well as the left. And yeah, Bedell was angry at George W. Bush -- but his economic philosophy was Ludwig von Mises libertarianism, and in one of his pet causes, attempting to expose what he believed was a cover-up in the death of Colonel James Sabow in 1991 (allegedly because Sabow was prepared to accuse the military of drug-smuggling going back to the 1980s), Bedell had an ally of sorts in right-wing GOP congressman Duncan Hunter, who sought an investigation of the case.

It seems to me that a lot of the political violence we're seeing lately is from people who are enraged, and have been for a long time, but who don't quite feel represented by any of the groups who dominate our political debate. Joe Stack was like that. Hell, I'd even throw in neo-Nazi James von Brunn, whom I still regard as a right-winger, but who did have some economic theories that weren't right-wing, and who was put off by philo-Semitism anywhere it appeared on the political spectrum.

My question is, why does it seem that people who've been angry for a long time, as all of these guys were (von Brunn, I think, has been angry longer than I've been alive, and I'm 50), suddenly turning violent now?

I think it's the atmosphere in the country.

Now, you might say it's the endless recession, but I don't think any of these guys had a recent reversal of fortune -- Stack, for instance, seemed to have been struggling through good times as well as bad. I think it's more the tone of the rhetoric out there, especially the radical, hateful, revolutionary rhetoric that's showing up in mainstream media outlets.

Maybe tea party and Bunning-style GOP rage, broadcast through the powerful Fox and talk radio loudspeakers, isn't making teabaggers violent (they think they'll win soon and everything will be hunky-dory), and it isn't making moderates and liberals and lefties violent (to varying extents, we're all still hoping some good comes out of Washington or out of progressive activism pressuring Washington, even if our hopes are fading), but it's making people who are off-the-charts wacko more and more inclined to politicized violence. Maybe people who are already riled up are getting even more riled up by the tone of the rhetoric, but, since they don't feel they have a dog in the fight, they just go even crazier, and seek bloodshed.

It's just a theory, but I wish the most overheated folks out there -- the vast majority of whom I think are on the right -- would ponder it.

Socializing this weekend -- my posts will be sporadic (at best) until Sunday evening....

AND SPEAKING OF WEAKNESS...

I hate to agree with anything posted at a Michelle Malkin blog, but when I read this at Talking Points Memo...

Obama to Progressives: 31 Million People--And My Presidency--Are On The Line If Health Care Fails

President Obama's message to progressives who are dissatisfied with the Senate health care bill is two fold: First: Don't forget about the uninsured. Second: Don't forget what failure to pass this bill would do to the party and my presidency....

... I had essentially the same reaction as this Hot Air blogger:

With all due respect, when the liberal president of the United States has to essentially beg his fellow liberals to vote for his proposal, it's safe to say we have a weak executive.

Really -- you hold a meeting with people who are on your side and you do it in such a way that the messaging is, inevitably, "Obama begs"? That's how you fight? You let that get out to the public? Do these guys know anything about optics?

The Hot Air blogger is right -- we do have a weak executive. Now I wish he/she would kindly convey that information to all the crazies on his/her side who think Obama is a jackbooted fascist.

SURELY LUCY WILL LET ME KICK THE FOOTBALL NOW!

No surprise to see this in The Washington Post:

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The Obama people never see what's coming -- they can never accurately estimate the depth of opposition to their plans, and they never have a plan to counter that opposition. Occasionally -- or maybe only on health care -- they can hang in for fifteen rounds, but they still never know how to win the war, because they never realize they need to know how to win a war.

And this just makes me groan:

...If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States.

Um, here's how that's going to work out:



Oh, and on the subject of a military tribunal for KSM, I hope the administration realizes that that will have to be conducted overseas. I hope there's no thought that KSM et al. can be tried stateside, even in a military procedure. That's another humiliating battle Team Obama would lose. Just cut your losses, guys. They're going to make you crawl, so just announce now that you're going to hold the freaking trial at Gitmo and end the humiliation now.

WHAT THE TEABAGGERS' UTOPIA MIGHT LOOK LIKE

I'm very pleased to see Amanda at Pandagon expressing skepticism about the notion that tea party people are as anti-Republican as they are anti-Democrat:

I honestly think what's going on is a big time identity politics temper tantrum, and ... it's got very little attachment to policy outside of those policies that reinforce their identity politics argument. And that argument is that they are the Real Americans®, and the rest of us need to submit.

...right wing populists shut up and get behind Republicans when they're in office. They only do this shit when Democrats have power, especially if the sitting President isn't a member of their perceived tribe. What that says to me is that even as they preen around about how they're not loyalists to the Republican party, that is in fact what they are. And the reason is that Republicans do the work of telling the right wing populists that they're the only real Americans. And that's what matters to them more than anything else.

She's arguing with Frank Rich and Rachel Maddow, with some justification -- Rich was on Maddow's show Wednesday night and he was arguing, among other things, that teabaggers actually understand that our deficits ballooned because of the Bush tax cuts, and are pissed off about it. Funny how they managed to keep quiet about that, and failed to wave signs depicting Bush with a Hitler mustache.

