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0:16

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

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August 22, 2010

23:00

Fall Preview--The Gubernatorial Races

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With so much political attention focused on Washington and the balance of power in both the House and the Senate, we tend to forget that there are over three dozen gubernatorial races that not only have a huge impact on how the majority of our individual states will be governed, but have a critical indirect impact on the balance of power in Congress, as well.

As was astutely noted during Netroots Nation, if the pen that will sign redistricting bills changes from Democratic hands to Republican hands in key states, that could easily translate to lost House seats via gerrymandering in 2012. Indeed, if the GOP comes up just short of the majority in 2010 (as a number of pundits are currently projecting), some carefully calibrated strokes of the redistricting pen in GOP-controlled processes around the nation can quite easily fill that gap.

So...yeah, the governor's races matter in Washington DC every bit as much as they matter in Olympia, Sacramento, and Annapolis.

Aside from their critical importance, the gubernatorial races deserve the eye of the political junkie for another reason--they are bound to be top-flight political theatre. The cast of characters and villains is second to none (I see your Rand Paul, and raise you a Tom Tancredo!), and the implementation of term limits in most states mean that more than half of the races on tap could easily be defined as competitive.

What follows is an early analysis of where we expect the races to be come November. Everyone's definition of terms like "toss-up" and "leans Democratic" vary, so let me define mine:

Toss-Up is defined as a race where the final margin of victory is currently projected as being between 0-5 points.

Leans D/R is defined as a race where the final margin of victory is currently projected as being between 6-10 points.

Likely D/R is defined as a race where the final margin of victory is currently projected as being between 11-20 points.

Comfortable D/R is defined as a race where the final margin of victory is currently projected as greater than 20 points.

An asterisk (*) indicates a race where a switch in partisan control of that governorship is anticipated.

Let's start the journey through the 37 contests for Governor with the races least likely to be exciting, and finish it up with the races that could easily be on a knife's edge all the way through November.

COMFORTABLE DEMOCRAT: Hawaii (*), New York
COMFORTABLE REPUBLICAN: Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee (*), Wyoming (*)

As you can see, three party shifts are virtually assured, heading into November. The Democrats are overwhelmingly likely to pick up one in Hawaii, although the identity of that Democrat remains unclear: the state awaits a competitive primary next month between former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann and former Congressman Neal Abercrombie. The GOP actually fielded arguably their best prospect in Lt. Governor Duke Aiona, but it is hard to find a pollster giving him much of a shot. Meanwhile, in New York, the GOP is busy trying to pick a winner between a guy who wants to house welfare recipients in prisons and a guy who used graphic 9/11 footage to highlight how insensitive it would be to 9/11 victims to build a mosque a few blocks away. Simple conclusion: there are no winners. Andrew Cuomo holds in a walk.

On the GOP side, it is hard to imagine that too many folks are expecting Tennessee and Wyoming to stay in the Dem column. In Tennessee, Democrat Mike McWherter faces enormous money and terrain shortfalls against GOP nominee Bill Haslam, the multimillionaire mayor of Knoxville. Meanwhile, Wyoming is Wyoming, and the Dems probably needed a far more acrimonious primary to overcome what is an enormous (and, if anything, growing) generic deficit. The GOP is also overwhelmingly favored in Kansas and Nebraska, two plains states where the GOP has comfortable footing and established candidates in current Governor Dave Heineman (NE) and retiring Senator Sam Brownback (KS).

LIKELY DEMOCRAT: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut (*), Minnesota (*), New Hampshire
LIKELY REPUBLICAN: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah

On the Democratic side, two incumbents are probably not as safe as they normally are, but still are pretty close to locks for re-election: Mike Beebe (Arkansas) and John Lynch (New Hampshire). Some polling has suggested that Colorado is a little more hostile to Democrats than it was in 2008. Two things are keeping that statehouse secure for the Democrats, though. They have their cleanup hitter coming off the bench in the form of popular Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and they are the beneficiaries of a good old-fashioned FUBAR on the other side in the form of a schism which has flawed nominee Dan Maes in the GOP slot and former Republican Tom Tancredo in the slot of the Constitution Party. The Dems, post-primary, are also favored to pick off two GOP-held mansions in usually blue territory: Connecticut and Minnesota.

On the Republican side, a few incumbents reside here, although three of them were not elected originally to their posts: Sean Parnell (Alaska), Jan Brewer (Arizona), and Gary Herbert (Utah). Brewer, pre-immigration debate, appeared somewhat vulnerable. The race may tighten again, but multiple polls have shown her pulling out a bit of a lead on Democratic state AG Terry Goddard. One incumbent to watch here is Idaho's Butch Otter. Polling here has suggested that this race could shockingly move towards "Leans GOP" status, as former college professor Keith Allred is hovering around 10-12 points behind. Nevada probably lost a lot of its potential when Brian Sandoval ended the career of scandal-enmeshed GOP incumbent Jim Gibbons. The remaining trio of open-seat races (Alabama, Oklahoma, and South Dakota) get rated here largely on terrain.

LEANS DEMOCRAT: Massachusetts
LEANS REPUBLICAN: Georgia, Illinois (*), Iowa (*), Michigan (*), Pennsylvania (*), South Carolina

Only one race gets rated "Leans Democrat", and it might be headed the other way were it not for a surprising and somewhat counterintuitive turn of events. In 2009, incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick learned that one of his fellow Dem statewide officers, treasurer Tim Cahill, was running for Governor as an Independent. The notion of two Democrats running against a GOP nominee seemed daunting, but then polls revealed something intriguing. Instead of Patrick and Cahill splitting the Democratic vote, Cahill and GOP nominee Charlie Baker split the anti-incumbent vote. Patrick has led in virtually every poll taken this year.

On the GOP side, we see a quartet of Dem-held seats leaning the other way, all in the Midwest or Industrial states. Two races (Pennsylvania and Michigan) are open seats where Democrats have to overcome the drag of outgoing two-term incumbents who have entered into that window of unpopularity that often accompanies longtime officeholders. The other two races (Iowa and Illinois) feature incumbents whose approval numbers are flagging. The only saving grace in that pair of races is GOP frontrunners (Terry Branstad in Iowa and Bill Brady in Illinois) with potentially exploitable flaws. In Iowa, the Dems can still mine the long political history of Branstad in the Hawkeye State (where he has already served as Governor for 16 years). In Illinois, Brady is a little-known downstate legislator whose politics are considerably to the right of the state. In the South, there are two races (South Carolina and Georgia) where the ideological excesses of one candidate (SC GOP nominee Nikki Haley) and the ethical excesses of the other (former GA Congressman Nathan Deal) might open up windows of opportunity for the Democrats to pick off a seat in nominally hostile territory.

TOSS-UP (6 D, 5 R): California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin

In these eleven races are the key to whether November will be greeted with smiles or frowns in DGA or RGA headquarters. If all the lean/likely/comfortable races fall as projected, the GOP is looking at a net gain of three governorships, which would place the balance of power at near-parity (26 R/24 D). If the toss-ups fall disproportionately to the GOP, then they could have a pickup of anywhere between 4-9 seats, which would ensure that a solid majority of the nation's governors will be Republican when redistricting kicks off in 2011. But if the toss-ups swing back toward the Democrats, they could hold or even slightly pad their majority of the statehouses, an almost inconceivable show of strength in a trying electoral climate.

CALIFORNIA: This is a classic battle of terrain versus money. California is a blue state, one where the generic lean to the Democrats is fairly profound. But the GOP has a candidate (Meg Whitman) who has already spent nine figures out of her own pocket to hold the seat for the GOP. Whitman has been within the margin of error of Democratic nominee Jerry Brown throughout. Should Democrats be concerned that Whitman has been able to pull close in what is admittedly an ugly climate, or should Republicans be concerned that Whitman has all of these inherent advantages, and still can't pull into a consistent lead?

FLORIDA: Few races have shifted more in the last few months than the race in the Sunshine State. The GOP primary in Florida (which comes to a merciful end of Tuesday) has been one of the most expensive, ugliest affairs in the 2010 cycle. Rick Scott spent nearly $40 million to win the nod, and polling in the past week shows that his efforts will be for naught. But Bill McCollum has gone from a lock to hold the seat for the GOP to a guy with no money (having blown his war chest fending off Scott) and badly damaged favorability. Democrat Alex Sink, meanwhile, has been able to look like the grown-up for the past few months, and has moved into a slight lead. Bud Chiles (the son for former Governor Lawton Chiles) looked like a potential Dem spoiler when he announced early in the Summer, but polls show him drawing fairly evenly from both parties. This would truly be an improbable pickup for the Dems, who were watching Sink trail by double digits to McCollum just four short months ago.

MAINE: Maine's gubernatorial elections are often a mystery to predict, because this is a state that is not afraid to embrace Independent candidacies (witness Governor Angus King, who served two terms here as an Independent from 1995 to 2003). The pattern holds in 2010, as Democrat Libby Mitchell and Republican Paul LePage (a surprise winner in the GOP primary) are joined by Eliot Cutler, a former Democrat who has polled in the double-digits as an Independent candidate. Sadly, only Rasmussen has deigned to poll the general. Their predictable results (great news for the GOP!) have yet to get outside confirmation, but one wonders if a teabagger-friendly candidate (LePage was the weapon of choice for the movement in the primary) can win in a state that Barack Obama carried easily in 2008.

MARYLAND: In the mid-Atlantic, one of the most high-profile races in 2010 is this sequel of one of the more high-profile races of 2006. Democrat Martin O'Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore, scored a clear win over then-incumbent Republican Robert Ehrlich four years ago. This time around, Ehrlich is back, but the strong Democratic tailwind of 2006 has been replaced by a headwind whose strength might be debatable, but whose existence at this point certainly is not. O'Malley still holds a slight lead, which might be legit. Ehrlich is clearly a known quantity, so the usual rules about challengers having a lot of upside may not apply here.

NEW MEXICO: This race has a lot of intriguing quirks to it. This was a state that seemed to shoot from a bellwether state to at least a light blue state in 2008, when Obama carried the state by 15 points. But outgoing Democratic Governor Bill Richardson is another one of those relatively unloved second-term outgoing executives, and the GOP nominated a Hispanic woman from bluish Dona Ana County in District Attorney Susana Martinez. Democrats counter with Lt. Governor Diane Denish. Every recent poll in this race (although it has been a while since we've seen one) has been a pure coin flip.

OHIO: If there is a race of the eleven that is flirting with leaving "toss-up" status, it is this one. Ted Strickland is an incumbent that is clearly struggling with public approval, and polls show him starting to trail former GOP Congressman John Kasich. Strickland's ace-in-the-hole might be Kasich himself, who cashed in big time in his post-Congressional days and will have to defend a few things (Lehman Brothers comes immediately to mind) that might be tough to defend in the current environment.

OREGON: This race joins Florida as a race that has changed markedly in recent months. Former Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber has come out of several years in the political wilderness to reclaim the job he held between 1995 and 2003. The national climate seems to be holding him back a bit, as well as the unique opponent he faces--Chris Dudley. The GOP nominee is largely known to Oregon voters as a bench player for the NBA's Portland Trailblazers. While Dudley built up a fair amount of name recognition from that gig, his political chops are still somewhat of a mystery. The DGA is helpfully trying to fill the gaps with a new website which is a fairly effective attempt to define Dudley. Expect Team Kitzhaber to work hard to define Dudley politically in a state where the terrain should still favor Democrats incrementally.

RHODE ISLAND: One thing is near-certain--the GOP will lose their nearly two decade stranglehold on the Rhode Island governor's mansion. The question is whether the GOP will be replaced by a Democrat (state treasurer Frank Caprio) or a Republican-turned-Independent (former U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee). Chafee is not a standard-issue Republican, of course. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, and was the least conservative member of the U.S. Senate when he served from 1999-2007. Caprio dodged a primary when state Attorney General Patrick Lynch elected to stand down several weeks ago.

TEXAS: One would suspect that, in this climate, an incumbent Governor in a traditionally Republican state should be safe and sound in 2010. In the Lone Star State, at least, that suspicion would be way off. Incumbent Republican Rick Perry survived a high-profile primary from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, but the fatigue that comes with longtime incumbency (he has already been on the job for nearly ten years) has put him in a fairly difficult position against Bill White. White may well have been the strongest Democrat the party could have fielded: a popular former mayor of Houston who has been able to go blow-for-blow with Perry on the fundraising front. The polls have been so close here that it is impossible to call this a "sleeper race" anymore.

VERMONT: This race, despite being a toss-up, has received little attention and scant polling. Republicans have held this seat since 2002, when Jim Douglas replaced outgoing Governor Howard Dean in an upset over Democratic nominee Doug Racine. With the seat open in 2010 upon Douglas' decision to retire, Racine is back. He is not alone this time, however, as a quintet of potentially competitive Democrats are in the mix. The Democratic field will shake out next week, with Tuesday's primary. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is generally considered to be the favorite, but this could be close. Republican Lt. Governor Brian Dubie has been quietly waiting, raising more cash than the Democrats and hoarding it (Dubie doesn't have a primary). This one could be extremely close: while Democrats dominate the state in federal elections, the GOP is often competitive in statewide offices.

WISCONSIN: It is a battle of the greater Milwaukee area in 2010, as three candidates repping the region are the frontrunners to replace outgoing Democrat Jim Doyle. The Democratic nominee will almost certainly be Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who also served for years as a Congressman from the region. On the Republican side, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and former southern Wisconsin Congressman Mark Neumann are squaring off in next month's primary. Walker was considered the strong favorite, but he did not have the best week, as charges of latent racism followed a video put out by team Walker that meant to criticize the President on mass transit, but wound up being a pretty ridiculous unforced error by Walker. Polls give Walker a narrow edge, but Barrett is still very much in the game.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/22/First_Amendment_values'

21:02

First Amendment values

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Let's say you're the key operatives and media strategists behind the party out of power. Let's say that your party's nominee challenging the Senate Majority Leader hates black football jerseys because they're the tool of Satan. And let's say that another of your Senate candidates wants to do away with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or kidnapped a girl in college to go take some bong hits. And let's say that your semi-official slogan is the "Party of No" because you've been obstructing every single badly-needed piece of reform that the majority party has been trying to institute since the beginning of the term. And for some reason, you still have the momentum entering the November election. Under these circumstances, it would stand to reason that your official propaganda arm would do anything to change the subject. And so it has: by focusing on the one subject that no Senator, Governor and Congressman can do a thing about.

It should come as no surprise that as the November election draws closer, the conservative movement would choose to stop focusing on things that legislators are responsible for (such as what sort of legislation to pass--and focus instead on something they have no control over (such as where a private entity builds a community center and house of worship). Democrats may be unpopular right now, but Republicans are just as unpopular. Meanwhile, the last thing conservatives want is to have a fight about actual legislation; they tried running briefly on the idea of repealing health care reform, but that fizzled. They certainly can't run on opposition to Wall Street reform, or the Lily Ledbetter Act, any other of the good pieces of legislation passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama.

But fortunately for them, they don't have to. This may seem as surprising: after all, elections are supposed to be about giving the voters an opportunity to decide which candidate is going to enact policy that would be more aligned with their interests. If only. This topic is explored in depth in Drew Westen's seminal work, The Political Brain. In one sentence, the book's upshot is this: Democrats spend all of their time trying to appeal to the rational brains of voters through facts, figures and laundry lists of legislative accomplishments, while Republicans focus on more emotional topics, such as narratives and values. And guess which side of the brain is stronger?

If voters were completely logical and practical, it would make no sense whatsoever for an entire movement to all of a sudden focus on an issue over which its candidates have no control. Even if the Republicans retook the House and the Senate, there would be nothing they could do to prevent Imam Rauf from developing Park 51 at its currently intended. location if he managed to raise the funds and get his team in place. But as Westen has conclusively demonstrated, that's not how voters make their judgments.

From an emotional point of view, people are uncomfortable with Park 51, regardless of where they stand on the more practical, legal issue of whether the government ought to ban it. And when conservatives express their own animosity toward the project, they are expressing an emotional shared value with voters. And during a time when voters seem fed up with both parties in terms of actually getting anything done, this source of emotional connection could end up just as strong a driver as any agreement with a checklist of stated platform positions: after all, if a candidate shares your basic fundamental values, you just might implicitly assume that they'll vote the right way on complicated legislative issues.

This issue puts Democrats on their heels: the typical Democratic response citing the First Amendment guarantees of free exercise of religion is a statement simply on whether or not Park 51 has a right to be built, but it doesn't address the issue of how the Democratic candidate actually feels about the issue--the emotional, hazy question of "should" or "shouldn't." Actually answering that question forces Democrats to either go outside the majority of American sentiment, or seem like they're making a much-delayed attempt at latching onto the majority opinion in a desperate attempt to save face. Neither of these options is acceptable.

This sticky political situation is fraught with danger, but there is opportunity in it as well. The Republicans are trying to go back to the playbook from 2004 and 2006 and use the Park 51 project as a referendum for exploring how concerned Democrats are about "national security" and "protecting America"--and the debate is playing out along similar lines to the old debates about FISA legislation, domestic spying, and our rights under the Fourth Amendment.

As thereisnospoon pointed out to me recently, though, Democrats have an opportunity to use their support for Park 51 to reinforce their existing narrative about supporting the little guy. Democrats support the right of middle-class moderate Muslims to worship in peace for the same reasons that we support extending unemployment insurance for those hard-hit in these economic times. For the same reasons that we support the right of the LGBT community to get married. Because even when it's slightly unpopular, our fundamental values is to stand up for people's basic fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Meanwhile, the Republicans are hating on hardworking immigrants who likely escaped oppression in their home countries to come here in search of a better life, all while doing their absolute best to protect the bankers on Wall Street who nearly wrecked the world just four blocks away.

That's what the Democratic Party is about. And we shouldn't hesitate to include Park 51 proudly into our narrative, rather than trying to defend it from theirs.

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19:00

Who are these people?

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So, the Republicans have figured out an election strategy. It can't be the economy, because they're already getting the full benefit of the Obama economic recovery program's shortcomings, and too much focus on the recovery would necessitate a focus on why a recovery was even necessary; and the electorate hasn't forgotten who is most to blame. It can't be corporate corruption, because the Republicans are wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate plutocracy, and have opposed any Democratic attempts at regulation or forced responsibility. It can't be the environmental awareness that has awakened in the aftermath of the BP oil disaster, because criticizing the president necessarily leads to questions of an alternative response, and the Republican alternative of doing even less is not going to lead to more votes. Unemployment is out, because the Republicans don't want to help the unemployed. Health care doesn't work, because the Republicans don't want health care to work, and repealing the president's health care plan would start the whole mess all over again; and nobody wants to start the whole mess all over again. When you're the Party of No, you have to give the voters a reason to say "yes." Abnegation and abdication aren't good campaign themes.

So, the Republicans want to make the planned Islamic center and mosque that would be built sort of near Ground Zero into a nationwide campaign theme. And never mind that it has nothing to do with national politics. And more specifically, never mind the pain and suffering it inflicts on innocents who already have endured far too much pain and suffering. Certain Democrats deserve condemnation for their own efforts at playing politics with a bigotry that deserves scorn and vilification, and the best advice for elected Democrats has been that repeatedly offered by Big Tent Democrat: stop talking about it; but the Republicans aren't merely floundering around trying to sound nuanced and wise while at best only embarrassing themselves, they're deliberately exploiting the worse devils of human nature. They're not seeking understanding or reconciliation, they're seeking to inflame. It's what Republicans so often do, particularly on the national level. They stand for nothing that is good for the common humanity, so they try to divide humanity by inciting people to stand against one another. Fear-mongering. It's a tired and decrepit template, but it may be all they know to do.

The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union is gone. No one is afraid of China or Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela. Terrorism is a tricky topic, because Republicans don't want people to remember that 9/11 should have been prevented, and that the man most responsible for it got away when he should have been caught. People just aren't as frightened about what's out there in the world, right now, so the only way to fear-monger is to focus attention on what's right here at home. That the Islamic center and mosque would be a place of worship and dialogue and community-building is irrelevant. That it's not actually at Ground Zero is irrelevant. That there are other houses of worship in the vicinity is irrelevant. That the people who want to build and use the center and mosque had nothing at all to do with the devastating attacks of 9/11 is irrelevant. That they might not even have the funding and plans to build it is irrelevant. The only thing relevant to Republicans is that it is a possible opportunity to identify an Other against whom paranoia, xenophobia, and plain old bigotry can be used for political gain. If there was a viable alternative Other, even the Republicans wouldn't be wasting time and energy on this waste of time and energy. Many of those caterwauling about this probably aren't even really bigots in their own hearts. But that only makes them worse. Because bigotry often is based on ignorance and irrational fears. It often can be alleviated, and sometimes even eliminated, by communicating and educating with compassion and wisdom. But deliberately exploiting ignorance and irrational fears is something far more sinister. It is not ignorant, it is fully conscious. It is not irrational, it is meticulously planned.

As previously noted, the modern Republican Party was build on the exploitation of racism. Nixon's Southern Strategy. Reagan refining it, beginning with his speech on "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The first Bush and Willie Horton. And even now, we have the continued idealizing of the Confederacy, and the normalizing of racism by the likes of Beck, Breitbart, Coulter, Faux News, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly. But to some on the right, racism isn't an ends, it's a means. And race is but one aspect of that means. The key is to turn people against one another so that reason is clouded, fears are heightened, and just enough people are demonized and marginalized. If bigotry against blacks isn't enough, there's also homophobia. Lee Atwater, who ran the elder Bush's political operation, may at the end of his life have come to regret some of his behavior, as he famously apologized to Mike Dukakis, but he never apologized to the black community whom the Willie Horton ads so viciously attempted to stereotype. And when the younger Bush built his political career on the strategies of Atwater's old friend Karl Rove, it was the same basic idea but with a different targeted demographic. Rove has been called a lifelong gay baiter, and while he was working for Bush, Republicans nationwide began promoting state ballot measures banning gay marriage, often in states that never would have legalized gay marriage in the first place. The real goal was to drive turnout of homophobic voters, which was understood to equate with improving Republican electoral prospects. As Republican strategist Charles Black admitted, in 2006:

"It’s a game of margins," said Charles Black, a Republican strategist who consults frequently with Karl Rove, the chief White House political strategist. "You’ve got about 20 House races and probably half a dozen Senate races that are either dead even or very, very close. So if it motivates voters in one or two to go vote, it could make a difference."

