SOMETIMES A PRIMATE IS JUST A PRIMATE ... RIGHT?

My gut reaction to the cartoon below, by Sean Delonas of the New York Post, isn't the same as that of Al Sharpton, the Huffington Post, Gawker, and others -- I'm not ready to say that Delonas is taking a racist swipe at Barack Obama:



The cartoon alludes, of course, to a recent story about a chimpanzee in Connecticut that was shot after attacking a woman, a story the Post has been flogging for days.

Yeah, I know -- I'm the guy who just got through telling you that J.D. Hayworth was blaming Jews when he named Chuck Schumer and George Soros as the prime culprits in the economic meltdown.

I stand by that. This feels different, though. The chimp in this picture isn't lanky and lean with a long face and outsize ears, the way Delonas draws Obama:



Obama-as-chimp fits the style of amateur-hour racists, but pro Obama-bashers know that analogy doesn't sync up very well with the poised, polysyllabic Obama we see every day. (That's why the pros give us subtler racist digs like The Wall Street Journal's "Driving Mr. Daschle.") Also, the wingnut line is that Obama himself didn't write the bill -- he left it up to the evil Reid and Pelosi. And finally, if the chimp is Obama, then Delonas is depicting a presidential assassination. This stuff, at least when the pros are doing it, usually avoids that level of eliminationism -- it's all about belittling and humiliation.

And yet, and yet ... I look at the most recent Post story about the Connecticut chimp and I read this:

Each night, Sandra Herold and her beloved chimp, Travis, would share a glass of wine before snuggling in bed together.

The Connecticut widow says she still cannot fathom how that loving animal, whom she raised as her "child," could turn violent, but when he began to maul her friend Charla Nash Monday, Herold said she didn't hesitate to stop him -- even if it meant killing him.

"I had to get a shovel, then a knife to get Travis off of Charlie," the visibly shaken woman said yesterday....

Nash, who sustained horrific injuries to her face and hands, had surgery at Stamford Hospital and will be transferred to a hospital in Ohio for extensive reconstructive surgery, friends said....

It feels like a racist cautionary rape/miscegenation tale from the Jim Crow era, doesn't it?

I still think Delonas believes the stimulus, not Obama, is the savage beast you shouldn't snuggle with because cozying up to it will encourage a vicious attack. But the fact that he got from that story to this cartoon makes me unsure what to think.

****

MORE: At the very least, Delonas should learn how to spell grade-school words.

COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE LEFT-WING TACTICS NOW GIDDILY ADOPTED BY THE RIGHT

From my college days protesting Jimmy Carter's revival of draft registration (still in place) to the days of early 2003 when I joined the crowds in the frigid streets of New York to demand an end to plans for a war in Iraq (still going on), I've gone to a fair number of demonstrations -- all of which seem, in retrospect, to have been utterly futile. Demos and marches may have had a real effect on American politics a couple of generations ago (while also generating a nasty backlash), but now they influence no one and barely make the papers.

So if the right embracing this utterly futile tactic, I couldn't be happier. We post-Vietnam era lefties have spent nearly forty years trying to build our own version of the glory days of progressive street protest -- if you guys want to try it, if this is your comeback plan, I say go for it.

I'm writing this in response to anti-stimulus demonstrations that brought hundreds (hundreds!) of people out into the streets in Denver and Seattle. I see from Michelle Malkin's write-up of the Denver demo that the right has adopted many of the least effective tactics of the left -- the live prop pig, for instance:



(Good one, righties -- having a mock candidate for president who was actually a pig worked out so well for the Yippies and the left in 1968, didn't it?)

Making sure that people in the crowd, especially behind the speakers, are confusing the message with slogans that are completely unrelated to the subject of the demonstration -- that's another popular lefty tactic I see the right is adopting:



And are the demonstrators operating on assumptions that are completely different from those of average Americans, a fact they seem incapable of grasping? Perhaps. Here's my favorite Seattle demonstrator:



And they don't seem to understand that most of us are not curling up at the end of a long day with Rand or Hayek:





Really, guys, keep this up. Go for lie-ins and die-ins and teach-ins. Use big puppets. That's what we did for decades, and look how much power we had from, oh, about 1980 to now.

