Understatement of the Day: Robert Gibbs on Dick Cheney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Responding today to Cheney's self-aggrandizing (pro-torture) attacks on Obama on Fox News yesterday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said this:

I'm not entirely sure that Dick Cheney's predictions on foreign policy have borne a whole lot of fruit over the last eight years in a way that have been either positive or, to the best of my recollection, very correct.

Not entirely sure? Haven't borne a whole lot of fruit? Way to be diplomatic, Mr. Press Secretary. Shall we read between the lines? (At least you noted, if not with nearly enough conviction, that Cheney had the facts "wrong.")

Cheney has been anything but positive, and certainly not correct, the fruit has been poisonous. And, yes, I'm entirely sure of that.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Dick!

By Carl

Well, well, well... I can't imagine why he'd be up in arms over this, can you?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out at President Obama and the attorney general on Sunday, saying the Justice Department's recent decision to investigate whether CIA operatives broke the law in their interrogation of terrorism suspects was politically motivated and dangerous to U.S. national security.

"I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long-term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say," Cheney said in an interview that aired on " Fox News Sunday."

The formal interview, conducted last week at Cheney's Wyoming ranch, was his first since Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced last Monday that he was conducting a preliminary review into the actions of certain CIA interrogators who might have gone beyond the techniques approved by the Bush administration's Justice Department.

Of course, an effective administration investigates its own wrong-doing, as how Janet Reno did under Bill Clinton, so Cheney has a point to make: any investigation should have rightly been carried out under the Bush DoJ.

Which seemed to have issues with indicting a ham sandwich, to stretch the famous analogy.

Or Congress could have, as it did in the early 70s for President Nixon's crimes, the 80s for Iran-Contra, and the 90s for the Lewinski affair.

I don't know about you, but my instinct tells me CIA agents violating international treaties probably ranks higher on the crime scale than a blow job.

But I digress...

It is true that, in none of the above scenarios was the investigation of a previous administration left as the dirty work for the next group of bureaucrats.

But then no administration, in conjunction with a Congress best described as "whorish to the self-interests of the administration," had ever had such an abysmal record of dictatorial, almost tyrannical, abuses of authority as the Bush administration, which includes ignoring the fact it might have been breaking the law.

It was, in short, a perfect storm of corruption and scandal, with a "look the other way" mentality that was at once abhorrent and antithetical to the good and welfare of the nation.

In shorter, it was the blind leading the deaf leading the dumb.

The dumb being us.

There are higher issues at stake here than whether some rogue CIA agents violated even the very liberal torture policies of an autocrat. There are issues that go to the very heart of what we stand for as a nation: do we allow torture so blatantly (because no one believes the US is always right and always innocent) or do we shove it back in that dark corner where we occasionally get upset at the things done in the name of freedom?

For that, and that reason alone, Dick Cheney should shut the fuck up.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Argumentum ad lapidem

By Capt. Fogg

It's an argument by throwing stones and it's almost all they do these days. Anything can be dismissed by calling it "lefty" "Liberal" or "Socialist" and all the faithful will giggle and smile while swallowing the argument.

Take Andrew Sullivan, for instance: he's "a Lefty sockpuppet" according to Jules Crittenden because by talking about the hiring of wives, daughters and sons of political celebrities, like Jenna Bush and Liz Cheney as journalists or commentators in "snarky" fashion without calling attention to the media frenzy over the late Ted Kennedy is an obviously "lefty" thing.

What's "lefty" about America's obsession with celebrities? Not much, as the Michael Jackson / Princess Diana episodes would suggest and to imply that Ted Kennedy's long and influential career is of interest to the country simply and only because he was the Late President's brother is a bit more "sock-puppety" than Oscar the Grouch's opposition to everything.

Yes, Americans ( and many others) are obsessed with celebrity worship, but Ted Kennedy had a very long, very influential career while Jenna? Let's just say her future as a journalist of merit is still hypothetical and media investment in her has more to do with her father's notoriety than with a distinguished body of essays, commentaries and investigations. It's a very false equivalence Jules and it makes you look desperate. It makes you look like little more than a tube sock with some buttons sewn on and a persona that does nothing more than repeat "lefty, lefty."

It's an easy bit of Schauspiel and easy to produce. Perhaps you can get the letter H or the number 4 to sponsor it.

(Cross posted to Human Voices)

Bored with Cheney

By Creature

What's really astounding about the FOX New Sunday interview with Dick Cheney yesterday is the lack of any real news. Cheney supports torture! Cheney pushed for the bombing of Iran! Cheney thinks the Democrats are soft on terror! Ho hum.

See, in a world where the disgraced aren't applauded, the real headline from yesterday should have read: FOX News give unprecedented air time to unrepentant war criminal! Now that would have made for an interesting read.

The un-Meritocratic States of America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Come on... really. Jenna Bush as a correspondent for NBC's Today Show? Seriously?

This is what she's "always dreamed to do"?

And the idea just came to the executive producer of the show, Jim Bell, because she "just sort of popped to us as a natural presence," because "she knows something about pressure and being under some scrutiny," and because, in a couple of previous appearances on the show, "she knocked it out of the park."

Please. Spare us the bullshit.