Of course, by that year, the countless failures and disasters of the Bush-Cheney administration weighed more in the minds of even those marginal voters than did their fear of gay love. What had helped in 2004 didn't do much in 2006. But it was the attempt that mattered. It's hard to believe that most smart Republican strategists seriously worried about the mythical negative social impacts of gay marriage, but they certainly wanted to exploit those who did harbor such false fears. It's the demonization that counts; and if demonizing blacks or gays doesn't work, there are other demographics to target.

In 1994, California Republicans promoted the xenophobic Proposition 187, and Republican Governor Pete Wilson rode its coattails to re-election. In this case, the strategy ultimately backfired, because the law was struck down in court, Wilson's presidential ambitions went nowhere, and the political backlash ended up devastating Republicans among California's increasingly diverse populace. Democrats ended up controlling all state offices, and only the arrogance and ineptitude of Gray Davis allowed Republicans even but a foot back in the door. What is now happening in Arizona also seems to be helping an incumbent Republican governor, but an increasingly purple and also increasingly diverse electorate might soon enough coalesce around a different attitude. But once again, the specifics are less important than the intentions. Once again, the Republicans are seeking political gain by stereotyping a minority population, while consciously inflaming bigotry against it.

As campaign strategies, much of this makes sense. At times, it works. When it doesn't work, a new demographic group can be targeted. But for the Party of No, it's the only game in town. And by persistently pursuing a politics that attempts to turn people against one another, that deliberately shreds the very concept of a social fabric, and that can only succeed by exacerbating demographic distrust, the humanity of Republicans is called into question. What kind of people would do such things? What kind of people would do such things again and again? They are hurting the people they target, and they are also hurting the nation. Bigotry is bad enough, but this is worse. And they continue to get away with it, even when it doesn't produce the electoral results they intend. Because too many are too afraid to call them on it. The traditional media usually enable it. Their typically inane attempts to turn all facts into relativist partisan debates prevent an honest assessment of what really happened and what continues to happen.

Republicans exploit bigotry. They inflame it. They attempt to capitalize on it. This is not about politics, it's about that forgotten concept of basic human decency. People pursuing such strategies should not be enabled. They should not be tolerated. Because if anything should be absolutely intolerable, it's intolerance and the exploitation of intolerance. Pundits and reporters should not be allowing this to continue as an acceptable aspect of our political process. It should be identified for what it is. It should be condemned. Those responsible should be condemned. This isn't about Muslims or blacks or the LGBT community or immigrants, it's about all of us. It's about who we want to be. And the only people these strategies should be casting into the spotlight of public scorn are the people who create and use these strategies. How is it possible for such people to be allowed anywhere near the halls of power? How is it possible for such people to be taken seriously? The only question about them that really should be asked is how they live with themselves. How do such people become such people? Who are these people?

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/22/The_blessings_of_liberty'

17:00

The blessings of liberty

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"He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, [and] refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither."

--The Declaration of Independence

That was included among the principal grievances against George III enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Both practical and principled men, they recognized that the new country would have to be populated and they were anxious to attract large numbers of immigrants to this continent. The economic viability of the new country depended upon having a diverse and skilled populace.

On the principled side of things, they of course wanted to expand their vision of the blessings of liberty to all [propertied, white, male] persons of the world. Why shouldn't they? They were the beneficiaries of their forefathers (and mothers') ability to settle in this new land. Creating a new, flourishing democratic nation for the world to see and perhaps emulate meant not pulling the ladder of opportunity up after them.

But let's assume they took the attitude that the Dred Scott Republicans of today and would deny the benefits of citizenship to anyone whose parents weren't both born in the colonies. That would mean 22 of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, well, would probably have been denied that distinction.

George Clymer: his mother was born in the colonies, his father in England
Benjamin Franklin: mother born in the colonies, father in England
Thomas McKean: both parents emigrated from Ireland
Robert Morris: born in England
Benjamin Rush: his father was English, his mother probably Irish
James Smith: born in Ireland
George Taylor: born in Ireland
John Morton: parents were Finnish
George Ross: his father was born in Scotland
James Wilson: born in Scotland
Matthew Thorton: born in Ireland
Francis Lewis: born in Wales
Philip Livingston: father born in Scotland
Button Gwinnett born in England
Thomas Nelson, Jr.: father born in England
William Hooper: father born in Scotland
Edward Rutledge: father born in Ireland
John Witherspoon: born in Scotland
Samuel Chase: father probably born in England

And how about those who wrote and signed the Constitution? Two of them, Richard Bassett and Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer have parents of unknown national origins. Eighteen of them were either born outside of the colonies or had one or both parents, including from the list above, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, James Wilson, George Read, and John Rutledge. The others:

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney: his mother was born in the British West Indies
Alexander Hamilton: born in the British West Indies
Pierce Butler: born in Ireland
James McHenry: born in Ireland
Richard Dobbs Spaight: parents born in Ireland and England
Hugh Williamson: parents born in Ireland
William Few: parents born in England
William Paterson: born in Ireland
Thomas Fitzsimons: born in Ireland
Jared Ingersoll: parents born in England
William Jackson (Secretary): born in England

Taken to its logical extreme, the desire to exclude anyone from the rights of citizenship on the basis of where their parents were born would invalidate the participation of those men in founding the nation. Not that there's much logic in the extremism of Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Jefferson Beauregard Session, III and, of course, John Boehner. Would they take it to this extreme? Of course not, but where would they draw the line on birthright citizenship? Would they let Michelle Malkin stay? Gov. Bobby Jindal? Former Senator Pete Domenici? Astronaut Jose Hernandez? Alberto Gonzales?

Gonzales, in fact, just wrote about the debate:

Like most Americans, I am a descendant of immigrants and a grateful beneficiary of the opportunities available to our nation's citizens. My grandparents emigrated from Mexico in the early 20th century seeking a better life, and they found it working in the fields and dairy farms of Texas. Diversity is one of the great strengths of the United States -- diversity fueled by the migration of ethnicities, cultures and ideas....

Based on what I have observed, most illegal immigrants come to America to provide for their families, and by most accounts, they contribute to our economy.

How embarrassing is it for these lawmakers to be schooled on the principles of the rule of law by Alberto "The Geneva Conventions are Quaint" Gonzales?

And of course, there's also the reality of this ginned up "drop and leave" epidemic Lindsey Graham swears is ruining the nation. That reality is, according to PolitiFact:

Because citizen children cannot sponsor their parents for citizenship until they turn 21 -- and because if the parents were ever illegal, they would have to return home for 10 years before applying to come in -- having a baby to secure citizenship for its parents is an extremely long-term, and uncertain, process....

Undoubtedly, citizenship plays some role in the decisions by undocumented immigrants to come to the U.S. After all, they have made a decision to make their future in the United States rather than in their home country, and part of building a better life in the U.S. is having citizenship for their children. But on Fox, Graham termed the practice "drop and leave," which suggests that illegal immigrants are coming here for the primary purpose of having babies with citizenship, then rushing home to wherever they came from.

Graham's comments on this are misleading. While that does appear to be happening with affluent "birth tourists," it's important to understand that those affluent "birth tourists" are not the ones illegally crossing the Rio Grande or the Sonoran desert. They are coming here with the proper legal papers and giving birth. Thus, whatever public policy challenges arise from "birth tourism" are separate and distinct from the public policy challenges of illegal immigration -- which is not at all the impression that Graham gave in his Fox appearance.

The motivating factor for people coming to the United States, legally and illegally, remains unchanged from when those men listed above signed their names to declare freedom--through the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, through the fight for suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment and finally full voting rights with the 24th and 26th Amendments. Opportunity. The whole idea embodied in the Preamble: "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

The great American idea has always been about creating a better life for each successive generation: "our posterity." It's been a long evolution to extend that vision beyond the white, male, property owners who were the original "We the people" to every person inhabiting this land. There's one amendment in particular that secures those blessings of liberty.

Constitutional historian Richard Beeman writes in his newly issued Penguin Guide to the Constitution: "Perhaps the most significant and far-reaching amendment to the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment is viewed by many scholars and jurists as the provision of the Constitution that has brought the principles enunciated in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence into the realm of constitutional law." In other words, equality, life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness were now constitutionally protected rights.

Messing with that is just downright un-American.

There are other words to keep in mind in this debate, words that are so integral to the American experience that they grace the very symbol of the nation.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/22/Midday_open_thread'

16:00

Midday open thread

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Science Daily:

By 2100 only 18% to 45% of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in global, humid tropical forests may remain as we know them today, according to a new study led by Greg Asner at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. The research combined new deforestation and selective logging data with climate-change projections. It is the first study to consider these combined effects for all humid tropical forest ecosystems and can help conservationists pinpoint where their efforts will be most effective. The study is published in the August 5, 2010, issue of Conservation Letters.

The New Yorker has the last interview with François Truffaut, which previously had only been available in a book. Richard Brody on its revelation:

I long felt that Truffaut’s pursuit of craftsmanship, sentiment, and charm apparent in his later films overwhelms, even obliterates, the drive for artistic individuality and expression. I don’t think so anymore; I’ve come to think, instead, that he emulated the Hollywood filmmakers he admired, and turned his films into satisfactory simulacra of the mainstream productions of the day, while leaving the most personal and daring elements just out of view and below the surface but available to viewers who approach them with the inner eye of reflection and sympathy. (What’s more—as I wrote earlier this year—the increasing distance of his ideas from the images that convey them is also a function of his increasing technical command.)

For what it's worth, I've always considered the charming and sentimental Two English Girls to be Truffaut's most under-appreciated masterpiece.

You have to respect this:

The controversial proposed New York City mosque and Islamic center is not the "ground zero mosque" and its location two blocks away is "near" – not "at"— ground zero of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, The Associated Press’ style arbiter told staffers in a memo Thursday.

AP staffers also were reminded that the mosque would be but part of a larger Islamic center, and that Muslim prayer services have been held at the proposed site since 2009.

Roscoe Bartlett is the sole Republican member of Maryland's Congressional delegation.

An audit by the Federal Election Commission has uncovered significant errors in Rep. Roscoe Bartlett's campaign account, the agency disclosed this week.

A final audit of the Bartlett for Congress Committee for 2007 and 2008 found that it failed to report dozens of expenses and significantly under-reported the amounts he raised and spent during that period, which covered his '08 re-election run.

The FEC, which enforces federal election law, has not imposed any penalties. Nor did it describe the errors as intentional. However, it said it reserved the right to take enforcement action.

Students and programmers from Columbia Engineering, NYU, and Princeton have created a visualization of the events revealed by the WikiLeaks Afghanistan logs.

As The Times noted in one article, "The archive is clearly an incomplete record of the war. It is missing many references to seminal events and does not include more highly classified information."

But the visualization shows surges of activity over this five-year period, growing drastically as the war progresses.

The direct Vimeo link is here.

In England, legal and medical experts are not allowing the strange case of David Kelly to be forgotten.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development holds a conference on housing, and somehow neglects to include affordable housing advocates.

Sometimes, there is a happy ending:

Blanca Catt -- the Portland teen who was at risk of being deported even though she was adopted by American parents -- has learned she's on the fast track to legally live, work and go to college in the United States.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent Catt a letter informing her that she should have her U visa within two months.

Catt was eligible for the U visa because she was a crime victim as a child. Catt was born in Mexico, was brought into the U.S. as a toddler and seized from abusive parents by state child-welfare workers. She was placed in foster care with American foster parents -- the Catts -- when she was 5. She was adopted when she was 8, and her parents say caseworkers told them their daughter automatically became a U.S. citizen because of the adoption.

They eventually learned that wasn't true -- the first inkling of trouble began when Catt was 16 and tried to get her driver's permit. Three years later, it looks like the end of their long fight may be in sight.

After her story appeared in The Oregonian, the offices of Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Earl Blumenauer called Catt's attorney offering to help.

Act surprised:

The economic crisis in the United States has reduced the use of routine medical care, and the cutbacks here are much deeper than in countries with universal health care systems, researchers say in a new report.

The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that "Americans, who face higher out-of-pocket health care costs, have reduced their routine medical care" much more than people in Britain, Canada, France and Germany.

Sometimes, the facts speak for themselves.

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13:59

The Golden Age

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From a modern day perspective, the US airplane sprang up in the Wright Brother's bicycle shop, and came into its own over European battlefields a decade later. And that's reasonably accurate with one caveat: most of the iconic biplanes that dueled above the muddy trenches of WW1 weren't made in the USA. In 1914 the Europeans had already mass produced thousands of aircraft while only about a hundred hand-made prototypes existed in the US¹. American manpower made a big difference in the outcome of the war, but US airpower arrived too little and too late.

After the war domestic aircraft production continued to lag. Alarmed by the slow pace of progress and now well aware of the military and commercial potential of airplanes, the US government stepped in with the Kelly Air Mail Act of 1925 which allowed the US post office to hire private pilots to carry mail. It saved a ton of money and time: if the government had to design and build their own aircraft, it would take years before airmail was available. The true price, at least as far as taxpayers were concerned, would have been the development, acquisition, maintenance, and operating cost of the planes divided by the number of parcels/pounds delivered. By hiring private owners the cost was much lower and airmail service could begin immediately.

US aircraft companies that had been struggling saw demand tick up. Just two years later Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St Louis into the pages of history, and US aircraft manufacturing, aided by investment capital flowing from Wall Street to main street, exploded. The 1930s, a decade otherwise marked by mass unemployment and a slow faltering recovery, is considered the golden age of aviation. Aircraft design enjoyed the largest peace-time burst of progress in history and employed thousands of people. Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart became household names. Mass production took hold, larger, reliable monoplanes with retractable landing gear and even pressurized cabins began rolling off assembly lines. And none too soon.

Without that golden age of innovation, America's influence in WW2, from the lend-lease of aircraft that served in the Battle of Britain to the D-day invasion, might have been reduced. How that would have affected the war is anyone's guess, but it's a good bet it would have lasted longer and millions more might have died. Instead, because of US air superiority, not only did the allies prevail faster, the spin offs in science, materials, electronics, and even progressive social changes like women in the workforce are today the stuff of legends.

No analogy is perfect, and I have grossly simplified this one despite suggestions from expert sources. But the similarities to NASA's proposed commercial crew program are striking. After the shuttle program ends, foreign manufacturers will once again be ahead of us and US astronauts will have to catch rides on Russian rockets. Just as the post office avoided enormous development costs and years of delay by capitalizing on domestic aircraft, NASA could get people and instruments to space way sooner using new spacecraft made by smaller emerging companies without paying the billions in development costs. Just as the US now leads the world in aerospace and employs hundreds of thousands of people who actually build things rather than trade paper for banks and insurance companies, the US space industry could lead in this field. And just as wealthy railroad barons and their army of political lackeys bitterly opposed competition and lobbied against the Kelly Act, powerful interests are working against commercial space: about 85% of NASA's current budget goes to the aerospace wing of the military-industrial complex and the defense industry is eager to keep that goose laying big fat golden eggs.

Something like the Kelly Act for the space-age will be up for a vote in September, along side legislation that would effectively kill it. The first bill in the Senate (S.3729) provides modest incentives to smaller, emerging spacecraft manufacturers who already have vehicles flying. The latter bill offered by the House (H. R. 5781) all but kills commercial space development in favor of a token version of George Bush's defunct Constellation program. HR 5781 as written would charge US taxpayers tens of billions for traditional aerospace contractors to develop new rockets that may not fly until 2020, if ever. I'll have some ideas about how to steer Congress in the right direction soon.

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12:02

Ninety years later

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Ninety years ago, a young man named Harry T. Burn, at the insistence of his mother to “be a good boy,” changed his vote from “nay” to “yea,” and the generations-long struggle for women’s suffrage was at last won.

It is easy to catalog the progress of the last nine decades. Women can vote, own property, earn a paycheck and keep the money in their own bank accounts, go to college and play sports there, and yes, run for and hold elected office. Three of the last four Secretaries of State have been women. The Speaker of the House is a woman. Three of the nine Supreme Court justices are women. And let us not forget that a woman very nearly won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.

But -– and of course there is a but –- it is not enough. Because despite these achievements, control of our economy and our government still rests almost exclusively within the hands of men. For women to achieve full equality, they must have a real role in making the decisions that affect their lives. And that role requires real, and proportionate, representation -- something 90 years of struggle for equality has yet to achieve.

In the private sector, while women now comprise the majority of the labor force, they are still vastly outnumbered by men at the executive levels. As of 2009, only thirteen of the Fortune 500 companies were run by women. And those women CEOs make only 85 percent of what their male counterparts make.

In fact, a study by the non-profit research group Catalyst found that at the current rate, it will take another 40 years for women to achieve "parity with men in the corporate officer ranks."

Forty years.

Will it take that long for women to achieve pay equity as well? Maybe. The incremental progress toward pay equity has not come without legislation guaranteeing women the right to work and to earn the same wages as their male counterparts -- and even then, a significant pay gap still exists today. As does the forceful opposition to such legislation.

Despite protestations from those who scoff at evidence of this disparity, like the Chamber of Commerce -– who has, for decades, opposed every single piece of legislation intended to address this disparity, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, the 1964 Civil Rights Act protecting pregnant women from discrimination, the Equal Pay Law, and the Paycheck Fairness Act -- the pay gap is real, and it is not merely the result of women choosing lower-paying jobs. It is a reflection of our deficiencies as a nation to recognize the obstacles and needs of half the labor force.

Just look at the utter failure of our country to address the reality of working mothers. Our country continues to treat working mothers as if they were an aberration, rather than the norm, and as such, any difficulties women encounter in trying to earn a living and care for their children is a problem for them to solve, a problem in which the government has no interest. Those women who "choose" to work and have families are left to their own devices, unworthy of the government's care or resources.

But working mothers are, in fact, the norm: 80 percent of American women have children, and of those, 66 percent of them are employed, mostly in full-time jobs. A country that valued women, and mothers, would address the obstacles women face, rather than dismiss them as a consequence of women's choices, a consequence for which the solution is, according to the Chamber of Commerce, "choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home."

That's really no solution at all.

From the moment a woman enters the work force, she will earn less than her male counterpart -- and if she has children, as the majority of American women do, it will cost her. She will end up making significantly less than men, according to a recent report by The New York Times.

And it will cost her in other ways. Unlike 168 countries that provide some form of paid family leave, most of which offer a minimum of 14 weeks and as much as a full year, the United States has only the Family and Medical Leave Act, which applies only to companies with 50 or more employees, and which guarantees only 12 weeks of unpaid leave. For most American women, three months without a paycheck is simply not a possibility. And even then, women still face the very real threat of losing their jobs anyway if they actually exercise that right.

Once working mothers do go back to work, they face the enormous expense of childcare -- an expense that ranges from $3,016 a year to $13,480 a year -- or more. Without any aid from the government because, according to those like the Chamber of Commerce, the government and society in general should not have to concern itself with the "choices" women make to work and have children.

But in a nation in which women are so severely underrepresented in positions of power, is it any wonder that the "solution" offered them is simply to figure it out for themselves?

For all the progress women have made, they still comprise a mere 16 percent of Congress and 12 percent of governorships. That's not real representation; it's token representation. And token representation is not enough to implement real, systemic changes that are necessary to improving the lives of women, and therefore all Americans. Such under-representation is not without its consequences.

During the debate about health care reform, for example, Republican Senator John Kyl argued against a requirement that insurers offer basic maternity coverage. Why? Because it didn’t affect him.

"I don't need maternity care," Kyl said. "So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive."

Senator Debbie Stabenow was quick to point out to him, “I think your mom probably did."

Yes, John Kyl’s mother -– and 80 percent of all American women. Yet when the government is run largely by men, who see no need for something as basic as maternity care, is it any wonder that our system still refuses to acknowledge the needs of half the population?

That's what you get with token representation: the government's blind eye to problems that disproportionately impact women -- but, in reality, impact everyone. Senator Kyl certainly isn't the first to argue against legislation to help women, on the grounds that since he doesn't need it, it doesn't matter.

The antidote is greater -- much greater -- representation, a critical mass of representation.

Critical mass is an idea that has moved from science and sociology to political science and into popular usage over the last 30 years. The concept is borrowed from nuclear physics: It refers to the quantity needed to start a chain reaction, an irreversible propulsion into a new situation or process.

...[O]nce women reached a critical mass in an organization, people would stop seeing them as women and start evaluating their work as managers. In short, they would be regarded equally.

The report by The White House Project, assessing women's level of involvement and progress throughout the public and private sectors, offered the example of the Supreme Court (before Elena Kagan became its newest justice):

One woman is newsworthy -– she’s a first.

Two is better –- but still an exception, not the rule.

Three out of nine -– one in three -– stops being unusual.

We are a long way from women holding at least a third of the seats in Congress. It's no wonder, then, that legislation to address the needs of women is still the exception rather than the rule. It's no wonder, then, that too often, Congress dismisses as unnecessary programs to help women and their families -- programs that exist in every other industrialized nation in the world.

The answer, though, is not only to elect more women. There are now, as there have always been, women who work against the best interests of other women. Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies are merely the latest incarnation of the anti-women’s movement -- a movement to oppose real solutions for women, dressed up in a skirt and lipstick, as if to legitimize their efforts to block progress. Palin is really no different from Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who made a career out of telling women not to have careers, the woman who fought –- and continues to fight -– against equality for women.