J.D. HAYWORTH: CHANNELING ANTI-SEMITES ... AGAIN

Talking Points Memo brings us this clip of J.D. Hayworth, a radio talk-show host and former GOP congressman from Arizona, arguing that our current economic situation has nothing to do with eight years of George W. Bush and quite a bit to do with two "sneaky" gentlemen who just so happen to be of the Jewish persuasion:



HAYWORTH: ...I'll tell you what was bad: the sneak attack on our economy, the dress rehearsal that was the debacle of IndyBank, when Chuck Schumer helped get that started, and the guy in the background, George Soros, manipulating all the currency....

Yup -- a Jewish senator and a Jewish "currency manipulator" made all this happen. (Hayworth alludes to the recent C-SPAN appearance by Congressman Paul Kanjorski, which, as I noted a while back, has been cited as evidence of a possible Soros plot even though Kanjorski never mentioned Soros's name.)

But as we learned in 2006, Hayworth doesn't seem to be particularly worried about appearing anti-Semitic:

A flap has erupted in Arizona over a Scottsdale congressman's recent book slamming illegal immigration, in which he praised thoughts by automaker Henry Ford on "Americanization" that are regarded by historians as anti-Jewish.

In his new book, "Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror," Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth espoused Ford's ideas on the early 20th-century concept of "Americanization" and touted them as a model for integrating new immigrants into American society. In turn, the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix took the lawmaker to task in an editorial, describing Ford’s vision as antisemitic.

In the 1920s, Ford's Dearborn Publishing Company released "The International Jew," a conspiratorial, four-volume work that portrays Jews as scheming to assert world domination. In it, Ford lays out the theory that Judaism and "Americanism" are inherently at odds with one another.

... In his chapter on the merits of assimilating immigrants into American society, Hayworth quotes from a 1914 New York Times article in which Ford said: "These men of many nations must be taught American ways, the English language, and the right way to live." In his book, Hayworth wrote, "Talk like that today and our liberal elites will brand you a cultural imperialist, or worse. But if you ask me, Ford had a better idea."

... Hayworth further stoked the debate over his passage on Ford when he declined to distance himself from the book's language and accused the Jewish News of playing party politics. In a letter to the Jewish News, Hayworth called the newspaper's attack "a politically motivated hit job" ...

Later, Hayworth, in an attempt at damage control, sent a surrogate to a synagogue in Scottsdale, Arizona, who made matters worse by claiming that Hayworth was "a more observant Jew" than the members of the congregation. After this remark was criticized, another Haywood surrogate reacted to the criticism by saying, "No wonder there are anti-Semites."

Remind me again: Why do people like Hayworth even have a place in mainstream discourse?

I MISS ALL THE GOOD STUFF

So is it true that anti-obscenity crusader Eric Cantor followed up on his office's dissemination of a profanity-laced AFSCME parody by releasing a pro-GOP ad scored to a song about patronizing a fifty-cent prostitute in the Old West?

Yup. Here's the ad (though I'm sure most of you have seen it already):



And here's the full song Cantor excerpted as background music, with lyrics:



Ridin' into town alone by the light of the moon
I'm lookin' for ol' Sukie Jones, she crazy horse saloon...

Peelin' off my boots and chaps, I'm saddle sore
Four bits gets you time in the racks, I scream for more
Fools' gold out of their mines, the girls are soaking wet
No tongue's drier than mine, I'll come when I get back!

Well, maybe Cantor thought it was a traditional miners' ballad from the Gold Rush era.

WHAT ARE RIGHT-WINGERS WHINING ABOUT NOW?

