IMPALIN’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President in 2012

Anyone who thinks Michelle Obama should use tea with the Queen as an experimental fashion platform is sadly deluded. I cannot believe some of the suggestions I am reading on this site. Bare shoulders at Buckingham Palace during the day would be seen as a tremendous insult to our monarch. Do Americans not realize that in Britain, unlike America, to wear a wedding dress in church that does not cover one’s shoulders is considered absolutely disrespectful? It was the first thing I was told when I had my wedding gown designed in London fifteen years ago. Sleeves are a must. Imagine, then, what the Queen - who is never sleeveless on formal occasions - would think of Michelle Obama showing up in bare-armed sheath by some clueless modern designer, when the Queen’s day uniform - as we know - is sleeves, hat, gloves - and no matter how hot the weather, tights. The Royal family is always told that they too should wear hats, sleeves and gloves to match the formal style when paying the Royal matriarch a visit - which means, that strictly speaking, so should America’s First Lady, out of respect. Anyone British person knows that when you are invited to Buckingham Palace, you behave - and dress - in the way Buckingham Palace suggests - not as if you were getting ready to sashay down a Fashion Week runway. Of course it’s possible to make the Royal formal style look glamorous. No one did it better than the late Princess of Wales - but she always dressed “correctly”. Anyone who attends Royal Ascot or Royal Regatta at Henley during London’s so-called season knows that if you try to put fashion ahead of protocol - you will be stared at and probably kicked out. For Henley skirts must cover the knee (I once had to stop the car en route and buy a new dress since I realized the one I had on was just a fraction too short) and at Ascot hats must cover the top of the head. Sleeves are always required. A friend who spent the week at Windsor Castle during Royal Ascot one week had to get into long evening wear for dinner every single night. So for all those shrieking about who will look the most fashionable during the G20 summit, may I suggest you dampen the nonsensical hurly-burly of wondering who will reign in the fashion stakes. The answer is neither Sarah Brown nor Michelle Obama, nor even Carla Bruni-Sarkozy but the women who has already set the bar - for over fifty years: Her Majesty, the Queen. More on Michelle Obama Style

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Vicky Ward: Of Course Michelle Cannot Go Sleeveless To Have Tea With The Queen!

Michael Steele has staked a lot on today’s special election in NY-20. The RNC has put in at least $225,000, Steele has sent staff to NY to assist on the race, and speaking in Albany in February, he said that the RNC has “come to play, and we’ve come to win”. Some have speculated that if Scott Murphy wins today’s election—and if you’re available to do GOTV calls, click here –that Steele could be deposed as chair of the Republican National Committee. Even if Murphy wins, Steele isn’t going to be taken out. And for Democrats, that’s great news. Deposing Steele would be a PR disaster for the Republicans. They’ve made a big deal about electing the first African-American chair of the Republican party. To depose him by coup—would the wingers characterize with one of their favorite terms, “high tech lynching” ?—would do more harm to the GOP’s standing on racial matters than would have been the case had they never named Steele chair in the first place. There’s also the problem of what would happen after Steele’s departure. Set aside the procedural difficulties of deposing him; even if the GOP could easily get rid of Steele, who would replace him? Steele became chair in part because there was no consensus among RNC members on who should be chair. Many recognize that the GOP has an image problem with voters outside the South who perceive the party as too beholden to the reactionary elements that dominate the Southern wing of the party. The delegates who eventually coalesced around Steele appeared to be of the anyone-but-a-Southerner faction. I’ve heard that many Republican consultants think the party has to tone down its submission to the Southern faction. If making a mediocrity like Steele chair was the only way to hold off the Southerners, there’s not much reason to think that re-opening the process would result in both another candidate not identified as Southern and someone significantly more competent and respected than Steele. This may disappoint some Democrats. It shouldn’t; instead, we should be pleased. Sarah Palin became John McCain’s running mate, despite not having the temperament or experience for the job, based largely on shallow PR considerations. Michael Steele became RNC chair for similar reasons; he’s black, he’s not from the South, he was viewed as “fresh” and would present a new image of the Republican party. He was not chosen for the job because he’s a living, breathing competent leader who would successfully guide the Republican National Committee. Like VP nominee Sarah Palin, he was picked to be a symbol, and was expected to quietly submit to being a passive symbol. Like Palin, Steele hasn’t been content to be a passive symbol, and is reveling in the attention. Like Palin, he says stupid stuff, and the attention he gets is typically net negative. Like Palin, he appears to have little of the experience, knowledge or skill required to perform well in the position to which he was promoted. And like Palin, he’s hurting the Republican party. I hope Scott Murphy wins today’s special election in NY-20. (And again, click here to make GOTV calls.) It will be good to retain what should be a Republican seat with someone who appears ready to be a strong Congressman. The only negative that could come out of a Murphy win would be if Michael Steele decides that a Murphy win requires him to resign, because, as a Democrat, I love the job Michael Steele is doing as chair of the Republican National Committee. In fact, I hope that one day he runs for President.  

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Even If Murphy Wins, Steele Will Remain GOP Chair

12,000 Untested Kits Undermine Investigations and Justice for Victims (Los Angeles) - Los Angeles County officials should move urgently to test a backlog of more than 12,000 rape kits - the physical evidence collected after a sexual assault - to ensure justice for rape victims, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 68-page report, “Testing Justice: The Rape Kit Backlog in Los Angeles City and County,” reveals that the backlog of untested rape kits in Los Angeles County is larger and more widespread than previously reported. Through dozens of interviews with police officers, public officials, criminalists, rape treatment providers, and rape victims, the report documents the devastating effects of the backlog on victims of sexual abuse. “Women who are raped have a right to expect police to do all they can to thoroughly investigate their case, but in LA they often feel betrayed to learn that their rape kits are never even tested,” said Sarah Tofte, researcher with Human Rights Watch’s US program and author of the report. “And in some cases, failure to test means that a rapist who could have been arrested will remain free.” Women who report being raped are asked to undergo a lengthy, extensive examination to collect DNA and other physical evidence that might identify their attacker, corroborate testimony about the assault, or connect their case to other rape crime scene evidence. The resulting rape kit is then booked into police evidence. However, although rape victims may believe it is automatically tested, that is often not the case in Los Angeles County. Rape treatment providers told Human Rights Watch that victims assumed silence from the officers investigating their case simply meant no evidence was found, or that there was no DNA match. But Human Rights Watch analyzed data from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and Los Angeles County’s 47 independent police departments, and found that as of March 1, 2009, there were at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. In those cases, officers never sent the kits on for forensic testing. Of these 12,669 untested kits, at least 1,218 are from unsolved cases in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim. And 499 kits are attached to cases past the 10-year statute of limitations for rape in California, making it impossible to prosecute the alleged assailants even if they were to be identified. Under California law, if those 499 kits had been opened within two years of the attack, the statute would no longer apply. Thousands more rape kits were destroyed untested. The backlog grew even as the Police and Sheriff’s Departments received millions of federal dollars from the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant, a program the US Congress created to address rape kit backlogs, the effect of which is blunted by the fact that grantees can use the money to test any kind of DNA backlog. Human Rights Watch’s report also contains previously unpublished data on the extent of the rape kit backlog in the 47 cities in Los Angeles County that have independent police departments. For example, records obtained by Human Rights Watch show that the City of Long Beach booked 1,911 rape kits into evidence in the past 15 years. Of those, 51 were sent to the crime lab, an estimated 780 untested kits were destroyed, and 1,072 currently sit untested in their police storage facility. (A chart of data from the 47 cities is available in chapter VI of the report.) Backlogs of rape kits exist at police stations and crime labs throughout the United States, but nowhere is the problem known to be more acute than Los Angeles. The accumulation of rape kits in Los Angeles County is due to a combination of police discretion regarding which rape kits get tested; a lack of financial commitment to testing; and the length of time it took officials to acknowledge the nature and extent of the problem, Human Rights Watch said. “Failing to test rape kits denies justice to women who’ve suffered sexual violence,” said Tofte. “If officials had spent federal money to test more kits, they might have prevented future rapes and allowed for prosecution in cases that are now beyond the statute of limitations.” The backlog can have tragic results. In one case documented in the report, in the time it took police to test one woman’s rape kit, the alleged perpetrator had attacked at least two other victims, including a child. Law enforcement officials told Human Rights Watch they sometimes delayed submitting a kit for testing because they did not believe a crime had occurred. Officials also said they tested every kit in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim, but the subsequent backlog count showed this not to be the case. Testing the rape kits can do more than isolate an unknown attacker’s DNA: it can connect evidence from different crime scenes and it can exonerate innocent suspects. “The Police and Sheriff’s Departments have agreed to test all rape kits now in the backlog and all those collected in the future,” Tofte said. “Now officials need to enforce this policy as part of a wider reform of the way rape is investigated.” The US has specific obligations under international human rights law that require reasonable steps be taken to secure essential forensic evidence from incidents of sexual violence. In order to meet these obligations and eliminate their backlogs, Human Rights Watch called upon the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to: Enforce policy requiring every booked rape kit to be sent to the crime lab and tested; Identify the crime lab resources necessary to test every booked rape kit - those currently in the backlog and those collected in the future - in a timely manner; Identify the police department resources necessary to pursue the investigative leads generated from testing every booked rape kit; Prioritize funding for the resources necessary to eliminate the rape kit backlog, test every future rape kit, and pursue investigative leads from rape kit testing; Implement a system to inform sexual violence victims of the status of their rape kit test; and, Preserve every booked rape kit until it is tested. Human Rights Watch also called on the Mayor of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles City Council, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to make funding for the testing of rape kits a priority in their 2009-2010 budgets. More on Sexual Violence

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Human Rights Watch: US: Los Angeles County Should Test Thousands of Rape Kits (Video)

From Sunday’s Meet The Press : MR. GREGORY:  In terms of future leaders of the Republican Party, would you like to see Sarah Palin become president? SEN. McCAIN:  I’d like to see her compete.  I think we’ve got some very good candidates:  Jon Huntsman and–the problem when I run down these names, I always leave, leave out a, a name–Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty.  There’s, there’s so many.  There’s a lot of good, fresh talent out there. MR. GREGORY:  But would you support Palin? SEN. McCAIN:  Oh, I’d have to see who the candidates are and, and what the situation is at the time.  But have no doubt of my respect, admiration and love for Sarah and her family. McCain is such a disingenuous ass … he was willing to put Palin a 72-year old heartbeat away from the presidency solely to fire up a base that hated him, even as he ran under the slogan “Country First.” And now that it isn’t his own self-interest at stake? Palin’s not even at the top of his maybe list.

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Remember "Country First"?

Mount Redoubt is awake. Our governor is not. I’m beyond annoyed. Currently 6 million gallons of Alaska Crude Oil wait at the base of a volcano that has puked, spewed and gone half mad 19 times in the last 8 days. The years of colonization have made flaccid the response of many Alaskans. For good reason; collective PTSD from the Valdez Oil Spill and subsequent 20 year wait only to have the Supreme Court deliver Exxon a reach-around while Alaskans grabbed their ankles. Ironic we needed petroleum products to deal with an oil company. Sadly, our governor couldn’t remember “Exxon vs. Baker” when asked by Katie Couric about Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with. The 20 year anniversary of the spill last week would have been an appropriate time for a statement, but she was loudly silent. It is a very real fear that history will be repeated. The Drift River marine terminal started operating in 1967. Brilliant. I know, let’s put an oil storage facility at the base of a volcano. You would think it was the secret lair of the Evil Dr. Cheney; or some hilariously funny and misguided plotline from an Austin Powers film. Pipelined in from another facility, it merely holds the crude until it’s ready to ride to the refinery across the inlet. One of the reasons given for leaving 6 million gallons of crude in the storage tanks is stability; the tanks are much more stable when they have something in them. Chevron referenced Katrina and the need to keep the tanks heavy enough so they don’t float away in a flood. The environmental coupon clippers decided to risk the pristine Cook Inlet in order to save empty storage tanks. DID I MENTION THEY ARE AT THE BASE OF AN ACTIVE AND EXPLODING VOLCANO? Drift River is also permitted by the EPA to treat ballast water from tankers. Were the storage tanks emptied of oil, they could be filled to safe and stable weight levels with sea water-called BALLAST when it’s in a boat. The volcanic eruption of 1989 was severe, but the tanks were not at risk - they had been emptied. 20 years later, industry initially wouldn’t release the amount of oil left in the tanks citing a threat to ” homeland security “. So, by that logic, the terrorists would attack if they knew the crude supply in a storage facility was running a little low? REALLY? The Palin Administration, the Coast Guard, and the EPA rolled with that and regurgitated the corporate line of drivel without question. Why don’t the terrorists attack the port of Valdez ? They release their crude number every day. Finally, due to relentless pressure from Cook Inlet Keepers, Chevron finally owned the fact that they decided to store 6 million gallons of crude oil at the base of Mt Redoubt . After months of seismic activity , rumblings, belches…well, all the volcanic foreplay you would expect before an eruption…why are 6 million gallons of oil still there? That’s over half the size of the reported Exxon Valdez oil spill . The Coast Guard, Chevron and the State have collectively admitted that there is a lack of response equipment if the Drift River oil tanks rupture or collapse. According to state statutes for lease conditions ; “Mitigative, Preventive, and Abatement Activities Required (a) The LESSEE will, at itsown expense ….The LESSEE shall prevent or, if the procedure, activity, event or condition already exists or has occurred, shall abate, as completely as practicable, using the BEST PRACTICABLE TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE…immediate, serious, or irreparable harm or damage to the environment (including but not limited to soil, sediments, water and air quality, areas of vegetation, fish or other wildlife populations or their habitats, or any other natural resource).” HOLY CRAP! It’s the Pottery Barn Rule ! You break it…you buy it. That’s hilarious! Exxon just proved it, and the Supreme Court set precedence for companies to have an “accident” and get a pass. It’s time to demand the State of Alaska enforce the laws we already have. It doesn’t take an economist to realize a “Free-Market” capitalist society is very expensive . Chevron, like Exxon, privatize their profits but socialize the risk with the livelihoods and lifestyles of the people and environment of Cook Inlet . The Cook Inletkeepers have a call to action. This is Vitamin Democracy. Write to the Captain of the Port - Mark Hamiltion - mark.h.hamilton@uscg.mil - and ask him to: 1) draw down the oil in the tanks at the Drift River Terminal until the valocano subsides and 2) position spill response equipment so we’re ready in case things turn south. Join Cook Inletkeepers . You can tell them I sent you. Join Renewable Resources Coalition to keep an eye on the Bristol Bay watershed and Pebble Mine updates. I could bang my head and tell you the controlling forces in Alaska have better things to focus on…like denying vaginal rights, bringing back the death penalty (Jesus would have loved that…oh wait, maybe not), and the “I-did-a-dog” bestiality bill. Palin’s pandering appointments of W.A.R. (extremist Wayne Anthony Ross) for Attorney General and the newly converted and former Republican Tim Grussendorf to replace the vacant Alaska State Democratic Senate Seat are just short of a “F*@# YOU, Alaska!” press release. But I won’t rant on that just now, WE DON’T HAVE TIME!

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Shannyn Moore: Palin & Chevron; Spill Disaster in the Making