Amanda's right about the key point being that teabaggers think they're the real Americans. As such, they'd never criticize Bush for tax cuts -- tax cuts are "real American." Spending is nasty and liberal. They didn't notice or care that Bush was spending when he was spending, and they certainly loved the war he spent a lot of money on, but still, spending is something they think our tribe does, not theirs.

I have one small quibble with Amanda's post. She writes:

If there was one thing teabaggers would probably rally behind, it would be a petition stating that the original franchise was the best one, before it was expanding to non-property owners, non-white people, and even women. Interestingly, since they're so allergic to being called out as racists and sexists, I suspect you could probably go farther suggesting that the vote should only belong to property owners.

I don't think they'd really deny women the vote in their utopia -- some of them would, I'm sure, the ones who think men should have dominion over their wives, but the others would be upset at the thought that that little patriot Willow Palin wouldn't be allowed to vote when she turned eighteen. I'm not even sure they'd go for something as blatant as white-only suffrage.

I think they'd want to restrict the vote to "taxpayers" as opposed to "tax receivers." I've seen this distinction made by right-wing bloviators, and I think it would figure in the teabaggers' ideal recasting of democracy. In other words, they'd want to deny the franchise to anyone who doesn't work, or who works for the government. (I'm sure most of them think nearly everyone in the latter group is nonwhite.)

Oh, they'd have to modify this somewhat -- people in the military, as well as cops and firefighters, would get to vote, as would people who don't work now but did work -- can't deny the franchise to all those teabagging retirees, now, can we? But current government workers apart from firemen and cops would lose the vote -- because, after all, they do precisely the work teabaggers think we could instantly abolish, and are paid by the icky taxes they think we should instantly stop levying, or at least drastically curtail.

THOSE LIBERAL ANTI-SEMITES IN MASSACHUSETTS!!!! (Not.)

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall.com asks:

Should It Be Illegal to Be a Jew in Massachusetts?

New legislation now being proposed in the Massachusetts state legislature to ban circumcision of any male children, including Jewish children, comes very close to saying, "Yes, it should be a crime." Circumcision of infant males has been a requirement of Jewish faith and identity since the time of Abraham....

How did we reach the point where powerful people seriously consider such outrageous intrusions on religious liberty? These "shots across the bow" are skirmishes in a larger war between a newly triumphant liberalism and older American values, including pluralism, conscience protection and respect for religious liberty....

Er, no, Maggie -- this isn't about liberalism. Let the (hardly liberal) Boston Herald explain (emphasis added):

A national group that views the circumcision of newborns as "genital mutilation” is taking its fight to Massachusetts and will press the Legislature to ban the age-old procedure at a hearing next month....

Before Massachusetts, [the] group tried to get bills submitted in 14 other states, to no avail.

Sen. Michael W. Morrissey (D-Quincy) filed the bill on behalf of Charles A. Antonelli of Quincy under the right of free petition guaranteed in the state constitution, according to the senator's office. Morrissey has no comment on the bill and is planning no action on it, said Kate Grogan, a legislative aide....

That's right: despite all the rampant religion-hating liberal secular humanism going around, no state legislator in 14 states would endorse this -- and in Massachusetts the bill was filed only because legislators are required to file any bill submitted by a citizen.

As explained here:

Free petition: In Massachusetts all citizens have the right to petition the state legislature. This procedure is called the right of free petition. A citizen drafts and files a Petition and accompanying Bill. A legislator sponsors the Bill in the General Court [the state legislature]. If a legislator disagrees with the contents of the Bill, he/she may indicate this by placing the phrase By request after his/her name.

And, in fact, this bill is marked "(BY REQUEST)."

Also ticking Gallagher off is this:

Meanwhile, just a year ago this week, two very powerful state legislators in Connecticut proposed a bill that would have had the government take over the finances of the Catholic Church. (It took a rally drawing thousands of folks to the state capitol to persuade them to withdraw the measure.)

Er, no again -- the bill would have had a panel of lay Catholics take over from priests; the bill was proposed by some Catholic parishioners after a Connecticut pastor pleaded guilty to stealing a million bucks from his church. (It's still not a great idea, in terms of church-state separation, for secular authorities to try to impose this sort of structure on an entire church, but the idea didn't emerge from a bunch of godless liberals. And besides, I thought right-wingers disliked the notion of church-state separation....)

WHAT IF IT'S "AND," NOT "EITHER/OR"?

Rick Klein at ABC's Note:

... What if 2010 isn't 1994 or 1982, but 2006?

Congress lurches forward on health care haunted by old memories: If you're not thinking about Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Mark Foley, you're not thinking....

Klein is talking about scandals in the Democratic Party -- Rangel, Paterson, Massa. I'm sure Republicans are quite capable of making hay out of all of these (even though Massa, while allegedly a gay sexual harasser, also has terminal cancer, and even though exploiting the Paterson scandal might require Republicans to declare that battering women is a bad thing). And I'm sure Democrats will do a less-than-spectacular job of damage control.

But I don't see why 2010 has to be just one of the above-listed years. It could be all three -- 1982 (party of president presiding over 10% unemployment loses lots of seats), 1994 (party of Democratic president who actually dares to try to push through his own agenda gets compared to a multi-headed Antichrist and loses majorities), and 2010. In other words, this election year could be off the charts.