Thanks, Tom and aimai, for holding the fort while I was gone. (By the way, in reference to Tom's post about the four Tennessee legislators who are challenging Obama's citizenship, I recommend the posts at Tennessee Guerilla Women about one of the legislators, Stacey Campfield. Campfield, among other things, has compared the Tennessee Legislative Black Caucus unfavorably to the Ku Klux Klan and has argued that if Michael Vick had staged fetus fights instead of dogfights, he'd have beenh treated much more sympathetically.)

****

This morning I see that Lauri Reagan at the generally ignorable American Thinker site is whining about remarks in a two-week-old interview with the Obamas:

... Apparently Barack Obama had no idea that all of that hard work would actually be just that -- hard work. I suppose he thought the job of POTUS would be just as much fun as the two years he spent on the campaign trail.

... apparently, he is realizing that because after just two weeks of living in America's most famous mansion, what did the Obamas do? They escaped the stress of the job and ran to a local public elementary school to read books with seven year olds. According to the report,

"'We were just tired of being in the White House,' the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School."

"'We got out! They let us out!' Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed."

...I find this scary. Great leaders do not say after just two weeks on the job that they are tired of being in their office. Great leaders do not complain...

Er, Lauri? Let's ignore the fact that this was a photo op, not a day off, and the fact that George W. Bush took an extraordinary number of days off. Do you know who used to complain like this all the time? I mean really complain?

Saint Reagan.

In fact (as Paul Slansky noted in his 1989 book about the Reagan years, The Clothes Have No Emperor), Reagan cooked up one specific complaint and repeated it to every interviewer he met.

August 1982:

President Reagan tells Time's Hugh Sidey that he sometimes feels trapped in the White House. "You glance out the window and the people are walking around Pennsylvania Avenue and you say, 'I could never say I am going to run down to the drugstore and get some magazines.'" he says. "I can't do that any more."

December 1982:

"Sometimes I look out there at Pennsylvania Avenue and see people bustling along, and it suddenly dawns on me that probably never again can I just say, 'Hey, I'm going down to the drugstore to look at the magazines.'"
--President Reagan discussing his feelings of confinement with a People reporter

Also December 1982:

"I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can't do that anymore."
--President Reagan sharing a sudden thought with a radio interviewer

January 1984:

"You find yourself remembering what it was like when on the spur of the moment you could just yell to your wife that you were going down to the drugstore and get a magazine. You can't do that anymore."
--President Reagan telling Time a story he hasn't told the magazine in more than 17 months

(The interviews cited are here, here, here, and here.)

Lauri, this was the god-king! The more-than-human serene highness! Ronald Wilson Reagan! He got tired of being in the White House -- and couldn't buy a damn magazine to relieve his distress!

And yet I'm sure you believe that he ascended bodily into heaven when he died, and that his corpse did not decay. Right?

Tennessee Scandal: Non-Citizen Legislators?

The Tennessee State Constitution requires that its legislators be, among other things, U.S. citizens.

Now, questions are being raised about whether four Republican legislators--Reps. Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Nicely--actually meet the citizenship requirement.

Even as the controversy swirls around them, all four remain silent on the issue. So far, none of the four has offered any proof at all that he really is a U.S. citizen. It shouldn't be that difficult...unless, that is, no such proof exists.

So are there four people serving in the Tennessee legislature who are constitutionally prohibited from serving? I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence of their citizenship...and their failure to produce any is damning indeed. And really, now: does Casada sound like an American name?

All I know is this: if I were a Tennessee citizen, I would file a lawsuit to force them to prove their qualifications. After all, the people have a right to know.

Moloch the Corrupter:

I meant to write a piece this morning about the new revelations (via Atrios) that the Bush Administration, with malice aforethought, made "rape by instrumentality" the first tool in its anti terrorist handbook. But by this afternoon it was clear that better women than I had weighed in on it--see Digby and Jane Hamsher. To my shock and disgust, however, these new revelations don't seem to have prompted any new soul searching among those who have, conventionally speaking, the role of court press. I'm speaking here of my own cousin, Joe Conason. In an essay at Salon of crashing stupidity and cowardice he makes this moronic observation. Shorter Joe: We can't have Truth and Reconciliation because we aren't South Africa!