Hoo boy. In the era of Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal, it’s pretty hard to stand out in the world of conservative lunatic ravings. But Andrew Breitbart’s recent opinion piece in the Washington Times truly raises (lowers?) the bar for the rest of the field in right-wing Crazytown. His thesis is that liberal blog commenters are ruining things for the conservatives’ attempts to have a nice online chat. That sounds like I’m exaggerating, but sadly, I’m actually toning his comments down. Read his whole piece if you don’t believe me. It’s worth reading, because YOU — quite possibly a Huffington Post commenter — are apparently what is ruining everything on “the Internets” for conservatives. Because this article was written in Crazytalk (a dialect spoken only in increasingly-smaller regions of our country), allow me to translate selected excerpts for you. A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power. We must not let that go unanswered. Some might initially be confused at the “war” terminology, but this is normal, as conservatives like to see everything as a “war” of us-against-them. So, while in a normal conversation this would be considered somewhat odd, rest assured that this is actually considered “normal” for his intended audience. His main point is that Americans who do not agree with everything he says and believes should be silenced (and, while he never actually comes out and says it, perhaps rounded up for their own good — because, quite obviously, they are insane and may be dangerous to the general public of conservative ideologues). Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy — us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency — and the humanity — of George W. Bush. Rational speakers of English will be confused by the turnabout of calling all who did not worship at the feet of our last president “facts-be-damned,” especially since Bush’s White House famously proclaimed it was not going to put up with that old-style “reality-based” conventional thought at all, but rather create their own reality. For people who have been living in Bush’s alternate reality for eight years, it is a rude shock when introduced back to the cold light of reason. Perhaps they should be weaned slowly, rather than facing the fact that the only person who destroyed George W. Bush (and his humanity, for that matter) was George W. Bush. Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way — all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its “idealism” in a most cynical fashion. The ends justify the means for them — now more than ever. Once again, reality-based readers may be confused by this. After having to defend Bush’s lies and Bush’s deceptive acts for so many years, they see anyone who contradicts the least part of what they say as their “enemy.” The large, stinking whale-sized carcass of irony in that bit about “moral relativism” will also be totally lost on these people. After arguing for years that “the ends justify the means” in all things military, they would stare at you blank-faced if you asked them a simple question like: “Who would Jesus torture?” Because that doesn’t fit in their definition of “wicked” at all. You have to feel somewhat sorry for them, because after wallowing in their own moral relativism for so long, they’ve apparently forgotten what the term means. Much of Mr. Obama’s vaunted online strategy involved utilizing “Internet trolls” to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that’s called “vandalism.” But in a political movement that embraces “graffiti” as avant-garde art , that’s business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people’s property in pursuit of electoral victory. Hugh Hewitt’s popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left. See, there’s that bit about “enemies” again. Although, I have to admit, his line about destroying “other people’s property in pursuit of electoral victory” is so bizarre, even I am at a loss to translate it. Perhaps I should make a hat out of tinfoil and try again? [Pause, to the sounds of crumpling tinfoil.] Nope, still don’t get it, sorry. Maybe someone ripped down a McCain campaign sign in his front yard last year? One can only wonder. Back to the rest of it. You see, in Crazytown, “discussion” means: “getting people who proudly (and without a hint of irony in their voices) call themselves ‘dittoheads’ to compete with each other to see how fervently they can agree with you.” It does not, as in the reality-based world, mean: “the marketplace of ideas, where everyone is allowed to speak their piece and debate the merits of their arguments.” Because that would be horrible, obviously, which is why conservative websites are happier not allowing any debate than having to poison their tender ears and eyes with another point of view. In fact (according to Breitbart) these scurrilous people are guilty of the crime of “vandalizing” the open marketplace of ideas known as the Internet, with (are you sitting down?) opinions Rush Limbaugh does not agree with . Since they are guilty of this crime (vandalism is against the law), the obvious answer is to lock them all up, or at the very least, forcibly keep them from their computers. He then reviews a bit of MoveOn history from the Clinton era, and offers a big Valentine to the leader of the Republican Party, the aforementioned Rush Limbaugh. Read the whole article to see this bit, if interested. “This is nothing more than the Internet version of Soviet disinformation,” Human Events editor Jed Babbin told me. “MoveOn.org and the little boys from ‘Lord of the Flies’ who run Media Matters want to make it appear that there’s huge dissension within conservative ranks on issues on which we’re most united.” Dang, Babbin and Breitbart seem not to have gotten the memo that the Cold War is over. You see, in their world, “Soviet disinformation” equals: “Americans exercising their right of free speech.” It is only in that wacky and bizarre reality-based world that “Soviet disinformation” equates to: “We get to say what we want to say, and nobody is allow to dissent.” This is, once again, due to a genetic deformity among conservatives. They are, seemingly, born without being able to spot irony in all its delicious forms. So, for the irony-impaired, allow me to explain more fully: most people think it’s funny when you use an example to disparage your opponent when you are guilty of the very same thing as your example . I know, it’s hard to understand, but this is called “irony,” and others find it amusing. The left also uses disinformation to inundate the advertisers of conservative-leaning talk shows to intimidate them from financially supporting popular mainstream shows. See, here’s another prime example. When conservatives boycott Disney for the audacity of letting homosexuals into their theme parks, that is a good thing. When liberals boycott cable television and talk radio advertisers, that is a wicked, wicked thing. But, being irony-impaired, you just have to feel sad for those who choose such hilarious and laughable examples to make their points. Skipping over a bit here, Breitbart is just getting warmed up. So now that the right is vanquished and thoroughly out of power, why doesn’t it learn from its conquerors and employ similar tactics? The answer is obvious. The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes. The current political and media environment crafted by supposedly idealistic Mr. Obama resembles Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela more than John F. Kennedy’s America. For one shining moment, Breitbart enters fully into the reality-based world. That’s actually a nice turn of phrase to describe the state of the right wing in American politics today: “vanquished and thoroughly out of power.” I also liked his use of “conquerors,” even though, again, conservatives absolutely must see everything as us-against-them warfare, even when they admit they’re losing. But then, due to the harsh sunshine of these facts, he retreats into writing comedy once again. I laughed so hard at that “Judeo-Christian ideals” sentence I could barely manage to drag myself back to the keyboard, in sheer awe of the irony of it all. Republicans have been masters of “dirty tricks” campaigns back to Richard Nixon (and probably before, but I’m too young to remember), and have used them quite successfully so many times that it is now known as the “Republican playbook” for winning elections. There are, quite literally, too many examples to cite here. One man’s propaganda is another man’s (cough… Karl Rove… cough, cough) plans for a “permanent Republican majority.” Once again, please, someone go back to the late 1980s, dig out that “Cold War is over” memo, and send this man a copy. “The current media and political environment” is made up entirely of “propaganda techniques… perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes.” Boy, doesn’t that take you back? Nostalgia for when those godless commies were such a convenient enemy is a common trait of the right wing, who apparently haven’t had an original idea since the Berlin Wall came down. Because, see, it’s propaganda and dirty commie tricks when voices other than conservative voices are allowed to be heard by the public. In Breitbart’s ideal America, only conservative voices would be allowed to be heard, and all others would be silenced. The laughable fact that this actually defines “propaganda” and “communist regimes” is totally and utterly lost on the ironically-challenged. The fact that America is built on a foundation of free speech and lively political debate simply does not exist in the conservative universe, because it is yet another of those inconvenient facts from the reality-based world the rest of us live in that they have chosen to ignore. But, although it’s tough to believe at this point, he has not yet written his funniest line. You might want to prepare yourself for this next sentence by preventatively lying on the floor, ready to roll around laughing your head off: The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and other left-leaning sites benefit from the right’s belief that there are rules and decorum in political debate and civic engagement. Of course, every now and then, a curious right-winger will go in and engage in discussion at a left-wing site, but rarely under purely disingenuous and mass coordinated means. You see, in their world, conservatives are all polite and would never ever ever say anything mean to anyone, especially not on some liberal website. All together with me, now: “OH, PUH-LEEZE!!” David Brock, John Podesta, am I missing something? As a prolific consumer of online content, I value nothing more than the sincere expression of opinion that differs from mine. Sometimes I am even moved or swayed from my dogma. But that was not the type of communication that got Mr. Obama elected. The American right is in a heap of trouble in a media age that doesn’t shun the goons and liars that have poisoned the political process and won the American presidency by breaking the rules of fair play. It is time to fight back, but it won’t be easy. The enemy is willing to do and say anything in order to win. In his rousing finish, he asks: “Am I missing something?” Since I was not named directly by Breitbart (and because it is just too, too easy a shot), I will refrain from answering that. I will leave it up to all you “goons and liars” to come up with your own reality-based responses. Ahem. He slips up a bit by admitting that he can be “swayed from my dogma,” since anyone with a dictionary can actually look up the term “dogma,” but then he is not used to such reality-based reactions, in his defense. That bit about “fair play” is pretty choice, too. You see, the ironically-oblivious right wing actually believes there was a stolen election in America — but that it happened in the year 2008, not in 2000. All those people who “voted” for Barack Obama when he “won” one of those godless communistic “free elections” in “a landslide” are quite obviously “the enemy.” Why they haven’t been locked up yet remains a deep, deep mystery for the right. Since this article was so completely over the top, I offer a clue to the right wing of America: if you’re going to complain about totalitarianism and propaganda, you might want to look in the mirror first. Out here in Realityville, totalitarianism and propaganda equals silencing your political opponents and denying them the right to speak — which is exactly what you are defending. This is why it is ironic, and why people are now laughing at you. Just to clear that up.   [ Note: For what I believe is the first time, I am breaking a self-imposed cardinal rule of my own writing: "I promise to avoid engaging in gratuitous flamewars (blogwars?) with other bloggers, or other media types. Much of what I read on popular blogs is merely "gotcha-ism" personally directed against other bloggers, or mainstream media types. I find these tempests-in-a-teapot boring, myself, and hope never to get dragged into such a contest." But this time, Breitbart's article was just too insulting to Huffington Post commenters for me resist. I will try to do better in the future, and offer my apologies for being provoked into writing this article. Mea culpa. ]   Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com  

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Chris Weigant: Oh, The Humanity! Godless Huffington Post Commenters Wickedly Destroying Conservatism

The Republican National Committee entity in charge of coordinating this past summer’s convention in Minnesota is being accused by one of its vendors of failing to pay nearly $800,000 in expenses. In a complaint filed in January 2009 [ PDF , 3 Dog Consulting, Ltd., alleges that it was not paid roughly $760,000 for fundraising services it did for the Minneapolis/St. Paul 2008 Host Committee, the non-profit group tasked with overseeing the convention. The suit remains unsettled to this date, with the host committee saying it has met all of its contractual obligations and 3 Dog insisting that the organization is trying to weasel out of its financial commitments. On the surface, the dispute appears to be more a business matter than political. The committee has more than $5.4 million cash on hand, with slightly more than $1 million in debts owed, according to FEC reports . It could, if it wanted, pay off the money for which it is being sued. “This is a run of the mill business dispute in terms of what is required under the contract,” said John Knapp, the committee’s lawyer. “We paid these fundraisers over $680,000 and don’t believe they are owed the money they are claimed.” But there are some potentially far-reaching implications to the complaint. For starters, while the host committee is legally a separate entity from the Republican Party, its executive is one of the GOP’s key behind-the-scenes players. Jeff Larson, who was tasked with raising money for the convention, is a conservative campaign guru, benefactor to former Sen. Norm Coleman (renting him a Washington D.C. apartment for below market price), and, perhaps most famously, the man who bought Sarah Palin her pricey clothes during the ‘08 campaign. Moreover, the clash over unpaid funds could persuade other major vendors to be more hesitant when working with the national Republican Party and their affiliated committees in the future. 3 Dog, after all, is not an obscure shop — the firm has done work for Norm Coleman , among others, including fundraising activities for his recount election. “At first I thought it was greed,” said Alan Weinblatt, the lawyer representing 3 Dog, when asked to explain what happened. “But that doesn’t explain it. Because what are they going to do with our money? So then I thought, what else could it be? Just reading the emails… there seems to have developed some antagonism between Mr. Larson and 3 Dog. I think he began to believe that he could do this without them. So he said, ‘Why should I pay them a four percent commission?’” 3 Dog entered a contract with the host committee on May 29, 2007 to “solicit both cash and in-kind contributions” for the 2008 Host Committee from outside the state of Minnesota. Its work was to conclude once the Republican convention was done on September 8, 2008. According to the complaint: “As compensation for its fundraising and consulting services,” the firm would receive a “retainer of fifteen thousand dollars, plus an additional amount equal to four percent of all donations and contributors that Defendant 2008 Host received from sources outside of the State of Minnesota.” According to the complaint, 3 Dog raised a total of $36,123,421 for the committee, meaning that it should have earned a $1,444,937 commission. But, as Weinblatt details, the firm stopped receiving payments about three weeks before the convention. They “didn’t think much about it until the convention was over and they asked where is the rest of our payments,” he said. “They were told, ‘there ain’t no more payments.’” The firm, the complaint asserts, ended up receiving $684,000 in commission, some $760,000 less than it believes it was entitled to. Asked about the alleged missing money, Knapp said that 3 Dog had been paid in full. He added that the committee had not set aside any money to pay the firm if in fact it loses the lawsuit because “we don’t believe we owe them money.”

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GOP Convention Arm Sued For Allegedly Bilking Firm Out Of $760,000

Election day is tomorrow in New York’s 20th Congressional district, and with the polls deadlocked, both campaigns are in full swing. Republican Jim Tedisco is busy wheedling money out of the GOP’s finest, like Rep. Michele “I’m Not A Kook” Bachmann . This is the same person who…well, let’s let Keith Olbermann summarize the Bachmann inanity from the past week: Heck, with friends like Michele, who needs Pat Boone ? Evidently the Tedisco campaign does: Pat Boone, a 50’s era teen heartthrob and squeaky-clean, conservative, “silent-majority” icon, is sending out robocalls on behalf of GOP congressional candidate Jim Tedisco. Pat Boone? The Pat Boone? What, was Barry Manilow too hip for them? Was Gene Autry too dead? Meanwhile, Democrat Scott Murphy is going about his business, and happily for him, he has better friends than Pat Boone and Michele Bachmann. His robocalls are from the district’s wildly popular former Rep, Kirsten Gillibrand. It seems rather significant that the 42-year-old Gillibrand wasn’t even born when Pat Boone was popular. A transcript : Hi. This is your Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand calling today to ask you to vote for Scott Murphy this Tuesday, March 31st. In these very tough economic times, we need someone who knows how to create jobs. Scott Murphy will work with me and President Obama to get our economy moving again. This is going to be a very close election, and Scott needs your support, so please join me in voting for Scott Murphy this Tuesday, March 31st. Polls are open from 6 am to 9 pm. Thank you very much. Please remember to vote for Scott Murphy on Tuesday, March 31st. Paid for and authorized by Scott Murphy for Congress 518-761-2009 She was also in the district campaigning for Murphy over the weekend, as was senior Senator Chuck Schumer, who cruised to reelection in 2004 with 70% of the vote statewide. I think Murphy wins the Battle of Surrogates this weekend, unless Pat Boone carries some particular weight in Upstate New York. Murphy knows his surrogates are better, too. This is part of the reason he sent out two mailers over the weekend, one featuring himself and President Obama (a fairly well-liked individual nationally), the other one, with the leaders of the Republican Party. That’s Bush, Palin and Limbaugh . This can’t say good things about how Sarah Palin polls in swing districts: A late attack piece from Scott Murphy in NY-20 features her, with Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush, as one of “them,” out to stop Obama. Given that Obama won the historically Republican 20th - and Palin lost it - that seems like a smart play. Well, the battle lines have been drawn. There’s nothing to do at this point but get out every last vote…so if you have even a bit of time, phonebank ! Do it today , because there is literally no tomorrow . Tomorrow is Election Day. On the web: Scott Murphy for Congress Phonebank for Scott Murphy Albany Project ActBlue Page

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NY-20: The War of Surrogates

CL fully becomes editor-in-chief (since October 2008) Sarah Gray Miller’s magazine with the May 2009 redesign, but in the if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it spirit, the monthly’s since-September 10, 2001, Come Home to Comfort tagline not only continues, but Miller also gives Comfort added importance by putting it above the logo on the cover, after its 71/2-year appearance on the monthly’s spine. “I fully respect the work of [1998-2008 predecessor] Nancy Soriano and [1978-1998 founder] Rachel Newman, and their advice has been invaluable,” says Miller. “Comfort was the idea of Nancy and [since August 2000 vp/publisher] Steve Grune, and there was nothing better in my mind that represents the magazine. Besides, just as Comfort sent a wonderful message in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, so, too, is the message in this difficult economy.” More on Magazines

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Country Living Becomes Sarah Gray’s Magazine With Redesign

Gov. Sarah Palin named Anchorage lawyer Wayne Anthony Ross as her new attorney general on Thursday. We did not expect her to pick a gay-friendly AG, however his blatant prejudice expressed in a public letter to the state Bar shows that he is a poor choice for our top attorney:

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Palin’s AG Pick Called Gays "Degenerates"

WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain isn’t committing to supporting his vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, if she runs for president in 2012. McCain _ the GOP’s presidential nominee last year _ says he wants to see who the other candidates are and what the situation might be. The Arizona senator elevated Palin to the national stage with his surprise pick. He says he has great affection for Palin and her family. But he also cites three other governors _ Utah’s John Huntsman, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty as potential candidates. McCain joked he was going to get himself in trouble for forgetting a name. McCain appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” More on Sarah Palin

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McCain On Backing Palin In 2012: Let’s See Who Else Runs

If you think wingnuts trying to tie every movement of the stock market to imagined corporate fears of a Democratic White House is a new thing, try out this quote. If it’s been a Reagan stock market up till now, it’s a Carter stock market today. The very day that Jimmy Carter pulled ahead of Ronald Reagan in the polls the markets reacted with their largest decline of the year. Who said it? Recently eulogized and fondly fawned over radioman, Paul Harvey.   Call me ignorant (and I certainly was at the time), but up until the fall of 1980 then I had pretty much ignored the right wing snippets Harvey wove into the mixture of stories, soap-selling, and news of the weird that had been an almost constant background to my childhood. I owned (still do) his whole series of “rest of the story” books, and from them learned trivia that kept me tuning in each day. Harvey’s presentation of some odd fact framed as a mystery was masterfully done.  But there was no mystery about the broadcaster’s inclinations that fall, as Harvey’s disdain for President Carter dripped from the speakers daily, along with praise for the cowboy coming to rescue America. Harvey not only invented the term “Reaganomics,” he used it proudly. When the election season ended, I realized that Harvey was always sprinkling his broadcasts with heavy sarcasm for “liberal hippies” and that when he talked about American values, he meant conservative values. It was easy to get lost in the avuncular chuckle or the way he delivered a pitch for hair cream in the same tone he used for world events, but the attitude was still there. That doesn’t mean Harvey was blind shill for the GOP as so many pundits are today. He had the guts to speak out against Nixon and wasn’t always a cheerleader for Ford. But Reagan was tailor made for Harvey’s American mythology. Both in his personal biography of reinvention, and in his message, Reagan echoed Harvey. Both of them spoke to a time in America that never really existed, both turned complex events into simple (and simplified) catch phrases, and both called for the best in Americans — but did so in a way that too often reinforced the worst in our nature. Newscaster Lowell Thomas received a Presidential Medal of Freedom for four decades of reporting that ranged from the battlefields of World War I and the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia to the grim days of the Cold War. Paul Harvey is the only other broadcaster so honored — and it’s no coincidence that he was given his award by George W. Bush. Harvey was the template from which later conservatives would start. He was the bridge between Father Coughlin and Rush Limbaugh, the torch carrier mixing news, opinion, and medicine show tonics. With Harvey gone, it’s natural that ABC radio is looking for someone to fill the niche, and the person they seem to have settled on is Mike Huckabee . Mike Huckabee will be getting his 15 minutes of fame. ABC Radio, wowed by listener reaction to the former Arkansas guv, says the stations Harvey fed will now get the Huckabee Report, a five-minute mix of Harvey-esque news and commentary, three times a day. 15 minutes a day doesn’t match the airtime Harvey commanded, but Huckabee certainly has the right mix to take over the massive audience — folksy mannerisms ladled over a one-sided view of America. Speculation is that Huckabee is taking the role to bolster his position for 2012 (or 2016, since the smart money may decide to ride out the Palin / Jindal follies).  But Huckabee might just decide he likes Harvey’s seat. Teddy Roosevelt once described the presidency as a “bully pulpit” meaning that it was a good platform to advocate for a position, but both the words in that phrase have alternative meanings — ones that are likely to appeal to Mike Huckabee. If he can get his bully pulpit without having to run for it, Limbaugh may find he has another AM soul mate.