I've come around to the notion that Democrats' best hope is to pass health care reform -- not because I believe that voters will magically warm to HCR once it's signed into law (actual beneficiaries of the few provisions that kick in early might have that reaction, but flagrantly dishonest GOP messaging will still dominate with regard to the rest of the bill). No -- the reason passing HCR might help the Democrats is that the GOP and right-wing crazies will go stark raving mad (or I should say even more stark raving mad) when and if this happens; the demonstrations are going to get more extreme, the signage is going to be even more threatening, there'll be calls for impeachment (and probably for a coup, and I mean that literally), and there'll probably be an uptick in at least attempted violence -- if HCR passes, security at all federal buildings should be beefed up immediately). Assuming (as I do) that the economy doesn't magically start generating jobs, this is really the Democrats' only hope going into November: the fact that they won't seem to be the party of anarchy and chaos.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED

I guess I'm enjoying the GOP's embarrassment at that story about an RNC find-raising slideshow that included this:



But this is a story only because it contradicts a ridiculous myth, which is that there exists some difference between that GOP and the "real" GOP. In reality, there's no difference whatsoever. Movement conservatism has been erasing the distinction for years.

Caricatures of Democratic leaders come from talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh -- who, of course, was made an honorary member of the GOP's 1994 congressional freshman class, after the Gingrichites won enough seats to take over both houses. The Bush White House had a "Radio Day" in 2006 in which right-wing talkers broadcast from the White House grounds (here's Sean Hannity interviewing Dick Cheney on Radio Day).

More recently, in just the past month, it's been widely assumed that the next GOP presidential candidate may well have spoken at this year's CPAC confab -- which featured a Nancy Pelosi pinata, a guy in a drag fat suit posing as Janet Napolitano, sumo wrestler, and other entertainments that make the fund-raising slideshow look tame (not to mention incitements to violence by speakers who included at least one presidential hopeful). And the Republican who just won reelection as Texas governor did so after talking secession, and there's been no attempt whatsoever to distance the national party from the election outcome -- on the contrary, various "great mentioners" are touting Rick Perry as a possible presidential candidate for the party.

So why are we maintaining the fiction that there's a Republican Party that doesn't believe, or at least embrace, the thinking represented by the slide above? Why can't the political world acknowledge what the Republican Party really is right now?

HEY, PALIN FANS, I THOUGHT IT WAS OBAMA WHO WAS OVEREXPOSED ON TV
(updated)

It's a common right-wing (and mainstream media) complaint that President Obama is on TV too much -- but can the same now be said about Sarah Palin?

Time was, a Palin appearance on TV was expected to give any show a ratings boost -- for instance Palin's appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show last November gave Oprah her highest rating in two years.

But Jay Leno? Well, the headline is that Palin helped Leno beat David Letterman last night, but check out the numbers:

Tuesday: Leno (with Palin) 5.8 million viewers, Letterman 3.7 million viewers.

Monday: Leno (without Palin) 6.6 million viewers, Letterman 3.8 million viewers.

Yeah, Monday was Leno's first night back in prime time, so it's not surprising that the numbers were high -- but we're talking Sarah Palin, folks. She used to be TV gold. She used to increase any show's viewership -- a lot.

Could it be we just see her way too much on Fox these days? As an audience draw, is she now a mere mortal?

****

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: Given the above, I'm thrilled that Sarah Palin is shopping around an Alaska-based reality series and is pitching it to NBC, CBS, and Fox rather than cable channels. I want her on network television. I want her to be utterly unavoidable on TV. The sooner America has had all the Palin it can stand, the sooner the starbursts are going to fade for at least some Palinites and Palinettes, and the sooner she'll go the way of Andrew Dice Clay, Morton Downey Jr., and other insult comics who eventually foundered on TV.

As for her forthcoming book, I think William (Book of Virtues) Bennett should sue for plagiarism:

Publisher HarperCollins announced Wednesday that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate is working on a "celebration of American virtues and strengths." ...

Her new work will "include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have inspired her, as well as portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her love of country, faith, and family," the publisher's statement reads.

So let's say: She wants to be Barack Obama (as president and repeat bestselling author), she wants to be Bill Bennett, she wants to be Snooki, and she wants to be a late-night comic. (Oh, and a media critic.) She's beginning to remind me of hecklers I used to see back when I went to comedy clubs. It clearly offended them that other people were making audiences laugh -- making their friends (and dates) laugh -- doing something that they clearly felt they could do (it's just talking, right?). Palin doesn't believe there's anything she can't do, and she can't stand watching other people get attention that she thinks she could be getting. So she wants the job of everyone who gets attention when she doesn't.

PUTTING COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY, OUT OF EITHER PATRIOTISM OR SELF-HATE

Talking Points Memo reports:

...According to Democratic sources in the Senate, Republicans were pressuring Bunning behind the scenes to relent on his filibuster -- even as many Republicans seemed uninterested in saying so publicly. But Bunning's relationship with his party isn't exactly rosy, so the Republican appeals had no effect.

In the end, the Democrats ended the standoff by promising Bunning votes they say he knows he will lose: first came his amendment to the unemployment bill, which failed last night. There's more coming, say Democratic sources -- the party agreed to allow more of his legislation to reach the floor, even though everyone knows the bills are doomed to fail....