She got the job because she's a Bush, because she has the right last name and the right connections, and because she has the right sort of appeal. Bell is clearly hoping viewers will tune in not because anything she has to say is all that significant -- honestly, who cares what her views are on education? how are her views worth anyone's while? is every expert in America unavailable? -- but because a Bush, the daughter of the ex-president (and a massively unpopular one at that) and a minor political celebrity (a celebrity by close family connection), will be on camera.

So what? Well, yeah, so what? I don't watch Today (a clip maybe, here and there, but that's it), and I suppose it's free to hire whomever it wants to pull in viewers, connected or not, qualified or not (not that everyone in the media is qualified, but whatever).

Let's just not pretend this is something it's not.

I think Greenwald nails it. This is all about "American royalty":

They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from. There's a virtually endless list of politically well-placed guests equally qualified to talk on such matters.

*****

Liz Cheney is really the perfect face of Washington's political culture, a perfect manifestation of all the rotting diseases that define it and a pure expression of what our country has become and the reasons for its virtual ruin. She should really be on every political TV show all day every day. It's almost as though things can't really be expressed thoroughly without including her. Jenna Bush as a new NBC "reporter" on The Today Show -- at a time when every media outlet is firing and laying off real reporters -- is a very nice addition though.

Yes, she'll fit right in, a perfect addition to an already deeply corrupt media establishment.

ALESSANDRA AMBROSIO - White Dress

OMG She Has a Zit !









THE NILES LESH PROJECT - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2009

Kick the bums out!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't put much stock, if any, in Rasmussen telephone polls, but I find it annoying that, according to the results of a new survey, 57 percent of Americans "would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again."

I'm reminded of the Family Guy episode in which Peter has a "grinds my gears" opinion segment on Quahog's local news:

You know what really grinds my gears? You, America! [Bleep] you!

Do these 57 percent of Americans understand that they live in a democracy and that, ultimately, the responsibility for selecting their political leaders is their own?

No, no, much easier to lash out and blame the people they elected.

Maybe they ought to take a little more interest in how they're governed -- that is, in how they govern themselves.

**********

Okay, speaking of Family Guy, here's a brief musical interlude this early Sunday evening (in my time zone). I'll be back later with more.



Okay, here's another...

Truth in Comics

By Creature



If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Nobody could have predicted

By Creature

That the day before Dick Cheney is set to appear on a Sunday news show an article would be published in The Washington Post giving credence to the disgraced vice president's "torture worked" claim. How very Judith Miller of them.

Tim Pawlenty, good Republican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, give Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty credit. With his eyes clearly on 2012, he certainly understands that the only way he stands a winning chance is by sucking up to the right-wing insanitarium that the Republican Party has become. Here's Bloomberg:

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, charged that President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program still isn't working and that his health-care overhaul proposal would lead to medical rationing.

With only 15 to 20 percent of the money spent, it "would be ludicrous to claim" the stimulus program is "what pivoted" the $14.1 trillion economy "at the so-called bottoming or now a potential beginning of recovery," Pawlenty said.

So what "pivoted" the economy, then? What slowed down the economic collapse -- albeit without reversing the decline, yet -- during this time of historic crisis? If not the stimulus, what? Luck? Prayer?

As if that weren't not enough, Pawlenty also pushed the "death panel" lie, in so doing aligning himself with Sarah Palin, another 2012 possibility.

So, to recap: If you're a Republican on the rise, and looking ahead with national ambition to 2012, you reach out for your party's support by attacking both the economic stimulus package and health-care reform -- and by lying about both. Presumably, as alternatives, a good Republican prefers that the economy essentially self-destruct and that a prohibitively costly, dysfunctional health-care system that leaves tens of millions of Americans without care or adequate coverage continue to drag the country down.

Thanks for clearing that up, Governor.

Summer raving

By Capt. Fogg

Those lazy, hazy, crazy conspiracy theories of Summer are still with us and not just in the deep South. Majikthise gives us a clip of Glenn Beck, Fox News' designated madman, discussing the prospect of Americorps being a cover for President Obama's own private army - a kind of American SS if you will. Just the kind of zombie troops he will need to disarm the Armed Retards of Texas and deliver our country into the hands of Sauropods from Saturn. Just like FDR did with the WPA.

Obama has given the job training and public service agency "half a trillion dollars" to turn them into an elite fighting force to use against Americans, presumably after the Pentagon balks and Blackwater opts out. The Pentagon would be jealous of all that funding - if there was a particle of truth in this seditious crock of Glennbeckery.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not reject conspiracy theories out of hand. There certainly were some involved in bringing on Bush's Second War and a number of less violent ones involving raiding the public treasury, but I say that because there is credible evidence for it. There never is for Beck's ravings. In fact the idea seems to be that total absence of evidentiary support is not only proof of conjecture, but a large screen upon which to project the ideas he comes up with by sticking his head in a paper bag full of aromatic hydrocarbons. Never mind the proof of his dishonesty, the folks who have been backed into a corner don't care about evidence. The people who hired him care nothing at all whether their viewers are human or subhuman or anti-human as long as they tune in, turn on and freak out.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

So what the hell's a "public option"?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Nate Silver reports on a new poll that shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike (if more the latter than the former, predictably enough), really have no idea what a "public option" would be.

Only 37%, in fact, correctly identified it. The rest either didn't know or thought it was a co-op network or a national, British-style system.

What the poll also shows is that there is fairly widespread support, including among Republicans, for "a new federal health insurance plan that individuals could purchase if they can’t afford private plans offered to them," even if this isn't exactly a great definition of the proposed public option.