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Bully Pulpit

Throughout recent elections, bloggers have become an increasingly important part of our political landscape, taking politicians and the media to task, demanding accountability, raising money for candidates, and organizing in force. Many, if not most, bloggers and blog readers remain anonymous for a variety of reasons. For a long time, I was also anonymous, fearful I would receive retribution at my now former job. But I spoke out using my anonymous handle “Scout Finch” because the injustices in this country were mounting and I could bear no more. I took inspiration from the legions of other pseudonymous anonymous bloggers, including many with funny names like Kos , Meteor Blades , Devilstower , and KagroX . They were influencing the debate and inspiring me to join the conversation. I was also reminded of another group of anonymous writers who wrote under the pseudonym “Publius.” They once published a series of anonymous articles, better known as The Federalist Papers , which would become catalyst to ratify the constitution . One of those radical, anonymous writers would later go on to become President of the United States . This country has long prided itself on the principle of freedom of speech. Writing anonymously about the affairs of our government is as old a tradition–or arguably even older–as our government itself. And the ability to speak freely without fear of retribution is as entrenched in our society as deeply as apple pie and fireworks on the Fourth of July. So, imagine my surprise to discover this morning that you have taken it upon yourself to “out” the increasingly well-known Alaskan blogger known simply as AKMuckraker at the blog mudflats . From your newsletter: Anonymous Blogger Anonymous No More The identity of the person who writes the liberal Democratic Mudflats blog has been secret since the blog began, protected by the Anchorage Daily News, among others. My own theory about the public process is you can say what you want, as long as you are willing to stand behind it using your real name. So I was interested to learn that the woman who writes the blog is Anchorage resident _ ______.* Best wishes, (real name redacted by me) So, based on your own “theory,” you took it upon yourself to joyfully expose someone who you knew was going to great lengths to protect their personal privacy. Someone whose only “offense” was writing about Alaskan political issues. You seemed to even derive joy from warning AKMuckraker AKMuckraker via email only hours before your grand unveiling. From: “doogans@gci.net” <doogans@gci.net> To: akmuckraker@yahoo.com Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:55:14 PM Subject: your identity **********: I am reliably told that you are the anonymous blogger who writes Mudflats. I am planning to reveal this in the enews I send to my constituents tomorrow, and am writing to let you know this and offer the opportunity to comment. Mike Doogan Most astonishing is your own career as a journalist. From your profile: Mike has worked as a Teamster, teacher, janitor and legislative aide, but for most of his adult life was a journalist, including nearly 14 years as a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News where he shared in a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1989. He has published a number of books of nonsense about Alaska and currently writes mystery novels. Surely, having a serious background in journalism, you of all people would understand and respect anonymous sources and privacy issues. As it turns out, you have little or no respect for open government, whistleblowers, anonymous citizens working to cover the issues of the day, or the First Amendment. In fact, judging by your now public emails with Alaskan blogger Phil Munger, it seems you’ve been on a one-man mission to out AKMuckraker . It is even more amusing when you consider the title of the next edition of your newsletter blog: “Special War and Toxic Politics Edition.” Oh, the irony of you lecturing about “toxic politics.” I’m sure Alaskans can appreciate your focus on outing a blogger who is most known for exposing the hypocrisy, questionable ethics, and corruption of Alaskan officials. I’m sure they appreciate your focus on warring with bloggers instead of taking on the difficult economic and social issues Alaskans find themselves faced with this winter, including those who can’t afford to heat their homes. But, instead, here you are — gloating about your efforts to ruin somebody’s life . Why are you so threatened, Mr. Doogan? As a member of the Alaskan Democratic Party, why are you so anxious to out a blogger working for progressive causes? What sort of perverse joy are you getting by outing this person? Did you think they would back off and shy away — leaving you to run Alaska as only you see fit? Did you think those pesky bloggers would wither like shrinking violets? Did you ever stop to think that you might be violating his/her rights? From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society. (h/t Maggie AKA Knife Pile Palin at mudflats ) Whatever your reasoning, you’ve certainly caught our attention. And if you think we are going to scuttle back into the shadows and let this pass, you’ve got another thing coming. Your petty, vindictive, unprofessional, unethical, and perhaps even illegal actions are certain to come back to haunt you. The drumbeat for a 2010 primary opponent has already begun. You can bet your last frozen dollar your next opponent will have support far and wide — from across Alaska and well beyond. Of course, given the possible legal ramifications of your actions, getting re-elected next year may well be the least of your concerns. Sincerely, Jennifer Bruenjes a/k/a the formerly anonymous “Scout Finch” Alaskans, if you want to reach out to Representative Mike Doogan and let him know how you feel about his disregard of the First Amendment and his endangering AKMuckraker’s personal well-being and/or livelihood, I’m sure he’d love to hear from you at: Rep.Mike.Doogan@legis.state.ak.us PHONE: (907) 465-4998 FAX: (907) 465-4419 ADDRESS: AK State Capitol Room # 112 Juneau, AK 99801 Further discussion can be found in the diary on the rec list by greenomanic. Update - From AKMuckraker him/herself: It said in my “About” page that I choose to remain anonymous.  I didn’t tell anyone why.  I might be a state employee.  I might not want my children to get grief at school.  I might be fleeing from an ex-partner who was abusive and would rather he not know where I am.  My family might not want to talk to me anymore.  I might alienate my best friend.  Maybe I don’t feel like having a brick thrown through my window.  My spouse might work for the Palin administration.  Maybe I’d just rather people not know where I live or where I work.  Or none of those things may be true.  None of my readers, nor Mike Doogan had any idea what my personal circumstances might be.  But that didn’t seem to matter. What appears to matter to Rep. Doogan is that either 1) he feels that if he “outs” me, he’ll change what I have to say, or keep me from saying anything. 2) he gets to play mystery detective (like in his books) and believes people will think he’s really cool for figuring it out, or 3) he feels like getting revenge.  He knows I want to remain anonymous, so he’s going to take it away.  In any of those three scenarios, he didn’t think it was important to get the bigger picture. And in any of those three scenarios we should probably find it disturbing that an elected official is using his time and mental energy in this way, against an ordinary citizen.  I don’t need to remind Mudflats readers that Alaska is in a time of turmoil.  We are facing unknown consequences with an erupting volcano that threatens to wipe out a tank farm on Cook Inlet holding 6 million gallons of oil.  We have critical issues in the legislature, including Alaska’s acceptance or rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for education and other critical purposes.  We have a governor who has just chosen an incredibly divisive and extreme right wing idealogue as our new Attorney General.  And there are only three weeks left in the legislative session.  It bothers me quite a bit that  instead of focusing all his energy on doing his job, one of our elected representatives would rather spend his time stalking and harrassing a political blogger.

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Open Letter to Alaskan Rep Mike Doogan

One day after a war of words between Sarah Palin and the state’s Republican Senate President over her grandstanding refusal of a portion of Alaska’s stimulus money, the state’s legislature weighed in : By a vote of 32-3, the House approved a resolution Friday accepting any money that Gov. Sarah Palin does not request from the state’s estimated $930 million share. Lawmakers say the measure would give them time to review the different categories of funds and determine if they are in the best interests of the state. A similar resolution is awaiting action in the Senate. Obviously Alaskan lawmakers aren’t willing to subsidize Palin’s political aspirations.

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Palin Says No, State Legislature Says Yes

In a story first reported by the superb Alaskan web site Mudflats , there has been a series of robocalls made in recent weeks regarding Alaska governor Sarah Palin in both Iowa and New Hampshire, two key primary sates in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign. (There have also been scattered calls reported in Southeast Alaska). According to the Mudflats, the calls went something like this: 1. Do you have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin? 2. Governor Palin thinks A, B, C, D & E. Do you agree with Governor Palin? 3. Do you feel it is important that Governor Palin is reelected as Governor of Alaska? I also received a tip this week from someone in New Hampshire, indicating that the call seemed more like a “push poll” to her, with the questions being asked in the second part of the survey focusing on Palin’s positions on higher taxes, gun control, oil drilling in Alaska and gay marriage rights–clearly some of the core, conservative red-meat issues on which Palin intends to run for President in 2012. Speculation as to who placed the calls has run the political gamut, from the far left to the far right. Palin’s “authorized” political action committee, SarahPAC, has formally denied conducting the poll. Recently, there have been some pollsters or pitchmen trading on the Sarah Palin name — taking a pulse on the Governor’s favorability. None of these polls are authorized by SarahPAC or the governor. Again, SarahPAC is not doing any telephone solicitation at this time. But if not them, who? The answer can be found on the website of the conservative “Americans in Contact PAC,” where on its blog for March 12, the following announcement was made: AICPAC Launches Campaign to Re-Elect Gov. Sarah Palin Washington, DC - Americans in Contact PAC has launched a multi-state campaign in support of re-electing Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin. In her tenure of serving in public office, Sarah Palin has stood for core conservative values like limited government, strong families, lower taxes and expanding our domestic energy development. Many liberal extremists across America are gearing up to fight against Sarah Palin and her reelection for Governor of Alaska. In response, Americans in Contact PAC is building a grassroots network of Palin supporters to fight against the liberal extremists from winning in Alaska. By starting now, Americans in Contact PAC will be poised and ready to fight liberal special interest groups and help re-elect Governor Palin. AICPAC’s website has a direct link to a controversial, black-ops robocall operation called ccAdvertising , which among other nefarious activities, has been linked to push polling on behalf of the National Rifle Association, the Minutemen, and the Economic Freedom Fund, a group bankrolled by Bob Perry, the right-wing Texas developer who funded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Records at the Federal Elections Commission indicate that the treasurer of Americans in Contact is Gabriel S. Joseph III, who also happens to be president of ccAdvertising, which was the focus of an investigative profile in the January/February 2007 edition of Mother Jones . According to MJ , the organization, which goes by “thousands” of aliases, “has been fined for breaking anti-robo-calling laws in North Dakota, and a federal judge banned it from phoning Indiana voters under similar statutes.” While there are no direct links to Palin or SarahPAC in AICPAC’s FEC filings , there were several odd, small expenditures listed near the end of the 2008 election to the McCain-Palin campaign and then later, to the Saxby Chambliss campaign. ccAdvertising also lists the Alaska Republican Party as one of its clients. So it’s definitely within the Palin orbit. The Daily Kos also did an extensive investigative piece on ccAdertising in 2005, following smear-tactic push-polling campaigns in Colorado, Ohio and California (all states which the Republicans lost last year). The organization was also suspected of push-polling against Obama in 2008. It does not a pretty picture make. But lost in the buzz over who did the polling has been the final question being asked in the robocall: Do you feel it is important that Governor Palin is reelected as Governor of Alaska? There are two ways to interpret the intentions of that question: One is to assess Palin’s performance as governor; the other is to assess how important the governor’s gubernatorial platform is to her 2012 aspirations. Anyone watching Palin stumble in Alaska the last few months through more ethics charges , a flip-flop on the Federal stimulus package and her failed oil and gas proposals will tell you that Palin is looking like a barracuda out of water and not having all that much fun in the process. Moreover, her approval ratings in Alaska have tumbled downward ever since she was nominated as John McCain’s running mate, and they have continued to tumble–particularly among Republicans–in recent weeks. And with Alaska facing a huge budget deficit and a decline in oil and gas prices (say good-bye to the fat Permanent Fund check), which way do you think they are headed? As for the Senate, anyone who thinks that Palin is going to run against Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, (especially since she’s been named to the Appropriations Committee and Mitch McConnell’s Republican leadership team) is off their rocker. Forget it. Palin may have simply outgrown Alaska, where her eye toward a bigger prize has alienated a constituency that has always placed practical outcomes over rhetoric and ideology. Conversely, the most recent CNN poll has Palin out in front of the GOP presidential pack with 29 percent, ahead of both Huckabee and Romney (both of whom seem to be made of wood and cardboard), with Bobby Jindal in the dust. And she is, without question, the one money-raising star in the Republican pack in the aftermath of the GOP’s 2008 election travesty. What is now tarnished in her home state remains bright and shiny outside. With a big book deal in the works and an adoring Republican base in the Lower 48, who, Palin may well be thinking, needs the long commute to Juneau?

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Geoffrey Dunn: HuffPo Exclusive: Right-Wing PAC Behind Palin Poll Revealed

Earlier today, Sarah Palin decided to cut and run from a confrontation over her decision (a.k.a. political grandstanding) to turn down a portion of Alaska’s share of the stimulus money: Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) backed out a scheduled meeting Thursday with state legislative leaders who have publicly criticized her plan to turn down a portion of the state’s federal stimulus funds. “We had a meeting scheduled with the governor today and her legislative liaison told us that she wasn’t there and that we could meet with the staff,” said Gary Stevens, the state’s Republican Senate President, at an afternoon press conference. “We’re here, we’re available, and unfortunately she is not.” Palin fired back in a statement released during the press conference, claiming that the lawmakers cancelled the meeting with her so that they could “host their own press conference.” Stevens said Palin’s account of events “is absolutely false.” “To say that we cancelled the meeting to have a press conference is absolutely untrue and somebody should be brought to task on that,” he said. According to Stevens and Republican state House Speaker Mike Chenault, a Palin legislative aide told them that the governor could not meet with them and offered to have members of Palin’s staff speak with the lawmakers instead. Stevens said the lawmakers turned down the offer because Palin’s staff “often has trouble answering questions.” Comedy.

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More Republican Infighting, Alaska-Style

Governor Palin just nominated Wayne Anthony Ross as the new attorney general. Talis Colberg had resigned February 9, just days after the State Senate had found Todd Palin and Palin aids in contempt for ignoring subpoenas during the Branchflower/Troopergate investigation. W.A. Ross, who drives around Anchorage in his Hummer with the license plate “WAR”, is less than savory to those who value free speech. In 2003, Ross defended Jeff Webster of Soldotna, Alaska. Webster had dumped gallons of water on war protesters in freezing weather. The protesters wore black and held signs with pictures of soldiers in hospitals that read “Victims of War.” Ross argued Webster was the victim of the protesters since his son was fighting in Iraq. Ross, a anti-choice advocate and NRA official, is a blatant pander to the base Sarah Palin is hoping to woo in the 2012 election. Her statements at the local republican dinner this past weekend bellyaching about not having a McCain campaigner to pray with have gone national. Her need for a prayer assistant is reminiscent of the Pharases and Sadusees warning from the book of Matthew . Palin’s pandering to her national “religeous base” is hurting Alaska. W.A.R. is not an appropriate choice for attorney general…he’s a sound bite. More on Sarah Palin

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Shannyn Moore: Palin Appoints "W.A.R."

Without a doubt, many of the attacks from the far-right against President Obama have amounted to nothing more than the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. The attacks are only marginally more coherent than Steve Carell’s Brick Tamland character from Anchorman shouting “LOUD NOISES!” for the sake of shouting something. Anything. The most ridiculous of the loud noises are the ones that entirely ignore the legacy of the previous president. Specifically, the very same people making the loudest noises about President Obama have also spent the last eight years spastically applauding President Bush’s worst trespasses every step of the way. The far-right’s staggering disregard for the significant flaws of the former Republican president confounds logic when measured against their ridiculous attacks on the current president. ATTACK: President Obama took a vacation to Hawaii . REALITY: President Bush set a record for presidential vacations during two wars and a major hurricane. ATTACK: President Obama’s budget could double the national debt. REALITY: President Bush’s spending actually did. ATTACK: President Obama is ” shredding the Constitution .” REALITY: You mean there’s a Constitution left to be shredded? ATTACK: President Obama chuckled while talking about bailing out the auto industry. REALITY: President Bush routinely smirked and grinned while talking about the significantly more serious issues of war and military casualties. ATTACK: President Obama is incompetent. REALITY: Do I even need to do the list? ATTACK: President Obama is presiding over a one-party fascist government. REALITY: This is not a joke. So. Loud noises! This is sort of like a fan of the Jonas Brothers accusing Death Cab for Cutie of selling out. Devoid of logic or basic consistency, these attacks are reduced to being nothing more than angry shouting. Speaking in tongues. All told, there isn’t a single Bush flaw that hasn’t been hamhandedly projected onto President Obama, and we’re not even three months into his presidency. But wait. There’s more. As has been the case for too many years, more than a few of these crazy bombs have made the too-short journey from the far-right’s psychotic pit of despair and into the establishment press. But in the case of the newest round of loud noises, the opposite is actually true. As you’ve probably heard, President Obama uses a teleprompter when delivering prepared remarks. This clearly means he’s a moron and intellectually incurious and incompetent and hopelessly doofish. Impeach! Impeach! This one appears to have started with a February item by Dean Barnett in the self-satirical Weekly Standard in which he wrote that President Obama is unable to deliver prepared remarks without a teleprompter. You mean the president doesn’t memorize his speeches like other modern presidents? And by “other modern presidents,” I mean zero other modern presidents. Shocking. Then, earlier this month, Carol Lee wrote a piece for the Politico . Her angle was, in essence, that President Obama’s New Fangled Word Squares from Outer Space sometimes make it difficult for photographers and videographers to get a clean view of the president. Poor, poor news media. Why does President Obama’s teleprompter hate America? In the past couple of weeks, the teleprompter attack has gone full-blown viral among far-right tea baggers and bloggers (who, by the way, still haven’t “gone Galt” as promised). Michelle Malkin, for example, posted a series of terrifically unfunny photoshopped images of the president and his teleprompters. Drudge ballyhooed a hilarious blog written by — get this — the president’s teleprompter. And random members of broader wingnuttia have taken to calling the president “TOTUS” (Teleprompter of the United States). So funny! I tell you what, here’s more fuel for the far-right bloggers. A gift from me to them. President Obama, it turns out, needs a pen — a PEN! — in order to write words on paper and to sign his name. Zing! Pow! Time to work up some awesome Obama’s Pen photoshops. In Pen We Trust! Barack HusseINK Obama! Sharpie of the United States — or “SOTUS.” But okay, I get it. The claim from the far-right is that, without his teleprompter, President Obama is a dumb stupid. That’s correct, far-right Bush dead-enders are equating verbal performance with intelligence. Say what you will about his politics, but no one with any degree of honesty can claim with a straight face that President Obama isn’t one of the smartest presidents of the last 50-plus years. The president’s impromptu speaking style, which the far-right misperceives as somehow “stupid,” is actually the president being thoughtful and prudent. And yes, he occasionally stammers and uses common verbal tics, but does that mean he’s “stupid?” Or disconnected? The same faction of people who proudly champion anti-intellectualism as a virtue are currently suggesting that a very smart man is an idiot. Let me know if you can figure that one out. While you’re at it, what the hell is a “peeance freeance secure Iraq?” The teleprompter attacks have become so inexplicably widespread that, Monday night, David Letterman aired a bit called “Teleprompter vs. No Teleprompter” about how stupid the whole teleprompter thing has become. Leading into a video comparing a clip of President Obama using a teleprompter and George W. Bush stammering without one, Letterman basically said (paraphrasing): “This is seriously all they’ve got?” Little did Letterman know that Tuesday night, the Great War on Teleprompters of 2009 would reach new levels of hackery. Immediately following the end of the president’s prime time press conference, David Gregory on NBC and Brett Baier on FOX News Channel reported that the president used a teleprompter for his customary prepared statement at the top of the event. As if that was somehow unusual. Baier, by the way, read his remarks from a teleprompter. Meanwhile, the AP’s Washington Bureau Chief and Karl Rove Enabler, Ron Fournier, described the teleprompter as a “crutch.” Fact: all presidents read a prepared statement at the outset of their press conferences. More on that presently. The whole Fournier item is one long, shameless, desperate grab for far-right blog links. (Quick aside: in the comments under the Breitbart posting of Fournier’s article , a far-right commenter wrote: “Grab some John Galt gear from [Café Press store link] and join us at your local Tea Party this April 15th.” Yeah do that, because nothing says “deliberately not earning money and withdrawing from society in order to bring down the economy” quite like promoting and selling John Galt swag. Consistent!) A “crutch,” is what Fournier called it. This implies that using a teleprompter is somehow easier than reading from printed pages. That’s definitely not always the case. Just ask John McCain. If you’ve ever tried to read a speech or some dialogue from a teleprompter, it just rolls along — sometimes too quickly, other times too slowly. If it’s manually operated, you have to rely on the judgment of the operator and hope they’re paying attention. It’s really quite unnerving unless you’ve really mastered it. But if you have, why go back to reading from pages? There’s no point. It’s like learning to pilot a jet, but then only ever traveling bareback on a donkey. In politics and the media teleprompters are about as commonplace as microphones and people named “O’Donnell.” Some use a teleprompter, some use paper, some use cue cards, some use both. Really, what difference does it make whether prepared remarks are read from paper or Perspex? Either way, we’re talking about prepared text printed on a readable medium. The teleprompter isn’t some space-age interdimensional portal that automatically injects your audience with nitrous oxide and mild doses of heroin, drugging them into an involuntary state of euphoric torpor. It simply allows the reader to deliver a speech without looking down at the podium. That’s all. Once again, there’s no other way to describe this attack other than to call it “loud noises!” amounting to schizoid, nonsensical garble. Just like any Glenn Beck show, in fact — maudlin platitudes that, if shouted loudly enough or accompanied by a few big ass crocodile tears, sound very serious. So ultimately if the intention is to turn “teleprompter” into a bad word, then good luck running Sarah Palin in 2012. Sarah Palin — whose one bright shining moment came complete with a teleprompter, and whose most damning moments came without one. BobCesca.com More on Sarah Palin

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Bob Cesca: Why Does Obama’s Teleprompter Hate America?