That was a good thing to do for the country. But if Republicans really felt vulnerable, I can't help wondering if Democrats demanded any concessions whatsoever in return for helping them out of a jam. Maybe on health care? Or Obama appointees? Or financial reform, or jobs?

What do you think? I see no evidence of that.

Instead, Democrats made concessions to Bunning. Yes, if I understand correctly (see, e.g., Chris Hayes on Rachel Maddow's show last night), Dems did play a bit of hardball, refusing Bunning's demand for three votes before the vote on the unemployment extension, and declaring to Roll Call that they were willing to keep the Senate operating all night to wear Bunning down.

But if they were going to break Bunning's stranglehold one way or another, why not get something out of the Republicans in return for sparing them the embarrassment of the all-nighter? Why not say, "Gosh, love to help you. What's it worth to you?"

Was the apparent failure to do so a matter of patriotism -- or a constitutional, party-wide inability to fight aggressively for their own side? I think I know the answer.

IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE

Steve Benen:

About a month ago, Sen. Richard Shelby, a far-right Republican from Alabama, decided to place a blanket hold on all pending administration nominees, including officials related to national security....

Shelby eventually backed down (a little), and lifted some of his holds. Two weeks later, the Senate approved 27 high-level nominees.

Now, the blanket hold on all pending administration nominees is reportedly back. Take a wild guess who's behind it.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), says that Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) has placed a hold on all pending nominations now before the Senate. He says there are now "several dozen" nominations on the Senate calendar....

May I inform you of how much worse this is going to get?

You're reading it here first: When Barack Obama leaves office, there will not be nine sitting Supreme Court justices. There may be eight, or seven, or even six.

It won't be because he didn't have time to fill the vacancies. He'll have had ample time. It will be because Republican obstructionism is only going to escalate -- especially if Republicans take over the Senate after the 2010 elections (but it will surely happen even if Democrats retain nominal control). The Republicans will filibuster his Supreme Court picks -- all of them -- and no one will stop them.

The mandarins of D.C., the Broders and Richard Cohens, won't declare this shameless. They'll demand that the president "compromise" -- even though Republicans will make it perfectly clear that the only acceptable compromise will be to fill vacancies from a GOP list of Federalist Society jurists.

Unless official Washington develops a sense of right and wrong, this is going to happen. And President Palin or President Pawlenty or President Romney or President Thune, in 2013 or 2017, will get to pack the Court.

MURDOCH AND AILES: ABDULMUTALLABS OF THE MEDIA?

Gawker's John Cook parses a few statements by Roger Ailes of Fox News:

In a 7-minute interview with the National Review Online's Peter Robinson that was posted this morning, Ailes casually undermined the point of Fox News and acknowledged that much of what it peddles to "real Americans" in "the heartland" is just calculated rhetoric that he's not stupid enough to actually believe....

In one statement from the interview, Ailes criticizes those who wear lapel pins to demonstrate their solidarity with one group or another:

... They wear ribbons for various charity events.... I don't wear the pins. And so they assume that I don't care. Of course I care, but I don't think wearing the right pin makes me a caring person. I think whether I am or I'm not is in my heart.

He's not talking about the American flag -- but this is precisely why Barack Obama said during the campaign that he didn't always wear an American-flag pin. And Ailes's Fox News slammed him for it mercilessly.

(Ailes, it should be noted, not only isn't wearing a charity ribbon on his lapel in the interview video, he isn't wearing a flag pin.)

Ailes also compares the Afghan war to Vietnam -- and says he's opposed escalation in both conflicts. What a liberal!

So in what way is Ailes in sync with his audience? Well, as Cook says, he shares Fox-watchers' class anger:

He may have escaped from the desperate heartland of Warren, Ohio, and he may be educated and intelligent enough to hold complicated views, but he's still one of them:

I don't see myself at the Beverly Wilshire hotel or at Le Cirque here in New York. Those are people who aspire to different things -- the chattering class.

Of course, as Cook discovers, Ailes actually does go to Le Cirque. He's part of the chattering class.

And that's the boss's line of hypocrisy, too.

In New York magazine's cover story this week on Rupert Murdoch, we're told:

Murdoch's hatred of the [New York] Times is a product of his long-standing class antagonisms rooted in his early days as an Australian building an empire in London.

And how does the great class warrior fight his battles for the poor and dispossessed? Let's look at what was taking place when Murdoch was beginning his quest to purchase The Wall Street Journal. (Emphasis is added below.)

On June 10, 2007, Murdoch opened the Gray Lady to read an editorial about his planned takeover of the Journal. "Frankly," the piece intoned, "we hope the Bancrofts will find a way to continue producing their fine newspaper, or, failing that, find a buyer who is a safer bet to protect the newspaper for its readers."

Murdoch was infuriated by the editorial, which he saw as yet another example, as if more were needed, of the Times' characteristic self-interest wrapped in a cloak of high-toned moralism. The previous night, he had run into Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at a party on Barry Diller's yacht, and Sulzberger had assured him the piece wasn't "faintly anti-Murdoch," as Sarah Ellison reports in her upcoming book, War at the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch wrote Sulzberger a personal note the next morning that concluded: "Let the battle begin!"

Lied to! On BARRY DILLER'S YACHT, no less!

AMANDLA! OFF THE PIGS! VIVA LA HUELGA! JIHAD!