More Sarah Palins and Phyllis Schlaflys and Mama Grizzlies are not the answer. Just as progressives work to elect more, better Democrats, so too do we need more, better women in politics, so that women are not just the exception, so that the obstacles women face are deemed significant enough to merit real solutions, so that the most basic needs of women cannot be dismissed as unnecessary just because men have no use for them.

Ninety years after that young Tennessee representative cast the deciding vote to enfranchise women, a battle was won. Women could, at long last, have a voice in the process of choosing their leaders. But the last 90 years have shown that it isn't enough. To create a nation that truly recognizes and values women and their contributions, women need to do more than just have a voice in the process of choosing leaders; they must have a voice in the process of leadership itself.

And that battle is far from over.

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10:00

Hannibal ad portas

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There is a clash of civilizations going on, and it has nothing to do with the Burlington Coat Factory Community Center. It's more fundamental than Christian vs. Muslim. It's reason vs. fear. Civilization vs. anarchy.

That clash is happening right here in America.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't believe that being a conservative equates with being evil. Over the course of our nation's history, many conservative figures have raised questions deserving of an answer. They framed their issues with ideas that were testable. They contributed to the national conversation in a meaningful, beneficial way. They acted not just out of raw self-interest, but with sincere desire to do what they believed best for our nation and its people.

After more than two centuries of trials both at home and abroad, we have results from those tests. Conservative economics haven't just brought on repeated failure here, they've done the same everywhere and in every time. Conservative social policies aimed at producing a country that's joined around a less diverse set of ideas haven't engendered strength through unity, but an inflexible fragility. Those questions have been asked and answered, but the results don't mean those who raised the conservative position were any less dedicated to discovering the truth and serving the nation.

Only that's not what's happening now. Those conservatives, the men and women who argued with reason and passion for the positions they believed best for our nation, have been replaced by something else altogether. The two sides in our national debate can no longer be characterized as simply "left" and "right." In a remarkably short time, we've witnessed the overthrow of the right by something new... only it's not really new at all.

For a long time I viewed this new crew with something of the same assumption that Jesus made on the cross: "forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing." Surely those tearing at the foundations of science would not have done so if they recognized the real danger their actions represented. Surely those calling for defense of the Constitution through limits on the freedoms it enshrines didn't grasp the contradictory nature of their positions. Surely those working to wrest the last crumbs of control from the powerless and carry them back to the powerful were unaware of years spent and lives lost in obtaining even this modest share of equity.

I no longer believe this is true. When Rush Limbaugh blames the BP disaster on "eco-terrorists," I don't believe he really thinks this is in any sense factual. When Newt Gingrich compares Muslims to Nazis, I don't believe he does it out of ignorance. When Glenn Beck says that President Obama will force doctors to perform abortions and Michael Savage says that the president will disband the Marine Corps, it's not because they are badly informed. When Sen. Pearce insists that the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to the children of immigrants, when Fox news moves the beginning of Obama's presidency so that the disasters of the Bush years land on his plate, when those who were so shocked that Godwin's Law might have been dented in a blog post two years ago are now shouting "Hitler" on the floor of the House and Senate -- I don't think it's because they've been pushed there through no choice of their own. Death panels? Do you think the people making that claim really believed it? What about global warming being caused by sun spots? How about the threat of Muslim terror babies?

The question of protecting the nation or the principles on which it was built is no longer the focus of "conservative" arguments -- it's not even a side note -- because this group no longer makes any distinction between the common good and their own self interest. They have reached the conclusion that their success is worth any price, even if that price is fatal to the founding principles of the nation. They have no canon but victory, no concept of restraint.

It's not surprising that this generation of Republicans has made a hero out of Joeseph McCarthy. They admire the way in which he cowed his enemies and the way in which he distorted the meaning of liberty. They admire him because he generated fear.

The question of "have you no sense of decency" has been answered. They do not -- at least not one that rises above their hunger for power.

For the unobservant, what's happening this November is just another in two centuries of mid-term elections. The press is already dusting off their talks from past cycles, ready to note how the numbers of each party in the House and Senate have been altered. They expect to devote an hour -- maybe two -- to highlighting what these changes say about the popularity of the president. They may go so far as to discuss how the results affect the fate of some bit of legislation (but don't count on it). You can bet that have some absolutely spectacular new charts prepared to show poll results and the rearrangement of seats in the legislative chambers.

But the story in this cycle isn't just numbers. What's at stake this November isn't holding Democratic gains in the House and Senate. It's not protecting Barack Obama's mojo. It's not advancing a progressive legislative agenda.

What we're facing in a few short weeks is a critical test; one that I believe may do more to determine our future than any action inside our own borders for over a century. More important even than the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Because the ideas put forward by men like Glenn Beck are not "just like fascism," they simply are fascism. It's the idea that personality can outweigh facts, and that force can author "justice" as well as any law. It's the conviction that those with hard-won knowledge are dangerous, and need to be overruled by "common sense." It's the view that history has an unfortunate bias, one that can be adjusted with a careful "correction" of the textbooks. It's the doctrine that only a portion of the populace is Real Americans deserving of liberty, and the rest must be dealt with as enemies. Those poisonous thoughts are sickeningly familiar, and they have lost none of their vile potency in the last sixty years.

Those that have taken the place of the traditional Republican Party (and the once reasonable politicians who have thrown over their long held ideals to grovel for these new masters) are not just battling with some aspects of science, they're waging war on reason. Not just tinkering with immigration policy, but sharply narrowing the meaning of the word "American." What's at stake isn't whether laws will be passed favorable to our positions, or whether laws will be passed that we don't like -- the real question is whether the United States will continue as a nation of laws.

We've been told, and polling data reflects, an "enthusiasm gap" between those who saw Barack Obama into office in 2008, and those who want to unseat him. Those massing on the right -- the birthers, Beckers, and baggers -- smell blood in the water. They've already seized the Republican Party and they mean to seize the nation. Somehow, for those not part of that movement, this election remains just another election. If that's going to change in the few short weeks that remain, it's going to have to be because some were willing to work, to raise the alarm, and to elevate what's at stake beyond a squabble between "left" vs. "right."

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/22/Sunday_Talk___A_Lie_Grows_in_Washington'

1:32

Sunday Talk - A Lie Grows in Washington

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0:18

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

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August 21, 2010

23:18

Polling and Political Wrap, 8/21/10

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All week, we have been offering birthday wishes to various folks. Today, a tangent on that--happy 51st birthday to...Hawaii! The beautiful archipelago became our fiftieth state on August 21st of 1959, when President Eisenhower signed a proclamation that came on the heels of the passage of a statehood bill in Congress and the overwhelming support of Hawaiians in a statewide referendum.

So a hearty mahalo to the state of Hawaii for being a critical part of the American fabric. With that, onward to the (very full) weekend edition of the Wrap...

THE U.S. SENATE

AK-Sen: Hotline On Call focuses on the forgotten primary
With just three days until the next time Americans head to the polls, most of the attention has been focused on Florida and Arizona. Lost in the shuffle, meanwhile, is a race that got a lot of early hype and then faded into the ether: the Senate primary in Alaska between incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski and Mama Grizzly's preferred candidate, attorney Joe Miller. Hotline on Call looks at the race, and comes up with a pretty decent reason why it fell of the radar screens: it might not be all that competitive. Despite the support of the Palin and Tea Party express crowds, Miller does not appear to have made any headway in his battle against Murkowski.

FL-Sen: Greene's biz dirty laundry hits Florida newspaper
When you are running for office, in part, of imparting your business acumen on the swamp in Washington, stories like this on Election Eve are bound to be a little bit unhelpful:

"We thought it was super. Somebody was going to invest money into the stores, get supplies, get us everything we need to run a business," she said, referring to Greene, whose Sunshine Energy LLC acquired the lease to her gas station and others in September 2009. "In the beginning, it seemed like that was going to happen. Then suddenly, nothing."

By February, Rose was having problems with vendors, who refused to deliver beer or soda unless they were paid cash. Her store and others occasionally ran out of gas because of supply problems. Payroll hours were cut. She put buckets around the store whenever it rained because a leak in the roof was not fixed.

"It started spiraling down, getting worse and worse," Rose said.

The convenience stores in question were eventually seized by the local landlord, who claimed that Greene's company breached contract by not providing proper maintenance of the properties. Greene, not surprisingly, is vehemently protesting the seizures, in a matter that has now gone to the courts.

GA-Sen: Second poll confirms Isakson is no lock in the Peach State
Less than a week after Rasmussen, of all people, showed that Republican incumbent Johnny Isakson could be potentially vulnerable, their finding was echoed by Insider Advantage. The southern-based pollster has Isakson under 50%, with the Republican at 47% and Democratic nominee Michael Thurmond at 35%. In what could provide an intriguing twist, I-A has Libertarian candidate Chuck Donovan at 7% of the vote. This means, of course, that 2010 could mimic 2008, when GOP Senator was forced into a post-November runoff election before he finished off Democrat Jim Martin.

IL-Sen: GOP pollster first in some time to claim a Kirk lead
It has been a good long while since a pollster has put Republican Congressman Mark Kirk out front in his battle with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias (early June, to be exact). But a GOP-leaning pollster, We Ask America, is claiming just that, releasing a survey showing Kirk with a 39-33 lead over Giannoulias. The difference is a large lead for Kirk with Independents (other pollsters have shown this metric far closer), and the fact that W.A.A. claims that Kirk is claiming 12% of the Democratic vote.

LA-Sen: Vitter dominating GOP primary, still wigging out about it
Here are two pieces of news out of the Pelican State that seem to lack a bit of congruency. Item #1: incumbent Republican David Vitter is not reacting particularly well to the hard-hitting new ad from GOP challenger Chet Traylor. Indeed, his campaign is throwing out lawsuit threats against any state radio stations that agree to run the ad. Item #2: Traylor is apparently not a dire threat to Vitter. A new poll out from Clarus Research gives Vitter a little sixty-nine point advantage (74-5) over Traylor, with perennial candidate Nick Accardo at 3%.

The pollster also hit on the Democratic primaries and general election. Congressman Charlie Melancon has a clear lead in the Democratic Senate primary, with 43% of the vote (both of his challengers combined log in at 5%). In the general, Vitter maintains a solid-but-not-dominant lead over Melancon, leading the Democrat by a 48-36 margin.

NH-Sen: Hodes latest Democrat to call for Warren nomination
Another day, another prominent Democratic challenger calling on President Obama to nominate Elizabeth Warren as the head of the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This time around, it is New Hampshire's Paul Hodes, who wrote the following on Friday: "Middle class Americans need a tough fighter like Dr. Warren to hold the Wall Street banks and credit card companies accountable. She saw what an out-of-control Wall Street was doing to our economy, and has fought hard every step of the way to tip the scales away from special interests and back towards average hard-working Americans."

WA-Sen: SUSA poll claims modest post-primary lead for GOP's Rossi
This is a rather eye-popping result: the first post-primary poll for SurveyUSA shows Republican Dino Rossi having no trouble consolidating the GOP vote...and then some. Rossi, according to SUSA, holds a seven-point edge (52-45) over incumbent Democratic Senator Patty Murray. It does seem somewhat peculiar that Murray will not be able to even hold down the 46+% that she earned just this past Tuesday. Evidently, SUSA is forecasting a surge of GOP voters to the polls in November that simply won't be matched by the Democrats.

WV-Sen: Manchin has huge lead in Senate special election
Local pollster RL Repass looks ahead to November in the Mountain State, and finds that Democratic Governor Joe Manchin is going to ride his high popularity (65% job approval) into a new gig in Washington DC. The local pollster gives Manchin a twenty-two point lead over self-funding GOP businessman John Raese (54-32). Repass also looks ahead to 2012, and finds Republican Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant as the frontrunners to replace Manchin in the governor's mansion.

THE U.S. HOUSE

AZ-08: Kelly's final pre-primary gambit--dissing Mama Grizzly?
Wow...this is pretty damned interesting. Jesse Kelly, the twenty-something veteran who is running as the GOP teabagger alternative in the hot primary to challenge Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, took a pretty interesting swipe at Sarah Palin. Kelly knocked Palin (who he still says has his 2012 support, given the current field) for making politically safe endorsements (Carly Fiorina and Terry Branstad come immediately to mind), saying that voters want "political courage" right now. Kelly's establishment challenger, former state legislator Jonathan Paton, immediately wedded himself to Palin, lambasting Kelly for saying not-nice things about the self-appointed GOP kingmaker. In the strangest footnote to this quite-strange story, this may well be the only competitive race in the Union in which Palin has not offered an endorsement.

FL-22: Allen West's near-Macaca moment?
Memo to all Republican officeholders and office-seekers: those guys with video cameras at your events are called trackers. It is an accepted action in American politics. You do yourself absolutely no good wigging out about it. Just ask this dude. Allen West is the latest to step in. While his gaffe might not rise to George Allen level, it is pretty bad nonetheless. Noting the presence of a tracker for the Democrats, West jumped on the young man, saying the following:

"I know here today we have a representative from the Florida Democratic party and he is here to film me and his whole purpose of filming me is to take what I say and allow other people to distort it so they can misrepresent me. You know if we allow those Gestapo-type intimidation tactics to prevail in the United States of America what happens to our liberties, what happens to our freedoms?"

If saying that a tracker represents Gestapo tactics is a bit over-the-top, consider it even a bit more so when you consider that: (A) West's opponent, incumbent Democrat Ron Klein, is Jewish and (B) the tracker himself, who worked for the Florida Democratic Party, was the grandson of Holocaust survivors.

West might have other problems, however, like finding his district. An article in the Broward New Times two weeks ago noted that not only does West live in the adjoining 20th district, he recently held a town hall in the 19th district, and opened a campaign office in the...23rd district. He has, to his credit, opened some offices in the 22nd district in which he is running, as well.

IL-10/IL-11/IL-14: GOP takes two of three seats in GOP poll
In three potentially competitive seats, it looks like a net gain of one seat for the GOP, according to new polls out Friday from the GOP-friendly pollsters at We Ask America. The pollsters give the GOP two seats held by Democratic incumbents, claiming that Adam Kinzinger has an eye-popping twenty point edge in IL-11 (52-32) over Democratic freshman Debbie Halvorson, while GOP state legislator Randy Hultgren has a more modest seven point advantage over Bill Foster (44-37). The lone bright spot for the Dems: W.A.A. also looks at the open 10th district (vacated by GOP Senate nominee Mark Kirk), and finds that Democrat Dan Seals has a lead (43-40) over Republican Bob Dold.

NY-13: GOP field may splinter in McMahon seat
Democrat Michael McMahon is running for re-election in a potentially hostile district, but his GOP competitors are doing their best to pave his path to a second term. The latest move came from GOP challenger Michael Allegretti, who filed 5000 signatures to form a new party line for November. Dubbed the Taxpayer's Party, Allegretti seeks the ballot line because of a schism in the local Conservative Party, which endorsed Allegretti's GOP foe, Michael Grimm. What this means, if it goes through, is that both Grimm and Allegretti will be on the November ballot, no matter which of the two gentlemen survives next month's GOP primary. All hail intrasquad discord!

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

CA-Gov: Whitman has issues with her right flank as GOP confab opens
Apparently, $100+ million has not bought peace between GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman and her right-wing base. As a semi-annual Republican convention looms this weekend, several delegates who represent the more conservative members of the caucus are quite vocal in their discontent with the nominee. Echoing a charge made by many progressives, the rightward base is nothing with contempt that the Meg Whitman of the general election sounds dramatically different than the Meg Whitman of the primary election. One noted derisively: "There's almost nothing left of primary Meg...As long as that's the case, she's not going to get Republican voters to turnout." At issue, in particular, are the issues of immigration and taxes.

FL-Gov (R): Frontrunners bludgeon each other all the way to the finish
It will be a miracle if either business magnate Rick Scott or state Attorney General Bill McCollum have favorabilities over 30% when their long and brutal primary finally lurches to a conclusion this week. New campaign finance documents report that Scott dumped eight figures into his flagging campaign in the last twelve days ($12 million in total). Meanwhile, Scott was waylaid by the revelation (conveniently dropped on Election Eve by Team McCollum) that he invoked his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination an eye-popping 75 times during a 2000 deposition. The deposition came in the midst of a massive Medicare fraud investigation that the government was undertaking against Scott's company, Columbia/HCA.

FL-Gov (D): Get me Buddy Chiles...stat!
Best political proclamation of the year comes from minor Democratic candidate Brian Moore, who is pretty likely to be on the unpleasant end of a landslide in the Democratic Primary, courtesy of state CFO Alex Sink. Moore assailed Sink's selection of former state legislator Rod Smith as her choice for LG, and issued a press release today saying that after his victory on Tuesday, he plans on calling up "Buddy Chiles" and offering the LG gig to him. Bud Chiles (who, as far as we know, has never been known as Buddy) is currently waging an Independent bid for Governor. The son of former Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles, his campaign made clear today that despite the overwhelming temptation, they'll stick with their own Indie bid for the office.

GA-Gov: Runoff highly possible in competitive guv's race
The new Insider Advantage poll out of Georgia referenced earlier vis-a-vis the Senate race has even more intriguing numbers for Governor. The poll gives Republican Nathan Deal a narrow lead of just four points over Democrat Roy Barnes (45-41). What's more, the poll gives Libertarian challenger John Monds 5% of the vote. If the undecideds break anywhere near evenly, it becomes very possible that this election will be forced into a post-November runoff. Another wildcard, of course, is the potentially ongoing investigations about ethical issues which helped to hasten Deal's resignation from the Congress. While Deal maintained that he resigned to focus on his gubernatorial campaign, he was under an ethics committee investigation, one that was rendered moot when he left office. There have been persistent rumors that a federal investigation into the affair is still rolling along.

MN-Gov: Indie candidate carves center (center-right?) path in 1st ad
Anyone wondering which of the major nominees was going to be impacted most heavily by Independence Party gubernatorial nominee Tom Horner is probably still wondering in the wake of the third party challenger's first ad. Horner carves a pretty post-partisan path, assailing both parties for looking too far to the ideological edges (using the fairly disturbing graphic of a man whose eyes...one red and one blue...look in polar opposite directions). However, Horner's radio advertising features his former boss, moderate GOP Senator Dave Durenberger. That might be a nod to moderate GOPers nonplussed by the ideological rigidity of their party's nominee, Tom Emmer.

OR-Gov: Kitzhaber catches break as leftish third party stands down
Democratic gubernatorial nominee (and former two-term Governor) John Kitzhaber has one less electoral headache to deal with, as the presumptive candidacy of left-leaning third-party challenger Jerry Wilson was denied by the party itself Thursday evening. Wilson, who drew 7% of the vote in a recent SUSA poll, lost his ballot line when the party elected not to fill their spot on the ballot for Governor (they did, however, choose to do so in several downballot races). There are a couple of competing theories as to why this happened: some question Wilson's plan to wage an internet-only campaign, while Wilson himself says he was told that the party was concerned that he might fail to reach the 1% of the vote standard, which would cost the party their guaranteed line on the ballot. Kitzhaber has had great luck with left-of-center Indie candidacies. Three weeks ago, the Pacific Green Party also declined to field a gubernatorial candidate.

THE RAS-A-POLL-OOZA

Given that the Ras-sies have "some dude" (much love to Swing State Project for that term) within sixteen points of Barbara Mikulski in Maryland, I think it is safe to say that the House of Ras hasn't lost their touch yet, despite having some numbers that have been mimicked by other pollsters in recent days. I'd also place bets that the Alabama Governor's race is closer than the betting line Rasmussen puts up to close out the week.

AL-Gov: Robert Bentley (R) 58%, Ron Sparks (D) 34%
AR-Gov: Gov. Mike Beebe (D) 53%, Jim Keet (R) 33%
AR-Sen: John Boozman (R) 65%, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) 27%
MD-Sen: Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) 55%, Eric Wargotz (R) 39%
WY-Gov: Matt Mead (R) 58%, Leslie Peterson (D) 24%

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/21/FL_22__Tolerance_causes_terrorism_'

22:16

FL-22: Tolerance causes terrorism?

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21:00

Obama makes four recess appointments

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19:46

Late afternoon/early evening open thread

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17:16

NY-Gov: GOP contender wants welfare recipients in prison to learn hygeine

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16:00

Midday open thread

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Unlike the hysteria of the conservative movement, this thread joins the United States Constitution in expressing its support for the free exercise of religion.

Ron Johnson, the Tea Party Republican challenging Senator Feingold in Wisconsin, blames climate change on sunspots. Yep. Sunspots.

Netroots Nation 2011 starts June 16, 2011 in Minneapolis--and registration is already open! You don't want to be that eager Kossack looking to sign up at the last minute wondering if anyone has a registration to sell.

And speaking of Netroots Nation: if you're out west, save the date of November 6. Netroots California is coming to San Francisco!

For all you video game players out there: The first two chapters in the legendary Bioshock shooter series were biting social commentaries on the philosophies of Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, respectively. The third will take on a different political philosophy: American exceptionalism. Can't wait.

This was diaried recently by Zain, but it deserves more emphasis. As the manufactured controversy surrounding the Cordoba House continues to rage, special attention should be paid to the words spoken by Imam Rauf, the cleric leading the effort, at the memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the journalist brutally murdered in Pakistan by terrorist Islamists:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.

And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.

It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.

As Jeffrey Goldberg points out, these aren't just nice, appeasing words to say. They could carry some consequences:

There are those who would argue that these represent mere words, chosen carefully to appease a potentially suspicious audience. I would argue something different: That any Muslim imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, "I am a Jew," is placing his life in danger. Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews. In other words, the man many commentators on the right assert is a terrorist-sympathizer placed himself in mortal peril in order to identify himself with Christians and Jews, and specifically with the most famous Jewish victim of Islamism.

If this Imam shouldn't build a Muslim community center, then...who should? And yet: instead of eagerly promoting this cleric--and promoting our national security in the process--the right wing has chosen to attack him and cast aspersions on all Muslim Americans in the process--all in the hopes of short-term political gain. Hmmm...where have we seen this before?

Republican Meg Whitman, the billionaire CEO who is attempting to buy the Governorship of California and has already spent at least $113 million of her own money just to be at a dead heat in the polls with Democrat Jerry Brown, says that her administration would defend Proposition 8 in the appeals and Supreme Court process. Just one more reason she should never see the inside of the Governor's mansion.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/21/Saturday_Hate_Mail_a_palooza'

14:30

Saturday Hate Mail-a-palooza

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13:32

John McCain loses his mind -- but he didn't change it

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12:30

Catfood Commission weighing Social Security cuts

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

The Wall Street Journal is reporting what we've all been expecting out of the Catfood Commission--they're looking to Social Security cuts.

The panel is looking for a mix of ideas that could win support from both parties, including concessions from liberals who traditionally oppose benefit cuts and from Republicans who generally oppose higher taxes, according to one member of the commission and several people familiar with its deliberations.

In addition to raising the retirement age, which is now set to reach age 67 in 2027, specific cuts under consideration include lowering benefits for wealthier retires and trimming annual cost-of-living increases, perhaps only for wealthier retirees, people familiar with the talks said.

On the tax side, the leading idea is to increase the share of earned income that is subject to Social Security taxes, officials said. Under current law, income beyond $106,000 is exempt. Another idea is to increase the tax rate itself, said a Democrat on the commission.

Republicans on the commission, of course, oppose tax increases, and Democrats opposed to any cut in benefits. Meanwhile, the WSJ says, "the White House and the powerful senior group AARP appear open to a deal," quoting an AARP official.

"We're prepared to be quite supportive of a real engagement on the issue," said John Rother, director of public policy for AARP. Acting sooner allows for changes to be made gradually, he said, and will reassure younger workers that the program will be there for them. He dismisses those who said they can never support benefit cuts. "I know all these people personally and they'll say we have to be hard line now to influence the debate...I kind of take it with a grain of salt, these emphatic statements."

Perhaps AARP experienced some pushback from their membership as a result of that statement, because they issued another, fuller statement from Rother in the wake of the article.

“AARP has long said that addressing Social Security's long-term financing is important, but it must be done with the goal of achieving retirement security, not deficit reduction. Social Security hasn’t contributed a single dime to the current deficit. It is financed separately from the rest of the federal budget with contributions Americans make over a lifetime of hard work. Any attempts to cut Social Security benefits to reduce a deficit it didn’t cause would undermine retirement security and place an unfair burden on future generations.

“AARP renews its call on both parties to act in the coming few years to shore up the system’s long term ability to pay promised benefits to retirees, survivors, and those with disabilities. We should not wait for a crisis to develop to act – Americans should be confident that their earned benefits will be there for them when they need them...."

So AARP remains committed to working with the Commission to stave off a crisis. One hopes that they are as committed to protecting future generations of AARP members. And that the White House isn't going to follow what would be hugely unpopular recommendations from the deficit commission for Social Security cuts in order to build some sort of "credibility" or political consensus with Republicans.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/21/Obama_demands_action_on_corporate_donor_disclosure'

11:30

Obama demands action on corporate donor disclosure

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

In an address that could have been entitled "Come out, come out, whoever you are," President Obama this morning blasted the Citizens United ruling, explained what it meant to the American political system and called on the American people to bring Congress to heel to pass legislation that would expose corporate dollars feeding into the electoral system.

First, he gave us the lay of the land:

As the political season heats up, Americans are already being inundated with the usual phone calls, mailings, and TV ads from campaigns all across the country. But this summer, they’re also seeing a flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them.

Then he explained the cause:

The reason this is happening is because of a decision by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case – a decision that now allows big corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. They can buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads – and worst of all, they don’t even have to reveal who is actually paying for them. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s BP. You don’t know if it’s a big insurance company or a Wall Street Bank. A group can hide behind a phony name like “Citizens for a Better Future,” even if a more accurate name would be “Corporations for Weaker Oversight.”

And then he explained efforts to find a solution:

We tried to fix this last month. There was a proposal supported by Democrats and Republicans that would’ve required corporate political advertisers to reveal who’s funding their activities. When special interests take to the airwaves, whoever is running and funding the ad would have to appear in the advertisement and take responsibility for it – like a company’s CEO or an organization’s biggest contributor. And foreign-controlled corporations and entities would be restricted from spending money to influence American elections – just as they were in the past.

And then laid the blame:

But the Republican leaders in Congress said no. In fact, they used their power to block the issue from even coming up for a vote.

This can only mean that the leaders of the other party want to keep the public in the dark. They don’t want you to know which interests are paying for the ads. The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.

President Obama recalled for listeners the history of Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican, mind you) and his fight to keep corporations from undermining democracy, and then closed his address with a challenge--and an echo of his "Yes, we can" slogan that worked so well on the campaign trail:

This shouldn’t be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. This is an issue that goes to whether or not we will have a democracy that works for ordinary Americans – a government of, by, and for the people. Let’s show the cynics and the special interests that we still can.

The full transcript can be found at the White House website and beneath the fold.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/21/This_week_in_science'

10:00

This week in science

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1:06

Open thread for night owls

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0:16

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

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August 20, 2010

23:30

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution

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22:46

Minn. GOP calls Democratic women ugly

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

Oh, those Republicans and their wacky sense of humor:

The male webmaster of the official website for the Senate District 56 Republicans says a video comparing the attractiveness of Democratic and Republican women is just a joke. Serenaded by Tom Jones, the GOP women are depicted in bikinis and gowns, while those identified as Democrats — Helen Thomas, Rosie O’Donnell and Michele Obama, among others — are represented in unflattering photos accompanied by the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?” The video, which wasn’t produced by the local GOP, “had only one purpose, humor,” writes SD56 webmaster Randy Brown via email.

Get it? Funny! Michele Bachmann is hot, but Michelle Obama is a dog. And Condi Rice? What a looker! But that San Francisco values lefty liberal Nancy Pelosi is so ugly -- especially in a Photoshopped picture of her grabbing her crotch.

But those who might take issue with the video -- including Andrea Kieffe, Republican candidate for the Minnesota House, who called the video a “juvenile attempt at marketing" -- are obviously just people who lack a capability for humor.

No, really.

“I do realize that there are groups of people who lack such capability [for humor], but fortunately that is their problem,” wrote Brown, who posted the video. “Again its only intention was to bring a smile to a few peoples faces, and possibly irritate a few others. Is it fair? Does that matter? It wasn’t intended to be fair. It was intended to be funny.”

Yeah, that's so funny. Democrats are ugly, but Carrie Prejean is hot in a bikini, so vote Republican. Ha ha ha.

(The Minnesota GOP has now removed the video from its website, but you can see a screen capture of it here, courtesy of the Minnesota Independent.)

The only real question is when Sarah Palin and her Mama Grizzlies, including Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, will stand up to refudiate this obviously sexist attempt at humor. After all, they are the new guardians of feminism and warriors against sexism. And, as Digby points out, if there's one thing Sarah Palin hates, it's sexism. Sometimes.

The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this "news" magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner's World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness -- a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin.

So according to the rules of Sarah Palin, women shouldn't be judged on their appearance. Apparently, that's one memo the Minnesota GOP hasn't received yet.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/20/Blackwater_Super_Patriot_chooses_Abu_Dhabi_over_America'

22:00

Blackwater Super-Patriot chooses Abu Dhabi over America

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21:18

WA-Sen: Tea Partier Didier holds out on Rossi endorsement

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

So much for unity in the Washington State Republican Party. Teabagger favorite Clint Didier, who got 12% of the vote in Tuesday's primary, isn't going to endorse Dino Rossi, at least for now.

At a press conference in downtown Seattle today, Clint Didier said he will not endorse Dino Rossi unless Rossi meets three demands which he said shouldn’t “be much of reach for Dino Rossi. In fact, they are really part of our party’s platform.” Calling all three “necessary” he laid out his demands:

Introduce the “Sanctity of Life” Act that U.S. Rep. Ron Paul introduced in the House. The bill would allow local jurisdictions to pass anti-abortion laws without interference from federal courts.

Sign a pledge that he won’t support any additional taxes or increases in new taxes.

Pledge to vote no on any bill that increases federal spending.

Didier said, “I want to endorse Dino Rossi, I really do. I want to beat Patty Murray in the worst way. I want to send her home with her pink slip in her hand.” But he says he’s gotten hundreds of emails from supporters who do not support Rossi. Noting that one-third of the GOP vote—”more than 150,000 people who gave me their vote and their trust”—was cast in his favor he said, “I know my endorsement is very important to my supporters. I know that my supporters aren’t going to automatically vote for Rossi. And a lot them told me they won’t vote for him at all.”
....

He added that if Dino didn’t agree to his demands: “My people have said they will not vote for him, and they will not support him, so I’m only hoping and praying that Dino will give this serious consideration because I want to unite this party behind Dino Rossi.”

Rossi has assiduously refused to these kinds of hard conservative stands in his two previous failed statewide runs because running so far to the right is the kiss of death in Washington state, particularly on abortion. He's been notoriously unwilling to clearly take a stand on abortion precisely because of that.

This puts Rossi in a bit of a vise. He can't win without consolidating the Republican vote. He can't consolidate the GOP vote without running far to the right. He loses moderates and independents if he goes right enough to appease the Didier crowd. Rossi taking such extreme stands could also really activate Murray's Democratic base, who already hate Rossi, but might need that extra nudge to fill out their ballot in November.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/20/Late_afternoon_early_evening_open_thread'

20:30

Late afternoon/early evening open thread

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20:18

Cheers and Jeers: Summer Beer FRIDAY!

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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Shall we play a game?

Late Friday. Dog days of summer. Nothing goin' on but war, famine, recession, natural disasters of epic proportion, unemployment, housing-market doldrums, 50-foot-tall laser-shooting crabs in the Gulf, nuclear saber-rattling, that giant asteroid I just noticed hurtling toward us (duck and cover!), and Republicans setting the stage for the midterm elections by desperately trying to focus attention away from the fact that their real agenda for Americans boils down to, "Screw anyone who makes less than $250,000 per year."

[Yawn]

So let's play a game. Just guess which of these snips come from actual letters published recently in the Portland Press Herald that defend the sanctity of kicking the Constitution to the curb by crushing gay marriage. It ain't as easy as it looks. Ready? Let's play!

Snip 1

We credit a superior being or creator with having devised a pleasurable method to ensure the continuation of His handiwork. That fact is attested to by the number of abortions sought each year by pleasure seekers. The importance of marriage derives its special place and designation in our lives from God's legacy in making both men and women partners in the creative process. That is a high honor deserving special status. It is not a ploy subject to convoluted reasoning by a so-called legal authority who fails to recognize the importance of God's gift to his people, His own birth.

Snip 2

If the "gays" are given the NON existent "right" to "marry" we will ALL be sorry when to see what follows in "its" path. All one has to "see" is the WAVE of HEDONISM plaguing Europe and its economy to know this is SO! This is like a nuclear "GAY" BOMB waiting to go off in YOUR living room!

Snip 3

My children born of natural conception validate my heterosexuality. The gay utopia to create their own society has no legitimacy within an American context. We have no obligation to grant gays anything but their right to their existence, and that is all.

Snip 4

He who controls the Spice controls the universe and what Piter did not tell you is we have control of someone who is very close, very close, to Duke Leto! This person, this traitor, will be worth more to us than ten legions of Sardaukar!

Snip 5

As variants of the color red were invented, they were given names like pink or magenta. Variants of tennis named themselves badminton and pingpong. Variants of baseball chose names like stickball and softball. Soccer is not called football in America. Now, using the California precedent, can we expect people who love pink to petition the Supreme Court to have the definition of red changed to include pink? Should the definition of tennis be changed to include pingpong and badminton?

Answers:

Snip 1 is real (But last time I checked there was no religious test or procreation threshold required to get a marriage license in any state); Snip 2 is not real, but that "argument" is USED "all" the TIME!; Snip 3 is real (That's right, homos, no "Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" for you. Just stand there and exist. And we're revoking your utopia permit); Snip 4 is not real, but if you're familiar with Dune you know the shit's about to hit the fan; Snip 5 is real, and a cautionary tale: don’t do 'shrooms until after you're done pecking on your Smith Corona.

Thanks for playing. It was really, um, kinda creepy. Next time I'll just break out the Jarts.

[Clink!] Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

» ‎ CITYPAGES.com - Dan Savage

August 17, 2010

11:49

MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, Tuesday, August 17, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

Muskrat Ramblings
The Muskrat Way and Me
posted by John

The votes are in, and, with 55.2% of the vote, HIGH CONCEPT was the free James Wallis “thank you” game, as voted on by the Army of Dorkness.

Details as they emerge.

****

I’ve been asked by some what differentiates the Muskrat Way (from Monday’s strip) and the Tao of Igor (from Dork Tower comic books 30-36).

In other words, both Igor and Carson have definite philosophies. How do they differ?

To them, I’d add Gilly. All operate with specific, undeniably positive world-views. But the differences are (to me, at any rate) well-defined, and I hope the comics reflect that.

Gilly and Igor represent, to my mind, forces of nature. Neither’s world-view is forced: they both live their lives with an almost unthinking freedom. OK…perhaps Igor’s more “Unthinking” while Gilly’s more “Freedom.” Yet – for better or worse – both Igor and Gilly are utterly true to their core natures. This makes them incredibly fun characters to work with.

The Muskrat Way, on the other hand, IS sometimes forced, by its very nature. It’s a philosophy of life Carson abides by, but one that takes action on the part of its follower. The list of tenets hinted at in Monday’s comic strip certainly allude to this.

While Igor lives his life with well-meaning but Chaotic Neutral abandon, the Muskrat Way is an approximation of Gilly’s perky outlook on life. But – muskrats being muskrats – it takes work. When you belong to a species that’s eaten by people in some parts of these United States, there are times the cheeriness doesn’t come naturally. Yes, his people rode with the US Cavalry in the latter half of the 19th century…as hats.

Yet I’m not sure there’s anything unnatural or too forced with the Muskrat Way. Spreading a little happiness…living life with a positive outlook…well, what’s wrong with that?

This weeks’ strips aren’t directed towards fandom and its natural inclination to grumble, though. They’re directed at me. There are times when I find myself all owly and scowly, with absolutely no reason to be. There are people in this world with real problems.

Often, when the Dork Tower characters banter back and forth like Matt and Carson are doing at the moment, it actually represents an interior dialog of mine. While I identify with Matt more often than not (one reason I’m so hard on the poor guy), Carson, Igor, Ken and even Gilly all contain aspects of self-portraiture. Some more than others. But the Muskrat Way certainly contains rules – “suggestions” is possibly a better word – that I, personally, wish to follow, and try to.

“Buy a CD from an opening act”? Yes, yes I will.

“Make a child smile”? Do some people have any idea how fricking easy it is to make a kid feel good about themselves?

Complaining about things in my amazingly blessed life – that I absolutely have the power to change – seems an utter waste of time, breath and electrons.

Those following me on Twitter have probably had their share of my, well, let’s call it “distaste,” shall we, for the buffoonish (stop it, John – STOP IT!) Guy Fieri or “Unwrapped” at this point. Does following the tenets of the Muskrat Way mean I’ll no longer gripe, moan and whinge at Food Network shows?

Probably not. A certain amount of grumbling makes for good comics, after all. There are several things I don’t want Dork Tower to ever become: “Love Is…” falls comfortably near the top of that list.

But the next time the unwatchable “Unwrapped” follows the sublime “Good Eats,” instead of complaining bitterly in a series of scathing (but HI-larious, erudite, and insightful) 140-character Tweets…I’ll just change the channel, and find something I like.

Or maybe do something positive: like improve upon my Food Network drinking game.

The Muskrat Way. Sometimes forced, seldom useless.

——- John

August 16, 2010

5:00

DORK TOWER, Monday, August 16, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

August 13, 2010

5:00

DORK TOWER, Friday, August 13, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

August 12, 2010

9:08

MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, Thursday, August 12, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

Muskrat Ramblings
A Flick Racer Thank-You
posted by John

A thank-you note, and a gift, from my friend James.

When I asked the Army of Dorkness to come through in the name of Good Game Design, helping his Flick Racer game in the Cadburys Pocketgame challenge, you folks answered the call in droves. Both James and I were blown away. As was the competition.

So, without further ado, James’ thank-you note, and gift:

*********************************

Flick Racer is through to the final round of the Cadbury Pocketgame competition, and it’s thanks to the Army of Dorkness. I mean that completely. The competition went live on 24th July. By 5th August after some heavy leveraging of all my online contacts, mailing lists, Twitter followers and Facebook friends, Flick Racer was languishing in third place with a measly 99 votes. So I dropped John an email, asking him if he could possibly help. Four days later, when the flag came down for the end of the competition you’d added almost 400 more votes to the game’s total. The next closest entrant was two hundred votes adrift.

That’s amazing.

To thank you for getting Flick Racer to #1, I want to do something special for the Dork Tower community in return. I’m going to give you a game. I’ve got two almost-finished designs, which for various reasons have never come out. You get to choose one of them, and I will finish it up and make it available as a free PDF, exclusively for the Army of Dorkness.

Here’s the choice:

1. COPSHOW

Copshow is a game of the glory-days of TV copshows: the 70s and 80s. It’s a fast and dirty card-based RPG, in which each adventure lasts exactly an hour—including commercial breaks and a message from the sponsor. From The Avengers to T J Hooker by way of Starsky and Hutch, this is that game. It’s filled with cliches and catch-phrases, ridiculous fashion, muscle cars driving down alleyways filled with cardboard boxes, interchangeable love-interests and entirely unnecessary gunfights. I am particularly pleased with the character generation system, in which each player takes it in turn to name things that their PC is the best at… and the PC of the person on their left automatically becomes the worst at it.

Copshow was originally called ‘Get Your Trousers On, You’re Nicked’, which was the first line of dialogue in the seminal 70s UK cop-show The Sweeney, until I discovered that a lot of Americans don’t understand that ‘nicked’ is slang for ‘arrested’. It playtested brilliantly at several conventions, but ran into production problems when I tried to find a way to combine the rulebook with the deck of cards in a package that would be affordable. No way ever presented itself, so the mostly-finished rulebook has slumbered on my hard-drive ever since.

2. HIGH CONCEPT

High Concept is a card-game of making movies in Hollywood. You play the executive team at a major movie studio, putting together pitches for new movies from the cards in your hand, trying to get yours made while taking over or sabotaging other players’. Cards represent common film tropes, movie titles, actors and more… but each one has a cost attached to it, which will push up the movie’s budget. So a typical pitch will go something like: “I’ve got a chick-flick you’re going to love. It’s Miss Congeniality meets Step Up, but—get this—it’s set in World War 2. Jennifer Aniston and Jean Claude Van Damme are in. It’s called ‘Nazis Can’t Dance’. I can bring it in for $60 million.”

And then someone plays the “They’re all talking animals” card.

Like Cop Show, HIGH CONCEPT playtested fantastically well—I still get people asking me what happened to it—and the game was almost good to go, until I did a bit of checking and discovered that there’s a massive problem with using real actors’ names. Movie titles are fine, but actors protect their name jealously. That torpedoed the whole project, because having real-world actors is an integral part of what makes the game funny. So I couldn’t sell it. But I can still give it away… with updated cards for ‘Everybody is blue’ and ‘Of course it’s in 3D, what do you think I am, an idiot?’

Both games, you’ll notice, use cards. I can’t give you actual cards. What I can give you is pages that you can laser-print onto cardstock—I’ll do them for A4 and US Letter—and cut out. And the game won’t be presented to commercial standards because I have a zero budget for art and a similar amount for the time I have to put into this, but I promise it’ll look decent, and it’ll be fun to play.

Okay! Free game! Cast your vote in the comments! Votes close at midnight (UK time) on Friday!

And thanks again.

James Wallis

*********************************

So there you have it! Leave your vote for which free game you’d prefer either on my LiveJournal post, my Facebook page, or drop me a line at john@kovalic.com, through my Twitter account (@muskrat_john) or through the comments section of dorktower.com.

A game, folks! We’re getting a GAME!

Go, Army of Dorkness!

——- John

August 11, 2010

5:00

DORK TOWER, Wednesday, August 11, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

August 10, 2010

9:51

MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, Tuesday, August 10, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

Muskrat Ramblings
I Know What You Did Last Week
posted by John

My week not at Gen Con:

* I helped my pal James win this round of the Cadburys Pocketgame competition. Well, when I say “I,” I really mean you all: the Army of Dorkness. From being down by fifty votes on Friday, the Army of Dorkness swooped in and helped Flick Racer win the thing by a comfortable margin of more than one hundred votes. Just amazing. James will be announcing a really cool “thank you” soon, and, with luck, so will I.

* By the way: “Flick Racer” looks VERY RUDE when typed in caps. Lesson learned.

* I went to see the New Pornographers with my wonderful wife and a slew of good friends, and the show turned out to be utterly EPIC. I was THIS close to Neko Case’s voice! THIS close, I tells ya!

New Pornographers

* The lovely and talented Judith and I attended a Madison Mallards “Tribute to Bacon” night at the ballpark, where Judith suggested she’d go for a Bacon Chocolate Sundae, if they had one. They didn’t. But they did have bacon (and lots of it – some even in handy caramelized bacon bit form), and they did serve chocolate sundaes. So I suggested to Mallards VP Vern Stenman that they missed an opportunity here. He agreed, called the head of food service over, and by the fifth inning the Bacon Chocolate Sundae was on the Mallards’ menu. And it was a huge hit – at times, the line was 20 deep. So popular was it that the Mallards are keeping it on their menu. So…go Team Judith and John.

Bacon Appreciation Day

* Lest you worry about me eating too many Bacon Chocolate Sundeas (De-LISH-us, btw), I’m down another couple of pounds. This makes it 16 pounds lost, mostly through eating less (shock! Horror!) and going on long walks and bike rides.

* But the MAIN thing that happened while you were at Gen Con and I wasn’t? Seeing Louisa pedal her tricycle – on her own – for the first time. I started off pushing her, and she put her feet on the pedals. I gave her a bit of a shove, and she went off. Four feet later, I realized it was no longer momentum from the push that was keeping my baby girl going, but those little legs. I was stunned, and outrageously happy. I WAS THERE TO SEE MY DAUGHTER’S FIRST BIKE RIDE. Much like last year, when I skipped Origins, and saw Louisa pull herself up for the first time, I was overcome by a wave of pure Dadda happiness.

I hear Gen Con was great, and I’m glad everyone had such a cool time. Miss you all, and I’ll be back soon.

Me, though? I was busy at home.

——- John

August 09, 2010

Permalink for 'Dork_Tower/2010/08/09/DORK_TOWER__Monday__August_9__2010'

5:00

DORK TOWER, Monday, August 9, 2010

» ‎ Dork Tower

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/09/Green_diary_rescue___open_thread'

1:06

Green diary rescue & open thread

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

Nick Price and Logan Yonavjak at the World Resources Institute write that, for the first time, users can view the geographic extent of mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. The hot-pink dots are forests negatively affected by removal:

Mountaintop removal has become an increasingly contentious issue over the past several decades, particularly in the southern United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by the end of 2010, 1.4 million acres of Appalachian forests will have been disturbed or cleared by mountaintop removal, an area larger than Delaware. And a recent decision by the Army Corp of Engineers has suspended fast-track permitting for mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. ...

Until recently, information about the geographic extent of mountaintop mining was scarce. Today, however, using maps produced by researcher Ross Geredien (in partnership with Appalachian Voices) and hosted on SeeSouthernForests.org, users can now map forest loss from surface mining to see exactly where mountaintop removal is occurring, clearly illustrating the significant impact this mining practice has had on the natural landscape.

Green diary rescue appears Sundays and Thursdays. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it. The rescue begins below and continues in the jump.

A Siegel offered an analysis on what was lost in Senate Climate Change inAction: Postmortem thoughts continued ...: "Lots of blame to go around and the fingers are pointing in all directions. And there are reasons for pointing fingers that include President Obama's faltering (at best) engagement in the issue and unwillingness to leverage the hottest year on record plus the BP oil disaster to force through clean-energy legislation, Obama advisors like Rahm Emanuel who find clean energy action a losing political issue, Blue Dog Democrats, substantive disagreements on how best to act, pollsters who argued that talking about climate change is bad, environmental organization strategy and tactics, ... All of these (and many others) are all secondary 'fault' issues."

Eddie C posted another spectacular collection of sunsets in
Friday Evening Photo Blogging.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/09/Open_Thread_and_Diary_Rescue'

0:16

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

August 08, 2010

23:00

Czar Reed

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

21:00

Deep Inside the Parents Television Council

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

The American Taliban (reminder: Markos's book is available soon!) strike yet again:

The Parents Television Council is ramping up its campaign against the CBS sitcom "$#*! My Dad Says," sending letters to 300 advertisers.

The PTC is urging marketers to not sponsor the show "unless they wish to associate their hard-earned brands with excrement."

. . . CBS has said that the content of the show, which will air at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays in the fall, will not be profane in any way.

"The program is inspired by the wildly popular Twitter phenomenon, which now has more than 1.5 million followers and has spawned a best-selling book of the same name," the network said Monday. "It will in no way be indecent and will adhere to all CBS standards."

But Winter's objection to the title remains.

"The premise of the show offers potential for good entertainment," Winter said. "The question is why CBS feels the need to shove harsh profanity into the faces of Americans through the program's title. Their reliance on symbols as a veil is feeble at best. Beyond a port-a-potty, a laxative or a roll of toilet paper, most corporations don't want their customers to associate their products or services with excrement."

Now, the PTC does note that "the premise of the show" -- described by Gawker as "based on the ramblings of an old man, filtered by his son, on Twitter" -- "offers potential for good entertainment." And indeed, old-man-ramblings do sound like music (Lawrence Welk!) to the ears of those who fund the PTC. So how'd CBS end up on the Council's $#*! list?

(You are LOOKING LIVE at the Parents Television Council HQ bunker)

CHIEF MULLAH OF THE PTC: So, the fall shows are coming out. What filth are the coastal homoelitists shoving down our throats like so many hard, veiny, throbbi-- er, what's there for us to bitch about this year?

SUBADJUTANT SUBMULLAH: Well, sir, CBS has this one with William Shatner-

CM: Jew.

SS: Sir?

CM: Canadian Jew.

SS: Er, yes. Um. So Shatner plays a crotchety old working-class-

CM: This isn't some pinko union bullshit, is it? Fucking Canadians, with their health care.

SS: Actually, no, sir. It's not. He's a grumpy old white man who complains about the state of modern society.

CM: Really?

SS: Yeah! He's always tweaking his libertine son about his shallow lifestyle.

CM: Damn, we could get behind this! It's about time someone let the 80% of Americans who are bitter old white guys have their say. Any homobashing or barefoot, subservient women in this shit?

SS: My press kit doesn't really get into that, sir.

CM: Well, we can hope. Is the son gay?

SS: Again, sir, I just don't know.

CM: Dammit, he better be, if the old man is unloading on him. Christ, we haven't had a really sympathetic, patriotic character on CBS since Archie Bunker, and that heeb Lear was always letting that commie-symp slob Reiner get the best of him.

SS: What about Major Dad, sir?

CM: (bites lip) What did you say?

SS: Major Dad?

CM: Aaaahhh . . . oh God, no!

SS: Sir?

CM: Jesus, how'd you know that's what the twinks at the Manhole call me? Has Julio been talking?

SS: Wha . . .

CM: (lip bleeding) Look, it was research, kid. I've got the receipts.

SS: . . .

CM: . . .

CM: (mops blood from lip) Er, what? Major Dad? What's that?

SS: Oh. . . um . . . right! Major Dad! Gerard McRaney, sir. You remember him from the Dobson prayer breakfast at the 2004 Convention, I'm sure. Anyway, he starred in a great CBS program called "Major Dad," all about faith, country, and family, in the mid-90s. Really uplifting stuff.

CM: Never saw it. Who the fuck watched CBS then? Jesus, you wanna talk about programming disasters. I mean, "Becker?" That crap ran for like 9 years, and I'm pretty sure no one ever actually sat through an entire episode.

SS: I'm sure you're right, sir.

CM: Damn straight I am. I'd like the meet the fucking cokehead Tartikoff wannabe who thought Ted Danson could carry a sitcom by himself.

SS: Um, yes. Anyway, this Shatner show is called "$#*! My Dad Says," and-

CM: Shit My Dad Says! Holy fuck, that's an outrage!

SS: Well, sir, it's actually a collection of symbols, not the word "shit."

CM: Like I give a flying fuck. We've got our angle! Subadjutant, prepare the Outragemobile!

(Exeunt)

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/The_tax_ratchet'

19:00

The tax ratchet

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

There was something distinctly amusing about watching Sarah Palin's piece of performance art last week defending the Bush tax cuts. In truth, there were lots of amusing things.

In progressive circles, there are plenty for whom the mere mention of the name "Karl Rove" engenders nothing more than the gnashing of teeth--or perhaps the occasional howl of execration. But his admirers and detractors alike can agree on one thing: he had a rare gift. He could turn his candidate's weakness into a strength, and his opponent's best strength into a devastating weakness. Have a candidate who's afraid of horses? Turn him into a kickass cowboy. Have an opponent who's a bona fide war hero? Turn him into a cowardly Frenchman. Have a vice-presidential candidate who got five deferments to avoid Vietnam? Turn him into the Dark Lord of the Sith. The idea is clear.

Fortunately, Sarah Palin lacks this skill. Her weakness is that she's an overmatched lightweight who has to scribble notes on her hand during interviews. And how does she decide to overcome that? By doing it again and reminding everyone that she did, in fact, scribble notes on her hand during an interview--though admittedly, the attempt to blame it on liberals for actually expecting a potential presidential candidate to have basic math skills deserves some plaudits. Let's just call it an attempt to appeal to the baser elements of her base.

Even more amusingly, the half-term governor managed to take her biggest strength and turn it into a weakness. Chris Wallace did his absolute best to do her a favor: He emphasized the point repeatedly that the tax cuts being defended by the Governor Who Quit were blowing a hole in the budget of around $600 billion per year and that they had benefited only the very wealthiest of Americans. But Mama Grizzly continued unbowed in their defense, repeating the tired talking points of failed Reaganism: that the tax cuts would hurt small businesses. That rich people employ everyone else, so increasing their marginal tax rate would prevent employment. That "raising taxes" will hurt the economy and slow growth.

All of which, of course, is utterly false. But you wouldn't know that from hearing Republicans talk about tax cuts--especially marginal tax cuts for the wealthy--as if they were some sort of panacea, equally effective regardless of the illness.

Conservative tax policy has long been centered on the hypothetical Laffer curve--a parabolic graph demonstrating a presumed relationship between marginal tax rates and total government revenue. At tax rates of zero percent and a hundred percent, government revenue is zero: after all, zero percent of zero is zero, and if the government takes all your income, there is no longer any incentive to work. The idea is that somewhere in the middle of that curve is the "peak"--the ideal rate at which government revenue will be the highest. Here's a basic example.

Now, just to recap: This so-called Laffer Curve underwrites much of the theory behind taxation policy in supply-side economics, because the default assumption is universally that tax rates are on the upward slope of the curve--namely, that tax rates are too high. If tax rates are lowered, that fact simply goes down the memory hole and is forgotten, and the new tax rates, such as they are, become the readjusted baseline. This was precisely the framing that the ex-governor used to promote the extension of the Bush tax cuts: according to Palin, Obama has a "proposal" to end the Bush tax cuts--even though by their nature, they were designed to be temporary and it would take a proposal to continue them, rather than to end them. According to Palin, Obama would be "responsible" for the largest tax increase in history, rather than simply standing by while they reverted to the levels they were at during a period of unrivaled economic prosperity.

The conservative perspective on tax policy is something like a ratchet: it only goes one way. The Laffer Curve is an extremely simplistic way of viewing tax policy, given the inherent complexities of the subject, but it is illustrative of a fundamental point: If conservatives were intellectually honest about their views on tax policy and the existence of a "peak rate" at which government revenues would be maximized, there would be a serious debate about which side of the hypothetical Laffer curve we were on.

It would be especially important to have that debate--especially regarding tax cuts for the wealthy--in light of the history of the top marginal tax rates in this country, which were as high as 77 percent in 1964, and have now decreased to as low as 28 percent during the presidency of George H. W. Bush before settling at the current rate of 35 percent --half of its 1964 level. It would seem even more important to have that debate in light of the deficit we currently face, and the supposed concern that conservatives have about it, especially given the fact that tax cuts for the wealthy are one of the less productive ways of providing economic stimulus.

Intellectual honesty, however, is not the conservative strong suit. Promulgating self-serving policy, on the other hand, is quite a different story. So as the battle over the Bush tax cuts heats up, just remember: The governor who quit isn't seriously interested in reducing the deficit. She's not even intellectually curious about whether the current tax rates are the best for the economy as a whole. Rather, she's very interested in making sure she gets to keep as much of her six-figure speaking fees as she possibly can. And if the people who were forced out of a job by her party's policies can't get unemployment benefits because of that? Tough luck. They just didn't have the drive to spend time giving Rich Lowry starbursts.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/An_unfortunate_debate'

17:00

An unfortunate debate

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

There's something really depressing about the debate over whether it would have been better to fight BP's oil spill with or without the aid of chemical dispersants.

Everybody agrees that the oil is toxic and everybody agrees that the dispersants are toxic; the disagreement is over whether it's better to mix the two of them together, or just leave dispersants out of the picture entirely.

At it's heart, this is a question that can be resolved empirically, but given that BP's wanted to use dispersants at least in part for PR reasons (less oil on the surface would mean less enduring negative imagery for BP), it is only natural that many people would be reluctant to believe any research showing that oil mixed with dispersants is less bad (or at least not any worse) than oil on its own.

The theory in favor of dispersants is that they break the oil into tiny droplets that are more easily consumed by oil-eating bacteria and that less oil therefore reaches land. The theory against dispersants acknowledges that dispersants break up the oil, but holds that breaking up the oil with another toxic substance poses a grave danger to the food chain in the ocean because the tiny droplets can infest larvae at the bottom of that chain.

Prior to BP's disaster, we didn't really know much at all about how dispersants would work in an undersea environment and to a large degree, we still don't know what their long-term impacts will be. During the leak, BP was very aggressive in its desire to use as much dispersant as possible, and the government was much more reluctant, but neither side really knew what they were doing. Obviously, in such a scenario, you'd like to think that the government would win out, so it was very disturbing to learn from Ed Markey that BP habitually sought and received exemptions to restrictions on the use of dispersants.

At the same time, despite fears that dispersants were making a bad situation worse, I don't think we can say definitively that anybody knew that they were making a bad situation worse. In fact, on Monday the EPA released the results of its own research showing that oil mixed with dispersants is no more harmful to larvae than oil alone. Even if you accept that research, it doesn't necessarily prove that using dispersants was a good idea, because we don't know the long-term effects of the dispersants on the food chain and whether it will find its way into humans.

But let's say for sake of argument that it turned out that applying the dispersants was in fact a good idea. Would such a determination lead us to conclude that the oil spill was in fact not that big a deal? Obviously, the answer is no.

In fact, being asked to choose between oil alone and oil mixed with dispersants is sort of like needing to choose between having your arm broken with a baseball bat or having your arm broken with a baseball bat while you're high on Rush Limbaugh's favorite pain pill. You don't really want either choice. In fact, being asked to make the choice should make you really mad, because it's the kind of choice nobody should have to make.

Unfortunately, it's a choice we've been asked to make by BP, pro-drilling politicians, and other oil companies. Given that reality, it probably makes sense to do the research and figure out whether dispersants are useful or not, because it's going to take some time before we stop drilling in the Gulf, and during that time, we're bound to have more accidents. But hopefully while that research proceeds and the issue continues to get debated, we don't distract ourselves from the fundamental problem that BP's oil spill demonstrated: with every passing day, with every barrel of oil we consume, it gets harder and riskier to find that next barrel. We're at that point in history when virtually all the easily extractable oil is gone. There's still oil to be had, but the cost of getting it is rising, and will continue to rise -- and the disaster in the Gulf is one of those costs.

So while it's somewhat important to get the dispersant issue right, it's really a sideshow. The fundamental issue is that oil's heyday has come and gone. We're witnessing the death of the world's primary source of energy. And the real question is whether we're going to get serious about finding other sources of energy so that we can preserve our way of life, or if we're going to let ourselves go the way of oil.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/Midday_open_thread'

16:00

Midday open thread

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

Michael Steele is a great guy, and he's doing a great job. It's a shame he's so under-appreciated.

And Meg Whitman is brilliant.

And Tim Pawlenty is charming.

The police chief of Dallas has a solution for date rape: women should stop drinking. You know, because when women drink, they're just asking for it. As if.

Michigan GOP Congressman Mike Rogers thinks the WikiLeaks whistleblower should be executed.

Another gruesome anti-choice group.

More on why we need these guys in the Senate:

Two Congressmen who are trying to ascend to Senate seats released proposals this week to tighten restrictions on former Members looking to cash in on K Street.

Rep. Paul W. Hodes on Wednesday unveiled a new plan that would ban House Members from registering to lobby for two years after they leave office. According to the New Hampshire Democrat’s bill, departing Senators and many federal officials would be forced to sit on the sidelines for six years after leaving office.

The day before, Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) introduced a new ethics package that would institute a lifetime ban on lobbying by ex-Members and a six-year ban for Congressional staffers. It also would bulk up financial disclosure rules and force sitting Members to put their assets in a blind trust.

In shocking mid-term election news, it's the economy, stupid.

A new study suggests deep brain stimulation may slow Alzheimer's.

Wyclef Jean is running for president of Haiti, and Sean Penn is unimpressed.

The decline and fall of Western Civilization is being televised.

In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, drug cartels control their local media. In other words, they've become sophisticated modern businesses.

A leading British expert on Iraq claims that the Chilcot inquiry into the run-up to war is being hampered by government officials who are covering up and blocking access to critical documents.

File this one for future reference. Under "blowback."

The Oregonian:

Federal biologists on Friday sent their strongest signal to date that the Columbia River Basin's immense hatchery production -- and the lucrative fishing opportunities that result from it -- could be reduced to better protect wild salmon and steelhead runs.

The draft report, the most thorough evaluation to date of the damage from hatchery fish, rounds up years of study of 178 hatchery programs feeding the Columbia, Willamette and Snake rivers.

Geoengineering to mitigate the effects of climate change? No.

The deadly weather in Eurasia is already unprecedented, that and ongoing global melting could be a preview of what's to come under some climate change models. I'll have more, including exclusive material from one of the world's most distinguished meteorologists, this week. -- DS

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/_Supporting__the_troops'

14:09

"Supporting" the troops

» ‎ Daily KosSearch Daily Kos

My first job out of college was with then-Rep. Ron Wyden, in his district office in Portland. I was a caseworker, there to help constituents work their way through the maze of federal agencies when something had gone wrong. One of my permanent, and pointless, assignments was the military; pointless because the Pentagon was little influenced by a member from Oregon who didn't sit on any relevant committees. My efforts were mostly limited to finding lost paperwork, trying to expedite emergency leave requests, that kind of thing.

There was one category of military cases that the casework staff split up on a rotating basis--veterans' work. We had to split it up for our own well-being, both because of the volume of cases and because of how emotionally draining they could be. We weren't in a war at the time, and didn't have returning vets needing our help. But the fight of Vietnam vets for recognition of disabilities from Agent Orange exposure to PTSD was in full swing. VA Medical Centers around the country were understaffed, underfunded and in some instances, the worst place to try to receive medical care. At the time, I didn't know any veterans of real war. Somehow no close relatives or family friends had gotten the call to serve in Vietnam. My memories of that war were hazy, as I was pretty young through the worst of it and shielded for the most part from those images Walter Cronkite broadcast every night into our homes. But I held the prevailing sentiment of kids raised by liberals in the sixties, seventies, and eighties--the Vietnam war was a mistake on many grounds, but I didn't get the individual sacrifice part, the real impact it had on the men who had to serve there until I started working on these cases.

Following the Vietnam war, our service members got a very raw deal. I'm not talking about the urban legends about them being spat upon and called babykiller when they got home. I'm talking about how their government--for 12 years run by those great patriotic Republicans Reagan and Bush the elder--betrayed them. How so many had to fight a mostly losing battle to have the actual physical and psychological damage done to them even recognized, much less compensated. How the most psychologically damaged of them were left to fend for themselves, leaving a crisis of homelessness and addiction. I will never forget the shock of finding out how shoddily our government treated the people who were compelled to sacrifice everything. Nor will I forget the frustration of being utterly incapable--even with the weight of a congressman's name behind me--to do anything to help those individuals.

We saw a repeat after the first Gulf War, with some significant changes. For one thing, there was no Walter Cronkite and no gruesome images of reality on our teevees. We had the "wargasm," night-vision fireworks shows far removed from the action, far removed from the reality. The Pentagon had taken one key lesson from Vietnam--don't let war be seen on television. Don't let on that there are actual casualties in this war, and sure don't let those casualties have an American face. And when the soldiers returned home and began to experience mysterious and debilitating illnesses, the government dismissed the claims, taking more than a decade to recognize Gulf War syndrome. I wasn't doing casework for Wyden any more, having moved on to his DC office to work on policy. But staff in Portland were getting those same calls, fighting the same bureaucracy and beating their heads against the same brick wall.

By that time I had figured out that, as far as the Pentagon was concerned, soldiers were pretty much disposable. That's a given for the people who have to make decisions about going to war--they can't let the human cost of war weigh too heavily in the decision-making. But it has to have at least some weight. That's where the Iraq war comes in.

The absolute cynicism of the "support the troops" propaganda BushCo foisted on the nation was probably the most enraging thing for me personally about this war, and enrages me to this 2,698th day of the debacle. From the lies that sent thousands of men and women needlessly into this war to the criminal lack of preparation that made it even more dangerous--they didn't even provide adequate body armor--the human cost of this war was unacceptable, on both sides of the equation. Body armor, tanks that weren't strong enough, soldiers being killed in their own barracks because of the shoddy work done by Cheney's contractor cronies and gassed by other cronies. That's not even taking into account the insane number of redeployments soldiers and their families have had to endure.

I'm still operating at an almost irrational level of rage over the Iraq War. I still get pissed off at those inane and empty "support the troops" yellow ribbon car magnets, though you see fewer and fewer of them closing in on the end of this decade of war. Because slapping on a car magnet or a ribbon is not a substitute for actually supporting the troops--for matching their sacrifice at home and being exhorted by our government to do so in any meaningful way. Like maybe paying more in gas taxes. And it's not a substitute for demanding of our political leadership a convincing rationale for war.

So when I read Brian Beutler's report on the deficit commission this week, and got to this:

Though most of the commission's work occurs behind closed doors in small working groups, early reports indicate that the GOP's unwillingness to support any significant tax increases are pushing the group toward proposed entitlement slashes and larger budget cuts.

And while Americans might expect that the commission would look at all spending, some members are seemingly using their positions to advance professional interests. A source familiar with the proceedings of the working group on discretionary spending tells TPM that some commissioners, including one military contractor, would prefer to save money by freezing military pay and scaling back benefits, rather than by eliminating waste in defense contracting.

The source said that different members of the commission come down on different sides of the issue. The discussion group is led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), whose primary aim is trimming fat on the contractor side, but, according to the source, David Cote, the Honeywell CEO who was appointed to the panel by President Obama, is pushing to find savings elsewhere.

"Coburn raised concerns about all of the cost overruns and redundant weapons system," the source told TPM. "Cote made excuses for it all."

According to the source, Cote and other members, including the commission's co-chair Alan Simpson, are focusing instead on "freezing military pay, making military people pay for their health care."

. . . I lost it. I wrote Thursday

Yep, in the middle of two wars, in which our soldiers and their families have been stretched beyond their limits with multiple deployments, cut their pay and scale back their benefits. Make them pay for their own health care. All so the likes of Blackwater--and Honeywell--can continue to suck at the public teat.

I've been stewing over this now for several days, and am no less angry. The impact on the individual lives of these men and women, and the ripple effect out into their families and their communities, remains inadequately acknowledged by our political leadership. I give huge kudos to President Obama for implementing a new policy for veterans suffering from PTSD, but that's not enough. Not when his hand-picked deficit commissioners are seriously talking about creating an even larger burden on our troops so that the military contractors don't have to sacrifice.

That's betraying our troops at the most fundamental level. These men and women--and their families--are still considered disposable by too many of the powers that be. The President needs to take that proposal from his commission off the table, and fast.

And as the war in Afghanistan moves into it's second decade, following the deadliest month yet in that war, this country needs to start having a very serious discussion about what "supporting the troops" really means.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/President_Obama_is_on_the_wrong_side_of_history'

12:00

President Obama is on the wrong side of history

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His experience didn't get him elected; his vision did.

He told us of a more perfect union, of an America that, after eight long and painful years of abuse at the hands of the Bush administration, we were desperate to believe was possible.

The hope and promise of Barack Obama’s election made the seemingly impossible possible. States like Virginia and Indiana, which hadn’t voted for a Democratic president in more than a generation, voted for him. Voters of every age, race, religion, and political affiliation -- even voters who called him a "n***er" -- put their faith in him and the vision he described, a vision perhaps never more eloquently articulated than in his landmark speech on race in March 2008:

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign -- to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.

And yet.

On the issue of equal rights for all Americans, this president stands on the wrong side of history. And if he does not change his position, he may well be one of the last American presidents to oppose marriage equality, forever leaving an ignoble stain on his legacy.

This week, the District Court of California ruled, clearly and unequivocally, that denying marriage rights to gays and lesbians is unconstitutional. Judge Walker’s 136-page decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger contains many critical explanations of the unconstitutionality and immorality of prohibiting gays and lesbians from exercising their equal rights to marriage, but on the penultimate page of the opinion, he states what is perhaps the most succinct rebuttal to those who would deny this right:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

And yet, the president continues to oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians.

That’s not how he and his spokespeople put it, of course. Following Judge Walker’s decision, the White House released this statement:

The President has spoken out in opposition to Proposition 8 because it is divisive and discriminatory. He will continue to promote equality for LGBT Americans.

But then David Axelrod went on MSNBC to clarify the president's position:

The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control.

This is nothing new, of course. The president's defenders argue, as Axelrod did, that the president’s position has not changed: he has, from the beginning, opposed marriage equality. In 2004, during his Senate campaign, he told the Chicago Tribune:

I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.

Just days before the 2008 election, he reiterated this position:

I believe that marriage is between a man and woman and I am not in favor of gay marriage.

Those who voted for him for president knew full well his opposition to marriage equality, and they cannot be surprised by his continued opposition. He has been nothing if not consistent.

Except that the president’s position is inherently inconsistent. One cannot support some, but not all, equality any more than one can be a little bit pregnant. To support equal rights for gays and lesbians must, by definition, include marriage equality. Anything less is an endorsement of a separate-but-equal policy that is anything but equal.

Let’s be clear about this: the president is not a bigot. While his opposition to marriage equality is the same as, for example, George W. Bush, this president is no Dubya, who never did anything to expand the rights of any Americans. Certainly no one could reasonably argue that this president has demonstrated the same hostility toward equality as those who scream that "God hates fags," who seek to deny all rights and dignity to gays and lesbians, who will be satisfied with nothing less than a Constitutional amendment that codifies their hatred. To lump President Obama in with these bigots is to ignore and dismiss the very real steps he has taken.

He signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanding the hate-crimes laws to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.

He extended job benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

He issued a memo directing the Department of Health and Human Services to establish rules that would grant same-sex couples hospital visitation rights.

In an address to the Human Rights Campaign last fall, he stated his supportfor repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and passing the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act.

And yet.

The president attempts to have it both ways, supporting legislation that would benefit and protect gays and lesbians, while remaining steadfast in his opposition to marriage equality. It is a fair, even necessary, question to ask: Why? Why does the president continue to resist supporting what is clearly a matter of equality? Is it because he truly believes that separate-but-equal marriage is a morally defensible position? Given the eloquence with which he has spoken of equality and dignity, and given the policies he has enacted, that seems unlikely.

Is it a political calculation? Whom, exactly, does such a position appease? Certainly not those on the right, who do not support civil unions, benefits, adoption, or dignity of any kind for gay Americans. For those on the left, though, separate-but-equal is untenable, a compromise that compromises the dignity of millions of Americans.

It is an unacceptable compromise. This is a moral issue, and moral issues should not be subject to political calculations. While the fate of the Perry case rests in the hands of the court system, and while the president continues to expand rights for gays and lesbians, he has failed to show true moral leadership on this matter. Were he to express his unqualified support for full equality, he would offer renewed hope to those who were first inspired by him, he would show his political and moral courage, and he would deprive the bigots of the cover they now enjoy, no longer able to justify their hostility to marriage equality by saying that even the Democratic president is with them on this issue.

His failure to do so puts him at odds with his own party. A majority of Democrats -- 56 percent -- support marriage equality. Among liberals, that number goes up to 70 percent. Even among conservatives, who still overwhelmingly oppose marriage equality, the number who support it has risen substantially in just four years.

And the trend of Americans’ attitudes toward equal rights could not be clearer: every year, on a number of issues -- from adoption to health benefits to hate crimes protection to housing and jobs discrimination -- support for equal rights grows. A majority of Americans now believe gay and lesbian relationships are "morally acceptable."

One day, future generations will look back on this debate with the same derision and disbelief with which we view the "debate" of segregation and interracial marriage.

Forty-three years ago, in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law... Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

It is too soon to know whether Perry v. Schwarzenegger ultimately will be the Loving v. Virginia of this century, granting all Americans their "basic civil rights" to marry. But whether it is the Perry case or another case that follows, that day is coming.

Some argue that now is not the time. Two wars, an economy that continues to teeter on the brink of collapse, the worst environmental crisis in history, and, let’s not forget, an opposition party that is hoping the president fails, that wants to see him impeached, that threatens to secede from the union, that does not even believe his presidency is legitimate, that encourages "Second Amendment remedies" -- in other words, now is not the time for the president to expend resources and political capital on a minority of his party, which, let’s be honest, has nowhere else to go. And besides, he is making incremental improvements, inching us slowly toward justice.

But the president himself has acknowledged that it is neither fair nor right to ask any oppressed minority to wait its turn.

For even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot -- and we will not -- put aside issues of basic equality. I greatly appreciate the support I've received from many in this room. I also appreciate that many of you don't believe progress has come fast enough. I want to be honest about that, because it's important to be honest among friends.

Now, I've said this before, I'll repeat it again -- it's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans petitioning for equal rights half a century ago.

This week, within 48 hours of reaffirming his opposition to marriage equality, the president released this statement on the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act:

For those who marched bravely; who worked tirelessly; who shed their blood and gave their lives in the pursuit of freedom for every American, the Act served as the culmination of decades of work to fulfill America’s promise. And for the members of the Moses Generation -- including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, who stood alongside President Johnson when he signed the bill into law -- it was an affirmation that although the arc of the moral universe may be long, it bends toward justice.

...

And together let us recommit ourselves, in ways large and small, to continuing their journey to promote equality and perfect our union.

The president asked us to recommit ourselves to the journey toward a more perfect union, toward an America that does not discriminate against any of its citizens, toward a vision -- his vision -- of "a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."

It is time for him to do the same.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/An_effective_government'

10:00

An effective government

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The Center for American Progress released an expansive report on what Americans want from their government. Conducted by Guy Molyneux, Ruy Teixeira, John Whaley using Peter Hart as pollster, CAP has dug deeper into the question that previous surveys. Instead of simply asking if people want bigger government or smaller government, they simply asked on a variety of issues what the federal government should be doing. The results are sobering, yet there is reason for optimism.

What people want, more than anything else, is for the government to be effective. I can't emphasize this enough. Keep in mind, when this survey talks about effectiveness, it isn't talking about the Washington definition of effectiveness. Washington says you're effective if you pass and sign a bill. Washington says you're effective if you get good poll numbers. This survey indicates that the American people, God bless 'em, believe effectiveness means actually solving problems.

First, the CAP report recaps what other polling is indicating:

The survey asks Americans "when the government in Washington decides to solve a problem, how much confidence do you have that the problem actually will be solved?" This question has been asked periodically by various news organizations over two decades, and the current results represent the lowest level of public confidence ever recorded. Just one-third (33 percent) of adults voice a lot or some confidence, 35 percent have "just a little confidence," and another one-third (31 percent) have no confidence at all. The proportion saying "no confidence" in the past has never before exceeded 23 percent.

Set aside the idea of what government should or should not be doing. The polling indicates the public does not have the confidence that government will get right whatever it decides to do. This low confidence is heavily attributable to the economy, which is seen by the public as both caused by and mishandled by the management in Washington. There is also the failure to properly regulate, failure to effectively fix the problem caused by the failure to properly regulate. Someone in the administration had better realize what Bill Clinton has said is the fourth important quality in a President: "Execute."

The most surprising elements of the report are those that run counter to the conventional wisdom in Washington:

We asked Americans what they think should be the higher priority for improving the federal government: reducing the cost and size of federal government, or improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government? By a decisive margin of 62 percent to 36 percent, people say their priority is making government more efficient and more effective, not reducing its size. In the political center, independents and moderates both cite a clear preference for more effective government (62 percent and 69 percent respectively). Even among the 57 percent of adults who say government is doing too many things today, there is as much sentiment for improving government’s effectiveness (48 percent) as for shrinking government (50 percent).

Republicans will always play to their crazy base that prefers to have our government modeled after that of Somalia, but the vast majority of the American people reject this view. Instead, their anti-government sentiment isn't about government doing "too much" or being "too big." It's about the fact that government isn't doing things well. It's mismanaging wars. It has a dysfunctional legislative process. It's not properly ordering its finances. It's allowing even something as basic as food safety to get screwed up. Oil spills. Mine collapses. Most importantly, it isn't putting people back to work, which is number one on the minds of the American people. If the administration could get a lot better on the execution side of things, confidence in government would improve even in the midst of a deep recession. Ignoring the confirmation process and making far more extensive use of the recess appointment power would be an excellent start.

Twenty-seven percent of the public says both that government is doing too many things today and that government should be improved rather than downsized. These citizens also want to see an expanded role for government in many areas, even including reducing poverty. This is a critical target group for efforts at government reform. Disproportionately white working class (54 percent of the group), this segment offers potential in-roads among a generally hostile constituency.

Members of this group could then be added to those who already think government should do more to solve problems—a group heavily dominated by growing progressive constituencies such as minorities, unmarried women, Millennials, and professionals, to form a potentially formidable coalition.

Working class whites have been the problem constituency for Democrats since Reagan, mainly because of the hot-button cultural issues where they are more conservative than most. But on the question of government, it is clear they share the views of other groups with high rates of poverty: government should do more. With mainstream Republicans no longer aggressively pushing cultural issues, and Democrats largely admitting defeat on issues like guns and LGBT rights, it is astounding that Democrats do not have the white working class vote buttoned up tight. The reason is clear: the Democrats are not aggressively putting those folks back to work. If they did, they'd break the back of the Republican party for a generation.

Other questions can provide us a more direct and clear sense of what responsibilities the American people do and do not want to assign the federal government. In this survey we ask people whether they would like to see the federal government become more or less involved (or not change its involvement) in
five different domestic arenas. As the accompanying graph illustrates, a majority of Americans favor more government involvement in all five of these areas:

Developing new energy sources

Improving public schools

Making college education affordable

Reducing poverty

Ensuring access to affordable health care.

The Obama administration has taken action in all five of these areas in which people say they want the government to get more involved. They've managed several things, I believe, very well. The handling of the auto-industry has been tough, but fair. The problem is people don't have the confidence that this administration is getting it right.

The American people want to see action yes, but mainly they want to see those actions translate into actual good results. On that measure, in every area, the American people have nothing to show for the first two years under President Obama. They probably won't ever see any direct benefit (in the form of lower insurance rates) as a result of the law. Access they get (years from now), but affordability is still up in the air. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes people have less confidence in the government's ability to solve problems.

Read the whole thing. This report indicates, contrary to the Washington conventional wisdom, that people do not want to "get government out of our lives." That is a particular obsession reserved only for the extreme right. What they want is for government to do things better. The middle class especially wants government involved in energy, poverty, healthcare and education. The only way they will vote for it, however, is if government does it what it does well.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/08/Your_Abbreviated_Pundit_Round_up'

8:23

Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

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Sunday opinion.

Martha Minow:

Now that the Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, there will be post-mortems about the confirmation process. Many members of the Judiciary Committee criticized Kagan for her admiration of Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked. I also clerked for Marshall, and found that these criticisms revealed not only a lack of knowledge of Marshall’s precise adherence to rules and precedent but also a failure to appreciate the significance of his contributions to American law. Kagan’s confirmation is not only a victory for her, but also a confirmation of Marshall’s enduring legacy.

From the Globe: Martha Minow, who is Elena Kagan’s successor as dean of Harvard Law School, is author of “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark."

NY Times editorial:

Political forecasters have warned for months that the widespread anti-Democratic sentiment in the nation could well coalesce into a Republican wave that approaches that party’s gains in 1994. President Obama’s independents have deserted him, the business and Tea Party wings of the Republican Party are alight with fervor and cash, and even season-ticket Democrats are searching for their old enthusiasm.

In part, that is because the significant accomplishments of the last two years — health care reform, the stimulus package, the resuscitation of the auto industry, financial reform — were savagely attacked by the right and aggressively misrepresented as the hoof beats of totalitarianism. Most of those efforts were actually highly diluted to draw centrist support, but they did not really get much of it, and the compromises meant that the bills were defended only halfheartedly by Democrats who should have stood up more firmly to the rage.

Put most broadly, the Democrats have been failing to delineate the differences between themselves and Republicans, to remind voters what Republicans would do if returned to power and how little their policies have changed from those during the two terms of President George W. Bush.

Frank Rich:

Could George W. Bush be a kind of Gipper-in-reverse and win yet one more for the Democrats? Clearly this White House sees him as the gift that will keep on giving. The 2010 campaign against the Bush administration is in full cry, with President Obama leading the charge. The Republicans are “betting on amnesia,” he confidently told the claque at a recent fund-raiser. “They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas.” It’s now the incessant party line.

Betting on amnesia is almost always a winning, not a losing, wager in America. Angry demonstrators at health care town-hall meetings didn’t remember that Medicare is a government program, and fewer and fewer voters of both parties recall that the widely loathed TARP was a Bush administration creation supported by the G.O.P. Congressional leadership.

George Packer:

“This is just one of those days when you want to throw up your hands and say, ‘What in the world are we doing?’ ” Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, said.

“It’s unconscionable,” Carl Levin, the senior Democratic senator from Michigan, said. “The obstructionism has become mindless.”

The Senators were in the Capitol, sunk into armchairs before the marble fireplace in the press lounge, which is directly behind the Senate chamber. It was four-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. McCaskill, in a matching maroon jacket and top, looked exasperated; Levin glowered over his spectacles.

“Also, it’s a dumb rule in itself,” McCaskill said. “It’s time we started looking at some of these rules.”

Listen up, Chris Dodd.

WaPo:

At another time, the ruling overturning California's ban on same sex marriages might have landed with the force of a political earthquake. Instead, the relatively restrained response underscores both the singular economic focus of this year's elections and the shifting politics of one of the country's major social issues.

More beltway CW down the toilet. Nate has an idea why:

Peter King, an idiosyncratic and bellicose Republican Congressmen from Long Island, has been one of the few politicians in either party willing to speak on the record about gay marriage in the wake of Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling on Proposition 8 this Wednesday. As he revealed in an interview with Politico, King thinks his party no longer has any need to use gay rights as a wedge issue -- not when they have immigrants to pick on instead:

King, the Long Island congressman, said that in terms of social issues, the raging controversy over the Arizona border laws is providing more than enough ammunition for Republicans in key districts.

“The Arizona immigration law is there, there’s no reason to be raising an issue of gay rights” as a wedge, he said.

Congratulations, gays! You're no longer the dweebiest kid on the playground.

NY Times:

In giddier times before the bust, his predecessor presided over the auction in a jaunty red blazer, but Mr. Oynes was far too conservative for that. Or so everyone thought — until he opened his briefcase and brought down the house with a size 46 scarlet jacket, an omen of the coming deep-water boom.

“They knew symbolically what this meant,” Mr. Oynes said in a recent interview. “In Louisiana terms: ‘Let the good times roll.’ ”

Now the gulf is reeling from the worst oil spill in United States history. Deep-water drilling has been temporarily banned. And the Minerals Management Service, the agency that led the way into the deep-water age, has been abolished, ridiculed as a pawn of the oil industry it was meant to oversee. The gulf office that Mr. Oynes ran for many years has drawn particular scorn.

AP:

Americans acquired a whole new lexicon — "top hats" and "top kills," "containment domes" and "junk shots" — as they watched on fuzzy screens while an ever-growing school of remote-controlled submarines attempted to staunch the well, and came to the realization that the oil industry was not prepared to deal with a blowout a mile beneath the sea. "It's like if NASA had pushed the technology envelope as far as they could to get into space, and then didn't do any kind of funding or study on how to get back," says Roberts.

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1:30

Sunday Talk - United We Stand

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0:18

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

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August 07, 2010

22:40

Meet deepwater drilling's doppelgänger: Corn-based ethanol

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In the off chance that you were looking for yet another example of just how terribly screwed up our national energy policy is, consider this fact: as bad as BP's oil spill was, it may not have caused any more long-term damage to the Gulf than has corn-based ethanol. Corn-based ethanol, the federally subsidized biofuel, is largely responsible for the Gulf of Mexico's 7,500 square mile dead zone -- the second-largest dead-zone in the world. San Francisco Chronicle:

While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf.

Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the algae dies, it settles to the ocean floor and decays, consuming oxygen and suffocating marine life.

Known as hypoxia, the oxygen depletion kills shrimp, crabs, worms and anything else that cannot escape. The dead zone has doubled since the 1980s and is expected this year to grow as large as 8,500 square miles and hug the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas.

As to which is worse, the oil spill or the hypoxia, "it's a really tough call," said Nathaniel Ostrom, a zoologist at Michigan State University. "There's no real answer to that question."

The Chronicle reports:

Corn-based ethanol is heavily subsidized by the federal government, including a 51 cent per gallon tax credit. Ethanol receives two-thirds of all subsidies for renewable fuels, costing nearly $20 billion between 2005 and 2009.

In large part thanks to federal subsidies, farms growing exclusively corn or soybeans have replaced diversified farms. This has led to an explosion in the use of fertilizer and pesticides and now more nitrates come from corn-production than from any other crop. Those nitrates leech into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the algae blooms that lead to the dead zones.

The dead zone has doubled in size since the 1980s.

Currently, 10% of gas must consist of ethanol. The EPA is considering raising that requirement to 15%. In 2007, Congress enacted legislation that will triple ethanol output, including refineries in every state.

There are more environmentally friendly alternatives to corn-based ethanol, but thanks to the subsidies for corn-based ethanol, they will never be used.

Of course, as bad as ethanol is, it doesn't let BP off the hook, not for one minute. After all, BP stands to claim $600 million in federal subsidies this year alone for ethanol production. So for BP, it's been a real twofer -- they've not only devastated the Gulf region with their oil spill, they're also one of the biggest contributors to the ethanol problem.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/WA_02__Rick_Larsen_takes_on_the_Tea_Party'

21:44

WA-02: Rick Larsen takes on the Tea Party

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19:46

Late afternoon/early evening open thread

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18:30

Filibuster reform background: the constitutional option

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Part I: Why can't they just change the rules?

Part II: The Rules vs. the Constitution

When we last left off in this intermittent series, we'd discussed: 1) what's standing in the way of just changing Senate rules if they want to, and; 2) the apparent paradox posed by the Constitution's grant of power to each house of Congress to set its own procedural rules by majority vote, and the Senate's assumption that it was a "continuing body" and that its rules -- including the rule requiring a 2/3 vote to end a filibuster of a proposed rules change -- also remained in effect from one Congress to the next.

Since then, many of you have researched or figured out on your own how that paradox might be addressed, and that has landed you on or near what's become known as the "constitutional option." Perhaps you've seen it discussed by Ezra Klein recently, or read one of several diaries at Daily Kos that have either discussed the very same procedure, or proposed variants of it, or even invented something similar from whole cloth, apparently even without any previous knowledge of the Senate's history with the maneuver.

But the very basic run-down is this: The Senate has, under Article I, Section 5, clause 2 of the Constitution, the right to determine its own procedural rules by majority vote. At the same time, it has adopted as one of its rules (Rule V) an explicit statement of the "continuing body" doctrine that says that because at least 2/3 of the Senate is always sitting in and sworn to office (since only 1/3 stand for election every two years), the Senate always has a continuous and uninterrupted quorum available to do business (a simple majority constitutes a quorum) and therefore continues to operate at all times, and brings its existing rules along for the ride.

Since one of those continuing rules (Rule XXII) is the one that requires a 2/3 vote to invoke cloture on a rules change, it is assumed that there exists a tension between the majority vote right conferred by the Constitution and the 2/3 requirement. That tension has in the past been addressed by the recognition of a sort of magical window said to exist at the beginning of a new Congress, during which it is possible to operate outside of the restrictions of Rule XXII -- and indeed all existing Senate rules -- and have the Senate adopt its rules anew or amend them by a simple majority vote.

Here's the theory: The Constitution's grant to each house of Congress of the right to adopt its own rules of procedure by majority vote can mean nothing if it can be trumped by the actions of a previous Senate, and rewritten to require a supermajority. And you simply can't permit the Constitution's clear delegation of a specific power to be swept aside forever, particularly by the decision of a relative handful of Senators, most of whom are now long dead. In order for Article I, Section 5, clause 2 to have any meaning, there simply has to be an opportunity for a sitting Senate to decide for itself -- without interference from previous and/or dead Senates -- what its rules of procedure will be going forward. This is the "principle against binding," that is, the legal principle which holds that a legislature cannot by its previous action constrain its own subsequent action, and certainly no previous iteration of the legislature may prevent specific action by future iterations of that legislature. In other words, the dead Senates of the past can't force the live, current Senate to live by the old rules unless the current Senate agrees to do so.

But because of this "continuing body" theory now (but no always) embodied in Rule V, the Senate has really never actually made a practice of explicitly agreeing to continue under the old rules. They just... did. Because. Because that's the way it's always been done. (And you know right away you're in trouble when you find yourself saying that.)

So if the principle against binding makes sense to you, and the continuing body doctrine makes sense to you, and you know that the Senate has never really bothered to explicitly accept the continuance of the rules and that's never appeared to be a problem before, then how do you reconcile these two things?

Well, you have to construct another theory to explain it all. And here it is: each "new" Senate (if the continuing body doctrine makes it possible to even contemplate such a thing) does in fact make some indication of its acquiescence to the continuation of the old rules. It's just that the "action" is a negative one. Upon first convening, if the Senate as a body gives no indication that it doesn't want to continue under the old rules, and indeed proceeds to conduct routine business as though the old rules continued in effect, the Senate by beginning to conduct that routine business is deemed (and remember: GOP sez deeming bad!) to have agreed by unanimous consent to the continuance of those old rules. That would explain how the lack of any explicit action on the rules in years past could survive the principle against binding. By not raising any objection to the continuance of the old rules, the "new" Senate has in effect agreed to their continuance, and has therefore not been bound at all by the "old" Senate.

But if instead of silence, the convening of a "new" Senate is instead met with the objection of one or more Senators to the continuance of the old rules, that "magical" window is opened up, and the rules are in play.

The question is, under what ground rules are the old Senate rules in play? It can't be the Senate rules themselves, since the whole point of the objection is to prevent their being agreed to as the "operating system," as it were.

The answer arrived at in 1917, during the debate that led to the adoption of the original cloture rule, was posited by Sen. Thomas Walsh (D-MT): that until Senate rules are affirmatively adopted or acquiesced to, the Senate convenes and operates under general parliamentary law, under which new rules may be adopted by a simple majority. And this also happens, not coincidentally, to mesh perfectly with the assumption the canons of construction lead us to when we interpret the lack of an explicit supermajority requirement in Article I, Section 5, clause 2.

In fact, that made so much sense in 1917 as a solution to the apparent Rules vs. the Constitution paradox that it's remained the preferred solution to the present day, though it's not been frequently invoked.

Next, we'll review how and when it has been invoked with regard to cloture and cloture reform.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Book_reviews__In_search_of_Utopia'

17:16

Book reviews: In search of Utopia

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Two recent books―one a softcover version of a hit last year―mull the meaning and power of Utopia, its meaning in Western culture and what happens when attempts are made to make utopian visions a reality.

In Utopia: Six Kinds of Eden and the Search for a Better Paradise
By J.C. Hallman
St. Martin's Press: New York
Hardcover, 320 pages, $25.99
August 2010

Money quote:

Utopias suffer from understanding lag. Historically, utopias have failed because they do not fully account for the world's variety or complexity. Not surprisingly, then, a tendency to deny one's own utopianism is characteristic of utopians, and even today earnest utopians are not keen on being branded with the word.

Author: A writer raised in Southern California, creative writing instructor and (most importantly, of course) a Kossack. Editor of The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature; author of The Hospital for Bad Poets: Stories, The Devil Is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe and The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game.

Basic premise: Author Hallman decides to take his lifelong fascination with utopian projects and thoughts on the road, to experience directly current versions of Paradise around the world. He samples the life of an intentional community in rural Virginia, pilgrimage spots for the Slow Food movement in Italy, a residential Eden aboard a ship that endlessly sails the world, a military-style bootcamp for gun-toting individualist/defenders of the American way, an eco-refuge for planned reintroduction of Pleistocene creatures and plants to the world, and a tour of a lavish city being built on an artificial island off of Korea. Throughout, the author weaves philosophy behind the utopian thought with historical attempts to re-create paradise throughout the ages.

Readability/quality: Discursive, lyrical, thoughtful and at times playful, Hallman’s writing is easy to follow and a delight to read. With a wide-ranging, easy-going charm, the reader ends up following him from place to place―and idea to idea―in a leisurely walk through the ages. Voice is predominant, and it’s a pleasant voice to spend time with indeed.

Who should read it: Dreamers, futurists, amateur historians, anyone with a curiosity about living your ideals.

Bonus quote:

The stigma now attached to utopia not only fails to get the joke, it blames hopefulness for hope's failures. Utopia critiques crisis. It acts. To crush the utopian spirit world be to extinguish the campfire just as its warmth is needed most.

Hallman’s aims to reclaim the idea of utopia from the world of cranks and charlatans, an admirable undertaking. There is a respectable history of serious people trying to work out ways we can live together, with stated values and shared goals, in a world quite a few steps away from the notion that life is, through and through, nasty, brutish and short.

***

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
By Greg Grandin
Picador: New York
Softcover release of 2009 hardcover, 416 page, $16.00
May 2010

Money quote:

In his more utopian moments, he envisioned a world in which industry and agriculture could exist in harmony, with factories providing season labor for farmers and industrial markets for agricultural products like soybeans. It's an easy vision to mock, especially considering the brutality and dehumanizing discipline that reigned at the River Rouge [Ford plant in Michigan]. Yet actual Fordism at its most vigorous albeit short-lived stage did result in a kind of holism, where the extraction and processing of raw materials, integrated assembly lines, working-class populations, and consumer markets created vibrant economies and robust middle classes. Anchoring it all was a belief that decent pay would lead to increased sales. Yet even as Ford was preaching his gospel of "high wages to create large markets," Fordism as an industrial method was making the balanced, whole world Ford longed for impossible to achieve.

Author: Grandin, author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, made it big with Fordlandia when it first was released in hardback in 2009. The book was Amazon’s #1 History Book of the Year, a National Book Award Finalist, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and was named to numerous “best books” lists in its year of initial release. Grandin is a Guggenheim fellow who teachers Latin American history at New York University.

Basic premise: With the 1927 purchase of a tract of land in the Amazon twice the size of Delaware, Henry Ford quikcly moved beyond his original intent of cultivating his own rubber plantation to supply his cars with tires, and moved into the realm of pure utopianism. As the project evolved, Ford dreamed (Disney-like before there was Disneyland or Celebration, Florida) of creating the ideal American town―complete with ice cream parlors and and golf courses―in the midst of one of the world’s most inhospitable climes for his very rigid interpretation of what makes America “America.” Native riots, disgruntled displaced managers from Michigan, sickened wives and a stubborn man with a warped view of the possible all collide in this endlessly fascinating account.

Bonus quote:

Ford, the man who in the early 1910s helped unleash the power of industrialism to revolutionize human relations, spent most of the rest of his life trying to put the genie back into the bottle, to contain the disruption he himself let loose, only to be continually, inevitably thwarted. Born more from political frustration at home than from the need to acquire control over yet another raw material abroad, Fordlandia represents in crystalline form the utopianism that powered Fordism—and by extension Americanism. It reveals the faith that a drive toward greater efficiency could be controlled and managed in such a way as to bring balance to the world and that technology itself, without the need for government planning, could solve whatever social problems arose from progress's advance. Fordlandia is indeed a parable of arrogance. The arrogance, though, is not that Henry Ford thought he could tame the Amazon but that he believed that the forces of capitalism, once released, could still be contained.

Fordlandia is more than a book about one man’s stubborn folly―it’s a reflection of America on the rise in an era in which limits (of human endurance, of nature and geography, of aspirations) were discarded in a heady environment of American exceptionalism. That Ford even got as far as he did in building his outlandish town is a testimony to his perseverance and willingness to lose money hand over fist. Fordlandia did indeed rise, inch by excruciating inch, with schools, broad and leafy streets reminiscent of the Midwest, churches and community halls. Running through the book too is a teaser theme of what characteristics of a place are truly “American,” what ideals we export (church-going, a narrow morality) and what we don’t (quashing of labor rights was a must in Fordlandia).

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Midday_open_thread'

16:00

Midday open thread

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I, Midday Open Thread, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. By the way, that includes the 14th amendment. And now, some links.

Ten members of a medical team, including six Americans, have been reported as slain by the Taliban in Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. --Susan

Say howdy to Justice Elena Kagan. --Susan

Fareed Zakaria's full letter to the ADL explaining his return of the the organization's award and honorarium. --Susan

Apparently, the Republican Party forgot that it doesn't matter how much momentum you have, it still takes money to win elections:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Republican National Committee is entering the fall election season with dire financial problems and, to an unprecedented degree, will be forced to rely upon outside groups to fund activities traditionally paid for by the national party.

While embattled RNC Chairman Michael Steele and a top aide sought to use the party’s summer meeting here to publicly put the best face on the cash shortage, behind the scenes senior Republicans expressed grave concern that their fundraising deficiencies may be the difference between a good election year and a great one.

...

And the committee is only going to be able to spend money on those relatively inexpensive House races thanks to a $10 million line of credit that was approved at the meeting here. Until then, said one incredulous Republican, there was no money available for paid GOTV activities like mailers and automated phone calls.

Even with the line of credit, though, the party can’t afford to assist their many gubernatorial and Senate candidates with any dollars for paid voter contact and will have to effectively outsource that operation.

Seriously, Chairman Steele is the gift that keeps on giving.

In case you needed any reminder that every vote can matter: the margin separating the two candidates for the Democratic primary in Senate District 21 in Tennessee? Two freakin' votes:

Jeff Yarbro, an aide to Gore strategist Michael Whouley during the 2000 election, may be sensing a bit of déjà vu. He spent a long six weeks, a friend recalls, in Palm Beach County and Tallahassee arguing over chads that fall — and is, right now, locked in a very close count for a state Senate seat in Nashville. Yarbro's currently down two votes to the veteran incumbent, with provisionals yet to be counted.

His campaign says, "At this point, we have a question of math, not politics," which doesn't really sound much like Florida.

And in case you're wondering who you should be pulling for in this contest, here's what Yarbro's opponent, incumbent Senator Douglas Henry, had to say recently about rape. So...go Yarbro.

Via digby, the Fourth Amendment--another one of those pesky amendments conservatives don't care about--isn't dead yet. The DC Appelate Circuit ruled that law enforcement may not track a vehicle using GPS for an extended amount of time without a warrant. So, the Fourth Amendment's life support machines still have electricity.

The Atlantic has a game for you: it's a "guess the quote" contest, where your choices are Osama bin Laden and Newt Gingrich. And it's not easy. That's the American Taliban hard at work.

So, Ann Coulter is going to headline the first annual Homocon, an event put on by the gay conservative group GOProud, apparently to announce the fact that they exist. This, despite Coulter's previous slanderous remarks about the LGBT community that shan't be repeated here. Makes you wonder if Coulter would support repealing DADT if gay soldiers promised her that they would have no problem invading countries, killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity.

Senate FAIL: The gang of 100 found some extra money to devote to school lunches. They found it by cutting foodstamp benefits. Stay classy.

A giant iceberg snaps off a Greenland glacier and the process could be the beginning of a phenomenon that could spell real trouble for the world's ocean and coasts. -- DS

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Saturday_Hate_Mail_a_palooza'

14:30

Saturday Hate Mail-a-palooza

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13:16

Bipartisan call: Let the marriages begin

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Judge Walker may have struck down Proposition 8 on Wednesday in a ruling that decimated every single plausible argument against marriage equality, but that doesn't mean that marriages have recommenced. Supporters of Prop 8 have filed a motion to stay the ruling pending appeal, and the judge has yet to rule whether to grant it. But there's bipartisan pressure urging Judge Walker not to do so, and to let California ring right now. First, Democratic Attorney General and Gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown:

Defendant-Intervenors’ argument that the Attorney General’s opposition to Plaintiffs’ initial request for a preliminary injunction supports their request for a stay pending appeal ignores the fact that there has now been a trial on the merits that conclusively demonstrated that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. In opposing the request for a preliminary injunction, the Attorney General argued that “the parties, the Court, and, indeed, the general public would benefit” from having the constitutionality of Proposition 8 “decided on the merits following full briefing and argument by the parties.” That has now occurred.

And not to be outdone, Republican Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger--who interestingly vetoed two marriage equality bills as governor, but has now seen the light now that he's entering the lame-duck phase of his Governorship:

The Court’s decision is consistent with California’s long history of leading the way in recognizing the rights of gay and lesbian families to order their relationships and manage their day-to-day lives. For that reason, California’s public interest is served by giving the Court’s judgment effect now.

Just to recap, the Defendant-Intervenor's main argument behind the stay is that allowing marriages to proceed, and then having the right taken away on appeal, would cause irreparable harm. A harm that is somehow more irreparable than not being allowed to marry at all? We'll see what Judge Walker has to say.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Shameless__lying_hackery_from_the_WSJ_regarding_Citizens_United'

12:16

Shameless, lying hackery from the WSJ regarding Citizens United

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Admittedly, anything less would be a surprise, but the testicular fortitude of this particular brand of mendacity should not overlooked. Just read the beginning of this Wall Street Journal article by James Taranto:

In his State of the Union Address in January, President Obama thundered: "Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests--including foreign corporations--to spend without limit in our elections."

The president was either ignorant or lying, for the decision he denounced, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in fact left in place a complete ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns. What the court did hold is that the First Amendment protects political speech that is independent of campaigns, even when the speakers are big bad scary corporations. (Or labor unions, but pointing that out did not suit Obama's demagogic purposes.)

So, how's it working out? Target Corp. donated $150,000 to a group called MN Forward, which is running TV ads supporting Tom Emmer for Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial nomination. The Associated Press reports that Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said the contribution--which, pre-Citizens United, would have been prohibited by state campaign-censorship laws--"was designed to support Emmer's stance on economic issues..."

Now read it again. Do you see the problem here? Taranto is either stupid, or he's lying and he thinks his readers are. He says Obama is lying for claiming that Citizens United will allow unlimited corporate spending in elections because the contributions have to be "independent of campaigns"--and then goes right on to say that Target made a contribution--that in the days before Citizens United would have been illegal--to an "independent organization" specifically to support a particular candidate.

There are no words for this treachery. It's brazen, baldfaced lying. Shameless, mendacious hypocrisy. And I wasn't even going to get into the absurd point that Taranto was trying to make, but since we're here, let's do it. To provide a little bit of context, Target Corporation, which has been renowned for its support of LGBT rights and diversity in the workplace, has come under fire from its courted community recently for doing something stupid: donating $150,000 to a group called MN Forward, which was using the unlimited corporate money to support a right-wing candidate for Minnesota Governor. The problem? Let's have Taranto continue:

But Emmer is "an outspoken conservative opposed to same-sex marriage and other gay-rights initiatives that have come before Minnesota's Legislature," and Targets's support for the effort raised hackles of gay groups like OutFront Minnesota, which last month issued an "open letter"...

Indeed, Target's contribution has become a big issue in areas heavily influenced by the LGBT community. But Taranto seeks to make a larger point: the fact that pressure from activist groups was successful in causing Target to think twice is, in Taranto's mind, evidence of the acceptability of unlimited corporate influence:

This episode illustrates why liberal fear of business corporations is nothing more than irrational prejudice. A company's purpose is to make a profit, not to advance a principle or to stir up controversy. Companies are accountable in the marketplace in a way that politicians and interest groups are not.

Target's executives believed, probably rightly, that Emmer's economic policies would serve Target's interests better than his opponents'. It didn't occur to them that his social policies had the potential to upset customers and hurt the bottom line. Merely by taking offense, scrappy little OutFront Minnesota was able to humiliate the leaders of a company with a market capitalization of $38 billion. Who has the real economic power here?

The first problem with hacks like Taranto is that they are exclusively focused on the marketplace and unable to see beyond it. Thus, Taranto and his ilk see no problem with political donations being an exclusively economic investment designed to generate a maximum rate of return from a government official made more pliant--or more elected--by the contribution made. But while the rare mega-corporation with a conscience, such as Target, may be swayed by the lobbying of a group far less economically influential than the corporation itself, the vast majority of corporate "speech"--that is to say, political investment--will not be. No amount of interest group pressure, for instance, could possibly convince the far-right Koch Industries not to contribute a million dollars to the Republican Governors Association.

Corporate contributions are not speech. They are often, instead, calculated investments made by a legal fiction with no other legal motive besides profit--something which Justice Stevens explained all too well in his dissent:

It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

These basic points help explain why corporate electioneering is not only more likely to impair compelling governmental interests, but also why restrictions on that electioneering are less likely to encroach upon First Amendment freedoms.

Taranto got one thing right: a corporation that chose to make itself vulnerable to the pangs of conscience was successfully lobbied by an attack at its weakest point. But it is specious at best to take that one specific case and extrapolate it into an opinion that it's entirely harmless to open up our government to the unlimited sway of deep-pocketed legal fictions created entirely to generate profit.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Obama_touts_Medicare_progress_in_weekly_address'

11:16

Obama touts Medicare progress in weekly address

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Forty-five years ago, we made a solemn compact as a nation that senior citizens would not go without the health care they need. This is the promise we made when Medicare was born. And it’s the responsibility of each generation to keep that promise.

Taking the double opportunity offered up by the anniversary of Medicare and a government report issued Thursday indicating Medicare's financial outlook is improved by the new health care reform bill, President Obama this morning took the opportunity in his weekly address to underscore the administration's commitment to shoring up the program and extending benefits to seniors.

…the steps we took this year to reform the health care system have put Medicare on a sounder financial footing. Reform has actually added at least a dozen years to the solvency of Medicare – the single longest extension in history – while helping to preserve Medicare for generations to come.

While vowing to slay those two nemeses that get the goat of Americans everywhere--waste and fraud--the president outlined the specific benefits that will accrue in the next few years for seniors:

Seniors who fall into the “doughnut hole” – the gap in Medicare Part D drug coverage – are eligible right now for a $250 rebate to help cover the cost of their prescriptions. Now, I know for people facing drug costs far higher than that, they need more help. That’s why we negotiated a better deal with the pharmaceutical companies for seniors. So starting next year, if you fall in the doughnut hole, you’ll get a 50-percent discount on the brand-name medicine you need. And in the coming years, this law will close the doughnut hole completely once and for all….

Beginning next year, preventive care – including annual physicals, wellness exams, and tests like mammograms – will be free for seniors as well. That will make it easier for folks to stay healthy. But it will also mean that doctors can catch things earlier, so treatment may be less invasive and less expensive.

And as reform ramps up in the coming years, we expect seniors to save an average of $200 per year in premiums and more than $200 each year in out of pocket costs, too.

The message does a good job at something on which the administration has been falling short--getting the word out about the benefits of the recently passed health care reform bill (and to a key voting constituency at that).

Not a bad idea in a crucial election year.

The full transcript can be found at the White House website and beneath the fold.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/This_week_in_science'

10:00

This week in science

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One of the most remarkable weather events ever seen is unfolding in Russia. While no one heat wave, or a single high temperature, are by themselves evidence for global warming, as the planet warms up these phenomena will become the norm rather than the exception:

The extreme heat has led to the worst drought conditions in European Russia in a half-century, prompting the Russian government to suspend wheat exports. The drought has caused extreme fire danger over most of European Russia (Figure 3), and fires in Russia have killed at least 50 people in the past week and leveled thousands of homes. The fires are the worst since 1972, when massive forest and peat bog fires burned an area of 100,000 square km and killed at 104 people in the Moscow region alone. Smoke from the current fires spans a region over 3,000 km (1,860 miles) from east to west, approximately the distance from San Francisco to Chicago.

To put this in rough perspective -- and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring -- if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday, even the nightly low in the massive urban heat islands of New York and Chicago would be over 90°! The midwest grain belt and parts of the Pacific Northwest would not see a drop of rain for two months and pushing as high as 110° in places. The desert southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara.

It would mean nation-wide massive power brownouts, unprecedented crop failures, water rationing like you have never seen, record wildfires raging in dozens of states, thousands of deaths [Correction: Dr. Jeff Masters at WeatherUnderground informs me it would probably more like tens of thousands of deaths] and life threatening heat related illness, roads and highways clogged with broken-down, over-heated cars, and emergency services stretched beyond the breaking point across the US and Canada. The conditions could be so severe in places, especially if the wave persisted for a couple of years, that it could produce mass migration, i.e., refugees, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Great Depression. But then again it snowed in DC last year ...

I am known by the greatness of my enemies! Unfortunately, industry rentboy Steve Milloy and wrong-way Jonah Goldberg are the best I've been able to produce. But they are both world class hypocrites, so maybe that counts for something?