As the number of mortgage applications jump this week, I’d like to take this opportunity to announce an incredible new product I’ve developed for new and future homeowners. They’re called “mattresses,” and they will revolutionize the way you live and save money. Each mattress is machine crafted in the town of Sweden, New York and then delivered to my apartment. Under each mattress I have personally stapled an industrial strength plastic sandwich bag. This is where you will keep your money and objects of value. I can also personalize orders. So if you’re on the wealthier side I can staple up to five bags. Then, I cut off that little cloth hook thing where you’re supposed to store hammers or other tools that hangs from my many pairs of carpenter pants. I glue these cloth hammer hooks to the bottom of the mattress. Don’t worry about my pants, I’d rather go without the hammer hook and help you. These hooks are where you can hang your guns. I can also personalize the number of gun hooks you need. So, let’s say an intruder comes into your house and is like, “Give me all your money.” You can just say, “Sure, let me just get it from under my mattress.” He’ll be like, “OK, it makes sense that you would keep your money under there during these hard times and I’ve heard of these new mattresses manufactured by Sarah Walker, in fact, I have one myself.” As you reach under the mattress you will not grab your money or your valuable objects but one of your GUNS and THAT’S when the intruder will think to himself, “Oh, crap. I forgot, I store my guns under my Sarah Walker mattress as well,” but since he’s a dumb thief he won’t know until it’s too late and you’ve chased him out of your home, your money and family safe. I am retailing them for $5,000 but if you order now I’ll throw in a tiny stuffed doll of an old Depression-era grandfather who will constantly remind you with his button eyes that you are doing the right thing by purchasing my patented mattresses. And get this! I’m making it not against the law to remove the mattress tag on my mattresses. So remove away! You know you’ve always wanted to.

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Sarah Walker: An Exciting New Product

President Obama made a joke referencing The Special Olympics when trying to make a joke about his lack of bowling skills. All hell broke loose. Maria Shriver (whose mother created the Special Olympics) was upset. A kid from the S.O. challenged President Obama to a game of tenpins. On and on the criticism mounted. The president apologized, but this isn’t enough for some right wing creeps who won’t let it go because they are miserable slugs who would dump on Obama if he cured cancer for screwing research labs out of grant money. Let me respond with a few points regarding this gaffe. 1)Does anyone really think this in character for the President? No? Me either. 2)Did any of the GOP creeps go nuts when Limbaugh made a blowjob joke about cancer victim Elizabeth Edwards? 3)Did any of these miscreants react when Limbaugh made fun of Michael J. Fox’s degenerative nerve disease by flailing his arms so wildly his man tits scraped the ceiling? 4)Did anyone notice that Sarah Palin criticized Obama for his remark around the same time she was turning down stimulus money for special education? 5)Radio blowhard Micahel Levin never refers to the president as President Obama,so we get it,you don’t recognize him as POTUS. How edgy! Disresepctful and never criticized as well. If you’re going to go after one of your own for tasteless and cruel remarks,then don’t go after this guy when it is by all accounts not a part of his character. More on Barack Obama

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Sam Greenfield: Where Were You When…?

Prince William Sound, AK — Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez demonstrated forever the hollowness of the oil industry’s promise that it could be trusted (because they were good guys) to produce and transport the viscous, dirty black substance that gets most of us to work. Exxon blamed the Valdez’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood, and his drinking for the disaster. Over the course of twenty years, the company spent what anyone else would consider a fortune on lawyers — repeatedly beating back and eventually decimating the compensation it would pay the fishing communities of Prince William Sound . It even managed to convince the Supreme Court that a modern supertanker was more like an 1830s sailing vessel than it was like an oil refinery — and therefore th at obscure case rulings from that era should trump more modern findings about liability and responsibility. As a result, a $5 billion damage award away was whittled down to $500 million — one-tenth of what a jury and common sense suggested that the company owed to the fishermen. And even when the courts did find liability — as with $92 million the company owes the taxpayers for natural-resource damages — neither the Bush administration nor the Palin administration in Alaska bothered to collect. So the fortune on lawyers was well-spent. Sweet work if you can get it. But if we really want to understand this story, we need to ask ourselves, “Why?” Is the problem that the oil industry simply attracts people who are greedy, short-sighted, arrogant, immature, lawbreaking, and irresponsible? Well, perhaps occasionally — like any other industry. Certain kinds of “get-rich quick,” overly testosteroned, and “only-the-present-matters” males probably were drawn to the oil patch. But so were long time-horizon geologists fascinated by the story of what happened millions of years ago beneath the earth’s crust, precise accountants who reveled in getting a spreadsheet to accurately tell the financial story of a complex human institution, detail-oriented lawyers who took pride in avoiding lawsuits by managing risk, and ship’s captains who loved keeping their vessels out of harm’s way. But the fact remains that the enterprise of finding, extracting, processing, and selling petroleum and its products has a sordid history: Bad government, corruption, violence, environmental devastation, dishonesty, and violence have plagued it for its entire history. “I drink your milkshake,” indeed. Long ago, development economists learned that when a poor and devastated country found itself suddenly in possession of a big oil field, the result was not prosperity but kleptocracy and despair. Almost everywhere, oil states are abysmal places to live., Even in the U.S., most of the states with the highest per capita oil wealth also have the lowest per capita economic indicators. Why? Well, oil is produced in a context — and that context is a really bad neighborhood. Any weaknesses inherent in the people and systems of the industry will be amplified and eventually made predominant by this industrial ecology. Specifically: 1) Producing oil is technically challenging, and the product is toxic but it is not expensive, even at $4 per gallon. As a result, oil companies are forced to pump vast volumes and tightly control expenses so that they can make their money on volume — not a good formula for such a toxic product. 2) Although an oil economy requires a reasonable number of highly skilled and trained people, it doesn’t rely much on the surrounding society and economy. It doesn’t require honest courts, a well-educated population, a free press, good housing, decent medical care, or any of the other attributes of a good society. It can be produced in hell — as long as there are enough security guards to protect its facilities. 3) A relatively small number of people can control the production, processing, and distribution of oil — so it’s an ideal breeding ground for empire, kleptocracy, and criminality — an oil state is easy to capture in a coup d’etat. And oil states have a tendency to sustain themselves by paying off their inhabitants, as Saudi Arabia does with its Wahhabi clerics and Alaska does with its residents — rather than by investing in modern economies. 4) Oil is found in one set of places but is valued and consumed in another — so those who use it don’t have to pay the price for producing it. Transplant Levittown, PA, to the Niger Delta, and you’d have a civil war tomorrow. 5) Finally, a few places can produce oil much more cheaply than the rest — and those places are even more remote from demand centers than the industry as a whole. Saudi Arabia will always be able to out-pump Oklahoma. So the price of oil is volatile because it is, normally, so cheap that consumers don’t invest in alternatives. When demand surges, prices spike. When demand slumps, they collapse. This is a formula for discouraging investment in finding ways to produce oil that are better for the neighbors or in creating a sustainable market for alternatives like renewable energy or even natural gas vehicles. 6) Finally, while the extraction and processing of oil is a highly innovative industry, its consumption is technologically sluggish and carefully cartelized to suppress innovation. We don’t pump oil with 1970s technology, but we burn it with technology that is at least that old. So while oil companies can, honestly, tell us how much they have innovated, we are still burning their product in internal combustion engines that have barely modernized at all. So even if we make the business of pumping oil clean, we have invested almost nothing to make burning it clean. Until this industrial ecology changes, the idea of clean oil company will remain an oxymoron. Big Oil can invest in glossy newspaper ads and tell good stories of wonderful people. But at the end of the day, the imperatives of the industry mean that the first modernizing prime minister in Angola will be seen by oil companies as an enemy, global warming legislation will be fought tooth and nail, and the U.S. and Alaska will need to lawyer very, very hard to collect the debts that Exxon-Mobil owes them. The solution? Kick our addiction — don’t expect Big Oil to reform.

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Carl Pope: The Captain May Be Sober Now, but Big Oil Is Still on a Binge

A big reason that the Iraq war never ignited nationwide outrage on the scale of Vietnam protests was the absence of conscription. As long as the volunteer army confined the consequences of George W. Bush’s Oedipal acting-out to one slice of America, taking it to the streets was just not how the country channeled its anger; telling it to the pollster was more like it. But watching today’s economic crisis touch people in every corner of the country, I wonder whether this democratization of catastrophe will turn out to be the match that finally lights the fire of reform. Everyone is being hurt by this meltdown. People-like-us, not just people-like-them, are losing their jobs, homes, savings, dignity and dreams. If this were a natural disaster - a pandemic, say, or an earthquake - there would be mourning. But this calamity has human causes; there are villains’ fingerprints all over it. So along with grief comes outrage, and along with outrage comes the potential for widespread protests, and along with widespread protests comes the scary side of organized anger: demagoguery, scapegoating, threats, violence, mobs. Don’t get me wrong. I find few sights as sweet as the groveling that corporate titans are now being forced to do. Their years of reaping short-term profits instead of investing in long-term growth destroyed our economic competitiveness. Their legal bribery of politicians created a cult of deregulation and “supply side” tax cuts that caused a massive transfer of wealth to the rich from the rest, resulting in unprecedented inequities and disparities. The casino they built out of collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps differed from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in size, but not in kind. Their obscene compensation - hundreds of times the earnings of average workers, a ratio that ballooned a thousand percent over the past two generations - drew those generations to Wall Street, where they bent their talent to making money instead of goods. Their conspicuous consumption was glamorized by a media that coined fawning new terms to describe them, like “masters of the universe,” but forgot relevant old terms, like “robber baron” and “vulgarian.” They deserve all the humiliation they’re reaping from their raping. But the populism uncorked by their bad behavior is as risky as it is refreshing. If it was frightening to watch crowds at rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin be whipped into ugly anger, it should also be troubling to hear talk radio talk and cable news noise about torchlight, pitchforks and garrottes. If Senator Joseph McCarthy’s bullying of witnesses for names of alleged communists was alarming in the 20th century, it should be disturbing in the 21st to watch congressmen demand the names of the recipients of AIG bonuses. If racism, anti-semitism, homophobia and xenophobia were inflamed by Weimar Germany’s financial collapse, why should today’s global cataclysm be immune from analogous hate? Last week The Los Angeles Times ran a large color photo with this caption: “HELPING HIMSELF: An Israeli takes items from the shelves of a supermarket in Hatzor Haglitit. As word spread that unhappy employees were looting, townsfolk joined in.” In the picture, a clean-shaven guy in his thirties - polo shirt, sweater, jeans - is filling a yellow plastic grocery bag with packaged food. The floor of the supermarket aisle behind him is strewn with boxes and cans; the shelves have been ransacked. On his head, the man wears a yarmulke. Unaccountably, the contrast between the meaning of that skullcap - here is a God-fearing man - and the meaning of his action - here is lawlessness - disturbed me as much as photos of devastation in Gaza, or of carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Tel Aviv. “In Israel, economic woes lead to looting” was the headline of the story. Is the veneer of civil society so thin, in Israel or America or anywhere else, that unemployment is an easy excuse for anarchy? We have all been chilled by images of looting in the wake of floods and riots. Will the Great Recession we have fallen into reveal that our culture, our values, our religion and our laws turn out to be pathetically flimsy barriers between the better angels of our nature and the volcanic rage these times are unleashing? Sure, it’s possible that our rising anger is little more than what Walter Shapiro in The New Republic calls “apolitical populism - a spasmodic outpouring of ideologically incoherent rage.” In this reading, though popular outrage may cause Obama even more trouble than Republican obstructionism, it is unlikely to coalesce around a policy agenda, unlikely to kindle a movement the way the draft did. But there’s another possibility. Yes, our apoplexy poses terrible risks. But the opening for real reform that also accompanies it - an opportunity for justice, accountability, solving intractable problems, making essential investments - could turn out to be as game-changing for this era as Vietnam was to another. Obama didn’t want, predict or deserve this disaster. But out of it may yet come a bigger opening for bigger change than anyone might have hoped to believe in. This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles . You can read more of my columns here , and e-mail me there if you’d like.

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Marty Kaplan: The Upside of Outrage

Race is such a hot-button issue that it’s virtually impossible to have an honest discussion about it in a formal or institutional setting. One on one, absolutely - but the past is too fraught with mistakes and the present is too full of people who are either insensitive or overly sensitive, scrutinizing everything for the veiled insult. Not that racism isn’t a problem; it’s just not always the problem. Sometimes people are just jerks. The worst response, of course, is the institutional reaction, which invariably is an overreaction that’s long on appearance and short on substance. To the institution, it’s about the appearance of caring - “We’ll appoint a committee to examine the problem” - more than the response itself. That’s at least part of what’s at work in Spinning into Butter , a film adaptation of Rebecca Gilman’s play of the same name. There’s been a hate crime at a private New England college - what does the administration intend to do about it? In this case, it’s an exercise in CYA, as opposed to TCB. As dean of students Sarah Daniels (Sarah Jessica Parker) quickly learns that, when the administration decides on a course of action - aside from trying to keep it from the press - it means calling an all-campus forum, at which the faculty members speak and students listen. Sarah wants to see herself as the common-sense liaison between students and administration, but she runs into problems almost immediately over a bit of ethnic terminology. She’s trying to help a student named Patrick Chibas (Victor Rasuk) get a scholarship that’s reserved for minority students. But he self-identifies as “Nuyorican.” That’s a term the scholarship committee doesn’t recognize, she tells him, rolling her eyes to indicate she’s on his side. But he hears it as an attack - she has to talk fast to convince him that calling himself Puerto Rican is just playing the game to get the scholarship and not an insult to his heritage. When the hate crimes begin - all directed at a single black student - the administration scrambles to contain the damage, without ever actually taking time to talk to the student himself beyond Sarah’s interaction with him. As she tries to both protect the student and actually do something meaningful, she runs into a couple of walls. One has to do with the school itself and its superficial attempts to create a diverse student body after years of essentially being a white enclave. That’s why Sarah was hired: because her last position was at an inner-city community college in Chicago. Having failed at actually hiring a black dean, the college figures that, by hiring Sarah, it’s getting the next best thing: someone who knows how to work with minority students. But that’s the other wall. Sarah came to this job because she was trying to get away from minority students. As one of the few white faces in her previous school, she felt alienated, intimidated - in short, she was forced to confront her own attitudes about race. She didn’t like what she found: a blend of fear and intolerance, based on the cultural differences she perceived. Spinning into Butter (the title refers to the children’s story, Little Black Sambo , a touchstone of the hate crime) is probably too schematic, too much a stage play to work as a movie. Ultimately it’s about face-to-face discussions - long ones - between characters, getting at the root of their feelings about race (or, more often, not saying what they mean). And its ending is still jarringly improbable. But Parker, with her sunny smile and assured demeanor, makes a terrific audience surrogate because her ultimate revelations are so at odds with what the viewer expects from her. In a long scene with Mykelti Williamson (as a TV reporter who befriends her), she reveals her own bitterness and, in the process, may force the audience to confront its own reactions to the dilemmas raised in the script. Where Gilman and director Mark Brokaw excel is in the scenes of the self-satisifed faculty. Played by a strong group of actors - including Beau Bridges, Miranda Richardson and Peter Friedman (with James Rebhorn as the college president), they are imperious and out of touch as they decide among themselves how best to deal with the students - and brittle and scared when confronted with the angry students themselves and their splintered set of complaints. Ultimately, Spinning into Butter tries to dramatize the problems of a society in which people talk at each other, rather than with each other. Suddenly, all anyone hears are code words, not context. Voices are raised, tempers flare and communication ends. And that’s where the trouble always begins. For more of my reviews, interviews and commentaries, visit my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.