As Nate argues, the poll is fairly manipulative in places. Still, it reminds us not to underestimate the extent of public ignorance -- much of it, if not all of it, generated by anti-reform propaganda. It is simply essential that proponents of reform, including the president, counter this propaganda with a concerted effort to educate the public about what exactly reform would mean, about what choices individuals would have, about what a new government-run alternative would offer.

Or is it already too late for that?

Craziest Republican of the Day: Mike Huckabee

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Again.

Last week it was for saying that "Evangelicals" (e.g., Christian Zionists like him) are more supportive of Israel than American Jews. Don't even get me started on that nonsense again.

Today it's for saying that, under Obamacare, Ted Kennedy would literally have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die."

Seriously. That's a direct quote.

Now, I'm not sure if Huckabee is just stupid, or what. Does he just not get it, or is he just a malicious liar, the sort of loose-with-the-truth ideologue who spins right-wing propaganda and advances Republican objectives? That is, does he know that he's lying or not? Maybe it's all mixed up in some hyper-partisan mental mash, with Huckabee and his ilk simply unable to tell anymore, if they ever could, what is true and what isn't -- or maybe, just maybe, they think that whatever they say, whatever they believe, is true.

Regardless, saying that Kennedy would have been left to die, and thereby trying to score political points off his death, is just repugnant.

I mean, really? Opponents of reform -- the sort of meaningful reform Kennedy fought for his whole life, reform with a robust public option -- were the ones who had Kennedy's back, whereas Kennedy's own friends would essentially have killed him off even earlier? Would Kennedy really have supported such reform if it had meant it would have left the elderly to die without adequate care?

Come on, this is fucking ridiculous, which is pretty much what Huckabee is. He calls Kennedy "heroic" and praises him for choosing to keep fighting for his life, and yet he continues to wage a campaign of lies against health-care reform?

It's crazy, yes, but it's also shameless, an appalling abuse of Kennedy's life, death, and legacy.

We won't soon see his like again

By Edward Copeland

As we get further from the news of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing (I write this minutes before the wake is set to begin), I find myself getting sadder and sadder. I always liked the man, though I never met him, but when you look at the list of legislative accomplishments he had a hand in in his 47 years in the Senate, it truly is extraordinary.

He truly was what a senator should be. Sure, he had flaws in his private life, but there never was a hint of a scandal related to his work on Capitol Hill. He never chased lobbyists for cash to run campaigns and gave them favors in return. He wasn't a showhorse, especially once he gave up his quest for the presidency. He rarely appeared on the Sunday news shows. He did his job and did it well.

What makes me weep the most are the personal stories that keep popping up from all quarters. The conservative Republican father grieving for his son killed in Iraq at his son's grave at Arlington turning around and seeing Kennedy for the first time in his life and complaining about the improper armor on humvees. Kennedy had hearings within weeks and got the humvees properly protected.

The stories of how he seemed to be the first to call when someone faced a tragedy or send a surprise gift to someone he barely knew when they had a child. How when one of his children and G. Gordon Liddy's daughter were graduating from the same private school while Liddy was in prison, serving his time for Watergate. Obviously, the girl did not have an easy time of it, being the daughter of Liddy. At the ceremony, Kennedy sought her out, gave her a big hug and told her not to worry that her dad was very proud of her.

A relative of conservative pundit Pat Buchanan worked in George W. Bush's White House and was given the task of the delivering to the Senate Judiciary Committee members the name of a new appointee for an appellate court. The first senate sort of shrugged it off, saying, "Another right winger." Kennedy welcomed the young man into his office gregariously and showed him around, pointing out photos and mementos. Buchanan said when the young man returned, he was walking on air.

Kennedy came from a life of privilege, but his passion was for the little guy and those who needed help to avoid oppression.

With the ugliness of politics today, it's a double tragedy that we have not only lost this great man, but the Congress has lost a member who knew why they were there instead of getting stuck in partisan mudslinging and not crafting anything worthwhile. The wake is about to start. Time for me to weep some more for everyone's Uncle Ted.

Heck of a job

By Capt. Fogg

Which patients should get a share of limited resources, and who decides? What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and does that end justify all means? Where is the line between appropriate comfort care and mercy killing? How, if at all, should doctors and nurses be held accountable for their actions in the most desperate of circumstances, especially when their government fails them?

These are the questions asked in the New York Times magazine article about New Orleans' Memorial Hospital. You'll remember that, abandoned and without power with high winds and rising water making evacuation impossible, some patients, perhaps as many as 17 were given lethal doses of morphine and sedatives as an alternative to letting them suffer and die of heat, dehydration, starvation, drowning or from the failure of the machines keeping them alive. While the times appears to be asking questions about personal responsibility, the timing makes it vulnerable to being boarded and looted.

Rightly suspecting the imminent hijacking of this story by anti-health care propagandists, Hanna Rosin writes "preemptively" at Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish that:

[T]his story shows the opposite of what would happen under government mandated health care reform. The reason the hospital staff got stuck having to make all these terrible decisions is because they were abandoned, and on their own. There were no established procedures, no regulations, no guidelines. There was just them, exhausted and overwhelmed, and a few dozen very ill patients unhooked from their respirators.