Here we have no such consensus and no revolutionary government with the power to mete out retribution to vanquished foes. What we have instead are the unrepentant officials of the Bush era, who continue to justify their misconduct as critical to the nation's survival. We have a new administration, immured in a world economic crisis, that recognizes conflicting imperatives of accountability and cooperation. And we have a responsibility to explore how the nation embarked on "a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American values," as Leahy put it.

Is there a way for President Obama to pursue that responsibility without inflicting vengeance or humiliation? Perhaps he ought to consider the creation of a presidential commission whose aims would be purely investigative -- and encourage the participation of those implicated in the abuses of the past by promising a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly.

With that gesture, he would acknowledge the importance of uncovering the facts, no matter how ugly, while magnanimously binding up the nation's wounds. He could leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint. And he could seek truth without vengeance.

Joe, the mere fact that you could look at the facts as already known and use words like "vengeance" to describe the Rule of Law shows you are utterly divorced from morality. Even worse, you propose that the quisling course you recommend to Obama is necessary because of
the:

obvious problem of identifying any person or group, as well as the difficult questions surrounding subpoenas, executive privilege and immunity from prosecution

What problems? Its a fucking bureaucracy--people were doing their *assigned jobs* and clocking in and out as torturers as regularly as the sheepdog and the fox in an old cartoon. There's a god damned *chain of evidence* in emails, photographs, and already existent testimony. There really isn't any kind of mystery here about what happened. The only people being kept in the dark are the American people *in whose name* this shit was done.

Respect for the laws of humanity and of the American Government can't, by definition, be considered mere "vengeance." Holding the former President and his willing stooges accountable is just the first step in restoring our standing with the world and with ourselves and our children. Damn the political difficulties and the Republican hysteria--indict, try, and convict. It is not for you, or for President Obama, or any other individual to pardon criminals, rapists, murderers and torturers who acted under color of authority.

I think Steve is probably right about the Freepers' reaction to the stiumulus bill:

Now that the wingnuts who read this stuff have to live with the fact that the stimulus bill has already passed, what are they going to do? I think tiny bands of Freepers are going to go out and hold pathetic, futile protests of public works programs. I think they're going to show up with picket signs at building sites; I think they'll go to hearings on proposed projects and demand that governments send the money back in protest of B. Hussein's attempt to turn this country commie. A brief lie-down in front of a bulldozer or two might even take place.

I would add that we'll likely see these stunts being organized by talk radio--by Michael Weiner, Melanie Morgan, maybe Rush Limbaugh. Their ratings depend entirely on outrage, and they never actually have to face any voters.

As another Steve (Benen) points out, though, the Republicans who do have to face the voters are reacting a little differently:

In Mica's press release about the stimulus package, for example, he not only applauded the spending for his district, he neglected to mention altogether that he opposed the bill. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who also issued a press release claiming "victory" for an Alaskan contracting program in the bill, also failed to mention that he voted against the measure that he's so excited about.

In other words, while the whole GOP caucus voted with an eye to primaries, at least a few of them are aware that there's also a general election.

I hope Steve is right--I hope the wingnut radio hosts make this bill the hill they want to die on. Mica and Young accept the reality that even if you call it 'pork', it's good to have the federal government spending money in your district. It makes you popular with your constituents. The more pressure Republicans get to oppose stimulus in their own backyards, the better off Democratic candidates will be in 2010.

We Write Letters

And sometimes they get published:

Editor:

Debra J. Saunders ("Harry beats Goliath," Feb. 10), draws a very peculiar conclusion from the saga of Bernie Madoff: that "regulation, too, can fail."

I would suggest a more precise and useful conclusion: that when regulation is put in the hands of people who are ideologically hostile to regulation, it is guaranteed to fail.

TOM HILTON
San Francisco

Of course, to Republicans that's a feature, not a bug; the guaranteed failure of their own efforts is what allows supporters like Saunders to say regulation doesn't work.

OFF THE GRID

I've got some things going on, so I won't be able to post tomorrow or Monday. Guest bloggers are expected, however, so stop by.

WHAT THE REVANCHISTS MIGHT DO NEXT

I see that Bill Kristol is getting huffy about the fact that there's money for maglev trains in the stimulus bill, as is righty blogger Donald Douglas. Kristol assumes this is pork, the most likely maglev project being per Kristol and The Washington Post) a maglev line between Disneyland and Las Vegas, in Harry Reid's home state of Nevada. Matt Yglesias has argued that maglev money could go to projects in a number of other states.) Donald Douglas's prose is a fairly dense thicket, but he seems not to like the maglev project because it's evidence that "the left wants a general transformation of society to a European social-welfare state (if not a Brezhnevite-Soviet command model), and the increasing nationalization of industry" -- as opposed, I guess to all those privately built interstate highways in the 1950s, back when we wouldn't dream of using tax money for transportation infrastructure. (No, actually Douglas does think public spending on highways is OK, 'cuz he grew up in Cali and thinks cars are bitchin'.)

I'm getting a bit sidetracked from the point I want to make, which is this: Now that the wingnuts who read this stuff have to live with the fact that the stimulus bill has already passed, what are they going to do? I think tiny bands of Freepers are going to go out and hold pathetic, futile protests of public works programs. I think they're going to show up with picket signs at building sites; I think they'll go to hearings on proposed projects and demand that governments send the money back in protest of B. Hussein's attempt to turn this country commie. A brief lie-down in front of a bulldozer or two might even take place.

I'm not saying this is anything to worry about. I'm just saying I think it'll happen. At worst, it'll be a nuisance; at best, entertaining. And what will the picket signs say? Despite the dubious provenance of the slogan, I think they'll say: THANKS, BUT NO THANKS.

WAITING TO HEAR FROM PROPONENTS OF THE "SENSIBLE CENTER" ... UH, STILL WAITING ...

As you may already know, according to the Huffington Post, Senator Arlen Specter says many Republicans refused to vote for the stimulus bill out of fear:

... "When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"

... "I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation," he said.

Specter was asked, How many of your colleagues?

"I think a sizable number," he said....

So of course you know what happens next: the pundits of the mainstream press will rise up as if with one voice and demand that the GOP repudiate its interest groups and its extremists. Chastened, the moderates will respond, forming groups such as the "Republican Leadership Council," which will immediately become one of the most influential organizations in American politics. RLC members and sympathizers will instantly get on the speed-dial of cable news bookers and editors of major op-ed pages. Any GOP presidential aspirant will have to make peace with the RLC if he or she hopes to have any chance of winning the nomination in 2012.

... Oh, please, who am I kidding? This was all a joke. Isn't that obvious?

D.C. DEMOCRATS: A HIGHER LEVEL OF SHAMELESSNESS, PLEASE

Ron Hogan of Media Bistro reported yesterday that Rod Blagojevich was seen at the offices of Macmillan -- parent company of the publishers Henry Holt, St. Martins, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hogan later reported that Blago was seen at Penguin (Viking, Putnam, Penguin Press, Riverhead, et cetera). Blago's clearly planning to write a book. How shameless is that?

This got me thinking about Daschle and Geithner and Richardson. Maybe their problem isn't that they were shameless -- maybe their problem is that they were inadequately shameless. After messing up ethically, they got all contrite, standing before the public with a "Kick me!" look on their faces. Daschle and Geithner paid what they owed; Daschle and Richardson withdrew from Cabinet consideration.

And they're still regarded as guilty, sleazy guys. By contrast, Blago is running rampant -- and he actually seems to have lost some of his toxicity.

Phil Nugent wrote about that early this month. Shortly after Blago's TV-interview blitz, Phil overheard a woman saying that all Blago was really guilty of was "acting like a jerk." Remember, this is Rod Blagojevich we're talking about. But as Phil says about the media tour,

... what if it sort of worked? What did Blagojevich really hope to get out of it? Maybe he'd given up hopes of keeping his job but still hoped to stay out of jail and maintain his celebrity as a lovable doofus, because he's studied the careers of George Wallace and Oliver North and knows that a man who maintains his celebrity has managed to hold onto his long-term political viability. The Feds turned Blagojevich into one kind of cartoon character, the foul-mouthed cynical pol who's openly crooked as shit. Rather than waste his time trying to wipe away that image, Blagojevich countered by plastering the airwaves with images of himself as a different kind of cartoon: the endearingly shameless jackass, too amusing to be venal. Has it worked? It worked with that woman behind me.

Maybe that's what Democrats need to do when they're on the defensive: double down and be more shameless. Maybe they shouldn't slink away guiltily. Maybe they should preen and strut and play the victim card. At the very least, maybe they shouldn't act as if anyone has a right to question their fitness to serve, or even their right to pass judgment on others.

Blago's a Dem, but in D.C. it's mostly Republicans who act this way -- see, e.g., Senator David Vitter (R-La.), the john who thinks he's morally superior to the Clintons.

There's a larger lesson here: Never act as if you're losing. Republicans are following that advice right now, and they have the press convinced that they're winning. Democrats, by contrast, are letting the country see them sweat. How's that working out?

"IT IS THEREFORE NECESSARY TO EDUCATE OUR COMRADES ... SO THAT THEY CAN ORIENTATE THEIR THINKING CORRECTLY." --MAO

Remember when right-wingers used to mock the Iraqi elections in which Saddam would win 100% of the vote? Remember the right-wing cries of "Collectivism!" at the sight of those Olympic dancers and drummers in Beijing?

Well...

The House approved a $787 billion economic stimulus package Friday afternoon....

The vote was 246 to 183.... Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill....

Yup -- again.

Afterward, House Republicans celebrated:



PARRR - TY!

YOU MEAN GOLF CARTS THAT AREN'T ACTUALLY GOLF CARTS?

Politico's Glenn Thrush carries the GOP's water:

Golf cart stimulus

Hot off the presses. New GOP talking points on the stimulus compromise -- suitable for talk radio and today's floor speeches.

Highlights, courtesy Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office:

• Tax Benefits For Golf Carts, Electric Motorcycles and ATVs: (Pg. 60 of the Tax Division of Conference Report, lines 9-16, "(2) SPECIFIED VEHICLE.—The term 'specified vehicle' means any vehicle which--"(A) is a low speed vehicle within the meaning of section 571.3 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations (as in effect on the date of the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009), or "(B) has 2 or 3 wheels.")....

I'm having trouble getting into the complete text of the bill, but, er, these "golf carts" wouldn't happen to be the same vehicles the New York Post was whinging about a couple of days ago, would they? The ones that aren't golf carts at all?

"Fore!"

The federal government is preparing to spend millions to purchase a fleet of small electric vehicles that critics compare to golf carts.

The $838 billion economic stimulus bill that passed the Senate yesterday contains $300 million for the government to purchase a fleet of "green" cars.

But the money won't just go to buy fuel-efficient hybrids such as the Ford Escape or Chevy Volt.

The cash also can be used to purchase "neighborhood electric vehicles."

The NEVs, which resemble streamlined golf carts, scoot at up to 25 mph, operate on battery power and can be plugged into 110-volt outlets for charging.

They are sometimes used at hospitals, college campuses and retirement communities, and can cost around $8,000 each. They don't produce carbon emissions....

Although the origins of the provision are unclear, it could be a boon to North Dakota-based NEV manufacturer Global Electric Motorcars, a division of Chrysler....

Oh. So these are green work-related vehicles? They're not golf carts?

So don't call them golf carts, dammit. I'm not talking to the Republicans -- asking them not to lie is like asking a dog not to piss on a hydrant. I'm talking to Glenn Thrush.

Yeah, they're silly-looking -- when I was in college, we thought the ones in use on campus were equally silly-looking. We called them Cushmans.

