WTF Happened to the Real Barney Frank?

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?

Oh, So That’s Why They Fought Al So Hard

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.

“Potential News”: Tomorrow’s News Assumed Today

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…

There Oughta Be a Law

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.

What He Said

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.)

Leave Obama Alone, You Damn DFH’s!

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.

Against Minority Rule

Back in the bad old days of apartheid in South Africa, the pitch against the policy was less often racism than the scandal of a tiny minority ruling a big majority. It seemed – and was called – a travesty of democracy, the antithesis of representative government, a sort of racist tyranny/slash/oligarchy. The core of democratic governing was embodied in the concept that the majority rules. If it doesn’t, explained John Locke in Of Civil Government, you’ve got chaos.

For if the consent of the majority shall not in reason be received as the act of the whole and conclude every individual, nothing but the consent of every individual can make anything to be the act of the whole which…’tis next to impossible ever to be had.

For over 200 years the United States and every other country with a democratic constitution considered this rule unbreakable. Abraham Lincoln fought the only internal war we’ve ever had to prevent a minority of Southern slaveowners from dictating policy to the majority government at the point of a bayonet. Political parties from the Federalists to the Whigs to the Know-Nothings to today’s GOP, Democrat, and Green parties understood the rules: when a majority of the country has decided on a course, the minority has to change their minds to get its way. In a democracy, minorities may influence policy but they don’t make it.

No one, to my knowledge, ever questioned this fundamental truth. Until the Bush Cult.

Will the Real President Obama Please Stand Up

Tom Tomorrow thinks that maybe it isn’t so much that there are two Obama’s as that maybe there’s more than one idea of Obama.

Fire! Fire!

Michael Berube on how our political culture would handle a rash of fires. (Via)

President Obama, speaking in Ohio, said he would “continue to reach across the aisle for oil-soaked rags.”

I don’t think Bush Fangirl and NYT stenographer Liz Bumiller ever wrote a story about how Bush’s “Civilian Goals Were Largely Unmet in Afghanistan “. Possibly because no one was aware Bush had any civilian goals in Afghanistan.

Roy Edroso on the reaction to Obama’s Nobel.

NEW VOICE UP COLUMN, in which I attend the follow-through on the story of Obama’s disastrous Nobel Prize victory. Apparently the new angle is that the Committee contrived by means of the award to get Obama to abandon Afghanistan, hand the U.S. over to global-warming internationalists, and Lord knows what else. Thus, if henceforth Obama does anything the Right doesn’t like, it will be in appeasement of our Oslo overlords. Soon the Scandinavians will replace France, Russia, etc. as right-wing hate-objects, and Jonah Goldberg will be writing about lutefisk-eating surrender nudists.

Oh yes, please.

Nobel What Prize?

Ditto. (Via)

Susie Madrak notices that the nominations closed the week after the inauguration, before Obama had had a chance to do anything about “Peace” and concludes, “I can only assume that he won for the achievement of not being George W. Bush.” Yup.

Mark responds likewise: “I think it’s safe to say the rest of the world really, really didn’t like Bush.” Nope. They sho nuff dint.

Anything & Everything

“Deep fat frying is the bulwark of western civilization. Dude.”

A Conservative Re-Thinks His Worldview

Pearls Before Swine