Would an HMO or a privately owned, for-profit facility have been better prepared or better able to get National Guard helicopters to the scene ipso facto? We can expect to hear that this is a logical conclusion. It's not.

I'm sure Rosin is right and that this, like any other pieces of flotsam that can be dragged out of the flood and into the argument, will be used to show that the government is poison and corporations are the antidote. In fact, that the government was unable to help in this circumstance owes much to the lack of planning and disdain for taking responsibility that has followed upon decades of Reagan-inspired sabotage of our institutions. Since there never really has been real evidence for the Reagan theorem that government is the problem because it is the government and government has no solutions and government should give way to private, for profit management, the Republican controlled administrations have been forced to manufacture a scenario by insuring impotence, corruption and incompetence in almost all areas, including most obviously FEMA.

The Dish quotes an unidentified staff member as saying:

This was totally against every fiber in my body. [But] we were abandoned by the government, we were abandoned by Tenet, and clearly nobody was going to take care of these people in their dying moments,

and I'm sure this will be picked up on as though the failure is intrinsic to government itself and not to a government that was rightie-rigged and Brownie-led against adequate response.

Regardless of whether the euthanized patients could have been evacuated or should have been left "in God's hands" none of this makes a valid argument against public health care, but we're not used to validity or even honesty in this fight and this struggle to make us believe that the government of the people, by the people should be sold off and all decisions about individual life, liberty and pursuit of happiness be determined by how much profit it makes for someone else.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Quote of the Day II

By Creature

"As I said, deficits saved the world." -- Paul Krugman, putting the Right's deficit hyperventilation into perspective.

Beck and the burning bag

By Capt. Fogg

Remember the Halloween trick with the flaming bag of dog crap? Eons of experience show that leaving it alone is the best policy because you can't stamp it out without getting shit all over your porch and on your shoes. It's an apt comparison, I think, to what's happening with Glenn Beck and the boycott of his incoherent hate-fests. Despite Fox having lost some 4 dozen sponsors, his ratings seem to be going up.

The L.A. Times tells us that according to his latest Nielsen data, he had 2.81 million viewers Monday, his third-largest audience ever on Fox. It didn't hurt that Sarah Palin, the de facto spokeswoman for the Stupid wing of the Hate Party, gave him a plug and it's good evidence that homo sapiens bashing has become the national sport.

OK, that's one person per hundred of population, but it's more shit than I want on my porch, thanks.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Death wish

By Mustang Bobby

There are some really interesting people in the pulpit these days. One such is a fellow named Steven Anderson at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Among his sermons that include the usual diatribes against gays and anybody else who doesn't believe in every word written in that book that starts out with two naked people and the talking snake, he calls for the death of the President of the United States.

Let me tell you something: Barack Obama has wrought lewdness in America. America has become lewd. What does lewd mean? L-E-W-D? [Pause] Obscene. Right? Dirty. Filthy. Homosexuality. Promiscuity. All of the -- everything that's on the billboard, the TV. Sensuality. Lewdness! We don't even know what lewdness means anymore! We're just surrounded by it, inundated with it!

... And yet you're going to tell me that I'm supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things -- you're gonna tell me I'm supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he's in Phoenix, Arizona.

Nope. I'm not gonna pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that's what I'm going to pray. And you say, 'Are you just saying that?' No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.

You say, 'Why would you do that?' That our country could be saved.

Ironically enough, Mr. Anderson is alleged to be an adherent to a faith that worships a man who was called "The Prince of Peace" and who admonished his followers to "turn the other cheek." Perhaps someone should introduce Mr. Anderson to his teachings; he might learn something. (I also think the United States Secret Service might want to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting of their own with Mr. Anderson. He is the pastor of the gentleman who showed up at the president's speech in Phoenix last week toting a semi-automatic weapon.)

There will be some people who will use Mr. Anderson's fervor as an excuse to bash Christianity and organized religion, but I really don't think that would be fair to either Christians or organized religion. Mr. Anderson represents Christianity the same way the Taliban represents Islam or the Ku Klux Klan represents American patriotism; perverted and grotesque rather than affirming and inclusive. The vast majority of Christians in this country -- and they number about 80% of the population -- are nothing at all like this nutball, and many of them support the idea of gay rights, reproductive choice, and universal healthcare. Organized religion has been a force for good in this world, too; I'm thinking of groups like the American Friends Service Committee (although some Quakers might have an issue with being called "organized"), and many other groups that are affiliated with faith that do not discriminate on the basis of belief or use it as a method of evangelism. Like all human endeavors, religion has been exploited and turned into a horrible distortion of its original intent -- a quest for knowledge and understanding -- but so have a lot of other human endeavors, such as government and the rule of law. That doesn't mean we should give up on it; it only means we need to discard the people who have exploited and perverted it.

There are also some people who think that giving Mr. Anderson any publicity by writing about his hatred only gives him visibility and the attention he so desperately craves. But I think we need to call attention to these people and make sure that the public is aware of this despicable and perverse kind of discourse. Keeping it in the shadows only gives them the room to grow and spread.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Quote of the Day: Jonathan Chait on who, or what, is really to blame for the whole health-care debacle

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, the Republicans are to blame, of course. But, for Democrats, here's some much-needed perspective from TNR's Jon Chait:

The Senate is what controls the process. That's the chokepoint for any health care bill. The question isn't how badly Obama wants a public plan, or how much he cares about bipartisanship. It's whether moderate to conservative Democrats in the Senate will filibuster a bill that has a public plan or lacks GOP support. Everything else is details.