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Marshall Fine: HuffPost Review: Spinning into Butter talks race

Spoilers ahead! I can’t believe it, y’all. It’s time for 2009’s final Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love . Where did the time go? Wasn’t it just yesterday that Nicki was standing on top of her house and Ana was serving food and serving attitude? Has it really been a month since the Great Polygamy Roadtrip ? But all disbelief aside, it’s time to say goodbye to another season of the greatest drama currently on television. Yes, you guys. That’s exactly what it is, and the finale proved why. Before I rank the wives, let me tip my Roman Grant Cowboy Hat to Bill for finally starting his own church. It’s a move I’ve been anticipating since season one, as the Henricksons are not quite Juniper Creek and not quite LDS, and with Barb excommunicated, Nicki fleeing her first husband, and the rest of the family wobbling in one way or another, this was the perfect time for Bill to sanctify his family’s private beliefs. Their new church seemed to instill new confidence, which was just what everyone needed. Between this and his play to get his brother-in-law out of town, Cap’n Henrickson may have shaken two of the biggest monkeys that were camping on his back. That means we can all start season four with a fresh slate, looking forward to new challenges instead of reiterations of the old ones. Bill’s third great move in this episode was his decision to loosen the reins on Sarah and Margene. It’s an appealing evolution in his character that also creates room for plotlines that aren’t about secrecy. I mean, imagine what Sarah might do now that she’s free to love Scott in the open. Or think of the possibilities for businesswoman Margene ! She took some serious steps in this episode—selling her car, steeling against Bill’s disapproval of her business plan—and they resulted in a potentially successful career that will be hers and hers alone. Or at least, it won’t belong to Bill or Nicki or Barb, and that’s the independence she’s been fighting for all season. Speaking of going it alone, I was shocked when Adaleen suddenly became a widow. All of those brilliant machinations on Roman’s behalf, and she still didn’t anticipate that Joey would murder him in a grieving rage. Even worse, since the D.A. was going to arrest Roman the next day, her plans were destined to collapse. She fought hard, but she just couldn’t keep her world together, and with Roman out of the way, I’d look for Alby’s wife Laura to give Adaleen six kinds of hell next season. Juniper Creek may need a Wife Watch! of its very own. Barb gets bonus points in this episode for using her authority to help bring Nicki and Nicki’s previously abandoned daughter into the Henrickson fold. I can’t declare her First Wife, though, because she hit her seasonal apex last week, what with the controversial endowment ceremony and all. That means we’re going out like we came in, with Nicki as First Wife. But that’s only right. In the last ten episodes, Nicki has endured more hardship than the heroine of a Russian novel. Simply by not going mental, she’s a strong contender for the top spot. But of course my girl has done more than survive. For one, though she’s at odds with many people at Juniper Creek, she’s the only character other than Laura who seems assured a powerful spot in Alby’s new regime. When she agreed with him that their parents should die, she earned his trust, and that trust will come with influence. On the flip side, Nicki also moved back into the Henrickson’s homes and hearts, and while she did it, she took a bold action as Cara Lynn’s mother, finally getting her away from the compound life. So while she was part of one of the episode’s most devilish plotlines, she was also the engine of its most redemptive. Because she’s so prominent in so many places, Nicki is this week’s First Wife. Heck, she’s the First Wife of this entire season.

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Mark Blankenship: Big Love Wife Watch!: Round Ten (The Season Finale)

::: As you probably recall, funding for volcano monitoring was one of the top reasons that Bobby Jindal opposed the stimulus bill. Now, as Sarah Palin tries to one-up Bobby Jindal in the “I want the 2012 GOP nomination so I’ll reject the stimulus” game, a volcano in Alaska is conspiring to mock them both: Alaska volcano Mount Redoubt erupts 6 times WILLOW, Alaska – Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano’s first emissions in nearly 20 years. … Ash from Alaska’s volcanos is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages. The young, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially susceptible to ash-related health problems. Ash can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles. Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights in and out of the Anchorage international airport because of the ash. Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage told only essential personnel to report to work. The Air Force says 60 planes, including fighter jets, cargo aircraft and a 747 commercial plane, were being sheltered. It tells you something about Republicans that they think there’s no point in protecting ourselves against natural threats like volcanoes or hurricanes, but that they think its worth going to war to prevent mushroom cloud nightmare scenario dreamed up by Dick Cheney. Oh, and as it turns out, volcano monitoring actually works — geophysicists correctly forecast this eruption: Meanwhile, the volcano became restless earlier this year. The observatory had warned in late January that an eruption could occur at any time. Increased earthquake activity over the past 48 hours prompted scientists to raise the alert level for Mount Redoubt on Sunday. On Sunday morning, 40 to 50 earthquakes were being recorded every hour. A steam plume rising about 1,000 feet above the mountain peak was observed Saturday.

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Beavis & Butt-Head vs. The Volcano

For the second year in a row, after over a decade of decline, teen births are on the rise. There is no doubt that America has a troubling relationship with sex, especially teen sexuality in particular. Last year we were shocked to discover that teen births rose in 2006. However, after today’s release of the 2007 data, it is clear that the 2006 statistics were not an aberration. Teen pregnancy (whether we choose to admit it or not) is still a major problem in this country. As a teenager, the thought of my becoming pregnant was traumatizing. Today, as a woman who is thirty-six weeks pregnant with her second (planned) baby, the thought (and reality) of pregnancy is still very much anxiety-provoking. Parenthood is far from easy no matter what your age or relationship status. That being said, there is no way that I could have possibly experienced pregnancy as an adolescent. I have a hard enough time now, as an adult. 4.3 million new babies were born in 2007. This number is the largest in United States history. Babies are everywhere. And it seems more than ever that having them is trendy, easy, and chic. Look at Jamie-Lynn Spears, Juno, Bristol Palin, and the alleged “pact” of pregnant girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Whether we like it or not, pregnant teens are in the spotlight. They get notoriety, immediate tabloid attention, and money for selling their stories to the highest bidder. If we indeed live in a world consumed by narcissism and the desperate need for infamy, teen pregnancy has been a fairly quick way of achieving those frightful goals. According to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics/Centers for Disease Control and Prevent, the birth rate for teenagers between the ages of 15-17 rose by 1% in 2007; 22.2 births per 1,000 girls. 40% of 2007 births were to unwed mothers, 25% of those women were younger than twenty years old. When Bristol Palin announced her pregnancy and pending marriage to Levi Johnson, I appeared on a morning news show to discuss the challenges of teen marriage and early parenthood. My co-panelists were teen parents who were choosing to marry (even at the tender age of sixteen). Their idea of marriage was all fantasy — cotton candy ideals of romance, financial assistance from parents, and monogamy. Sadly, this is rarely the case. And just look at Bristol, she and Levi didn’t even make it to the wedding. Needless to say, relationships are far from easy. And adolescence is a time of exploration — not for making any type of impossible-to-keep commitment. Sure, babies can be a blessing. But a true blessing is in having the ability to make informed decisions, the freedom to speak up for your needs, having access to reproductive health services and information, and having accurate and effective sexuality education. Those are the kind of blessings I will instill in my children.

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Dr. Logan Levkoff: Teen Births Rise Again: Are Babies Always a Blessing?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin faced bipartisan criticism and an angry protest back home after deciding to reject federal stimulus funds. That might be why her Lieutenant Governor is now saying she didn’t decide anything . Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell showed up to deliver Palin’s message - that she’s not necessarily “rejecting” the money, but wants a public debate on how it’s spent and whether it would cost the state in the long run. Among the questions: Is the governor’s team trying to have it both ways - saying “no” to the money while leaving the door open to spending it? DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan comments : “We know when Governor Palin says “thanks but no thanks” she doesn’t always mean it. We hope that’s the case here, and she’s changed her mind about denying the people of Alaska of half a billion dollars in recovery finds that could create thousands of jobs and help turn the economy around. But given her history on the subject, we’re not hopeful.” More on Sarah Palin

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Palin Flip Flops On Stimulus In Face Of Anger

Dozens of protesters held signs Saturday criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin for turning away federal economic stimulus money they said is vital for education and other services for Alaskans. “Mama Grizzly, you forgot your cub,” said one sign. More on Sarah Palin

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Palin Faces Protest For Rejecting Stimulus Funds

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama didn’t have time to join a roast of prominent officials by the journalists who cover them, cracks Vice President Joe Biden, because Obama is getting ready for Easter . “Axelrod really wanted me to do this on teleprompter — but I told him I’m much better when I wing it,” Biden said. “I know these evenings run long, so I’m going to be brief. Talk about the audacity of hope. President Obama does send his greetings, though. He can’t be here tonight — because he’s busy getting ready for Easter. He thinks it’s about him.” No, that’s not the reason, counters California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He’s just not that into you.” “Here you were expecting ‘Yes we can,’” Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said during the festivities at a downtown hotel ballroom. “And instead what did you get? ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’” “Now let’s see: we have a Republican speaker who was born in Austria, and tonight’s Democratic speaker was born in Canada,” Biden observed. “Folks, this is Lou Dobbs’ worst nightmare.” Obama may not be the messiah or even stuck-up, but he is the first president in decades to skip the Gridiron Club dinner during his first year in office. Instead, the president spent Saturday night at Camp David with his family, missing out on the 124th annual event in which journalists use jokes and songs to skewer politicians _ a few of whom get to throw back some jabs of their own. “I know that no president has missed his first Gridiron since Grover Cleveland,” Biden added. “Of course, President Cleveland really did have better things to do on a Saturday night. When he was in the White House, he was married to a 21 year old woman.” Biden teased the press a bit too, saying, “I understand these are dark days for the newspaper business, but I hate it when people say that newspapers are obsolete. That’s totally untrue. I know from firsthand experience. I recently got a puppy, and you can’t housebreak a puppy on the Internet.” He also made fun of his predecessor. “You know, I never realized just how much power Dick Cheney had until my first day on the job. I walked into my office, and you know how the outgoing president always leaves the incoming president a note in his desk? I opened my drawer and Dick Cheney had left me Barack Obama’s birth certificate.” And Biden even poked fun at himself. “I’d like to address some of the things I said: Like when I said that ‘JOBS’ is a three-letter word. I did say that. But I didn’t mean it literally. It’s like how, right now, most people think AIG is a four-letter word,” he said. “Or when I announced our stimulus package website, I was asked how you get to it: All I said was I didn’t know the website number. What I really meant to say was, ‘Ted Stevens didn’t tell me what tube the website is in.’” Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, “really set back the cause of hot governors.” Then, with an eye on Pennsylvania’s chief executive, Granholm added: “You know where I’m coming from, Ed Rendell.” The Democrat also took a shot at Schwarzenegger, asking which of his movies best prepared him to deal with the GOP: “True Lies” or “Kindergarten Cop”? Much of the evening’s dark humor focused on the financial crisis. Biden said that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in attendance for the event, is “always there when you need money, no questions asked.” In a send-up of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an impersonator sang “Imperial Girl” to the tune of Madonna’s “Material Girl.” The journalists-turned-entertainers, wearing silly costumes and accompanied by the United States Marine Band, also took a few final swipes at the previous administration. A spoof of former Vice President Dick Cheney set to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” made fun of Cheney’s dominant role in George W. Bush’s White House. The Cheney mimic sang, “I pulled the strings, he said the words … he did it my way.” More on Joe Biden

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Biden Lampoons Obama At Gridiron Dinner: ‘He Thinks Easter Is About Him’

NEW YORK — A mahogany casket bearing Natasha Richardson’s body was taken Saturday to the country home where she married Liam Neeson in 1994, according to a published report. The actress’ coffin _ emblazoned with an Irish claddagh symbol, signifying love, friendship and loyalty _ was driven from a Manhattan townhouse to the couple’s farmhouse near upstate Millbrook, the New York Daily News reported. Screen and stage stars had paid their respects at a private viewing the night before. The newspaper said state police and local sheriff’s deputies kept reporters at a distance as a silver-colored hearse turned into the couple’s home, in a scenic stretch of hills and horse farms about 90 miles north of New York City in the Hudson Valley. Richardson’s maternal grandmother, the actress Rachel Kempson, died while visiting her granddaughter and Neeson there in 2003. On Saturday night, there was a “road closed” sign on the entrance to the rural road to the couple’s property. There has been no official word on a funeral, but reports have suggested one is planned Sunday in Millbrook. State police and the Dutchess County Sheriff’s office said Saturday night they had no information on any arrangements for Richardson. Richardson, 45, died Wednesday at a New York hospital after falling and hitting her head while skiing in Canada. Neeson greeted a stream of celebrity mourners at a private viewing Friday at the American Irish Historical Society’s headquarters in a Manhattan townhouse. Actors Ralph Fiennes and Ethan Hawke, actresses Uma Thurman and Sarah Jessica Parker, the designer Kenneth Cole and shock jock Howard Stern were among those who paid their respects.

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Report: Richardson’s casket taken to upstate home

There is something absolutely bizarre and troubling going on in the political netherworld of Sarah and Todd Palin, Greta Van Susteren and her wannabe-queen-maker hubby, John Coale. At best, it’s a clear case of journalistic conflict-of-interest on behalf of Van Susteren; at worst, it’s a sleazy, national power play by a couple of practitioners of Scientology–the controversial cult that Time magazine described as “a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.” Let’s start with the easy stuff: Van Susteren is a flat-out hypocrite and a con artist. Quote me. Ever since Palin was first selected as John McCain’s running mate last August, Van Susteren–she of the rather severe face lift and right-wing tilt–has been utterly infatuated with the Palins (especially with Todd) and has enjoyed unequaled access to the Last Frontier’s first couple and their family. There’s been the interviews in the kitchen with Sarah, the fawning (if not embarrassing ) tête-à-tête with the “First Dude” overlooking Lake Lucille, the softball conversation with Sarah after the GOP’s defeat in November, and, most recently, the controversial interview with 18-year-old Bristol Palin and her infant son, Tripp. While there’s something ironic about the Alaska’s most famous evangelical Christians pallin’ around with a couple who believes that 75 million years ago an entity named Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling DC-8 airliners, it’s all been good for Van Susteren’s ratings. It’s also expanded her television platform from the narrow confines of legal journalism to broader national political commentary. She’s ridden Palin’s conservative steed into an entirely new level of public exposure. This last week, Van Susteren ripped into comedian David Letterman for his riff on Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston and the governor: Letterman : You remember that Sarah, one of the deals was one of her children, daughters, a very young girl, was pregnant and was going to get married to the young man that knocked her up. And her name was Bristol, and the kid’s name was Levi Johnston. You remember these kids? Well, they have broken up. Yes. So if you were going to send them a gift… And the kid, Levi Johnston, is saying that, “We are just not ready for marriage.” And I thought that makes sense because their mother really wasn’t really ready to be vice president, either. Okay. Let me say from the outset that I found the jabs at Bristol and Levi insensitive–but then a lot of the humor on late-night talk shows tends toward the insensitive (that’s why we laugh). It wasn’t out of line by typical late-night standards. But Van Susteren threw a hissy fit about it. She brought on as a guest, Jane Swift, the former governor of Massachusetts, to tag-team Letterman and excoriate him for his joke: He took it 15 steps further and picks on the kid. We left the Bush children alone. We left Chelsea Clinton alone. That was always something that people were respectful towards the children, recognizing it was different….Do you really have to go that far to make a buck, to make a laugh? First of all, it’s an outright lie that the Bush and Clinton kids were left alone. They took plenty of jabs. More importantly, the reason that Bristol Palin has now been elevated to late-night talk show fodder is precisely because Van Susteren brought the 18-year-old Bristol on her show and conducted an in-depth interview with her, one that led to chastisement from across the political spectrum, including the conservative right . It was Van Susteren who made Bristol Palin a public figure, who pulled her out of her privacy with her child, and who played the ratings game with Bristol’s private life. Not once did Van Susteren acknowledge that fact, reflect on it, nor express any regret for doing so. Not once. So much for insight and compassion. Bristol Palin has Van Susteren to thank for her being the butt of late-night jokes. Because Van Susteren went that far to make a buck . Moreover, this was the second time in recent weeks that Palin had used her bully pulpit to come to Palin’s defense in respect to issues surrounding Bristol. She did it again with hack-man Bill O’Reilly against “the far left” who was “making fun of Bristol.” Van Susteren : But I mean, they live with themselves. They live with themselves. I’m just — I am appalled because this is an 18-year-old kid. Neither Van Susteren nor O’Reilly had the integrity to note that the far right was going after Bristol, too. So they skewed the news to do a hatchet job on the left. What else is new?. Even more troubling, however, was this exchange between O’Reilly and Van Susteren: O’Reilly: Joining us from Washington, FOX News anchor Greta Van Susteren, host of “On the Record,” who knows the Palin family well. Van Susteren: Well, you know, you say that I, just as an aside, that I know them very well. The only way that I’ve met them is by interviewing them. So, you know, I don’t socialize or spend a lot of time with them. But I do have a little bit of a sense having interviewed them multiple times. What she didn’t acknowledge then or any time before–and only acknowledged after being busted by Politico and the Washington Post –was that her husband, Coale, has been “helping” Palin’s presidential campaign. He’s not helping her run the State of Alaska–which is her current job and for which she is being paid $125,000 annually, plus, of course, per diem–he’s helping her with her exploratory campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination for President. Coale apparently has some sort of fixation on powerful women, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. It’s more about their position than it is about their ideology. (I’ll leave it to Letterman to compose a crack about that.) But when Van Susteren failed to disclose her husband’s relationship to Palin, whether he was paid or not, and claimed only a professional relationship with the Palins, she was engaging in out-and-out duplicity and covering up a blatant professional conflict of interest. There are rumors that Coale, a powerful attorney in Washington, D.C., guided the formation of SarahPAC and that he even helped raise money–or put up some himself–to form Palin’s political action committee (one that looks a whole lot like Hillary’s) in Arlington, Virginia. How weird is it? The Baltimore Sun reported that Coale admits to being “enamored” with Palin and that he refers to her as “his girlfriend.” The Washington Times quoted Coale as saying in January, just before the Obama Inauguration, that “I am getting as far from D.C. as I can. I may go to Alaska and see Sarah.” Well travel to the Last Frontier he did, apparently to hang out with Sarah at that ever so exciting sports event, the Iron Dog, during which the governor’s husband was conveniently ensconced on a snow machine. I was sent a photo–which also ran in Andrew Halcro’s fine blog on the subject–in which Coale (at left) can be seen fixated on Palin at the Iron Dog, with Palin’s daughter Piper in the foreground. If ever a picture said a thousand words, this is it: Of course, Van Susteren put a feminist spin on it all: He has fun doing it. He happens to enjoy helping them with advice. He likes to see women succeed… As The Gawker wryly observed, “The elite Scientologist just likes helping the ladies.” Van Susteren also noted that her husband met Palin through her in Van Susteren’s professional capacity as a journalist. Which he then turned into a personal and political relationship. There’s another journalistic boundary that’s been crossed. Well, maybe. As the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan acerbically declared, that would imply that Van Susteren “is actually a journalist.” Maybe Tom Cruise will play Todd in the movie.•