One way to look at this is that Ailes and Murdoch are our versions of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- wealthy beneficiaries of the established order who, unsatisfied, become peddlers of radicalism. (Murdoch is actually a lot like Abdulmutallab: the would-be underwear bomber is the wealthy son of a banker who's one of the most prominent citizens of his nation, Nigeria; Murdoch is the son of Sir Keith Murdoch, an wealthy newspaper magnate who was extremely well-connected socially and politically in Australia. "Sir Keith Murdoch left us in his debt," said Australia's prime minister when Sir Keith died. They're both sons of men who were prominent, but only locally prominent. The sons felt the need to take their radicalism to the U.S., the world's superpower.)

Another way to look at this is that this is what we have in this country in place of real class struggle -- not economic class against economic class, but one set of rich guys against another. Murdoch vs. the Times. Cablevision vs. Disney/ABC. Viacom vs. Hulu. That sort of thing.

NO COMPLETE GAME FOR BUNNING

Well, so much for the last post -- Bunning took a deal and the unemployment extension passed.

Bunning's amendment failed. I'm not surprised that every voting Republican voted for it, as did Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Joe Lieberman, but, um, Russ Feingold? Why? Any ideas?

And I'd be curious to know (see the comments to the last post) what you think about Aimai's contention that Dems screwed up the messaging, and my (unusually non-pessimistic) sense that they didn't....

BACKING BUNNING: WILL MOST REPUBLICANS FEEL IT'S CONSERVATIVELY INCORRECT NOT TO?

Steve Benen links this response to Jim Bunning's obstruction from the Senate Democrats' Web site. It quotes Republican senators who've expressed support for Bunning (Jon Kyl, John Cornyn, Jeff Sessions, Bob Corker) and notes the large number of Republicans who refuse to talk about Bunning one way or the other.

I've been lurking over at Free Republic, and the titles of a few threads tell me what's going on:

Finally, Senator Jim DeMint Defends Jim Bunning on the Senate Floor

Republicans Look for Way Past Bunning's Blockade (RINOs folding like cheap suits)

Boehner backs Bunning's efforts (Whoa!)

There's no ambiguity here -- the Freepers want the Republicans to join with Bunning and give no quarter.

In Wingnuttia, I think, crossing Bunning could increasingly be like criticizing Rush Limbaugh -- something you do at your peril. I think, if this goes on long enough (and I hope it doesn't -- I'm rooting for the all-night session Roll Call thinks might end the impasse), many Republicans will feel they either have to get behind Bunning or find some way to sidestep the issue, just to avoid the wrath of the crazy base. Tea party and talk radio pressure is only going to build if this drags on. If there's an all-nighter, I suspect Bunning might actually have some backup.

OBAMA PRAISES FOUR GOP HEALTH CARE IDEAS

Well, that certainly must have won over some skeptics in the opposition ... right?



Guess not. Imagine my surprise.

And He Smiled A Quiet Smile To Himself.

President Obama is scheduled to outline his vision on moving forward with health care reform tomorrow, but today the president wrote to congressional leaders from both parties, explaining several areas of agreement with Republicans.

"No matter how we move forward, there are at least four policy priorities identified by Republican Members at the meeting that I am exploring. I said throughout this process that I'd continue to draw on the best ideas from both parties, and I'm open to these proposals in that spirit," Obama's letter explained.

The GOP ideas include:

1. Although the proposal I released last week included a comprehensive set of initiatives to combat fraud, waste, and abuse, Senator Coburn had an interesting suggestion that we engage medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs.

How on earth does he keep from bursting out in giggles? He must have the driest sense of humor since the Thar Desert.

--aimai

I'M VOTING SCROOGE!

I keep reading that Jim Bunning can get away with obstructionism because he's leaving the Senate and doesn't have to worry about running again -- but I see that the Republicans who are running to succeed him think his crusade is an electoral winner, or at least not a liability:

Republican Rand Paul's campaign for the U.S. Senate will hold a rally at 3 p.m. Tuesday in front of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning's Lexington office to support Bunning's blockage of unemployment and health care benefits for over 1 million jobless Americans, including 119,230 Kentuckians.

David Adams, campaign manager for Paul, said Monday he will be representing Paul at the rally....

GOP candidate Trey Grayson ... and Paul have applauded Bunning's stance....

Another GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, Todd County businessman Bill Johnson, said Monday that he supports Bunning....

I know, I know -- these guys are fighting to win a Republican primary, so each one thinks it's important not to be out-Scrooged by the others.

But aren't Democrats always quaking in their boots, terrified that months, even years, after the fact, some statement they've mde or vote they've cast will be turned into an attack ad against them, aimed at swing voters? Does anyone really think that Kentucky -- the fifth-poorest state in the union, with an umployment rate of 10.4% -- won't still be experiencing high unemployment and hard times come November?

And yet the Republican Senate candidates aren't worried. I suppose they think that few voters will remember this, and that those who do, or who might be reminded, simply won't mind (or will approve). After all, decades of Reagan/Limbaugh/Fox propaganda have conditioned much of America to believe that ordinary citizens don't really deserve a safety net, right?

(Via Crooks & Liars.)