In other words, it's not all Obama's, or even primarily Obama's fault. And if Democrats, and especially the more progressive ones, want to lay some blame, they should look no further than the Senate.

I sort of buy this and sort of don't. Obama certainly could have done more -- and should do more -- to promote meaningful health-care reform with a robust public option. But he's also a realist, and there's only so much he can do, not just given these structural/institutional limitations but given how much political capital he's already spent on the stimulus package and the bank and auto bailouts.

And the key is not so much to secure the support of obstructionist Republicans opposed to reform, including the three in the Gang of Six, but to keep moderate/centrist Democrats in the fold. Which is easier said than done, of course, what with the likes of Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and Ben Nelson now doing their best Republican impressions. (It's also a bit rich for the generally moderate/centrist Chait to be calling upon liberals in the party to try to oust these more right-leaning Democrats. For more on this, see Greenwald.)

There is still hope for reform, of course. With Republicans looking more and more like the obstructionists they are, and showing more and more that what they really want is not compromise but no reform at all, Democrats are slowly but surely turning away from the possibility of a bipartisan bill, realizing that, if reform is to get done, they'll have to go it alone. Whether they'll be able to or not, given the Republican-lite positions of Lieberman et al., remains to be seen, just as it remains to be seen whether Obama will put a stop to the phony "post-partisan" niceties and lead the fight for meaningful reform. Which may be his plan, after all: Make a show of reaching out, genuinely, to Republicans, allow Republicans to expend their energy refusing to negotiate in good faith, move in and promote a Democratic bill while Republicans are relegated to the sidelines, blamed for their obstructionism, and emerge with what he wanted all along.

Once again, I fear I'm being naively optimistic. Regardless, I think Chait is right that it's hardly all Obama's fault. He can only do so much, after all, and there is only so much that can be done with members of his own party blocking the way.

Of course Romney won't seek to replace Kennedy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

First, he'd lose a special election.

Second, he's focusing on 2012.

A spokesman said that "Romney's focus right now is on helping other Republicans run for office, and that is how he will be spending his time." Which, while perhaps true, is seriously misleading. Romney's real focus is on trying to build up the Romney brand in the GOP, to promote his own presidential ambitions in an indirect way. And he can do that by throwing his weight, and his money, behind "other Republicans" whose support he will need when 2011/12 rolls around and he's once again eyeing the White House. Being the junior senator from Massachusetts, behind Kerry, just wouldn't help him all that much.

By the way, as TNR's Jason Zengerle is reporting, the likely short-term replacement for Kennedy, at least until a special election can be held, is none other than Michael Dukakis.

Lifting clouds

By Carl

The fall is usually a time of bleaker economic news than the rest of the year. Not so much this year:

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Fewer Americans filed claims for jobless benefits last week, another sign the economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s.

Applications fell by 10,000 to 570,000, a higher level than forecast, in the week ended Aug. 22 from a revised 580,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance fell to the lowest level since April.

Companies’ staff cuts are easing as government stimulus measures help stabilize the housing and manufacturing industries. At the same time, a rebound in hiring will take longer to occur, restraining the consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

[...]A separate report from the Commerce Department showed the U.S. economy contracted less than forecast in the second quarter as a jump in government spending and smaller cutbacks by consumers helped mitigate a record plunge in inventories.

I won't bore you with an analysis of that last paragraph. Suffice it to say that companies are running leaner operations than they had been, and the economy is starting to drift back towards growth.

The wildly successful Cash For Clunkers program, ended Monday but launched July 24, wasn't even a factor in the 2nd quarter, which means that the 3rd quarter will probably show a further slowing in the rate of recession, if not a turnaround.

New homes sales rose ten percent in July, which is an amazing leap when you factor in the thought that mortgage lending was nearly non-existent until the second TARP bailout enacted under President Obama. Still, sales are off 13.4% from July 2008. July 2009 was the fourth straight month to show a gain in new home sales.

That's not to say housing is out of the woods yet. Lending to builders is still tighter than a maiden aunt's ass which means new home construction, a vital component of the American economy, is moribund. What you're seeing is the sale of previously built homes that sat empty.

Still, things could be much worse and the economy could be in a lot worse shape than it is. Right now, things are still teetering on the precipice like a Keystone Kops clown car. We could still tumble.

But at least I have faith that this driver is not going to put the car back into gear and drive us off the cliff like the last President nearly did!

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

30% of the crazy taken right off the top

By Creature

Actual RNC survey:

"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?"

Not a concern, but a feature. Democrats, we have been found out.

The ridiculousness knows no end.

Blue Dogs bite

By Creature

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has drawn her line against the public option. I guess she prefers we mandate a windfall of premiums to insurance companies for overpriced, crappy plans instead. Sure, this makes perfect sense. That is, if you value corporate profits over constituent pain.

Hateful twits, hateful tweets

By Capt. Fogg

". . . and forgetting long passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and piss not on their ashes."

- Thomas Browne -

Unless, of course, the vitriol of human meanness courses through your veins, in which case you don your rabid pit bull apparel and gnaw on what bones can be found. I've rarely seen such hate, even at a time like this where hate is the entire foundation of American conservative politics. As fast as the greasy fingers can type, the Internet begins to fill with accusations of murder, treason, and more formless forms of evil known as "liberalism." There is no restraint in Mudville now that Ted Kennedy has struck out.