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Geoffrey Dunn: Palin Pallin’ Around with Scientologists: Todd & Sarah & John & Greta

Family and friends gathered at the American Irish Historical Society in Manhattan for Natasha Richardson on Friday afternoon. Among the mourners were all of her family, Lauren Bacall, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Diane Sawyer, Howard Stern, Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Matthew Modine and Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker. Broderick and Parker also offered their condolences to Richardson’s husband Liam Neeson Thursday night as Broadway dimmed theater lights to honor the late Tony winner. Read more about the wake here. Neeson was the last to leave. PHOTOS: (AP Photos) More on Photo Galleries

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Liam Neeson, Family And Friends Together At Natasha Richardson’s Wake (PHOTOS)

The Pentagon celebrated the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War this week by releasing its annual report on military sexual assault. The numbers are disturbing. Reports of sexual assault have risen 8 percent in military as a whole. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they have shot up by 26 percent. Yet to the Department of Defense this is good news. As Kaye Whitley, director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), said at a press briefing at the Pentagon on March 17 (CSPAN), “The numbers have gone up and I reiterate: this does not mean sexual assaults have gone up, this means the number of reports have gone up, which we see as very positive as we’re getting the victims in to get care.” Actually, no one can tell if an increase in reported sexual assaults means more assaults or more reports. To say otherwise is nonsense, especially given the fact that few than 10 percent or so of assaults are reported at all, as the DoD admits in its own report. (Report, p. 51) The only accurate way to measure military sexual assault is to rely on veterans who are no longer afraid to report it, and those studies indicate no good news at all. Nearly a third of military women are raped, some 71 percent are sexually assaulted, and 90 percent are sexually harassed. Men, too, are assaulted in alarming numbers. Recent VA statistics show that 59,345 men have reported sexual abuse in the service. Given that the purpose of SAPRO is to encourage sexual assault victims to report and seek help, it’s worth taking a look through the report itself — a document as convoluted and jargon-ridden as one would expect from the DoD — to see what message it is really giving to victims. Let’s take a soldier called, say, Sarah. Sarah, who is 2O, has been raped by her 27-year-old sergeant after he pretended to be nice to her and plied her with drink. (The report reveals that 71 percent of victims are between 16 and 24 and in the lowest ranks, while 59.5 percent of assailants are between 20 and 34 and are in higher ranks. The use of alcohol in rape is high.) Because military platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, Sarah knows that if she reports the sexual assault everyone will know, including her sergeant, whether she gives her name or not. She will have to face that sergeant day after day, who might well try to punish her for revenge, and she will have to put up with resentment and blame from her fellow soldiers who will likely see her as a traitor and a snitch out to ruin her sergeant’s career. Furthermore, because military culture demands that all soldiers keep their pain and distress to themselves, reporting an assault will make her look weak and cowardly. But suppose Sarah braves all this and reports her assault to the authorities anyway. The most likely outcome is that her case will be thrown out, either because she wasn’t able to come up with enough proof, or because her command will say something like, “We will pursue your accusations, but we’ll also charge you with underage drinking and ruin your career. So you better shut up.” In 2008, 49.4 percent of prosecutions were thrown out because, as the report phrases it, they “lacked sufficient evidence, involved a victim that recanted [read intimidated into silence], or involved a subject or victim who died.” (report, p. 36) If Sarah nonetheless perseveres, and her sergeant is sent to court-martial — which happened in a mere 10.9 of all the reported assaults in 2008 — and if he is found guilty, he is most likely to be punished with “nonjudicial punishments” or “administrative actions and discharges.” Even in the rare cases the military had deemed solid enough to prosecute in 2008, 62 percent of the perpetrators got away with a slap on the wrist. Finally, if Sarah tries to find out what the conviction rate of sexual predators is, perhaps looking for some reason to brave all the cross-examinations, hostility, and traumatizing methods of military investigations, she will be told that the SAPRO office doesn’t keep those figures at all. Given these outcomes, it is a wonder anyone in the military reports sexual assault at all. Watching last Tuesday’s press conference on CSPAN, when Whitley and her sidekick, Robert Reed, Associate Deputy General Counsel, tried to put a positive spin on this dismal reality was like watching two earwigs squirming on a pin. When, for example, a puzzled reporter asked Whitley what made her so sure that the rise in reports reflected more reporting and not more rapes, she got a reiteration of the reasoning printed in the report itself: “Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the United States. Estimates suggest that only a small percentage of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. The Department expects that the same is true for military society as well. An increase in the number of reported cases means that the Department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases occurring each year.” (Report, p. 33) In other words, the DoD knows assaults aren’t rising because rape is so underreported. Huh? When another baffled reporter asked why on earth the report contained no information about the rates of conviction, all the DoD’s counsel Robert Reed could say was that those figures were collected by different departments of the military in different branches. “But why didn’t SAPRO collect these numbers for the report?” the reporter asked again, more baffled than ever. Reed did his earwig squirm and dodged the question by repeating what he’d just said, several times. Could the Defense Department possibly be avoiding mentioning those conviction rates because they are so embarrassingly low? If the Pentagon were serious about preventing and prosecuting sexual assault in the military, all this squirming would not be necessary. Instead, this is what it would do. Fire Whitley, Reed and all the rest of the PR flacks the DoD parades out there to fudge the statistics. Put in their stead a survivor of military rape dedicated to telling the truth. This survivor would stand up and say, “The rate of sexual assault in our military is a national scandal. We are going to address this by protecting every victim who reports, by making it a court-martial offense to intimidate anyone out of reporting or to block the investigation in any way, and by punishing any commander overseeing a unit in which assaults occur. “We are also going to follow the civilian practice of putting the burden of proof on investigators, not on the victim. We are no longer going to make victims face their assailants or pay for their own rape evidence kits, as they must do now. We are going to reduce our dismissed cases dramatically. And we are going to prosecute, imprison and expel from the military anyone who is found to have committed sexual or domestic violence against fellow service members or civilians.” Until the Pentagon makes these declarations, and follows through on them, any claim that its sexual assault reports contain good news is nonsense. Helen Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, just out from Beacon Press. Her articles on female soldiers won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. More on Sexual Violence

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Helen Benedict: The Pentagon’s Annual Report on Sexual Assualt in the Military, or, How to Lie with Statistics

Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren responded on her blog to the story that her husband, Washington lawyer John Coale, is an adviser to Sarah Palin . Van Susteren wrote on GretaWire : I am getting lots of inquires about my husband John Coale — no, he is not a paid adviser to Governor Palin and never has been. And no, he does not want a job with her or with the other women he has helped. Yes, he has given Governor Palin advice and helped her. He met her through me when I interviewed her….I did not meet her through him. I have gotten interviews with her not through him but through our staff on OTR. It is that simple. The inquiries came following a Washington Post story that listed Coale among the “protecters of the Palin brand” — without ever suggesting, however, that Coale was a paid adviser. Rather, Chris Cilizza wrote: Coale, in an interview with the Fix, described himself simply as a “friend” of the Alaska governor but acknowledged that he suggested she start a leadership PAC and helped her navigate through some of the questions surrounding her family that lingered after the campaign. Others familiar with Palin’s political team insist that Coale has far more power than he is letting on — essentially helping to run Sarah PAC. Coale demurred on that front, noting only that he talks to Palin regularly and that she is a “fascinating person” who is “definitely not what the right thinks or the left thinks.” Van Susteren has enjoyed unparalleled access to Palin and her family, conducting several interviews from Alaska — most recently with new mom Bristol Palin . But, as she writes on her blog, she insists her access to the Governor and her family does not come through her husband’s relationship but rather through her own staff, and that her husband met Palin through her. More on Sarah Palin

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Greta: My Husband Is Not A Paid Palin Adviser, But He Gives Her Advice

Dogs are just domesticated wolves, brought in from the wild somewhere in Asia back in the Pleistocene. Dogs and wolves can and do interbreed, and scientists consider them the same species. Given the lack of biological difference between the two, it’s interesting how differently we perceive them. Whereas dogs are man’s best friend and the archetype of loyalty, folklore has given us the Big Bad Wolf and the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Domestication makes all the difference, of course, and we humans have always large carnivores that kill our livestock and are capable of killing us. Still, the viciousness and thoroughness of past wolf-extermination campaigns in this country, and the lingering antipathy towards them in the few places where they still exist, seem out of proportion to the risk they pose to livestock and people. In the first half of the 20th century, we came very close to scrubbing wolves off the face of the conterminous United States. This was no accident. In 1750, close to 200,000 wolves roamed the land, occurring in each of what would become the lower 48 states. With each passing year, that number sank, plunging precipitously between 1900 and 1920 as Congress officially sanctioned the Bureau of Biological Survey to shoot, trap, and poison wolves to extinction. Sarah Palin has nothing on these guys –they were brutally effective. Ironically enough, the extermination was complete in the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, where every last wolf was dead by 1930; there, as elsewhere, the wolf-elimination program was intended to boost deer and elk populations. That plan worked, probably better than anybody expected or even hoped for. The country’s white-tailed deer population exploded, from roughly 5 million in 1960 to 30 million in 2000, while the number of elk in Yellowstone shot up almost an order of magnitude, from 3,000 to 20,000. Good news for hunters, but bad news for our country’s ecosystems. Not surprisingly, the deer and elk got comfortable in these newly wolf-free habitats. Not only were there more of them, but they began brazenly foraging in areas, like streamside vegetation, that would have been too dangerous before. Populations of aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees could no longer successfully replace themselves, since their seedlings were getting hammered by the ravenous herds. When the old trees died, there were no younger trees to take their place. The loss of vegetation along stream beds led to erosion of the exposed banks and muddying of the waters. Moreover, beavers, which had been recovering from heavy fur-trapping in the late 1800s, crashed in the 1930s, as the trees they fed upon disappeared. Since the dams beavers build create and regulate wetlands, their disappearance further transfigured the ecosystem. With no competition or predation from wolves, a smaller predator in the ecosystem–coyotes–ran amok. So went the chain-reactions from this ill-advised eradication program, dramatically altering the form and function of our country’s most iconic ecosystem. But it wasn’t just Yellowstone and it wasn’t just wolves–the loss of wolves, cougars, and grizzlies has changed the face of the West, from Olympic National Park in Washington to Utah’s Zion Canyon, from the cottonwood trees all the way down to butterflies and lizards. Then, in the mid-1990s, something amazing happened. The US Fish and Wildlife Service took 66 wolves from Canada and plunked them down in Yellowstone, over the fierce objections of many locals in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Since 1995, the wolf population of the region has quintupled. Much of what we know about the importance of wolves in maintaining the integrity of these ecosystems has come from research by Oregon State University’s Bill Ripple and his colleagues, who have been studying the ecological impacts of the wolf reintroduction. And the effects have been dramatic. Within three years of the reintroduction, coyote populations declined by 50%. The elk are back down to reasonable numbers, and more importantly, they’ve regained a healthy level of fear, avoiding high-risk areas like the sensitive stream banks. The aspens, cottonwoods and willows are all coming back, and with them, the beaver. The top photo below, from a paper by Ripple and his colleague Robert Beschta, was taken in 1991; the photo below is from 2002 and illustrates the recovery of streamside cottonwoods after just seven years of wolf presence. The restoration of the wolves and the subsequent recovery of the Yellowstone ecosystem is one of the greatest conservation success stories of all time. Should we try to replicate it elsewhere? Absolutely. Since we’ve already summarized the ecological benefits of doing so, let’s just take a look at the possible objections. First of all, wolf attacks on humans are vanishingly rare. Wolves do of course occasionally attack livestock, and this was one of the loudest arguments against putting them back in Yellowstone. In reality, however, the economic threat posed by these occasional events is negligible, especially since the Defenders of Wildlife pay ranchers full market value for wolf-killed calves and lambs (totaling $1.14 million since 1995). Also recall that coyotes are more abundant where wolves are absent, and coyotes are quite efficient stock killers. According to the US Department of Agriculture , of the 190,000 cattle killed by animal predators in 2005, coyotes were responsible for more than half (man’s best friend, the domestic dog, came in second with 11.5% of the toll). So most of what’s saved, livestock-wise, by killing wolves may be lost–and then some–to corresponding increases in coyote predation. Finally, increased tourist dollars from people paying to come see wild wolves stimulates local economies and more than offsets the impact of any livestock losses on the regional economy (albeit indirectly). In 2005, nearly 100,000 Yellowstone visitors spent more than $35 million specifically to see or hear wolves. We still have a chance to restore functionality to the ecosystems conserved in our nation’s fabulous national parks. There are viable opportunities for wolf recovery from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona and as far east as New York and Maine . Most Americans seem to like the idea. But the window is closing. Once a stand of trees disappears completely, restoring wolves will not bring it back–the ecosystem settles into what ecologists call a new “stable state,” and a priceless piece of our biological heritage is lost. Visit the Defenders of Wildlife to find out what you can do. The Yellowstone image is taken from WJ Ripple and RL Beschta, 2003. Wolf reintroduction, predation risk, and cottonwood recovery in Yellowstone National Park. Forest Ecology and Management 184:299-313. More on Sarah Palin

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Todd Palmer and Rob Pringle: Why We Need Wolves In Our Parks

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will reject almost half of the federal stimulus money available to her state, her office said Thursday. “We will request federal stimulus funds for capital projects that will create new jobs and expand the economy,” Palin said in a statement. “We won’t be bound by federal strings in exchange for dollars, nor will we dig ourselves a deeper hole in two years when these federal funds are gone.” More on Sarah Palin

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Palin To Reject Almost Half Of Stimulus Money

It’s time. I’m not going to make this harder than it already is, so here it goes. I am a recipient of one of the AIG executive bonuses. My conscience has gotten the better of me and I think it’s time to come clean and let the healing process begin. First, let me say that I fully intend to return one hundred percent of part of my 6.4 million dollar bonus. I realize now that I would be a monster to accept all of it, so rest assured that I will not take more of your hard-earned money than I absolutely have to in order to sustain my modest lifestyle of international kite surfing and sampling endangered animal flesh. I worked at AIG until last year when I left on my own accord to pursue my true passion of part time blogging. However, my contract stipulated that I would receive my bonus this year, which couldn’t have come at a better time, because have you SEEN what’s going on with the economy lately? It’s ridiculous! I know that technically I may have had a little to do with this economic snafu, but if you look at the percentages my bonus is something like the equivalent of half a cent in the grand scheme of the bailout, so maybe everyone should just cool off. My friend did that math for me, so sue me if it isn’t correct. Just kidding! Don’t sue me! Anyway, I’m like, really sorry guys. And if it makes you feel any better, after I give back the full amount of a portion of my bonus I will totally leave the country so you don’t have to deal with me again. I don’t expect you to write, so I won’t leave an address or anything. So, yeah. Sorry again and I hope others will have the courage that I have just demonstrated and reveal themselves as well. I already feel like a better person. Did I say feel? No. I am a better person.

Continued here:
Sarah Walker: Coming Clean

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. (Deut.23:2)–King James Bible Well it seems that the latter-day Joseph and Mary trophies of the religious right-wing pro-life movement have been tarnished and their lackluster bronze has turned a gangrenous green, which is starting to show through the shoddy, flaking shiny gold paint (applied so gingerly for their RNC debutante debut). It seems poor Tripp (a quite apropos name considering his conception in itself was a stumbling gaffe) will remain a bastard after all (meant in the biblical sense only–I’m sure he’s a swell little feller). It appears that John McCain’s hearty handshake, the Christian Radical Right’s unconditional love for the life of Bristol’s illicit gestation and GILF-y Grandma Palin’s half-cocked shotgun were not enough to let this hitching go forward without a hitch. After the campaign folded so did Levi’s schwag bags full of NHL tickets, signed WWF memorabilia, cold hard cash and whatever else it took to keep his pot-smokin’, sh*t-kickin’, rabble-rousin’, redneck mouth shut. After months of awkwardly stuffing his broad-shouldered hockey bad-boy body into formal designer duds (gratis of the Sarah’s heavily abused RNC slush fund ) he can finally lose the tie, throw on a Natty-Light -stained hockey jersey, put on his trusty, well worn cup, blast Winger’s “She’s Only Seventeen” from the speakers of his shiny new red Chevy Silverado pick-up truck (the obvious ride of an unemployed high school dropout) and go raise some hell in the Land of the Midnight Sun. It’s all not really that surprising, actually. Much like the real-life aftermaths to all the really awful reality shows that we hate ourselves for watching and obsessing over (see the Bachelor , Joe Millionaire and Flavor of Love ), once the season ends all the principle players go their separate ways (only to be pointed and chuckled at in chance encounters at the local 7-Eleven or Texaco Station ). Meanwhile, Bristol is allegedly “devastated” by the loss of her baby-daddy and would-be hillbilly-heroin-in-law ( Sherri Johnston –currently out of the clink). I’m sure it was quite a whirlwind romance that led to tiny Tripp’s being conceived in illegitimate, underage sin, most likely to the tune Danity Kane’s “Damaged” (after Levi talked our little Juno Lynn Spears into raiding Mommy’s old kush stash, being a good Christian and helping him keep warm… really warm… without the use of any of those silly pagan penis protectors). Yup, a good old-fashioned wholesome courtship. To be honest, I’m still not quite sure how the fundamentalist fringe came to embrace this disgrace in the first place (I’m only passing judgment by their own standards here: Hosea 5:7 , Hebrews 12:5-8 ). Not only did they forgive and forget just because the fetus was spared but paraded these two about in front of the entire RNC like they actually had something to be proud of. This Cult of Life which has taken a stranglehold on the Republican Party also cheered as poor little Trig was being exploited as a token, passed around from person to person for photo ops like a little special-needs hot potato (he was even held by a very reluctant Cindy McCain, who looked a mite perturbed about the possibility of an upchuck incident on her 300,000-dollar ensemble , and eventually soundly licked by his adorable older sister Piper Palin–awwww!). What about now that the fruit of Bristol’s desecrated loins will not to be consecrated in ad hoc holy matrimony? Will they abandon her to the eternal flames of hell or find yet another way to rationalize championing her coerced commitment to carrying a misbegotten child to term in defiance of the Law of their Lord? More importantly, how do they spin this ill-fated turn of events to elect their Goddess-Head Rapture -obsessed lipstick laden Pit Bull soccer-mom idol in 2012? Is this really the party of family values? If so, where is the “family” or the “values”? What is the sound of a party imploding ? More on Sarah Palin

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Warren Holstein: Family Values, Schmamily Values: The GOP’s Bristol/Levi Hypocrisy

So, who are the figures charged with guiding Palin’s political image in Washington? Here’s the lineup based on our conversations with informed strategists. • John Coale: Coale, a well-known Washington lawyer and the husband of Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren, drew national media attention when he endorsed Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid in protest of the way in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he backed in the primary, was treated. Coale, in an interview with the Fix, described himself simply as a “friend” of the Alaska governor but acknowledged that he suggested she start a leadership PAC and helped her navigate through some of the questions surrounding her family that lingered after the campaign. Others familiar with Palin’s political team insist that Coale has far more power than he is letting on — essentially helping to run Sarah PAC. Coale demurred on that front, noting only that he talks to Palin regularly and that she is a “fascinating person” who is “definitely not what the right thinks or the left thinks.” More on Sarah Palin

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John Coale, Greta Van Susteren’s Husband, Advising Sarah Palin

One of the cool features at Memeorandum, my favorite aggregator of political content, is that you can warp back to any previous point in time to see which stories were dominating bandwidth on the World Wide Web. Here, for example, is what the world looked like on Election Night, or on the morning that Sarah Palin was selected to be John McCain’s running mate. I thought it would be useful to examine how the current controversy surrounding AIG has spread throughout the Internet over the past several days. This story has been a little bit unusual in that it’s not all that newsworthy: AIG’s intention to pay its so-called retention bonuses has been public knowledge for some time. But the story has absolutely blown up within the past 72 hours.