THE DOMINANT WORLDVIEW OF THE GOP-BASE VOTER, IN 144 PARANOID WORDS

Just found this blog post via Free Republic and, wow, it's a masterpiece of concise conspiratorialism -- everything is in here, I think, in a mere 144 words:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced that the Obama Administration would be working hand in glove with the UN to pass a new Small Arms Treaty designed to register, ban and confiscate firearms owned by private citizens. This is nothing more than a massive, global gun control scheme. Next step is to weaken the military, shrink down the police force, and allow groups such as ACORN, Black Panthers and union thugs with baseball bats, led by Andy Stern, control the outcomes of elections, food distributions and managing chaos. When there are more people on welfare rolls than taxpayers, and those who keep getting extended unemployment checks without having to work than those who work two to three jobs to survive, the conditions will be ripe for a total takeover. And that’s how they intend to do it. Just ask Van Jones.

I want a reputable pollster to just read this aloud, verbatim, to interviewees and ask whether they think it's completely true, mostly true, partly true, mostly untrue, or completely untrue. Fifty bucks says a majority of Republicans -- I'd guess 60% minimum -- would pick "completely true" or "mostly true."

When the top-rated cable-news outlet in America effectively endorses a "documentary" film positing that dirty hippies from the '60s deliberately caused the financial meltdown, and the film is also endorsed by the woman who may be the next Republican presidential nominee, this kind of rant is no longer fringe -- it's mainstream GOP. And I wish some non-lefty Beltway pundits would acknowledge how frightening that is.

OBAMA'S CHENEY-WANNABE LEAKS HIS BOOK PROPOSAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST?

I'm reading the latest bit of self-promotion dictated by Rahm Emanuel to a Washington Post reporter -- this time the byline is Jason Horowitz -- and I think what we might be seeing is Emanuel's book proposal. I'm not sure he's going to be fired; I think he thinks that's possible, but I think he's preparing for the possibility, even as he tries to make the case for the president to give him even more power even as he betrays the president's secrets. Emanuel's goal, obviously, is to make the case that none of the bad things would have happened in the Obama presidency if everyone had just listened to him -- I'm just not sure who the intended audience for this message is. The president? Future employers on Wall Street, or in the media? Or for now is he just thinking he'll be canned and cope with termination by writing a book, like Staphanopoulos's All Too Human or David Stockman's Triumph of Politics -- or be the voice behind a leaker's book like Ron Suskind's Paul O'Neill book, The Price of Loyalty? In any case, I think he's doing this because he doesn't expect the listing Obama presidency to right itself, and he's hopeful that he'll escape blame when and if it's irreversibly under water.

In this way, I think Emanuel's doing what Dick Cheney's been doing recently. Emanuel is also Dick-like because he clearly doesn't think it's appropriate that his boss -- you know, the president of the United States? -- should be able to overrule him on anything. We know that from the previous bit of self-promotion Emanuel dictated to a Washington Post writer -- the Dana Milbank column from a couple of weeks ago:

... The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel's counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year.... Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco....

Obama's greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill....

Parts of the new Horowitz article are clones of Milbank's piece:

... Emanuel grew wary that closing the U.S. military prison in Cuba was possible without opening a slew of other politically sensitive national security problems....

Emanuel made his case to Obama, articulating the political dangers of a civilian trial [for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] to congressional Democrats....

... before Obama and his advisers settled on a policy of expansive scope, Emanuel back in August suggested a smaller bill that would be easier to pass...

The Horowitz article addresses Emanuel's loyalty to the president, but there's a doth-protest-too-much quality about the way that message is presented -- or maybe I'm just reacting to the fact that the message is buried in a passage that's almost absurd in its level of Emanuel puffery:

Emanuel's allies say there is no such thing as Rahm at rest. According to almost everyone who has ever worked with him, he has an insatiable need to be in the mix, and he is deeply concerned with the news of the day. His office is the White House nerve center. "In order to get a final decision, everything needs to go through Rahm's office," said a former administration official who thinks Emanuel should delegate more.

Every morning, Emanuel leads a 7:30 meeting with about 10 senior administration aides, pushing through the president's priorities, all listed on index cards embossed with the title "Chief of Staff." ...

His weighing in on a mind-boggling swath of governmental and political activity adds to his outsize image as chief of staff of everything. As a result, he can be blamed for almost everything, especially as health-care legislation became stuck, the president's approval ratings dipped and widespread angst about the economy fueled a GOP resurgence...

Emanuel's aversion to distractions from the president's agenda has caused conflict, and disappointment, on the Hill....

Suffering ... opprobrium -- what Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Emanuel's friend of three decades, described as "taking flak" for the president -- hasn't visibly bothered the chief of staff....

Yes -- such a loyal egomaniac, that Rahm. (Love those embossed index cards.)

If Emanuel is fired, I fear he's going to be the belle of the Beltway ball, a guy who'll say he could see right away that this presidency was going to fail. I think he really is going to emerge strengthened from all this, just because hating Democratic officeholders is one of the Beltway's favorite sports.

HOW YOU CAN TELL HAROLD FORD IS A TRUE DEMOCRAT

I had questions about Harold Ford's true intentions in exploring a primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand here in New York -- I wondered if he was hoping to establish his name in a primary, then run as a Lieberman-style independent, presumably after ascertaining that the GOP would take a dive, as it did in Connecticut in 2006 -- but now I realize the error of my thinking. I realize that Harold Ford is a true Democrat. I realize that he's possibly the quintessential Democrat.

How do I know that? Because, in the New York Times op-ed he's written announcing his withdrawal from the race, he spends most of his time attacking fellow Democrats, while seeming to recall only at the last minute that he's supposed to regard Republicans as the bad guys:

WHEN it was reported two months ago that I was thinking seriously about running for the United States Senate from New York, Democratic Party insiders started their own campaign to bully me out of the race.

... The cruel twist, of course, is that the party bosses who tried to intimidate me so that I wouldn't even think about running against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand ... are the same people responsible for putting Democratic control of the Senate at risk.

... Our elected officials have spent too much time this past year supporting a national partisan political agenda -- and not enough time looking out for their own constituents.

...too few in the Democratic Party are really willing to break with orthodoxy to meet these challenges.

...the party has been too slow to change....

And ... oh yeah, almost forgot:

I refuse to do anything that would help Republicans win a Senate seat in New York, and give the Senate majority to the Republicans.

Translation: I'd hate it if those thuggish sleazebag idiots in the Democratic Party lost the Senate seat.

That's party loyalty, Democrat style.

A PIG FOR PALIN'S LIPSTICK?

Because there doesn't seem to be any equivalent to a wooden stake when it comes to Republican pols' careers, no matter how much they seem to be disgraced, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this story, from David Brody at Pat Robertson's CBN News:

Sources close to Ralph Reed tell The Brody File that the former Executive Director of the Christian Coalition is "seriously" considering running for Congress in Georgia. According to one well-placed source, Reed has talked to key grassroots leaders and local elected officials in Gwinnett county and other parts of the district, but has not made a decision yet.

18 year veteran Congressman Rep. John Linder announced over the weekend that he's retiring. This seat is in a big time Republican district in the Atlanta suburbs. Reed would be positioned well.

As David Weigel notes, Reed would seem to be washed up -- he ran for lieutenant governor in Georgia in 2006 and, largely as a result of his Jack Abramoff ties, lost the GOP primary by 14 points -- but maybe he thinks he can call on a very special political ally to help him out: Sarah Palin.

Recall that during the Virginia governor's race, Palin made robocalls for Reed's new Faith and Family Coalition on behalf of GOP candidate Bob McDonnell (even though McDonnell, trying to downplay his far-right credentials, distanced himself from the robocalls as well as from Palin).

Also read this early-February Ralph Reed post at National Review's Corner, which lavished praise on Palin:

The Palinator

Sarah Palin dominated the news this weekend with a flurry of appearances, from her keynote speech to the Tea Party national convention in Nashville, campaigning for Gov. Rick Perry in Texas, and an appearance on Fox News Sunday, her first Sunday morning interview.

...[Palin] is raising funds for GOP candidates (many of them in primaries), giving speeches, maintaining ongoing exposure as a Fox News contributor, and making contributions through her political action committee. All these activities will redound to the benefit of conservatives in the short term, regardless of her long-term plans.

Palin has sharpened both her message and performance on the stump. Her Tea Party remarks provide a blueprint of sorts for conservative candidates in 2010....

She understands the fiscal and values agendas of conservatism are reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.... In this sense, Palin is a fusionist who weaves the various strands of conservatism into a coherent whole.

This is why Palin can act as a bridge between Tea Party activists and the Republican party and have credibility with both.

...the MSM are missing the bigger story, at least in the short term: Palin, whom they tried to drive out of respectable political discourse, is reenergizing the grassroots of a Republican party that they dismissed as dead....

I think if Reed can line up Palin's support, he's off to the races. At the very least, it will be excellent PR for his new organization, which he has said he hopes will be a "21st Century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids, married with MoveOn.org, with a sprinkling of the NRA" -- a tea party/religious right hybrid that would be, as he sees it, very Palinesque.

HAYWORTH'S NON-DISAVOWAL DISAVOWAL

A headline at Talking Points Memo right now is "Hayworth Disavows Birtherism: I Believe Obama Was Born In Hawaii." If you read the piece, you'd conclude that J.D. Hayworth, who's challenging John McCain in the GOP Senate primary in Arizona, has actually changed his tune on birtherism:

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), who is challenging Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the Republican primary, appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on Friday, and disavowed ever having any belief in the Birther movement, after the McCain campaign attacked him for his prior Birther-friendly statements.

"Hey Bill, I view this entire debate as esoteric. It's as esoteric as arguing about the eligibility of Chester Alan Arthur well over a century after he served as president," said Hayworth, referring to the 19th-century president whose detractors would spread rumors that he was born in Canada. "Look, Barack Obama's the 44th president of the United States. His election was certified. I believe he was born in Hawaii. I made certain statements on the air to -- to provoke conversation. That's what happens in broadcasting."

But Hayworth isn't contradicting his last statement on this issue, which is that Obama is a legitimate president (in Hayworth's opinion), yet it would still be a good idea for him to show his birth certificate:

During a Monday evening interview on CNN (watch it here), Hayworth pointed to the case of fugitive Vietnam War protester Howard Mechanic, who in 2000 sought a seat on the Scottsdale City Council using the alias "Gary Tredway." After he was exposed, Mechanic eventually received a pardon from President Bill Clinton.

"All I'm saying is, for every race across the country, especially with identity theft in the news, it would be great that people can confirm who they say they are," Hayworth said.

"Identity theft? I mean, come on," an incredulous CNN host Campbell Brown said, laughing. "Is that honestly what this is about?"

Brown pressed Hayworth as to whether he was "comfortable with the fact that (Obama is) an American citizen." ...

"Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He is our 44th president," Hayworth told Brown. "I have no qualms about who he is, or who he says he is."

If you check the transcript, Hayworth even used the word "esoteric" in that interview:

I know who he is in terms of policy, in terms of reckless spending that will drive up hyperinflation, in terms of a so-called stimulus that led to incredible unemployment, and in terms to a guarantee of higher taxes on the American people and debt that is going to choke off generations yet to come.

That's the Barack Obama that concerns me, not some esoteric argument about birth certificates and eligibility.

So in that interview he was trying to continue sending out birther dog whistles while seeming to disavow birtherism, just to maintain his legitimacy in both the crazy and less-crazy GOP camps. It added up to a sort of birtherism lite -- I think Obama is legit, but shouldn't we see more documents, just to be safe?

That didn't quite work for him, so, with O'Reilly, he dropped the dog whistle. And TPM was fooled ... as, I suspect, most of the mainstream media will be -- even though he hasn't changed his tune at all.

A tough interviewer -- there probably isn't one in the national media, but maybe there's one in the Arizona press -- would pin him down now by asking him: All right, you acknowledge that Barack Obama is legitimately the president. Are you no longer your calling for him to produce his birth certificate? Has he produced every document he needs to produce to put this question to rest? Is there any legitimate reason for people to continue questioning his eligibility?

That's what I want to hear. I want him to be compelled to answer "Yes" or "No."

I'm sorry it'll never happen. I'm sorry that, if he wins this primary, he'll be deemed to be within the pale and not a conspiracy nut. He still hasn't truly renounced birtherism. Not yet.

WE NEED OUR OWN FREAK SHOW; WE CAN'T SHUT THEIRS DOWN

Steve Benen, Brad DeLong, Digby, and others are understandably disgusted by yesterday's edition of This Week on ABC, on which, as Steve says,

[the] panel discussion covered exactly four subjects...: health care reform, Charlie Rangel's ethics problem, David Paterson's latest troubles, and the fate of the former White House social secretary (and where she's from, what her clothes looked like, what her next job is likely to be, etc.), which hardly seems relevant to anyone who doesn't actually attend social events at the White House.

As you may know, Paul Krugman grumbled about the significant amount of time devoted to the last of these subjects (in a country with massive unemployment, a subject that was ignored), and Sam Donaldson cut him off with a snippy "Paul, welcome to Washington."

It's disheartening. But is it just futile to complain about it? Is there another approach?

I'm not sure all the scandal trivia on This Week qualifies as what Mark Halperin and John Harris called the "freak show" -- to some extent, obsessing over Rangel and Paterson and Desiree Rogers is just an old-fashioned airing of political gossip, with an emphasis on gossip that's relevant to the two big news capitals, D.C. and New York. (I'm trying to ignore the fact that all three scandal subjects are African-Americans.)

But the people who run the media obvious crave something to talk about that seems serious, but is actually fun for them. Could it be that there's just no getting around this? Would it be better if Democrats and liberals found a way to feed this need, by personalizing as many disputes with the right as possible?

Why didn't Democrats make the last few days all about Jim Bunning -- not just Bunning's "Tough shit!" declaration as Dems complained about the fact that he was blocking an extension of unemployment benefits singlehandedly, but about Bunning in general? There's so much to work with:

... he compared [2004 Democratic challenger Daniel] Mongiardo's appearance to one of Saddam Hussein's sons. Then he made an unsubstantiated claim that opposition staffers beat his wife "black and blue" at a political picnic.

Earlier this month, Bunning backed out of a televised debate with Mongiardo, giving the relatively unknown Democrat 30 minutes of air time. Bunning joined another debate via a satellite hookup from Washington, where he read his opening and closing statements from a teleprompter....

Bunning has also begun traveling with a state trooper, telling one Kentucky TV station that, "There may be strangers among us," according to the Post. He has attributed his need for protection to the same classified intelligence that prompted Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., to close his D.C. office.

Most recently, Bunning admitted he wasn't aware that a group of Army reservists had refused a convoy mission in Iraq, saying he watches only Fox News for information and hasn't read a newspaper in six weeks....

Why not flood the zone with Bunning stories? Why not work the refs? Because some of the stories are old? Because he's retiring? Because he apologized for some of his past obnoxiousness? Because the unemployment legislation he's blocking is likely to pass soon? Because it's unseemly? Because it doesn't aid the cause of comity?

WHO CARES?

Just do it. The beast wants human interest stories? Well, feed the beast, dammit. Don't keep sighing and waiting for everyone to turn high-minded. Don't wear a tie and tails to a pie fight. Dress appropriately -- and bring a few pies of your own.

Then, when it's clear our side can give as well as get, when the nonsense doesn't all favor the other guys, maybe what serious dialogue we have won't take place with our side at a distinct disadvantage.