Via Mark, one of the most pungent and complete assessments of the Republican base/party ever coined in a single sentence (bolded). From Balloon Juice’s John Cole:

The funny thing about all of this is that no matter how bad all their ideas are, no matter how disastrous their governance has been, no matter how many horrible things they have done to the economy and this country, what really is killing the Republican party is that deep down, they are just complete assholes. You see it in the way they treat women, you see it in the way they treat minorities, you see it in the way they treat homosexuals, you see it in the way they treat anyone who is not a white Christian, and you see it in the way they treat anyone who disagrees with them slightly about anything. They just have no respect for anyone, and it shows.

Yup. That about covers it.

Joel Pett, USA Today

Wiley

Boeing picks a right-to-work state for its new factory. You know, cheap. But David Horsey foresees a few problems….

(Click picture to enlarge.)

Once upon a time there was a liberal crusader named Barney Frank. Barney was famous for his toughness, his smarts, and his canny ability to realize when he was being conned. Then the Democrat party won the Congress back and Barney found himself Chair of the House Financial Service Committee. Suddenly (*dummmm da dum-dum*) he was replaced by an evil twin who became the banksters’ best friend, shoveling them $$$ by the barrel and protecting their profits at our expense. What happened? Who pulled the switcheroo?

The new Barney Frank, whoever he really is, will be attacked today by the AFL-CIO’s new president, Richard Trumka, for proposing a new set of banking regulations that, rather than restricting the power of banks to make their own rules, actually gives them more power than they had before they crashed the economy. What a good idea. Not. (Via Digby)

After weakening current law on derivatives, the committee is proposing once again to weaken law in the banker’s favor. The draft legislation concerning banks “too big to fail” would actually lead to more bailouts over the long run. In an advance copy of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s prepared testimony that I obtained, Trumka will tesify that:

The discussion draft appears to take the most problematic and unpopular aspects of the TARP and makes them the model for permanent legislation.

Essentially the legislation would weaken regulation and lead to the conditions in which the American people would be forced to bail out the banks again. As Trumka testifies:

The discussion draft would appear to give power to the Federal Reserve to preempt a wide range of rules regulating the capital markets – power which could be used to gut investor and consumer protections.

Trumka goes onto explain in vivid details how the Federal Reserve with its lack of accountability has traditionally acted in the interests of the banks:

The Federal Reserve currently is the regulator for bank holding companies. In that capacity, it was responsible throughout the period of the bubble for regulating the parent companies of the nation’s largest banks. While regulatory authority rests in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, routine responsibility for regulatory oversight has been delegated by the Board of Governors to the regional Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve System’s regulatory expertise resides in these regional banks. The problem is that these regional Federal Reserve Banks are actually controlled by their member banks – the very banks whose holding companies the Fed regulates. The member banks control the selection of the majority of the regional bank boards, and the boards pick the regional bank president, who are effectively the CEO’s of the regulatory staff… Giving the Federal Reserve with its current governance control over which financial institutions are bailed out in a crisis is effectively giving the banks the ability to raid the Treasury for their own benefit.

Trumka explains how the proposed legislation would give the big banks more of an incentive to take risky bets in order to drive out their competition:

We are also deeply troubled by provision in the discussion that would allow the Federal Reserve to use taxpayer funds to rescue failing banks, and then bill other non-failing banks for the costs.

Isn’t that absolutely absurd? If a bank deemed “too big to fail” by the Fed takes out risky bets and its fails miserably, the other banks who were engaged in safe banking would have to bail them out.

(emphasis added)

And that’s not the worst. Barney’s Committee’s legislation would allow the Congress to do all the bailing out in secret.

[T]he proposed legislation would allow the government to bail out banks into the trillions of dollars without having to seek Congressional approval. It would allow the Federal Reserve to bail these banks out secretly without the public knowing about it.

Is this a Goldman Sachs’ wet-dream or what? And Barney Frank is chairing the Comittee that came up with this abomination? I don’t think so. The Real Barney Franks would NEVER let this anywhere near the floor. So what happened to him? Where is he? And who switched him for this ass-kissing Uriah Heep, slave of the investment banking class? Hmm?

Come on. We want answers.

There was always some question about whether there was anything that explained the long, pointless, childish GOP refusal to allow Sen Al Franken to be seated until every last legal option had been worn to a frazzle and the Minnesota electorate with it beyond the inherent stubbornness of bad losers to admit they lost. Well, maybe. Look at the first thing Franken did: submit a bill to embarrass a favorite Republican contributor/contractor and Cheney’s ex-corpo (yeah, right), Halliburton, by refusing to let them walk away scot-free from the Jamie Leigh Jones kidnapping and rape charges. The WaPo’s Katherine Parker is apparently having a problem understanding why they fell so easily into Franken’s trap. It’s a good question but the answer is ludicrously simple. to prevent the Pentagon from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve disputes over sexual assault and discrimination through arbitration rather than through the courts.

The impetus behind the amendment was the 2005 horror story of Jamie Leigh Jones, then a 20-year-old employee of Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, who alleged that she was drugged, gang-raped and held captive for 24 hours in a shipping container without food or water. When Jones sought legal recourse, the defense contractor argued that, under its employment contract, she had to pursue her complaint through arbitration rather than the courts.

No one hearing details of the alleged assault wants to be on the side of those who attacked her — or the company that refused to help her. If you’re a remotely savvy politician, that’s not a battle you want to join.

And yet the Pubs did just that, opening themselves up to this:

30 Republican members of the U.S. Senate have been getting phone calls lately from people asking, “Why do you support rape?”

These callers most likely are familiar with the fake Web site RepublicansForRape.org, which recounts the recent skirmish over Sen. Al Franken’s “anti-rape” amendment to the Senate defense appropriations bill.

Why, Katherine wonders, would they do that?

Fafnir Q&A on Iran:

Q: Is Iran a threat?
A: Oh yes. Even as we speak Iran is potentially starting the beginnings of a very possibly quite almost-real hypothetically nuclear weapons program!
Q: Oh no! How many nuclear weapons does Iran already have?
A: Counting warheads, ICBMs, mid- and long-range missiles, ABMs, tactical nukes, bunker-busters and submarine-based weaponry, the full nuclear arsenal of Iran at this moment is very rapidly just beginning to quite possibly approach a number just short of one!
Q: That makes them almost as deadly as the rogue nation of Whoville or the Islamic Republic of Candyland!
A: And they could be just months away from an actual bomb!
Q: But they’ve been just months away from a bomb for years now.
A: I know! Which means in terror years, Iran already has a bomb…

OK so we can’t agree on which Democrat healthcare reform bill will best preserve insurance company profits, at least we can all agree that there oughta be a law that David Brooks not be allowed to masquerade as a psychologist, historian, economist, or – Dawg forbid – a philosopher. Can’t we? Please?

And no matter which h r b will best p i c p, any bill that passes ought to require that “crazy fatigue” is fully covered, even if 2/3 of the country needs treatment.

***

Seems to me that of all the contests to cheat on, the Miss America contest ought to be the one most cheat-free. I mean, if the contest organizers are going to pay for contestants’ boob jobs, where will it end? Is nothing real any more? This has to be a violation of the truth-in-advertising law, doesn’t it?

***

The black community ought to consider passing a law against Star Parker. She’s giving them all a black eye. So to speak.

Sharpton blocked Limbaugh like Governor Orval Faubus tried to block black children from entering Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

Can’t say it any better than TBogg.

Yes. Keeping Rush Limbaugh from joining a bunch of rich white men attempting to buy their way into a fairly exclusive club made up of other rich white men is just like calling out the National Guard to keep black children from going to school with white children.

Awesome analogy.

Dean Baker on the necessity for public action. (By way of Avedon)

Why Richard Trumka may be the right guy at the right time. (BWO Mark G.)

A somewhat whimsical post on what other lib/progs had to say about Obama’s Nobel brought a couple of responses, one from Frank F explaining the process of nomination and why it all make so much sense even though Obama hasn’t actually, you know, done anything yet.

I think Nobel was looking at the Obama Administration’s non-proliferation goals, which it seems the media is incapable of doing. The actions are both ambitious, and on their way to succeeding. The success of these policy goals will have a dramatic effect on global security. Given that Nobel emphasized his work on the nuclear front, its not hard to understand why they made the decision.

jean followed up by taking me and all other critical lefties to the proverbial woodshed.

Thanks, FrankF, the best rebuttal I have seen to the naysayers, especially the progressive/liberal whining. THAT has been disheartening. Just shows how much the left has their heads up their (you know where), and I count myself a progressive.

I don’t know. Does counting yourself count?

IAC, after giving her criticism (and FrankF’s) of my criticism (well, my agreement with the criticism of others, at any rate) a good deal of critical thought, I have reached the critical conclusion that jean is right. It’s not Obama’s fault that he hasn’t kept his promises, hasn’t done what we hoped he would do. It’s our fault.

Really, how dare we criticize Obama? He’s only been president for 10 months and that’s obviously not time enough to accomplish anything except the making of grand promises. I mean, what do we want? He’s good looking, smart, speaks well, comes across on the Almighty Teevee like a star, and he isn’t George Bush.

OK, so he backs Bush’s economic policies, is keeping both wars going while threatening a third (effectively out-Bushing Bush), is keeping Gitmo open, supports FISA and extending the PATRIOT Act, is fighting in court for Bush’s state secrets policy, etc etc etc. HE ISN’T BUSH. I don’t know why I didn’t think that not-being-Bush was enough. That wasn’t fair of me. It has onlybeen 10 months. What can we realistically expect him to do in less than 25% of his (first) term? He just hasn’t had time.

Well, OK, so he has had time to make sure that the banksters got their $3Tril in bail-out money, billions of which they promptly paid themselves in bonuses, thus ensuring that some stimulus money would trickle down to the economy in the form of more jobs for yacht cleaners and up-scale shoe designers.

Oh, and he had time to send his DOJ lawyers to plead for retention of Bush’s state secrets policy. He had time to do that, thank goodness. Even though, now that I think on it, it might have taken less time if he hadn’t. You know, a simple withdrawl takes a lot less time than a long defense of the indefensible.

But that brings up another issue it seems I and the other critics just don’t seem to sufficiently grasp. It should be clear (lord knows Harry Reid has said it often enough) that Obama can’t do anything that would upset Limbo or Beck because they’d in turn sic their hundreds of loyal followers on his ass. Not that they don’t do that anyway, but why invite it by pissing them off? They’re loud and Almighty Teevee likes them and the Villagers thinks they’re, you know, Heartland, so we just can’t afford to take the chamnce that they represent more people than they seem to represent, which is a handful in militia hideouts in Montana. What if there’s more?

You see, Harry explains over and over, we just don’t have enough votes to avoid the threat of a filibuster even though we have enough votes for cloture except for the 22 Blue Dogs in the 435 member House and the 13 in the 100 member Senate who always vote with the Republicans. Reid is only Majority Leader, it’s not like he can discipline them or anything. There just isn’t a thing he can do about it. We need to accept that. Carping isn’t going to help.

And then there are those of us spoil-sports who insist on pointing to the polls that say citizens are in favor of lib-prog approaches to our problems, that they’ve had enough of meanness, stinginess, selfishness, and corporate puppety masquerading as policy. For example, between 65 and 80% of the public is in favor of a public option in healthcare reform, and 55%+ favors single-payer. So what? Harry says, “That’s not enough.” He is convinced that the Democrats are going to be thrown out if they don’t do what the Republicans want them to do even though the Republicans don’t want them to do anything and will vote against it no matter what it is, and if the Dems do nothing will then attack them for doing nothing.

And who’s to say he’s wrong to be afraid? OK, the polls say so, but what do they know?

Finally, there’s the Greater Good of Bipartisan Support that President Obama wants in order to prove that there’s Republican support for his policies, which of course there isn’t and won’t be. That’s not important. What’s important is that there be the illusion of bipartisan support, which is why it’s important to disembowel healthcare reform in order to keep Olympia Snowe happy. She’s a Republican and even though she hasn’t promised to vote for the policy that’s been built around her objections, the fact that she hasn’t said she’ll vote against it means there might be “bipartisan support” from a Republican. Who could ask for anything more? Isn’t that worth the sacrifice of any number of the lioves that won’t be saved by corporate non-reform?

In short, it has become clear to me that Obama is the best president in the best of all possible worlds and that he just can’t possibly be expected to do any more than he’s done even when he could have and it would have been simpler and quicker and more popular than fighting for Bush policies. Obviously, us pro/lib whiners have our heads up our asses and simply don’t understand the pressures that the Not-Bush Obama is up against. We should be happy that Bush retired and was replaced by a handsome orator who can speak English and we should just stfu.

That’s just what I plan to do, jean. Gawd bless you for opening my eyes.