Too many blogs, too many twits, too many accusations to dignify with a reply, but one thing is held in common: the tribe that represents the worst traits of our remote ancestors feels victimized and therefore free from any obligation to decency. They lost an election, their worship of feudal corporatism, equal rights, and civic responsibility is being challenged -- at last -- and their true values finally revealed. It's as ugly as it's ever been.

I recently and reluctantly signed up for Twitter. I should have stayed at home. The necessity to keep it all idiotically short has brought out more unadorned ugliness than one finds on blogs.

Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,

rages the ridiculous Breitbart.

IF a GOP possesses 1/100 of human failings of T. Kennedy he/she is TOAST,

is another one of his staggering lies with endless examples to prove it false. Malkin laughs that he didn't go to France for his treatment, as though it were funny or actually meant something, others follow suit and Chappaquiddick references spurt like pus from the septic boil of Republic sentiment, from those who would and do accept any act of presidential treason, dishonesty, and manslaughter -- and, yes, drunk driving. How many people died because George W. Bush was president? No, Kennedy was a "villain," "a bad, bad dude," a "duplicitous bastard," and a "prick."

Pissing on Kennedy's ashes is just a small part of the psychotic rage that fills the void once filled by conservatives. A conservative by nature does not respond to disagreement by using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. That's what a madman does, that's what Mr. Breitbart is, that's what Ms. Malkin is, and this is what the end of everything sounds like.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Will the Party of No finally admit that the stimulus is working?

By Creature

Of course the answer is no, but with more good economic news, thanks to government spending, it's going to be hard not to. Too small, or not, the money spent is helping and it's this that really irks me about the GOP and their tea-bagging allies. They scream deficits, and whatnot, but without the spending we'd still be spiraling down. Of course, they'd rather we kept spiraling, because bad news for America (and the president) is good for them. Or something.

Jeny Baby - AssTraffic.com/HD/[1080p] (2009)

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The importance of geothermal power

Guest post by John Malone

John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow.

Ed. note: This is the second piece we've cross-posted from Operation FREE. The first, on veterans and Big Oil, is here. -- MJWS

**********

In the world of renewables, most of the attention is on the wind and the sun. Geothermal power just hasn't gotten the same respect. That could be changing, as both the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley are considering the heat under the ground as a potentially huge source of clean, domestic U.S. energy, but recent setbacks are calling into question how much geothermal can contribute. Given the potential benefits, we should be doubling our efforts to make geothermal a viable power source for the U.S.

Some background: All thermal power plants use the same basic process. A heat source (burning coal or gas, uranium, concentrated solar energy) is used to turn water into steam, and the energy released turns a turbine that produces electricity. What sets geothermal apart is that the steam comes directly from the ground. Water percolates down through cracks in the ground and is heated to the boiling point by hot rocks underground (in some cases coming back up as a geyser -- think Old Faithful), and the resulting steam is drawn up via a well to a turbine.

This makes for, in principle, the ideal alternative energy source. Geothermal power releases virtually no CO2 or pollutants. Crucially, geothermal provides baseload power -- wind and solar power are better suited as peaking technologies, as they are dependent on energy sources that wax and wane over the course of a day. Geothermal power is on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (geothermal power plants can have utilization rates up to 98%). And from a national security angle, the promise of geothermal is obvious: There is no more domestic source of energy than the actual ground underneath us.

There's one problem, though. There are only a few places in the U.S. where you can find shallow groundwater hot enough to get steam directly from the ground. Engineers and geologists are therefore looking at a new way to tap underground heat. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) make use of the fact that, if you drill deep enough, any bedrock in the world gets hot enough to boil water. Basically, EGS involves drilling a well into deep, hot, dry rock; drilling a second well nearby to the same depth; fracturing the rock between those two wells enough to allow water to pass between them; and then pumping water down the first well and allowing it to percolate through the hot fractured area to the second well, where it will come back to the surface as superheated steam. The potential for EGS in the U.S. is enormous. A 2006 MIT report concluded it could provide 100,000 MW of power by 2050.

EGS is not without its drawbacks. Cost is the main hurdle. Oil and gas companies now measure well depths in miles, but these are wells drilled through relatively soft rock, not the hard granites that are best suited for EGS. If not managed properly, rocks could lose their heat -- eventually, pumping water through a hot rock system could bring the heat gradient down to the point that new wells need to be drilled. There has also been some concern about earthquakes. In 2006, an EGS pilot project in Switzerland set off a 3.4 magnitude quake.

That said, these hurdles are all surmountable, and given the huge benefits it could bring, there is already a surge in investment -- both public and private -- in EGS. Google laid down an $11 million investment for early-stage research. Perhaps most encouraging is the interest shown in EGS by our Nobel Laureate Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu. Obama's stimulus plan set aside $400 million for pure geothermal R&D. And it's looking like EGS wouldn't need too much more of an investment. A recent NYU study found that as little as $3 billion in R&D development could make EGS cost-competitive with fossil fuel plants.

The widespread application of EGS is still a ways off. But geothermal, whether traditional or EGS, should be used alongside technologies like wind and solar to diversify our renewable base. There is no silver bullet in renewable energy. It's better to think in terms of silver buckshot, where a collection of solutions add up to a big impact. We should do our best to make sure that one of those solutions is the one right under our feet.