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AIG: How A Meme Spreads

Spring Break has broken out in the political techno-sphere, with attractive, blonde women scrapping in such an unseemly, insensitive way that Joe Francis could show up at any moment with his “Girls Gone Wild” camera. The contestants are fringe Republicans (different fringes): Meghan (daughter of John) McCain, walking dynamite stick Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin stand-in, Laura Ingraham. It’s not that the feud isn’t fun to watch, for people of any party affiliation. But when Ms. Ingraham got on Ms. McCain about body fat, things turned ugly. I mean, saying Jews are bad (Ms. Coulter), that’s just part of being sassy and provocative. But, particularly here in SF — sensitivity central — going after someone’s weight is below the belt. Although she is the most bombastic of the three, often accused by her many critics of a crude kind of madness, Ms. Coulter is the only one who has not engaged. Yet. Maybe she’s exercising some restraint. Also, she’s been on the receiving end herself of unkind comments about body type though the slights, as mirrored by her politics vs. Ms. McCain’s, sit at opposite ends of the solar system. One super lean, one definitely sturdier. (How’s that for Northern California language neutral?) First, Meghan McCain slammed Ann Coulter as an extremist. “I could be a poster woman for the opposite,” she said on her Daily Beast blog. Her friendly commenters clearly feel she could be a poster woman, period. Ms. Coulter, she said, is “offensive, radical, insulting and confusing.” OK, a little mortar fire from the tree line, as her dad might say. But then this: “Figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off,” she wrote. Now it’s getting personal. Cue the “Jaws” theme. But it was Laura Ingraham who responded, presumably on Ms. Coulter’s behalf. She described Meghan as “kind of cute” (the set up, or maybe the subplot of all of this) even if she was also “just another Valley Girl gone awry.” But here it comes: Meghan was “plus-sized.” Ouch! And they were off. Twittering and posting and TV/radio trash-talking, and invitations to kiss certain robust body parts . Ms. McCain scolded, “Quite talking about my weight, Laura Ingraham” she titled her next Beast piece and went on to defend “curviness.” Of course Gawker couldn’t resist being nasty to everyone : “Mean Pundit Accidentally Justifies Meghan McCain’s Boring Self-Obsession” was their headline. (Michelle Malkin tackled the weighty battle on her blog, but steered away from body image and stuck to the political right angles.) Then today Ingraham brought the dialogue back from brawn to brains by just flat out calling McCain an “idiot.” Though, she prefaced with “useful,” so that’s nice. Really. I mean where’s the civility? Didn’t we learn anything from the unfortunate Jessica Simpson (now Lindsay Lohan ) body obsession? It’s actually making people cry. In public. I say sensitivity training with a dash of anger management all around. With a lot of hard work and non-judgmental therapy, we could approach the kind of thought-positive posture of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, which said, according to the AP , that “Followers of the youth music and fashion trend known as “emo” have suffered discrimination and violence. They have recommended (never insist. Ever.) “Sensitivity training to prevent it.” Emos wear long bangs and skinny (just in the fashion sense) pants and listen to angst-ridden music, the story said. Save the Emos! And our own national sense of decorum while we’re at it. For more, read Bronstein at Large .

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Phil Bronstein: A weighty battle gets uglier - can we all be a little more sensitive?

UPDATE : The Huffington Post has obtained an exclusive first look at the April 2009 Portfolio cover story about Sarah Palin. The cover, which (as mentioned below) features a photo of Palin from her Vogue shoot, is headlined “Palin & Big Oil: The Cold Hard Truth.” Joe McGinnis’ cover story, “Pipe Dreams,” focuses on Palin’s failure to build a gas pipeline in Alaska. The subhed reads: Forget “Drill, baby, drill.” Sarah Palin says she’s building a $40 billion gas pipeline, which even President Obama wants. The only problem: It isn’t there. And it’s her fault. McGinnis’ article has already generated a response from the Palin camp — though they have not seen anything but a press release: Based on a press release by Portfolio to promote its April issue, it appears McGinniss’ article is highly critical of Palin’s efforts: “…McGinniss finds that not only is the pipeline not being built, but Palin herself is the biggest obstacle in its path.” Palin spokesman Bill McAllister released the following statement: It seems to expect people to be surprised by the fact that the pipeline is not under construction. That’s not much of an “aha.” Obviously, anyone paying attention knows this will be years in the making. “Palin has virtually ignored the pipeline issue since returning to Alaska in November to focus instead on her 2012 presidential campaign strategy.” Show me one shred of proof for either part of that statement. The governor had a nearly daylong meeting with her gas line team the week after the election, and of course those consultations have continued. In early December, she arranged an event in Fairbanks to present the AGIA license to TransCanada. She has gas line-related funding requests pending before both the Congress and the Legislature. This is “ignoring”? McGinniss notes “her absence from major oil-company summits.” She had Exxon in her office last week. Not sure what his point is there. McGinnis calls AGIA a blunder, but every lawmaker but one voted for it, and a majority voted to stay the course over a year later and give TransCanada a shot. The governor campaigned in 2006 on getting Alaska’s terms for its gas, in contrast to the Murkowski contract that ceded tax sovereignty, judicial sovereignty and regulatory sovereignty. AGIA was a game-changer, a new paradigm. See the full cover below. The full article is now live at Portfolio.com , as is a slideshow of “Governor Palin’s Life in Pictures” — titled Palin’ Around . The issue hits newsstands tomorrow, Wednesday March 18. Original Post : Sarah Palin will pop up later this week on an unlikely magazine cover: Condé Nast’s business title Portfolio . WWD’s Irin Carmon reports (third item down) that the choice was met with “staff resistance,” but editor Joanne Lipman defended the selection due to Palin’s relevance to Big Oil. Palin did not sit for photos for the cover. Instead, outtakes from her February 2008 Vogue photo shoot will be used. Read the full report here (third item down) . See Palin’s Vogue pictures here . More on Conde Nast

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Sarah Palin: Portfolio Cover Girl For April 2009

I was sitting in my buckboard outside of the general store waiting for the wife to pick up a few yards of gingham and some kerosene for the kitchen light, while mulling over the last newspaper that the stage brought out of Denver. Says here that the Rocky Mountain News is closing it up. Guess I’ll have to take the Cincinnata paper off the Eastern stagecoach… If that’s old news to you folks, my apologies. I had to have the stage take it to the nearest telegraph station, who sent it from there to some nice young feller in a big city with a laptop to upload it to the Huffington Post on that newfangled Internet. This, unfortunately, is the world in which newspapers still think they operate, and we live. As the publisher of the first digital sports magazine in the world, cover and all, celebrating his first decade in digital media publishing, let me lay before you my screaming bias that I have known for the last decade: Print journalism is dead. Long live journalism! In a February 28, 2009 article , the Pew Research Center writes: The trend is unmistakable: Fewer Americans are reading print newspapers as more turn to the internet for their news. And while the percentage of people who read newspapers online is growing rapidly, especially among younger generations, that growth has not offset the decline in print readership. To all those from Time Magazine, whose sleeping with the fishwrap proposal for the revival of newspapers is the wishful thinking of a horse-and-buggy press in the Sixth Sense days of its existence, to the papers great and small who are having their freak-outs over the digital floodwaters of Internet reading, it could not happen to a nicer group of journalistic snobs. In the early days of our digital magazine, I would meet fellow journalists working a ballgame or a day at Spring Training, and the conversation would go something like this: Journalist: Who do you work for? Me: Minor League News. Journalist: Haven’t seen you on the newsstand… Me: That’s because we’re a digital magazine. Journalist: (Condescendingly): Oh, you work for a website … Spitting cobras could not throw out more venom than a print journalist uttering the word “website.” Legendary television comedy pioneer Sid Caeasr told me once that: “We always wanted to be better than Broadway. We wanted their respect, and it was a long time in coming.” Back in those days, when I wanted these status quo savants to respect our hard work and brotherhood in quality journalism, I would politely point out that, just as a piece of paper can be a newspaper, a magazine, a greeting card, or a hamburger wrapper, the electronic media is capable of producing everything from newspapers to citizen newsletters to the blog rants of millions. It did little good. Paper snobs seem to feel that the public cannot discern the difference between a professionally written journalistic publication and Aunt Sarah’s rants on the latest banking scandal. It masks a more deep-seeded fear that the New York Times opinion section gets to be a little irrelevant when the Huffington Post and the Daily KOS are getting more airtime as media resources. Most print publications have done little to distinguish themselves on the web. If you surf newspapers online, most of their web outlets use a handful of canned software that is so visually unappealing that, were it in print, they would not be able to get birds to use it as cage liner. Newspapers could have lead the charge into the brave new world of electronic publishing. Instead, they have let the web geeks and the programmers tell them how to make everything fit into bland busy boxes, rather than redefine the space, as they would in print, from a design/style edge first, and make the geeks do their bidding. They tried to marginalize the Internet, and hope that it will go away. It reminds me of a very sad photo that I saw once of a group of Vaudevillians, old theater performers of short sketches, dancing and oddities, starting into the window of a television store. “It will never replace Vaudeville,” you can almost hear one of them mutter under their breath, feeling the dark cloud of Sid Caesar’s “Show of Shows” sucking their audiences back into their living rooms. Webaphobia is by no means limited to our print cousins. Broadcasters are likewise tweaked and freaked. I found old-school Joe Mathieu of XM/Sirius’ “Press Pool” on the POTUS channel quite amusing a couple of weeks back when President Obama held his first news conference. He was put out by the fact that the Huffington Post was given a seat at the event, and turned his nose up at the upstart new media. Apparently while American news media are racially tolerant, digital media is still supposed to ride the back of the bus, if the old-line mike jockeys and TV talking heads have their way. They don’t though. Vast numbers of the public continue to move to the web to get their news and entertainment. The web has caused such an exodus from television viewing to web viewing that Fox News, which finds itself largely immune, as many of its red state minions are somewhat afraid of the bogeyman Internet … “They have ‘funny’ ideas out there, Margaret… funny ideas…” CNN has done everything to court these folks short of putting a clown suit on Wolf Blitzer to attract this crowd. Hey… that’s not a bad idea. No.. No. Wolf is a serious news man. Maybe a pony and a blue balloon. Of course I cannot be outdone by the geniuses in programming at CNN, though, who did me one better: They put on comedian D.L. Hughley. D.L. is very funny. I thought his Studio 60 got short-shrift from NBC just as it was starting to let the characters of the ensemble show about life behind the scenes at a Saturday NIght Live-esque show really develop. Still, his “news” show, “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,” really would have been more at home at Comedy Central, where he could really let loose, and been in the company of Stewart and Colbert, than at stodgy CNN. “Internal Memo: Project Out-Stewart the Daily Show Fails” must have made the rounds prior to CNN, which may stand for Comedy News (Not), canceling Hughley’s show. D.L. didn’t break the news at CNN. It was already broken. Gone are the Bernard Shaws and the Bob Frankens. In are the Kewpie-doll talking heads and the happy chat babble that has replaced substantive news at the once-giant of the business. It is truly sad. Blitzer has the gravitas of Soupy Sales, and Campbell Brown may have no bias or bull, but she also lacks depth and distinction. Until newspapers can migrate to the web and put out a piece of content that is visually as appealing, and learn to charge grown-up prices for subscriptions and advertising they are as doomed as the Rocky Mountain News. A few newspapers get it right on some fronts. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have continued to explore and optimize the digital newspaper. Both have evolved significant styles online. The San Jose Mercury News has been at the forefront of the digital age and held its own reasonably well. Sadly though, for too many newspapers, radio stations, and television stations, the web is a hodge-podge, publishing a mush of random content at the readers often lacking both substance and style. At its best the Internet provides is immediate and highly cross-referenced news that synthesizes and synergizes. It also mixes media into a powerful information cocktail. Come to the Huffington Post and read an original thought like this, and you might find some easy connect in it to a piece of video on Jon Stewart’s take-down of CNBC “Mad Money” host (BYE-BYE-BYE!) Jim Cramer. Just don’t jump on that link until you are done reading here, okay? (I’m just going to give the horse some hay before we head the buckboard on out…) More on Jim Cramer

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Brian Ross: D.L. Hughley Didn’t Break the News: It Was Already Broken

No matter how much some folks would like to believe otherwise, you just can’t let go of the past without first addressing it. Our freshly out-of-office malefactor chieftains and their backers would love for their deeds to vanish into the mists, to be misremembered in text and concealed in myth until all the principals are dead. Other Americans acknowledge that evils were done and lies were told but argue that paying any attention to them will distract us in the “fierce urgency of now” and pull the country apart when unity of purpose is essential for solving our multiple crises. Move on, it is said. Forgive and forget, or at least, forget. If we take that path, we belie ourselves. Making this choice, we condemn our children to a future in which the vicious misconduct we have witnessed is repeated in some new form and new venue by new leaders telling new lies by means of new and more sophisticated media. Moving on in such fashion, we taint the ideals our nation supposedly holds inviolable. We might as well walk into the National Archives rotunda, smash the glass display cases, take a crap on the Constitution and wipe up with the parchment of the Bill of Rights. The publication over the weekend of Mark Danner’s US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites in The New York Review of Book has been commented on already by some observers who have been most attentive to torture during the past few years. These include Valtin/Invictus and emptywheel , and by the time what I am now writing is published, Glenn Greenwald, Armando, Andrew Sullivan, Scott Horton and others may well have weighed in. You can read in Danner’s piece grim excerpts from the report of the  International Committee on the Red Cross that he obtained. That report is based on interviews with 14 captives held by the U.S. Here is its essence: The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. As Danner writes: Such unflinching clarity, from the body legally charged with overseeing compliance with the Geneva Conventions—in which the terms “torture” and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” are accorded a strictly defined legal meaning—couldn’t be more significant, or indeed more welcome after years in which the President of the United States relied on the power of his office either to redefine or to obfuscate what are relatively simple words. Indeed. Last week, David Rose of the Daily Mail conducted an exclusive interview with another of the tortured , Binyam Mohammed. Mohammed had finally been released from Guantánamo after seven years there and in secret prisons in Pakistan and Morocco. He’s accused the British authorities of complicity in his torture. On Friday, the BBC conducted the first broadcast interview with him (starts at the 6:45 minute mark): Binyam Mohammed : All the questions were done by the Moroccans. They would go out, talk to the Americans, then they would come back and have all their questions ready. And most of the questions which I was asked could not have come from anywhere else but British intelligence. … Manel : What did you think when you realized that this was coming from the UK? Mohammed : I was shocked, ‘cause there I was in Pakistan talking to John on how he’s going to help me. Manel : That’s the MI5 officer? Mohammed : Yes, that’s the MI5 officer. And I find out that the way he is going to help me is by forcing the Americans to question me on things which I had no idea about. Manel : And just to be clear, because this is important, you’ve said you don’t want to talk about what actually happened to you in Morocco, but you have been shown this information at the same time or at a different time to the things that you say were happening to you in Morocco; in other words, the torture. Mohammed : That was happening at the same time. These photos were coming in, I would say, every maybe three weeks. The torture was going on sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly. Manel : Are you suggesting that the (MI5) person was involved at any level in the actual torture that you say you went through in Morocco. Mohammed : Well, to my understanding, and to my belief, if it wasn’t for the British involvement right at the beginning of the interrogations in Pakistan and the suggestions that were made by MI5s to the Americans of how to get me to respond. I don’t think I would have gone to Morocco. It was that initial help that MI5 gave the Americans that led me through the seven years of what I went through. Manel : …What do you want to see happen? Mohammed : Well, I want or prefer … I want people taking responsibility for what has happened over the seven years. If we just let people do what they want to do, and then not be accountable, that’s opening up the doors to torture and abuse. Manel : How high should this accountability go? Mohammed : Well, literally, I think all the way to person who started all this was the President of the U.S. I think he has to take, he has to be taken to trial for what he has done all these seven years. Manel : And in terms of Britain’s role? Mohammed : Well, if there is any evidence that the Prime Minister was involved or knew about this, then he should be tried, too. In her brilliant, cut-to-the-bone book on the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, The Wordy Shipmates , Sarah Vowell quotes the most famous line of Governor John Winthrop: “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” She continues: The eyes of all people are upon us. And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it’s still shining – because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That’s how we carry out sleep deprivation. Vowell’s book was written while the Cheney-Bush administration was still in office, of course, before Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that “the United States of America does not torture.” He could have made that section of his speech 50% better by saying the United States does not torture anymore . Because everybody knows that America did torture until at least January 19, 2009. And it would have been 100% better if he’d said his administration would seek out those who ordered torture and sought specious legal shields for their actions. But then, had he done so., perhaps not so many in Congress would have given him the same rousing applause. Much has been made in this bicentennial year of the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. Of particular note has been his second inaugural speech. This contains those famous words meant to heal: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, …let us strive on to finish the work we are in, …to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” As in those dark days just weeks before Lincoln was gunned down, our nation today certainly needs healing. But there’s more it needs. In all the recent talk of Lincoln’s presidency, we rarely hear mention of some other words from that same speech . “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.” So it should be for every administration. Each holds the power and should bear the responsibility. But responsibility without accountability means nothing. For the Obama administration to give its predecessor a pass for its misdeeds, to move on as if nothing happened, would be a failure of responsibility. We cannot escape history. Yet that seems to be the new administration’s intent. Not only does it appear there will be no special prosecutor and no regular prosecutor assigned from within the Department of Justice to handle these crimes, it appears there will be nothing like the Otis Pike-style investigation as in the 1970s. The odds seem against even the weakest tea, the truth and reconciliation commission that Senator Patrick Leahy has proposed. No new witnesses have been called to speak at a second round of the hearing that was held March 4 , according to his press office. Meanwhile, some who followed orders to torture are still serving their terms in the slam, while the order- givers roam free.