Must see video of the coldest, highest swim, on Mt. Everest no less! The speaker is outstanding and explains, sadly, his swim would not have been possible, if not for a lake newly formed by climate change and rapidly receding glaciers.

New analysis of Martian material points to evidence of ancient life.

The most commonly used test for marijuana has caused a massive number of false positives resulting in arrest, imprisonment, and job loss for untold thousands of innocent, non drug-using people.

Government agents went strangely out of their way in what appears to be an effort to discredit and possibly restrict genetic testing companies for reasons unknown.

I don't know all the details yet, but Phil Plait, better known as the Bad Astronomer, has landed a three part special on the Discovery channel on the Bad Universe!

Update: I'd love to push MSNBC to give Phil a weekly show to debunk crap science. What do you guys think? Would that have an audience?

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Your_Abbreviated_Pundit_Round_up'

8:50

Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

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Saturday punditry:

Gail Collins:

Tuesday is Primary Day in Connecticut. Here are some of the big issues:

•

If someone employs a large number of people to spend their lives hitting each other over the head with chairs and the occasional sledgehammer, should we hold it against her if she doesn’t provide health insurance?

•

If an unemployed millworker is asked to describe her multimillionaire former boss, do you think she’d be more negative if the interviewer plied her with a sandwich?

Bob Herbert:

The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps.

We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens’ lives. All are experiencing significant decline.

The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations.

College isn't for everyone, but still...

Nate Silver:

Krugman comes to the conclusion that "The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future." Some writers, including Ted Gayer at the Tax Policy Center, a thinktank whose work Krugman cited, take issue with the use of the term "fraud". Fraud can mean different things, but usually implies some intentionality: deception on purpose, rather than on accident. I don't know if Ryan's budget plan is deliberately intended to be deceitful: people in Ryan's circle seem to vouch for his seriousness, and there's much to be said for that. With that said, it has had the effect of deceiving some people, and I don't see how it has improved the quality of the budget discussion.

Charles Blow:

Wyclef Jean will be gone until November, if not longer. The hip-hop star officially announced in Port-au-Prince on Thursday that he’s running for president of Haiti. The election is scheduled for Nov. 28.

David Broder:

Much as I differed with McConnell's defense of the status-quo Senate, I have to agree with several of the other points he made at the breakfast. He is right when he says that the Senate tends to be at its best when the party ratios are relatively close -- say 55 to 45 -- rather than as lopsided as they have been during Obama's first two years.

A more-even split encourages dealing between the parties in the center of the political spectrum, and it may very well return if Republicans make the gains now widely forecast for November.

Disneyland on the Potomic, Broder style. If you just clap hard enough, Tinkerbell will be alive again.

But then he threw a curve by endorsing the idea that the 14th Amendment guarantee of U.S. citizenship to every child born in this country, whatever the child's parentage, should be examined in congressional hearings. That is a radical change, freighted with emotional baggage, and if this is an example of what it would mean to have more Republicans on Capitol Hill, watch out.

Radical. He said radical. Hello? Does anyone read this column any more?

Derrick Z. Jackson:

This could be the future of a new Boy Scouts of America. This is its 100th anniversary, and, as many know, its future is uncertain. Scout membership has withered since the 1970s from 4.8 million to 2.8 million. While its "on my honor’’ community values remain timeless and its outdoor program is needed more than ever in a nation that is 27-percent obese, the Boy Scouts of America has diminished itself with stale positions on social issues.

One way it can modernize on a massive scale is to invite girls to participate, from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout.

Very young mixed-gender scouting is normal throughout Europe and in countries like Belize, South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand, and Japan. The Boy Scouts of America bans girls from traditional scouting until high-school-age Venturing, much too late to pique youth interest in mountains. So since 2003, my wife and an Eagle Scout mother, Michelle Holmes, has recruited elementary-age girls for Scout activities under the Scouts-affiliated and coed Learning for Life after-school program. Girls earn honorary Boy Scout ranks and merit badges until Venturing.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/07/Open_Thread_and_Diary_Rescue'

0:16

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

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August 06, 2010

23:30

The GOP's constitution problem

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Think Progress's Ian Millhiser details the astounding number of issues the Republican party has with the constitution, and the various

REPEALING CITIZENSHIP: Numerous GOP lawmakers, including their Senate leader and the most-recent Republican candidate for president, are lining up behind a “review” of the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to virtually all persons born within the United States....

REPEALING CONGRESS’ POWER TO REGULATE THE ECONOMY: The Constitution’s “Commerce Clause” gives national leaders broad authority to regulate the national economy, but much of the GOP has embraced “tentherism,” the belief that this power is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub....

REPEALING CONGRESS’ POWER TO SPEND MONEY: The Constitution also gives Congress power to “provide for the common defense and general welfare,” a broad grant of authority to create federal spending programs such as Social Security. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), however, recently called upon the Supreme Court to rewrite the Constitution’s clear language and repeal parts of the budget he doesn’t like....

REPEALING CONGRESS’ POWER TO RAISE MONEY: The Constitution also gives Congress broad authority to decide how to distribute the tax burden. Thus, for example, Congress is allowed to create a tax incentive for people to buy houses by giving a tax break to people with mortgages, and it is allowed to create a similar incentive for people to buy health insurance by taxing people who have health insurance slightly less than people who do not. Nevertheless, the frivolous assaults on health reform would eliminate this Constitutional power....

REPEALING EQUALITY: The Constitution entitles all persons to “equal protection of the laws,” a provision that formed the basis of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision yesterday that California cannot treat gay couples as if they are somehow inferior. Immediately after this decision was announced, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) called upon Congress to “act immediately” to overturn it — something that it could only do through a constitutional amendment....

REPEALING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS: As Judge Walker also held, marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. The GOP’s anti-gay amendment would repeal this constitutional protection as well.

REPEALING ELECTION OF SENATORS: Finally, a number of GOP candidates have come out in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment, the provision of the Constitution which requires direct election of senators, although many of these candidates also backed off their “Seventeenther” stand after it proved embarrassing. It is simply baffling how anyone could take one look at the U.S. Senate, and decide that what it really needs is even less democracy.

There's one amendment to the constitution that they worship, however. I've spent the last few days with CSPAN2 and learned a great deal about how the second amendment is really the only one that matters. Without the second amendment, we would all be at the whims of a tyrannical government. For instance, a government that would be willing to scrap an amendment which provides "due process" and "equal protection of the laws" for all of its citizens.

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22:46

Pelosi: "We have a moral obligation to preserve the planet"

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This is the sense of urgency and priorities that we need:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was in Portland Thursday touting a new residential energy efficiency program here, vowed to continue fighting climate change even if it costs Democrats politically in the next election.

"This is about saving the planet, not the Democratic majority," Pelosi said after touring a newly weatherized home in Northeast Portland. "We have to be thinking about the next generation, not the next election and that is what this conversation is about.

She's obviously been reading the science. A few weeks ago, the National Research Council released its comprehensive report on the consequences of climate change. As reported by Nature:

For example, the report shows that each 1 °C of warming will reduce rain in the southwest of North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa by 5–10%; cut yields of some crops, including maize (corn) and wheat, by 5–15%; and increase the area burned by wildfires in the western United States by 200–400%. The report also points out that even if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is stabilized, the world will continue to warm for decades. If concentrations rose to 550 parts per million, for example, the world would see an initial warming of 1.6 °C — but even if concentrations stabilized at this level, further warming would leave the total temperature rise closer to 3 °C, and would persist for millennia.

And it rendered some explicit conclusions:

"The report says an 80% cut is meaningful," says Jay Gulledge, director of the science and impacts programme at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. "I've never seen that stated before, but it is based on the best calculations for the carbon cycle."

But even if the world's leaders finally got serious about addressing the issue, it's not as if the problems will just go away:

For example, carbon-dioxide-induced warming is expected to be nearly irreversible for at least 1,000 years, according to two studies published in 2008 and 2009 (refs 2,3). "There is more certainty [in this report] than we've seen before," says Steve Cohen, executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. "It is blunt, direct and clear. Unlike the IPCC reports you don't see any hedge words."

Pelosi made the case that federal investments in greenbuilding will create millions of jobs. Which is an important point to keep emphasizing. But unlike most politicians, she clearly understands the larger picture.

"We have to make up for a lot of lost time," said Pelosi, blaming the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders for refusing to address the threat of climate change seriously. "We have a moral obligation to preserve the planet."

If only others would follow her lead.

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22:01

Just who would the Media Shield amendment shield?

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Well, it's a good bet the dying newspaper industry would reap benefits, given who's helping to write the proposed amendment to the Media Shield law awaiting Senate approval:

From sponsor Sen. Chuck Schumer's website:

Schumer and Feinstein are working with representatives of the newspaper industry in crafting the new language that will explicitly exclude organizations like Wikileaks—whose sole or primary purpose is to publish unauthorized disclosures of documents—from possible protection.

So of all the people with skin in the game -- whistleblowers, digital media, television journalists, First Amendment experts, the citizen public who may just like to know what their government is up to -- it's one portion of a dying industry advising on this. And, it should be noted, doing so in a way that's suspiciously self-serving. Just look at what the criteria for a shielded "journalist" will be, according to Charlie Savage (writing, I note with appropriate ironic acknowledgement, in the New York Times):

Paul J. Boyle, senior vice president for public policy at the Newspaper Association of America — which supports the bill — said Senate aides had asked his group to consult on the proposed changes.

Mr. Boyle argued that the WikiLeaks case could, paradoxically, help supporters of the bill. He contended that the increasing use of subpoenas to pressure reporters to identify sources created incentive for would-be leakers to send material to a group like WikiLeaks rather than to a traditional news organization subject to American law and having editorial controls and experience in news judgment. [Emphasis added.]

And we all remember what great editorial controls and "experience in news judgment" the newspaper industry gave us in the deplorable case of Judith Miller, the New York Times and the fevered march to war.

What makes this rush to punish Wikileaks via legislation doubly frustrating is that it's not necessary. By Schumer's own admission there are safeguards in place for just such instances, as he makes clear in his own statement on his website:

Schumer, the Senate’s lead author of the measure, said two parts of the existing bill already ensured that Wikileaks could never assert the privilege created by the legislation. First, the site does not fit the bill’s definition of a journalist, which requires that the covered party regularly engage in legitimate newsgathering activities. Second, the bill allows a judge to waive the privilege altogether if critical national security concerns are at stake.

So we're rushing headlong into -- once again -- letting traditional media define who is a "journalist" and who is not when there are safeguards already in place (although the "legitimate newsgathering activities" seems to me to be a whole area of gray muddle all its own inviting endless parsing and litigation. What's "legitimate?" And just how much explanatory material needs to accompany a whistleblower release to qualify as "newsgathering?").

Additional stupidity is piled on when one realizes, as the New York Times points out::

It is not clear whether WikiLeaks — a confederation of open-government advocates who solicit secret documents for publication — could be subject to a federal subpoena. Federal courts most likely do not have jurisdiction over it or a means to serve it with such a subpoena.

Moreover, WikiLeaks says that its Web site uses technology that makes it impossible to trace the source of documents that are submitted to it, so even if the organization were compelled to disclose a source, it is not clear that it would be able to do so.

To summarize:

Wikileaks already would be subject to safeguards in the current proposed legislation as written, sans a specific amendment.

Wikileaks would prove difficult to serve since it's not in the federal jurisdiction anyway.

Even if Wikileaks could be served, it appears Wikileaks itself has no clue as to the identity of its sources.

Wikileaks pushed its initial leaks through traditional news outlets: The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Speigel. Does this document laundering leave Wikileaks in the clear? Or does it implicate the newspapers as accomplices? If it exonerates in this case, what news organizations or outlets would not qualify as sufficiently legitimate?

The newspaper industry is advising on who should be considered a "real journalist" through a useless, non-productive amendment.

So what, exactly, is really going on here? How about this, again from Savage:

Still, in case WikiLeaks or a similar organization sought to invoke a shield law, proponents of the legislation are trying to create legislative history that would show judges that Congress did not intend for the law to cover such organizations. The idea, aides said, would be to add language bolstering a section defining who would be covered by the law as a journalist — an area that can be tricky in an era of blogging and proliferation of online-only news media outlets.

Apparently just as Schumer is unwilling to let a flag-waving national security issue pass him by without weighing in (no matter how ineffectively), the newspaper industry will not let an opportunity go wasted to define who is practicing real journalism and who is not.

Guess which side of the divide online media and citizen journalists are going to fall once the Newspaper Association of America is through advising?

The good news is that at least one major daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, weighed in on the side of common sense:

Journalism is fast-changing, and Congress is slow-moving. One consequence is that the more Congress attempts to define journalism, the more anachronistic Congress becomes. Rather than trying to figure out who should be protected and who should not, Congress should focus on what it is trying to accomplish — namely, to preserve for citizens of this democracy the information they need to govern themselves, information that sometimes only becomes public if those who have it can supply it anonymously. The bill as written does not permit every leaker to escape punishment; it merely requires judges to balance the interest of protecting a source against the public's interest in the information sought, and it specifically creates a national security exception. Those compromises already go far — too far, in our view — toward intimidating sources, but they provide more than enough protection for what Schumer and his allies, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), fear.

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21:16

House Dems skittish of state aid, teacher funding?

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Say it ain't so, Blue Dogs.

Significant action in the Senate is obviously out of the question, since the chamber is largely paralyzed. But the House has its own problem -- panicky Democrats who are afraid to do the right thing. Politico reports that some of these hand-wringing Dems might even be afraid to help save school teachers' jobs next week.

When the House returns next week to rubber-stamp the Senate's $26 billion state-aid package, Democrats will take a political crapshoot.
Even though party leaders expect that approval will be a slam-dunk, some early responses from rank-and-file Democrats have raised red flags about the optics of returning to a special session to vote on more spending -- even if it's framed as saving teachers' jobs.

The risk for Democrats as they seek to bolster their flagging election prospects is that some of their vulnerable members will feel like they have to walk the plank, yet again, on a politically unpopular economic-stimulus agenda, while reminding voters of their failure to handle routine budget work this year.

This really is crazy. With the economy sputtering, here's a bill that will help prevent tens of thousands of layoffs, including school teachers and firefighters. It's paid for, and won't add a dime to the deficit. It enjoyed bipartisan support in the Senate, and even Ben Nelson voted for it.

But for some panicky House Dems, saving jobs means spending money, and "spending = bad." Why? Because Republicans say so.

Like Mike Pence.

On Fox News today, House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) continued the GOP's assault, saying the aid package reflects the Democrats' philosophy of "borrowing," "bailouts," and "takeovers."

PENCE: [W]e're going to continue this process next week of more borrowing, more spending, more bailouts, and continue to sustain this policy of takeovers that's been characterized in this Congress. And we've just got to try something different. It's time for fiscal discipline in Washington, DC, and it's time to preserve the tax relief of the recent past and even talk about passing tax relief that will create jobs. But this more spending, more bailouts is not the answer.

Pence isn't known as a stickler for policy details, but this is silly even for him. The bill does not require any borrowing, as it is fully paid for and will actually reduce the deficit by $1.3 billion. Meanwhile, characterizing aid for public sector employees — such as teachers and police officers — as a "takeover" is absurd.

We're talking about jobs, hundreds of thousands of them, not bailouts. And we're talking about people, not "special interests." There's nothing politically unpopular about having 25 kids in a classroom instead of 40. There's nothing politically unpopular about having enough firefighters and cops on the job to protect us. There's nothing politically unpopular about having enough nursing home and home health care aides to take care of our loved ones.

If the Blue Dogs really want to see what's politically unpopular in their districts, they should watch what happens when thousands of more people lose their jobs because they don't pass this bill.

Permalink for 'Dork_Tower/2010/08/06/MUSKRAT_RAMBLINGS__Friday__August_6__2010'

10:53

MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, Friday, August 6, 2010

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5:00

DORK TOWER, Friday, August 6, 2010

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August 05, 2010

12:16

MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, Thursday, August 5, 2010

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Muskrat Ramblings
Life Is Too Short For Bad Games
posted by John

Hey, you guuuuuuuys!

I don’t do this often, but a really good friend could use some help.

My pal James is a very clever games designer (not to mention all-around smashing bloke), and has a game entered into for the Cadburys pocket game competition: “Flick Racer.”

It is a very nifty game, and it’s already on the short-list of finalists. It would be good to see it win.

How good? Quantifiably good? Well, yes, actually. Not to disparage any other game, but, well, darnnit, the fact of the matter is that game that is in the lead is NOT a very good game. At all. It’s a spin-the-randomiser-move-your-dobber kinda game, nd while that’s all well and good, the last time anybody came up with anything new or nifty in that genre, the Black Death was also making headlines.

Now, I’m not SAYING that poorly designed games cause devastating plagues across Europe and Asia. Or that God kills a kitten whenever a child is given a bad game. But evil is evil, and Cadbury’s will give away 25,000 copies of a bad game, and, well, you see where this might lead.

Also, there’s a small but tidy cash prize, and I’m not SAYING James will buy you a drink should he win, but…well, yes. Yes, in fact, I am saying that, and he jolly well should buy you a pint. But this is me talking.

So if you would vote for Flick Racer, I truly would be ever so thankful. (If you got a chuckle out of Dork Tower or Munchkin in the last month or so, think of this as a VERY cheap tip in the ol’ tin can of life).

Please go here to vote for “Flick Racer”: http://www.pocketgamecompetition.co.uk/media/926424-Flick-Racer. You have to sign up, but it’s painless and/or easy. I did it, and I’m really hoping you will too.

Please vote, and get your friends to vote. James is one of the Good Guys, and life is too short for bad games.

UPDATE (2:50 pm CST): “Flick Racer” took the lead by a single vote, but the moment it did, Cadburys took own the game’s voting page, and all references to the game. The above link gets a 404 Error. I’m trying to let James know ASAP, so we can find out what’s what.

****

Also, I recall I rather promised James that the Army of Dorkness would come to his rescue. So it would be a tad embarrassing if it didn’t. Not to put you on the spot or anything. Ahem.

****

James is British, by the way. Yet I’m not sure entirely why I slipped into my London vernacular just now.

****
Are you at GenCon? Then I hate you (I don’t, actually) and I am jealous of you (I am, actually). But I would be chuffed if you wandered over to the the Indy Press Revolution booth (#2339) and picked up a copy of THE BONES, published by Gameplaywright, a super little book from a super little company about dice, and the gamers who love/hate them.

The Bones cover Do not let the fact that I wrote the introduction to this book put you off buying it. It’s really a special little tome. The stellar contributor list is:

Keith Baker, Jason L Blair, Greg Costikyan, Ray Fawkes, Matt Forbeck, Pat Harrigan, Jess Hartley, Fred Hicks, Will Hindmarch, Kenneth Hite, James Lowder, Russ Pitts, Jesse Scoble, Mike Selinker, Jared Sorensen, Paul Tevis, Jeff Tidball, Monica Valentinelli, Chuck Wendig, and Wil Wheaton. And did I mention WIL FREAKING WHEATON!

I mean, look, in a few hours you’re probably gonna be standing in line to give Wil Wheaton a die anyway, so why not have him sign THE BONES while you’re at it?

Here’s the promo blurb from THE BONES, that says it better than I could:

“This isn’t about math. It’s about unlucky breaks and victory against all odds.

This isn’t about percentiles and probabilities. It’s about late-night game-ending rolls where everything hinges on that climactic moment when one single die skitters across the table and determines the fate of a hero, a city, an empire…

The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring.

Step back and look at how we play with dice.”

And on Sunday, from 1-2 pm, several authors who contributed will be at the Indy Press Revolution booth, signing as well.

****

Mythos Buddies series two is safely off to the factory.

We had a little last-minute fun, when we discovered the glue used in making the Buddies didn’t really work on the glow-in-the-dark version. So, while we’re working on a solution, I had to come up with a new buddy in a matter of hours.

So, gentles all, I give you…

Lieutenant Thulhu:

Lieutenant Thulhu

Coming soon (I probably should have looked up when, exactly) to a counter near you.

Thanks, and GET THE VOTE OUT FOR MY PAL JAMES!

—- John

August 04, 2010

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22:26

Prop 8 Struck Down: The Decision

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22:02

Reid plans pre-election showdown on Bush tax cuts

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21:26

CO-Gov: The unbearable communism of bike commuting

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It's not often that politics and one of my other big hobbies, cycling, intersect. But they just did in Colorado.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting Denver into a United Nations community."

"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor's efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes "that's exactly the attitude they want you to have."

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said.

He added: "These aren't just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to."

Maes may be a new name for you. He's a Sharron Angle-style teabagger running for governor. He had staked out the fringes, ignored, until establishment choice and former Rep. Scott McInnis imploded thanks to a plagiarism scandal. Suddenly, this kook is leading in the polls and has a pretty good chance of getting the GOP nod.

SUSA gives Hickenlooper a 22-point lead over Maes, while even Rasmussen can't spin this one away, giving the Denver mayor a 15-point lead over the Republican (McInnis doesn't fare any better). What was originally a top GOP pickup opportunity is now looking like an increasingly safe hold for Democrats.

But beyond the horserace aspect, Maes gives us yet another window into the psyche of the teabagger, one in which being environmentally responsible is suspect, in which the United Nations is code word for communist. It's a world in which "liberty" apparently means dealing with congestion-choked streets, noxious air quality, and unhealthy living.

We know this crowd hates brown people, non-Christians, single women, Hollywood, San Francisco, Massachusetts, gays, immigrants, New York, Chicago, anyone born in Hawaii, Muslims, urbanites, liberals, environmentalists, anyone who wears birkenstocks or drinks lattes, and any country outside of the United States.

I guess you can add cyclists to the list.

Permalink for 'Daily_KosSearch_Daily_Kos/2010/08/04/Solar_tsunami_may_offer_rare_glimpse_of_aurora_in_lower_48_tonite'

21:00

Gregarius

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