Healthcare for Kennedy

By Creature

Not only should the Democrats politicize Senator Kennedy's death (and funeral) they should do it as full-throated as Kennedy himself would have. If a few right-wing heads explode along the way, great. At least they'll have healthcare to cover their hospital costs.

GYULAI VIKTORIA - FHM Hungary

THE NILES LESH PROJECT - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2009

Ted Kennedy and the day that was

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm currently working on a piece for The Guardian on Suaad Hagi Mohamud, the Kenyan-Canadian who was detained in Nairobi a few months ago for not looking enough like her passport photo. Canadian officials refused to come to her defence and actually pushed for her to be prosecuted, with the government back in Ottawa doing nothing to help until a DNA test proved her identity. So I won't be blogging much until tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, make sure to check out some great posts by my co-bloggers, including two from this afternoon by J. Thomas Duffy (one on the Kennedy legacy, one on the Little League World Series), two from Capt. Fogg (one on right-wing doublethink, one on Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Kennedy), and a glowing Kennedy obituary from Carl. I also had health-care-related posts up on McCain, Coburn, and Feingold.

Stay tuned for more from the Reaction team.

**********

I've been thinking a great deal about Ted Kennedy today. Needless to say, I was appalled by how some on the right took the occasion of Kennedy's death to go on the attack -- appalled, but not surprised.

For the most part, though, Kennedy received the tributes he deserved, including from some Republicans. He was one of the towering figures in American politics, a giant of decades in the political spotlight. I think Obama himself put it well (in an e-mail that his supporters, myself included, received this evening):

For nearly five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives -- in seniors who know new dignity; in families that know new opportunity; in children who know education's promise; and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including me. In the United States Senate, I can think of no one who engendered greater respect or affection from members of both sides of the aisle. His seriousness of purpose was perpetually matched by humility, warmth and good cheer. He battled passionately on the Senate floor for the causes that he held dear, and yet still maintained warm friendships across party lines. And that's one reason he became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.

Ted Kennedy (1932-2009). America, and the world, would have been much less without him. He will be greatly missed, and never fully replaced.

Dead man walking -- tall

By Capt. Fogg

The man can't be much warmer than room temperature, but the demons are howling farleftliberalsocialist like some inbred glossolalian hysterics at a backwoods revival meeting where the devil is being denounced. Even those of us who dress more like civilized people and give University lectures are out there making false equivalences between how poor old milk-of-human-kindness Robert Novak was treated by farleftliberalsocialists like Crooks and Liars as compared to the way they're trashing the memory of the last of the Kennedy Brothers -- although the more adroit like William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says he "wont go there" -- while he's coming back from just having been there.

Rush Was Right! Exclaims the Professor. People are using Ted Kennedy's death to their political advantage and the people who would like to put Ronald Reagan on Mount Rushmore and name airports and highways after him are very disdainful of that sort of thing, aren't they? Can you imagine that - those laughable liberals want to name a health care bill after a man who tried most of his life to reform health care and have the audacity to trash a man who only committed treason and lied about it.

" Democrats are desperate to do anything to overcome public opposition on the merits."

says the Associate professor. He doesn't tell us whether those merits include "death panels" or other outright lies so beloved of Republican saboteurs. He doesn't mention that the public opposition is the minority opinion and that's it's costing News Corp and the Insurance Industry and the Drug Companies billions to do anything and everything to overcome majority opinion; anything including lies and fabrications.

Face it, they're delighted that one more impediment to the will of the minority is down and so sure are they of public stupidity and gullibility they don't even bother to cover their tracks or hide their fallacies.

"Strange, when Rush Limbaugh used the phrase "Kennedy Memorial Health Bill," [in predicting how Democrats would use Kennedy's death] he was harshly criticized.. . . Now that passage of Democratic health care restructuring seems much less likely, I guess it is okay to invoke Kennedy's name."

That's just what I mean. No Perfessor, the objection to Rush calling a sickly old man a dead man was what the anger was about. Laughing about a brain tumor: it's not the same thing as calling a dead man a dead man: even a dead man who tried to do some good in this world instead of shilling for pirates.

(Cross posted at Human Voices)

Well ... There's THAT part of The Legacy, too ...

By J. Thomas Duffy

If almost right on cue.

In the waning, dull, Dog Days of August, and, somewhat ironically, in the middle of the molten hot Healthcare battle, Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away, ending his fight against brain cancer.

There'll be lots of paychecks and other perks, to interrupt the vacations of the masses of babbling heads, to rush into the nearest cable studio (or, if they are heavy-duty talking heads, they might have the weight to do a remote) and start blathering away, from the headline stories, to insider anecdotes, ending, of course, with whispers during the wall-to-wall coverage of the upcoming funeral.

Local news here in Boston will even surpass all that.

Yes, he was the "Liberal Lion", and did a lot of good things during his time in the Senate (perhaps SCHIPS, and burying Bork among the top).

But one thing won't get mentioned, or, if it does, ever so briefly, a blink, and then, used as a launching point to herald some tale of pulling himself off the floor and rising to great heights.

We speak, of, naturally, Chappaquiddick, and the unfortunate death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

And that brings us to one of the greatest satires in history, run by the National Lampoon, back in 1972.