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Still Refusing the Remedy for These Crimes

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. I just don’t think it’s funny. I’m always curious why people come to Alaska. Born in Homer, I won the ovarian lottery, but my parent’s adventure to this great state is one that can entertain the crustiest of old timers. “So, what brought you to Alaska?” is a question few dare ask a stranger in a bar, but it always manages to conjure interesting stories while sitting around a fire with friends. Strangers in Alaska bars, more often than not, have checkered pasts and damn near sneer at what they perceive as an intrusive question. After receiving a curious email last week from a friend in New York, I am searching for the answer to that question for one such visitor. Granted, in a year, Alaska has four times as many visitors as we have citizens. Old bumper stickers asked, “If we call it ‘tourist season’ can we shoot ‘em?” The ‘visitor’ who captured my interest is Tim Griffin. In an interview last month published in a small Arkansas weekly, Mr. Griffin claimed to have come to Alaska “more than 20 times last year.” Who is Tim Griffin? Why was he here? Prepare for less than savory answers. From September 1995 to January 1997, Griffin worked with Special Prosecutor David Barrett in his investigation of Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of HUD. For two years after that, he was Senior Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Government Reform. During his time there, the committee was very active. They issued 1,052 dead-end subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party. The cost to taxpayers? More than $35 million. In September 1999, he became Deputy Research Director for the RNC - special ops for George W. Bush’s campaign. Griffin was a legal advisor working closely with Attorney Ben Ginsberg of Patton Boggs, LLP for the Bush-Cheney 2000 Florida Recount Team. In a BBC documentary, “Digging the Dirt”, Griffin stood next to a sign reading “ON MY COMMAND–UNLEASH HELL (ON AL),” and stated, “We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war,” he said. ” We make the bullets .” From March 2001 through June 2002, he was Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff. In 2004, Griffin was a key player and reunited with Attorney Ben Ginsberg in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry. Ginsberg resigned from his position with George W Bush’s re-election campaign after his Swift Boat involvement became public. Griffin began serving as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, Office of Political Affairs at the White House in April 2005. His duty was “organizing and coordinating political support for the confirmation of Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.” For a year, beginning in September 2005, Tim Griffin was on military leave from the White House. He served as a prosecutor for Judge Advocate General (better known as JAG) and then went to Iraq. He claimed to have prosecuted 40 cases. Among those was a case allegedly against a soldier gone berserk on his commander. Griffin claimed he put the soldier in the clink for 25 years. The truth is, Griffin served only as assistant trial counsel to three cases that never went to trial. Apparently, Tim Griffin’s tall tales were training for those he might later tell in Alaska over a beer in some local bar. In 2006, due to a little known provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, George W. Bush & Company fired a handful of US Attorneys and replaced them without Senate confirmation. In December 2006, US Attorney Bud Cummings was fired from his district in Northeast Arkansas and replaced with Tim Griffin. In February 2007, Paul McNaulty, Deputy Attorney General, testified Cummings was fired to make a place for Griffin at the urging of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, further cementing Griffin’s cozy relationship with the Bush Administration. On May 30, 2007, investigative journalist, BBC Correspondent and best selling author, Greg Palast, turned over 500 emails to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers . The emails were inadvertently sent to the wrong email address during the 2004 campaign. Those wrongly addressed emails revealed the caging of over 70,000 voters in Florida. The targets of registration scrubbing were Black soldiers and poor Black and Hispanic citizens. Disenfranchising voters based on race has been a felony since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Palast’s information had been published for nearly 2 years, but on the day it went to Washington, Tim Griffin resigned from his Rovian created job as US Attorney in Arkansas. Except for short stints working for the presidential campaigns of Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, Tim Griffin was off the radar. Until, of course, he showed up in Alaska, which brings me back to my question: Why would Tim Griffin come to Alaska over 20 times last year? Attached to my email was a news article from the Northwest Arkansas News Source dated February 22, 2009. NWANews: What are you up to now? Griffin: I have two businesses. Depending on the time of the year, I am about 50-50 law and public affairs. I have the Griffin Law Firm. I primarily represent businesses in federal litigation in Texas. My public affairs company, I provide communications advice, how to develop a message that makes sense whether for corporate clients or political ones. NWANews: Can you name a client or two? Griffin: I went to Alaska last year over 20 times. Worked on a ballot initiative, which we defeated soundly. NWANews: What was that? Griffin: It was related to mining industry. Wow! So Karl Rove’s right hand man and special assistant to George W. Bush, under Congressional investigation for felony vote caging, got on a plane “over 20 times last year” to work against Ballot Proposition 4, the Clean Water Initiative? That’s a pretty big gun to get on that many flights-even if they were first class seats. Tim Griffin basically spent 40 days from May to August on planes going back and forth between Anchorage and Little Rock! Ballot Initiative 4 was an attempt to regulate water quality standards in Alaska. The Target: the proposed Pebble Mine-an open pit, sulfuric acid mine. The Mission: to protect the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run, the largest remaining wild salmon run in the world. Alaskans Against the Mining Shutdown was the Political Action Committee created by the mining industry. According to their reports , they paid Mercury Public Affairs of New York, $106,507.80. That payment included a website and all of Tim Griffin’s services and travel reimbursement. The average price for a ticket from Little Rock to Anchorage was about $1000 and takes at least 12 hours. Summer hotel rates are easily $200 a night. After expenses, Tim Griffin wasn’t taking a golden salary. If I were sitting next to Tim Griffin at a bar, I’d have a lot of follow up questions to my initial inquiry of “So, what brought you to Alaska?” Like for instance: 1.) Who called you? With all of your White House and Karl Rove connections - WHO do you know in Alaska? 2.) Did you develop any relationships with Alaskans while working on the Bush-Cheney Florida Recount Team in 2000? Or the Swift Boat Smear Campaign for Truth against John Kerry? Or in any of your illegal electioneering activity? WHO do you know in Alaska? 3.) Why would you waste your vote-caging and election-fixing talent on a ballot initiative in Alaska? WHO do you know in Alaska? 4.) What else did you do up here? WHO do you know in Alaska? 5.) Did you get to meet Sarah Palin? She came out against the initiative in a massive multimedia campaign after an anonymous “journalist” asked her how she would vote on Ballot Prop 4! Were you that “journalist”? WHO do you know in Alaska? 6.) How many frequent flyer miles do you have? WHO do you know in Alaska? 7.) Why didn’t the opposition detect your presence? You’re kind of a big deal. WHO do you know in Alaska? 8.) With all of your credentials, you seem underpaid. Did you work for free or was some other kind of payment involved? WHO do you know in Alaska? 9.) When you were working as an “informal advisor” to Mike Huckabee, did you talk to Alaska Congressman Don Young , who chaired Huckabee’s exploratory campaign? WHO do you know in Alaska? 10.) After learning of your other “bed-mates,” I can see how you would ignore Anglo American’s environmental track record. Proven environmental terrorists who rape, pillage and plunder resources then leave the toxic clean-up to locals. But you’re not local. Again… WHO DO YOU KNOW IN ALASKA? Oh, so many questions. Like I said…you get at least an hour’s worth of conversation when you ask, “So, what brought you to Alaska?” Unless the person in the bar is that stranger with a nefarious background…like Karl Rove Protégé, future felon vote-cager and election-fixer Tim Griffin. I wonder who he knows in Alaska. I wonder who picked up the bar tab. More on Sarah Palin

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Shannyn Moore: Karl Rove, Sarah Palin & Tim Griffin walk into a bar…

The lights can seem a little dimmer in SF these days — a lot of economic struggling and downsizing. But they’re blazing in Washington, D.C. “My sister and brother-in-law just got laid off in San Francisco,” one lobbyist I know told me. “Now they have to move out of the Bay Area because it’s too expensive. But here, business is booming. You can feel it. That’s the real difference between the two cities.” Of course, it helps when that business is government and you can print your own money. Maybe that’s why it felt like half of San Francisco was in the capital last week, joining a thundering herd of idealists, opportunists, lobbyists, and other money jockeys all looking for some piece of the vastly expanding action from the Obama Administration. I was staying at the Mayflower Hotel, aka, Elliot Spitzer’s sin castle . While I didn’t see the former Governor or the now-fashionable Ms. Dupre, every time I stepped outside I did run into someone from home. First I crashed a dinner where Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk had a gaggle of 50-plus local biz execs and half the Board of Supervisors at the Newseum . (It’s suddenly chilling, not charming, that newspapers already have a museum.) David Chiu was polite as ever and Bevin Dufty, animated like a game show host, worked the tables. They were all there for serious business: trying to get about $2 billion of the federal stimulus pie for San Francisco — for Muni, broadband for poor neighborhoods, health care technology, green jobs and high-speed rail. They worked the powerful, including Mmmes Feinstein, Pelosi, and Boxer, and joined the L.A. Chamber of Commerce at a lunch/reception on the Hill. LA Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, was there to add his star power to make sure he was presente in taking care of his peeps. And why wouldn’t you? David Chiu told the Chronicle’s DC ace reporter Zac Coile that competition among cities for this dough was tough and heavy. On the senate side of the Capitol, I ran into DA Kamala Harris at a confirmation hearing for her brother-in-law, Bay Area native and Stanford law grad Tony West, appointed by Mr. Obama to be the new assistant attorney general for the civil division. Tony’s wife, Mara, Kamala’s sister, used to run the SF ACLU and is now a vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation heading the peace and social justice operation. And their daughter just got accepted to Harvard Law. Those darn underachievers. Ms. Harris was also in town to lobby her pal, Attorney general Eric Holder, for some funds to help fight crime in SF. But wait. Who was missing in this intense, timely, to-the-hoop press of San Francisco officials and luminaries looking for some City help for the poor, the commuters and the environmentally-minded? One guess. Right. The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Waldo Newsom . And where was Waldo? Campaigning for governor in Oakland and applying for an upgrade on his high profile tech credentials by visiting Twitter. Stuff like that. “It’s a shame we have to come to Oakland to talk to you,” yelled a man at his East Bay appearance , according to the Oakland Tribune. It’s also a shame, because some of that new paparazzi frenzy the Mayor manages to accumulate in lieu of perks for his constituents might have actually helped the SF contingent attract some useful attention. Though in town, he was most definitely not driving a bus to help out Muni with its employee shortage that leaves riders stranded. He was instead at Twitter HQ where Mr. Newsom told the Twitter chiefs that “using Twitter has made me a better mayor, and I’m only 3 and a half weeks into it,” according to the SF Examiner. “I’m barely scratching the surface.” Maybe in the city, but in Oakland and elsewhere in the state, he’s been boring right in. “I’ve been able to gain invaluable feedback about what people are thinking ,” he said about his Tweets . Some of those people are thinking he’s got ADD on the job. A Sunday chronicle story about his many absences should make him an Amber Alert candidate. But this DC thing was one trip out of town that he should have taken. The Chamber folks had apparently worked the whole visit around Mr. Newsom’s schedule so the Mayor could lend some of his glam and star power to their pitches for dough. But he stiffed them. Fortunately, just like the first round of City budget discussions, Board President Chiu stepped comfortably into the vacant role of city leader and got a quorum of his fellow Supes to commit to the trip. At least someone’s paying attention. It’s not like Washington was without appealing, high-powered celebs, though. I had lunch with Greta Van Susteren, who’s salty and funny in person. She still loves Sarah Palin and isn’t afraid to say so, even in an Obama-drunk city. Two ladies at a corner table wave at Greta as we leave. “We’re the Indiana contingent,” they shout at her, then giggle and elbow each other till their beehive hairdos quiver. And I’m not giving up on Gavin Newsom, by the way. He may have been AWOL in Washington and only an occasional tourist in San Francisco, but news broke late in the week that he’ll be the grand marshal at the 26th Annual Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade this May 17. Tweet. More on Stimulus Package

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Phil Bronstein: Everyone goes to Washington but Gavin "Waldo" Newsom - Here’s what he missed…

Before he left CNBC’s Jim Cramer in the dirt, Jon Stewart had pretty much knocked CNN’s “Crossfire” off the air and drawn blood from Chris Matthews and Bill Kristol, among others. No, he did not elect Obama, but he did play a role in helping him along, if only by demolishing the opposition. Mainly it was through his show’s withering and wicked mockery of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for several years, and much of the same directed at John McCain and Sarah Palin (Stewart suggested that she might be “tagged and released into the Alaskan wilderness”), along with its longtime criticism of the war in Iraq. Stewart had also given Stephen Colbert his own show, which provided its own subverting of the Republicans. Here are just a few of Stewart’s highlights for the final year of the election campaign, drawn from my new book, Why Obama Won. * January 2008 : Jon Stewart played clips of various “experts” on Fox declaring that the main culprit behind our sinking financial picture and the sell-offs on Wall Street was fear of a Democratic victory in November. Stewart’s comment: “How bad do the Democrats have to be to pre-fuck the economy?” He also played statements by numerous pundits hailing Fred Thompson’s chances, before he ran, closing with Bill Kristol calling him truly “formidable.” Stewart: “Oh, Bill Kristol, aren’t you ever right?” Joe Biden, by serendipity, was booked on The Daily Show just as everyone was mocking his quip about Obama being “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Biden told Jon he was simply trying to be “complimentary” toward Obama, but wasn’t “artful” in doing so. He said he had already called Obama, to which Stewart quipped, “I bet you did.” Biden then said he also called former candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to which Stewart added: “And Michael Jordan?” March 2008 : Appearing on The Daily Show on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama denied a hot rumor — just started by Jon Stewart — that he planned, if elected to the White House, to “enslave the white race.” Obama quipped, “That is not our plan, Jon, but I think your paranoia might make you suitable as a debate moderator.” August : A Pew Survey finds that viewers of The Daily Show and Colbert Report are more knowledgeable about current affairs than watchers of shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and Larry King — as well as average viewers of CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, NBC, ABC and daily newspapers. October 2008 : Michelle Obama, the possible future First Lady, made her first appearance on The Daily Show , and it was a winner. Jon introduced her, in scary tones, as a longtime “associate” of Barack Obama, but somehow refrained from accusing her husband of fathering two black babies. Later in the month, the candidate himself appeared. Obama cracked that no matter what he does, yes, there will be some Sean Hannity fans who won’t want to go out for a beer with him. One funny bit: After Obama questioned the “Bradley Effect” — that a lot of white supporters won’t be able to pull the lever for him — Stewart speculated that, on Election Day, Obama’s own white half might suddenly decide in the voting booth: “I can’t do this.” “It’s a problem,” Obama quipped. “I’ve been going through therapy to make sure I vote properly on the 4th.” Then there was Bill Kristol appearing on the show to defend the McCain ticket and claim he would pull it out on election day. The New York Times columnist also predicted that Obama would disappoint his lefty supporters in office, prompting Stewart to ask, Why then are you and McCain calling him a radical leftist? But the high point was Kristol asserting that Stewart was wrong about McCain because he was “reading The New York Times too much.” “But Bill,” Stewart, replied, “you WORK for The New York Times .” Not for much longer. * Greg Mitchell’s “Why Obama Won” contains a lot of HuffPost-related material . He is editor of Editor & Publisher. More on Jim Cramer

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Greg Mitchell: Jon Stewart Wrecked Cramer — But Did He Elect Obama?

very irate aide to Gov. Sarah Palin contacted ABC News today to explain why his boss’s 31 requests for earmarks in the fiscal year 2009 budget, totaling $197 million, represent a victory for fiscally conservative values. “I am disturbed by this item,” wrote Bill McAllister, director of communications for Gov. Palin, referencing a blog entry from last night in which we referred to an article in the liberal magazine Mother Jones noting that Palin — after what seemed like a campaign against earmark abuse — was back at the proverbial trough. More on Sarah Palin

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Palin Lashes Out At ABC News Over Report On Her Earmark Requests

No, Sarah Palin was not on the cover of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated . Not this year, anyway. But as part of SI’s web “bonus,” the venerable sports mag featured a profile of Todd Palin and his participation in Alaska’s annual Iron Dog –a snowmachine endurance race through the frozen western half of the state billed as the “toughest in the world.” Talk about sports hagiography. It would appear that SI stringer Bill Donahue has it nearly as bad for Todd as Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren . In his article, “The ‘First Dude’ in His Element,” Donahue proclaims: There is something masterful about Todd Palin. He is almost invariably calm, and he is handsome and rock-steady in an affable, unobtrusive way. He is the perfect political husband. Donahue was clearly taken by Palin and his partner, Scott Davis, referring to their “lean, gym-sculpted physiques.” Palin’s portrayed as a man of the outdoors, all wrench and Testoserone. One would never know that Palin played a central — and troubling — role in his wife’s Troopergate scandal and that he had his fingerprints all over a host of other government controversies. Indeed one of the findings last fall by the state’s Legislative Council was that Sarah Palin had “wrongfully permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office…to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper [