Apparently, I’m Responsible for McCain’s Win

This arrived in the mail.

You too can intimidate, embarrass, or humiliate your friends into voting for Obama by pre-blaming them for a McC win. Just click “Customize This Video for Your Friends” and fill out the form. You can send it to dozens of shirkers li8ke me and nmake them feel really bad. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Dominionists Get 2nd Spot on GOP Ticket: Palin and AIP

I trust you know who the Dominionists are – ultraconservative, neofascist, fundamentalist Xtians who want America to become a theocracy run by Biblical laws.

If you are unclear about what this means, read the book of Leviticus in the Bible. Biblical law as interpreted by these folks means the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and recalcitrant children.

 No, this is not a joke. Not an exaggeration. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, are Dominionists with all that that means. Todd is a dues-paying member of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) and has been for years. Sarah’s relationship is through him. The AIP wants Alaska to secede and become a Xtian nation on its own.

Obama’s Corporate Support

I never intended this to be an anti-Obama site. And it isn’t. But I did note the reluctance of many to include Obama’s DLC connections and business-friendly background in their assessments of him as if they didn’t mean anything and have done my best to correct that one-sided view. Which desperately needs to be corrected.

Leave us stop pretending that Barack is some sort of latter-day saint and skip right to the uncomfortable truth: he’s been getting money from ordinary people, alright, but he’s been getting a lot more from…you guessed it: the corpo’s.

Sen. Barack Obama credits his presidential campaign with creating a “parallel public financing system” built on a wave of modest donations from homemakers and high school teachers. Small givers, he said at a fundraiser this week, “will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.”

But those with wealth and power also have played a critical role in creating Obama’s record-breaking fundraising machine, and their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. Seventy-nine “bundlers,” five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama’s total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million.

Yes, boys and girls, Obama takes lots and lots of $$$ from the Big Boys of Big Business. Something those of you with stars in your eyes, but especially those of you trying real hard to find some reason to believe BO isn’t a corporate puppet, are going to have to deal with.

One more barrier on the road to Obama-Mania.

And in case it isn’t clear, Hillary’s no better,

Dump the Dems 3b: Conviction v. Pragmatism

The other thing that Thomas Nephew’s post about his encounter with Eric Alterman throws into sharp relief comes from his commenters. It is the old tension between pragmatic compromise and ideological purity.

Put another way, when does the need to be elected in order to pursue your agenda cross the line into cowardice and/or philosophical emptiness? When does pragmatism turn into win-at-any-cost vapidness? IOW, where exactly is the dividing line between a Paul Wellstone and a Mitt Romney? And is there any room at all for principles? Alterman – and a great many other so-called liberals in the Democratic party – think not.

You know I have a lot of trouble thinking of any principles that I hold more dearly than defeating George Bush in 2000 (2008?) , in the election … [audience laughter] seriously! I think that principles are a form of vanity. Of moral vanity. I think principles are a very useful teaching method for children. I think… but… I have two problems with principles. One is that whatever principle you have I have a competing principle for the same situation. So when you say I’m doing this on principle I can tell you “but there’s another principle that’s at work in the same situation and you’re violating that principle.” So I think principles are what people do instead of making difficult decisions.

(emphasis in the original)

Maybe. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe pragmatism is a way to avoid the certain pain of sticking to difficult principles, principles you believe in but which may make being elected problematic.

I’m not going to discount the nerve, even the courage it takes for a committed believer to compromise his/her beliefs in order to affect a world which will leave him/her out if s/he doesn’t. But otoh, we’re now looking at a situation in the Democratic party where compromise – some say “surrender” – has gone so far that it’s hard to say what the Donkeys stand for any more or even if – like Romney – they can be said to stand for anything at all.

That isn’t a question Alterman or those like him want to discuss. Here’s Paul from Nephew’s comments section:

Thomas, I think you’ve happened upon the tension that occurs between the idealist and the pragmatist.

Alterman is a political opportunist. He’s more concerned with helping his Party obtain more power and influence than achieving goals based on ideals or principles. You may find he and his kind distasteful (as do I on more than a few occasions), but they are a necessary component of the system.

You are an idealist, who believes that the Party should use its power to push through social justice programs for the betterment of the country.

Nell disagrees.

Paul, you’re oversimplifying to the point of condescension about idealists and pragmatists. And you’re also underestimating Thomas’ pragmatism, which his response and many past posts demonstrate.

Exactly. Mr Nephew has been far more willing to compromise than I have been and I’m nothing if not a pragmatist. The difference between the Alterman/Paul school and the Nephew/Nell school is the difference between a group for whom, just as Eric said, defeating George Bush is more important than anything else, and a group that believes it’s just as and perhaps far more important to prosecute accountability in order to prevent a repitition of the Bush/Cheney lawlessness.

But it goes beyond that, even. Defeating Bush is all very well and certainly important for the country. Yet as critical as that victory is, its importance does not allow us to duck the prime question:

And replace him with…what?

Even if we accept the connected propositions that a) defeating Bush is the Prime Directive and b) defeating Bush requires adopting GOP initiatives – which I hasten to say I don’t accept and neither does Thomas or Glenn Greenwald or any number of other lefties who’ve spoken up since the ’06 election who think exactly the opposite – even if you accept that duality, you’re forced to ask what difference it really makes if his replacement is just going to go on pursuing the Bush Agenda or, at a maximum, refuse to undo the damage that has been done so far.

Democrats and liberals have all too plainly been counting on a win in 2008, and have dealt away much of their honor and self-respect in the process of waiting for that blessed event — which may not come. But even if there is a President Obama or a President Clinton next January 10, the value of that victory has already been tarnished by their party’s — and its apologists — craven refusal to hold the most powerful lawbreaker and political criminal in the land to account.

Mr Nephew is convinced – he and Paul have at least this in common – that the Democratic refusal to stop the war, the spying, the torture, and the destruction of the economy that have been hallmarks of the Bush Regime is some sort of campaign strategy that they will jettison once the election is over and the White House is theirs. Far from being too idealistic, Mr Nephew is arguing that the Democrats are chasing the wrong strategy, that unprincipled surrender is a losing strategy.

In point of fact, it’s much more likely that the Democratic refusal to oppiose George Bush has much less to do with winning the election (as Greenwald pointed out months ago, the numbers suggest their willingness to roll over for the Bushies has badly hurt them in opinion polls, thus actually making it harder for them to win the longer they are seen as Bush enablers) than it has with the strong and demonstrable possibility that the Democratic party has been so focused on its need to WIN that it has become poisoned by its own obsession, infected by Republican success with the They’re Right/We’re Wrong Virus. If that’s the case, then they have chosen deflect a base uncomfortable with their new “principles” by using the win-at-any-cost excuse.

And much of the base is buying it.

There’s a legitimate argument here but those of us willing to have it must be just as willing to go all the way to the ultimate questions:

What has the Democratic party become since it was taken over by the neo-liberal New Democrats in the late 80’s?

and

Do they deserve to win? Are we really going to be any better off with a party that has grown used to making excuses for torture, supporting govt spying, prosecuting an illegal war, and abetting the growth of imperial powers in the presidency as if they aren’t worth worrying about?

“What Are You, 4 Years Old?”

For Kyle, Duncan, Markos, Alegre,  and the other so-called “progressives” who’ve been taken in by the Kabuki.

If a Republican Wins, Head for Tierra del Fuego

I didn’t watch the GOP debate last night because there’s no point to it. They’ve established a pattern and it’s always the same: 2 or 3 of them get into a vicious fight over who’s most like a dictator, who’d violate the Constitution the most often, who’d break more laws, who’d give the oligarchs the most tax breaks, who’d torture more innocent people, who’d invade the most Muslim countries, and/or who’d make sure a maximum number of the poor would starve, freeze to death, and end up homeless, roaming the streets.

And just to be sure we’re clear, those aren’t attacks against their opponents. They’re boasting.

 

Dems v Dems: Woolsey’s Little Revolt

In my recent posts about the Democrats I’ve said more than once that the hold of the minority conservative leaders currently controlling the party could be broken if the majority of liberal/progressive Dems currently under their thumb staged a revolt. Well, according to The Hill, one has – in a mild, non-revoltish sort of way.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is encouraging anti-war activists to find challengers to centrist Democrats, with the aim of moving the party to the left and ramping up opposition to the war in Iraq, to the chagrin of top Democratic aides.

“You folks should go after the Democrats,” Woolsey said in response to a suggestion from an activist during a conference call last month organized by the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

“I’d hate to lose the majority, but I’m telling you, if we don’t stand up to our responsibility, maybe that’s the lesson to be learned.”

OK, so she’s one legislator. We don’t have a headdress yet but we’ve got our first feather and the first crack in the wall.

The Real ’08 Election Frame: Seduction

It may be fitting in a peculiar way that the first columnist to tell the truth about the presidential race is a tv critic.

Heather Havrilesky writes about television for Salon magazine, and her latest column starts this way:

America has been feeling pretty impotent lately. The march of freedom screeched to a halt a long time ago, and we’ve got a feeble grip on our national identity. After decades of fancying ourselves sexy and invincible, we’re suddenly scrutinizing our teeth in the mirror and second-guessing the Ultrasuede loafers we once thought were so cool.

Thankfully, a new presidential race is heating up, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Who better to put the spring back in our step, than a brand-new lover, one who loves absolutely everything about us, from our stubborn independence to our somewhat delusional egocentrism? With pulpit-pounding conviction and an openly flirtatious grin, our new suitors say they see past the bald spot and the ill-fitting pants, they remember when we were young and brash, when we grabbed the world by the throat and had our way with it.

Hillary flatters us endlessly, Obama gives us long, moony, “Endless Love” gazes, and John charms our socks off. But which of these courtly callers will make us feel like our old virile, bossy selves again? The candidate who can soothe our egos, woo us out of this self-hating stupor and make us feel strong and special again will win the big prize!

She’s absolutely right. The ’08 election isn’t going to be about the Second Gulf War and occupation of Iraq or the economy stupid or the destruction of the Constitution or the general mess the Bush presidency has made of America and its wholesale violation of American values for the sake of enriching the already rich. It isn’t going to be about who has the best plan to clean up the mess or is the most likely to restore our rights or has the stones to put the corporatocracy in its place.

Obama Vows to Undo Bush Executive Orders

eRobin at Fact-esque has been saying for a couple of weeks that we need to demand from Democratic candidates statements to the effect that they will definitely overturn Bushian anti-Constitutional imperalist power-grabs, while noting that only Chris Dodd has done so – albeit in a limited, lame shuffle that leaves him lots of wiggle room.

Today at Yearly Kos, in answer to a questioner during the Q&A session, Barack Obama became the second candidate to take a stance, and there was nothing wishy-washy about it. No transcript and I can’t type fast enough to give you his statement verbatim but this is pretty close: he said that virtually all of the Bush/Cheney power grabs had come in the form of executive fiats, and pointed out that that meant that when he became president, he could use executive fiats to reverse Bush’s orders, and he would.

The crowd applauded, of course, but he then added that he thought there could be good reasons for signing statements and that he wouldn’t promise not to use them.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes supporting Obama so frustrating. Whatever he gives with one hand, he takes away with the other. He has a good, potentially workable health care plan, but then it turns out he’s going to maintain the participation of private, for-profit insurers who will game the system, whatever it is, the way they always do. He wants to get out of Iraq but only, apparently, so he can send the Army back into Afghanistan. It all amounts to talking left even as he gives the right most of what it wants.

This makes him a good politician but a good president? Not so much.

NEWSFLASH! Conservatives Defend Constitution! (Updated)

The wide-spread meme developed by the RWNM as cover for side-stepping its responsibility for Bush – that the reason Republicans got whaled in November was because “they weren’t conservative enough” – has spawned a somewhat surprising off-shoot: a group of Reaganite conservatives who are attacking Republicans for their disinterest in the Constitution.

A new political group recently asked Mitt Romney to promise not to wiretap Americans without a judge’s approval or to imprison US citizens without a trial as “enemy combatants.” When Romney declined to sign their pledge, the group denounced him as “unfit to serve as president.”

Such rhetoric might be expected from liberal activists. But these critics, who call their organization American Freedom Agenda, are hardly leftists. They represent what they insist is a growing group of disaffected conservatives who are demanding that the Republican Party return to its traditional mistrust of concentrated government power.

“Mitt Romney’s ignorance of the Constitution’s checks and balances and protections against government abuses would have alarmed the Founding Fathers and their conservative philosophy,” said Bruce Fein, one of the group’s co founders and a Reagan administration attorney, in a press release last month attacking Romney for not signing the pledge.

Better late than never, I suppose, but one has to wonder about the absence of a similar blast at Bush. The Emperor and his Grand Vizier are the ones who have put what the AFA is upset about in place. It’s all well and good to demand of the candidates who would take his place that they renounce “ignorance of the Constitution’s checks and balances”, but how seriously can we take them if they don’t denounce the guy who’s purposely and blatantly violating the principles they say are so important? Without that one would be tempted to assume that this is, what? An election ploy? A cynical strategy to put the self-destructive GOP back in the hunt by appealing to those infamous swing voters?

“Conservatives have to go back to the basics,” said co founder Richard Viguerie , a veteran direct-mail strategist and author of “Conservatives Betrayed: How the Republican Party Hijacked the Conservative Cause.” “We have to go back and re launch the conservative movement. And for traditional conservatives, it’s part of our nature to believe in the separation of powers.”

The other two co founders are Bob Barr , a former Republican congressman from Georgia, and David Keene , chairman of the American Conservative Union .

All four argue that Bush is not a true conservative, and they decided to join forces earlier this year to make the expansion of executive power a topic of debate in the 2008 presidential election. They have applied for tax-exempt status, created a website, and drawn up a 10-point pledge that they intend to ask every candidate to sign.

These are not exactly moderates we’re talking about. They’re only slightly less extreme than the movement neoconservatives with which Bush surrounds himself. Viguerie and Barr were both vocal defenders of Reagan’s Iran/Contra operation, and Barr wasn’t exactly the Voice of Reason when he was in Congress. He played the part of hack and did what he was told.

So is this real or a PR play for sympathy and a plea to be allowed back into the reality-based community in time for the ’08 election?

At this point, I’m leaning toward the latter, but I’m willing to be convinced.

Update 6/17/07: In the “I Shoulda Knowed” Dept, Sideshow‘s Avedon Carol explains what’s actually behind this apparent anomaly.

[T]hey’re especially worried about putting the power of a runaway executive into Hillary Clinton’s hands.

Now it makes sense.

Stealing ’08: Why Tim Griffin’s Appointment Was So Important

I have been hinting (here and here) that the Gonzo tumult is a distraction from the main event: Karl Rove’s use of the Justice Dept to provide cover for his planned theft of the 2008 election. While the Congress – and the country – wastes its time and energy trying to get Gonzo Al to resign (we know Bush won’t fire him under any circumstances), Rove’s USA replacements are gearing up for an election full of dirty tricks and illegal rights-embezzling.

Why, for example, was it so damned important to get a legal non-entity like Tim Griffin into a USA spot in a potential swing state that Harriet Miers was willing to pressure top Rove political aide Sara Taylor (who resigned today, perhaps feeling the investigators breathing down her neck and seeing the writing on the wall) to lean on Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling to fire Bud Cummins so Timmy could have his job?

Let’s see, shall we?

Stealing the ‘08 Election: Rove and Reconstruction After Katrina

Evidence has come to light over the past month that the so-called “incompetence” of the Federal response to Katrina is anything but. It has been a calculated effort led by Karl Rove to turn Louisiana from a Democratic state into a Republican state by destroying New Orleans, but it may backfire.

Two weeks ago the WaPo reported that roughly a quarter of a million people are suing the Federal government for damages, claiming that the Army Corps of Engineers screwed up the building of the levees, dams, in fact the whole New Orleans water delivery system.

Ever since the floodwaters receded, the idea that the U.S. government was to blame for the Katrina catastrophe has possessed and angered its victims.

A legion of lawn signs, posted in front of many wrecked homes, wagged a finger at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for the flood works: “Hold the Corps accountable!”

Turns out it was more than mere talk. After a massive deadline filing rush recently that is still being sorted through, the United States is facing legal claims from more than 250,000 people here demanding compensation because, they allege, the Corps negligently designed the waterworks that permeate the city.

***

[O]fficials said the damage claimed against the Corps exceeds $278 billion, an amount that dwarfs even the estimated $125 billion that the federal government has put up for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

Win or lose, the volume of claims is a measure of the prevalent sense in this city that the United States created the disaster and that, worse, it has failed to make up for it in disaster aid.

“This was the largest catastrophe in the history of the United States, and people want justice,” said Joseph M. Bruno, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys handling the case in federal court.

Greg Palast: “The 2008 Election Has Already Been Stolen”

What a difference an “R” makes.

In talking to people around me and reading blog comments, I’ve realized that there’s a significant misunderstanding about our voting problems and it all revolves around a single letter: R.

People seem to think that the phrases “vote fraud” and “voter fraud” mean the same thing. They don’t. We need to clear that up before we can move on to the main business here – that the firing of the USA’s is about stealing the 2008 election.

Voter fraud: fraud perpetrated by voters. IOW, somebody pretending to be somebody s/he’s not or pretending to be eligible when s/he’s not. You know, like in Chicago in the old days when the Mayor’s Machine turned out hundreds of people who used phony documents to vote numerous times in the same election.

But that was in the pre-electronic days (almost the pre-electric days) when such things were not just possible but easy. Voter fraud hasn’t been a problem since the 50’s, pretty much, and recent investigations of suspected voter fraud turned up NOTHING. No evidence of a widespread movement. No evidence of a tiny organized cadre. No evidence. Period. As Royal Masset, the former political director of the Republican Party of Texas, put it in the Houston Chronicle, among Republicans it is an “article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections.” Not fact. Not proof. Certainly not on the basis of evidence. Faith.

Voter fraud simply doesn’t exist except in the paranoid ravings of rabid Republican extremists – you know, the people who run the GOP these days: Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, James Dobson, Karl Rove, the Texas Republican party, and everybody who reports to Karl Rove – which is, as we’ve been learning lately, pretty much everybody in the Bush govt.

Vote fraud (no “r”): fraud perpetrated on the voting process. IOW, an attempt – usually by a political party and its operatives – to subvert an election in order to obtain a victory they would otherwise not enjoy. IOOW, to steal it.

Unlike voter fraud, vote fraud is very, very real. The evidence isn’t just available, it’s overwhelming.

Which brings us to Greg Palast.

In an interview with the online zine BUZZFLASH’s Mark Karlin, Palast – who broke the story of the wholesale suppression of minority voting rights in Florida in 2000 – was asked if the 2008 election was going to be stolen and replied, “It already has been.”

The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections — not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy. They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls, same as they did in 2000. But instead of calling them felons, they said that they had suspect addresses.

Susie Flynn for President

OK, so the field is already crowded with candidates and more are showing up every day. Trust me. This one is different. She’s what you might call a single-issue candidate. She’s running for one reason and one reason only: to help uninsured kids.

 

Welcome!

My name is Susie Flynn. I am running for President of the United States of America to help the nine million children who have no health insurance. This is a crisis. These children have been let down, yet the people accountable are doing too little to solve it. By running for President, I intend to make everyone in America aware of the issue so that it will no longer be ignored. Under your next President, every child in America must get the health insurance he or she deserves.

There’s a petition on her website, and you can sign up for a newsletter.

BTW, she’s ten.

I think I just found my favorite.

Edwards Blogging Controversy: A Summary (Updated)

You have probably heard by now that Michelle “Dancing on the Ceiling With My Head Up My Ass” Malkin and Bill “Jews Are Taking Over the World” Donohue have attacked the Edwards’ campaign for hiring pandagon‘s Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister‘s Melissa McEwan to, as the NY Times put it in its own inimitable fashion, “reach out to liberals in the online world”. Donohue, notorious himself for such temperate comments as “If you asked” some Hollywood actors “to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face” and “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular” claimed that Amanda was a “potty-mouth”.

This is what’s known as a “double standard” given Donahue’s spirited defense of Mel Gibson‘s attack of intensely profane anti-semitism only a few months ago, and what my mother would have said was “the pot calling the kettle black” as the way he did it was, well, pretty G-D profane.