Riffing off a Volkswagen ad of that time, they put this out there;



From Wikipedia;

The case resulted in much satire of Kennedy, including a National Lampoon page showing a floating Volkswagen Beetle with the remark that Kennedy would have been elected president had he been driving a Beetle that night; this satire resulted in legal action by Volkswagen, claiming unauthorized use of its trademark.

(You can go HERE, to see both, the original VW ad, and the satirical one)

In today's' corporate-owned media, I don't know if there is a publication out there that would have the balls to do something like that today.


Bonus Links

Senator Kennedy from Cindy Sheehan

Jack Newfield: The Senate's Fighting Liberal

Martin F. Nolan: Kennedy dead at 77 ...Liberal lion of the Senate, symbol of family dynasty succumbs to brain cancer

Joan Walsh: Ted Kennedy's last battle

And, a "Must-Read", from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, over on The Moderate Voice;

Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Go Girl Go!

By J. Thomas Duffy

While, invariably, the Little League World Series almost routinely, each year, generates a heartwarming, or tear-inducing, story, and this year is no different.

Except that history, perhaps a bit dubiously, was made;

Game-Winning Hit by 13-Year-Old Girl Could Be a First

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — Katie Reyes hit a two-run single in the top of the sixth to help Vancouver, British Columbia, rally for a wild 14-13 victory Tuesday over Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, in the Little League World Series.

The Little League president, Stephen Keener, and other longtime tournament officials said they could not recall a girl having the winning hit before in a World Series game.

“I was excited. I was shaking,” Reyes, 13, said about going to the plate for her big hit. She finished with three hits and three runs batted in.

Playing first, Reyes also caught the last out. She joined her happy teammates jumping on the mound after Canada won its last game of the series. Both teams had already been eliminated entering Tuesday.

WOW!

All this time, decades, and it's only the first time a girl has gotten a winning hit?

Does that have to do with girls not being into playing Little League, or nitwit coaches across the land, holding on to yesteryear, believing girls don't belong in baseball?

ESPN, which posts a video of it, has more;

Fifteen girls have played in the series since 1984, when Victoria Roche of Brussels, Belgium, became the first female to play in South Williamsport.

Reyes wasn't the only girl playing at the series this year -- Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, had 13-year-old Bryn Stonehouse playing first base, too.

The only other time there were two girls in the series in the same year was 2004

Well, anyway ...

Hats Off to Katie Reyes!

Go Girl Go!


Bonus Link

Here's a good background piece, from the Toronto Globe and Mail, on Katie Reyes;

Canadian 'girl that delivers' takes on the World Series




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Quote of the Day: Russ Feingold on health-care reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From Politico:

We're headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, and I think that's unfortunate.

More: "Nobody is going to bring a bill before Christmas, and maybe not even then, if this ever happens. The divisions are so deep. I never seen anything like that."

There is good reason to be so pessimistic. Reality sucks.

Especially Congressional "reality" dominated by cowardly Democrats and obstructionist Republicans.

(I still think Obama might just know what he's doing, waiting for Republican opposition to run its course before stepping in, allowing Republicans to take the blame, and pushing a Democratic bill that includes a robust public option. But maybe I'm being delusionally optimistic.)

Burn baby burn

By Capt. Fogg

Teddy Roosevelt was a Socialist; so was Adam Smith, Adolph Hitler and FDR. Anyone in fact who thinks there ought to be a government is a Socialist unless there's " a war on." At that point everything changes and anyone who thinks there's too much government, too intrusive and abusive in it's powers becomes the Socialist villain. That's the simple version. Of course people who wonder why, when half the e-mail screeds one gets from Republican sources begin with a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and exhortations never to forget, we can also call an official day of Remembrance and Service "Socialist." Is it the service that sours the remembrance? Perhaps a national day of insulting France would have been less Socialist. Perhaps burning the UN would have been more "conservative."

“The plan is to turn a ‘day of fear’ that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left,”

writes Matthew Vadum in The Spectator. What could be more Socialist that interfering with the fear level Republicans promote in concert with international terrorists to keep authoritarianism alive in America.

"Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.”

Or at least the meaning that can be interpreted to demand bigger, more militaristic government and an attack on Constitutional Government. That's "desecration" howls Vadum. I'm sure that all the police, fire, public safety, paramedics and others who died on that day were Socialists as well - and desecrators as well. And what about all the Socialists who volunteered afterwards? You can see the danger!

So when you see the inevitable burning towers picture, remember to preserve the fear, promote the panic and for heaven's sake don't do anything to get in the way of ever increasing government power and defense contractor profit. That would be nothing but Nihilism and Socialism (if your doublethink capacity is great enough to tie those two together.)

While your doublethink module is engaged, please remember that it wasn't Socialism to support a national day of service when George Bush promoted the idea or when it got Bipartisan support this Spring. It's Socialism because Barack Obama is President.

Damn, these socialist/nihilist Liberals are insidious! Promoting positive outcomes and reducing fear is the first step down the slippery slope toward Socialism and if that is difficult for you to understand, Raw Story has all the reasons all the Republican opinion shouters give us to support "conservative" fear mongering, xenophobia, divisiveness, totalitarianism, Chauvinism and military aggression instead of that goddamn e pluribus unum constructivism those nihilist homosexual, far-left Socialists, want to sell us.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)