(I'll add, however, that one day, a few months after I graduated, I was at an ATM near campus talking to a woman I knew when a thief reached around us and grabbed her money out of the machine. I ran after the thief -- futilely, because I wasn't fast, even in my twenties -- but then a Cushman-driving security guy who'd left campus noticed the chase, joined in, and eventually caught the guy, who was then arrested. So my Cushman memories aren't all negative.)

If it's generally accepted that these are useful work-related vehicles that will have to be replaced sooner or later, and the new ones won't use fossil fuels, and buying the new ones now will keep North Dakotans employed until private-sector demand picks up, then what the hell is the problem?

THE EMTs AND THE MOB THROWING ROCKS THE EMTs ARE EQUALLY TO BLAME IF THE SICK GUY DIES

Mobs trying to make it impossible for emergency personnel to do their jobs -- you get that in places where the social order has broken down and thugs rule. You're also getting that right now in Washington. But I repeat myself.

To Peggy Noonan, however, if the patient expires, the emergency workers and the stone-throwers on the street are equally to blame:

There's a sense that everyone's digging in. President Obama has dug in on this stimulus bill: Pass it or see catastrophe. Republicans are dug in: Pass it and see catastrophe. The digging in is a way of showing certitude, and they're showing certitude because they're lost.

We hire politicians to know what to do about empty stores, job loss, and "Retail Space Available." But they don't, and more than ever we know they don't.

No, Peggy, you're wrong. Our politicians know what to do. Your politicians don't. And your politicians are hell-bent on preventing our politicians from doing what needs to be done.

Let me switch metaphors. For your politicians, Peggy, chaos and the suffering of innocents are tactics -- they're means of gaining the upper hand. Your politicians are economic terrorists.

****

Now I'll briefly address the ridiculous main conceit of this Noonan column:

A major reason people are blue about the future is not the stores, not the Treasury secretary, not everyone digging in. It is those things, but it's more than that, and deeper.

It's Sully and Suleman, the pilot and "Octomom," the two great stories that are twinned with the era. Sully, the airline captain who saved 155 lives by landing that plane just right....

This is why people are so moved: We're still making Sullys. We're still making those mythic Americans, those steely-eyed rocket men....

But Sully, 58, Air Force Academy '73, was shaped and formed by the old America, and educated in an ethos in which a certain style of manhood -- of personhood -- was held high.

What we fear we're making more of these days is Nadya Suleman. The dizzy, selfish, self-dramatizing 33-year-old mother who had six small children and then a week ago eight more because, well, she always wanted a big family....

... a great nation that fears, deep down, that it may be becoming more Suley than Sully -- that nation will enter a true depression.

So this is a generational thing? Let me talk about generations. You know when Sully was born? January 23, 1951. You know when Rush Limbaugh was born? Eleven days earlier. When "we" were "making" Sully, "we" were also "making" Limbaugh -- as well as the likes of Jim "All Tax Cuts" DeMint (also born 1951) and John Boehner (born 1949).

Limbaugh in particular, if he'd been Sullenberger and thought blaming the disaster on liberals would help movement conservatism more than landing the plane successfully, almost certainly would have let the plane crash (after parachuting to safety first). That's clearly how he's approaching this economy.

As for the nature of the younger generation, I notice that shortly after 9/11, when it suited her politics, Noonan didn't think we were breeding a race of parasites:

... what the New York Fire Department did--what those men did on that brilliant blue day in September--was like D-Day. It was daring and brilliant and brave, and the fact of it--the fact that they did it, charging into harm's way--changed the world we live in. They brought love into a story about hate--for only love will make you enter fire. Talk about your Greatest Generation--the greatest generation is the greatest pieces of any generation, and right now that is: them.

Actually, that's a reasonable, thoughtful conclusion: the greatest generation is the greatest pieces of any generation. It was true then and it's true now. It's always true. A few years ago, Noonan understood it. Not now, though.

A MOB, PERMANENTLY PARTYING LIKE IT'S 1998

I really don't care about the Judd Gregg situation. I'm certain the public doesn't give a damn: for ordinary Americans, this is a problem that ranks on the priority list somewhere around the need for prompt removal of pocket lint.

But notice where we are: the public continues to have great confidence in the Democratic president and wants him to succeed, while the press is fixated on portraying him as a self-sabotaging stumblebum who never learned the ways of the world he lives in, in contrast to the admirable torch-wielding mob that wants to hound him to his political death.

You know where you are? You're in 1998, baby.

For Republicans, of course, there are only two modes: flight suit and 1998. Unquestioned dominance and slow-motion bourgeois riot. And remember that, for Republicans, the meaning of 1998 wasn't "Clinton survived and thrived" but "Republicans laid the groundwork that defeated peace and prosperity in 2000." Obama, of course, doesn't have anything resembling peace and prosperity.

Obama may well survive. He may even win handily in 2012. He may leave office with the public still on his side and a long list of accomplishments. But a guy the press seemed to love for quite a while has lost that respect -- less, I think, because his nominees had tax problems or because it turned out that he wasn't really the Wingnut Whisperer than because the journos realized, Hey, he's a Democratic president! Bwahahahaha!

Which means that, to the press from now on, he'll always be Bill Clinton at best. And we know the torch-wielding GOP will always see him that way as well.

GREGG OUT -- GOOD SIGN?

I'd like to believe that Obama will now realize the utter futility of bipartisan outreach in this climate ... but I'm not optimistic, and I'm bracing myself for, say, Douglas Holtz-Eakin as pick #3.

IS BUBBLE BOY SEARCHING FOR HIS LOST BUBBLE?

I see that George W. Bush plans to give his first major post-presidential speech in Canada.

I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but I can't help suspecting that he chose a venue in that country rather than this one because in the U.S. he can no longer rely on a full (and fully politicized) president-size security detail that's committed to banishing all dissenters to a point miles away from his precious self. In Canada, by contrast, he still has a close ally in Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a fellow Guantanamo apologist). So I'm guessing Harper will see to it that Bubble Boy's bubble is properly reconstituted. I'm sure Bush wouldn't venture off his own property if he thought a discouraging word might upset his delicate sensibilities.

SCREW IT -- MAYBE YOU SHOULD THROW THE BOOK AT THEM IF YOU CAN

As regular readers of this blog know, I've said for a while that Barack Obama was probably right about the likely problems associated with pursuing criminal charges against Bush administration officials involved in torture and warrantless wiretapping -- the total partisan war that would almost certainly ensue was likely to cost Obama and the Democrats too much, and prosecution efforts would probably not result in convictions of the people who really deserve to be convicted.

But I'm starting to think, well, screw it. I was worried about a quid pro quo? It's clear now that Republicans are going to offer nothing but quos whether or not Obama offers any quids at all. There's absolutely nothing Obama can do -- short of resigning along with Joe Biden, after designating Sarah Palin as his replacement VP -- that can possibly diminish the partisan assault by Republicans, which will be total and unrelenting no matter what he does. And there's very little to be gained from seeming non-partisan -- yes, the public (according to polls) appreciates it, but that's counterbalanced by the Beltway media's declarations that GOP hissyfits prove the Republicans are "back" and Obama is weak.

The new Gallup/USA Today poll on this subject suggests that there's support for some response -- a probe of the allegations if not pursuit of criminal charges -- but, frustratingly, the poll surveys three possible responses rather than two, fails to find majority support for any of them, and thus leaves open the question of whether, asked to choose between a criminal probe or nothing, the public would accept or reject the criminal probe:



(Interestingly, investigating a third area of Bush abuse, the politicization of the Justice Department gets the most support, though not by much.)

Of course, I'm rethinking my objections to a criminal probe at the exact moment when Obama is proving that he can't even win overwhelming public support for an economic recovery program that's done in the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a president so popular we put him on money. If you can't rally the populace with an "FDR II" message, maybe you can't sell "Bush sucks" either. But hell, he's going to get slammed anyway, so I'm not sure he has anything to lose.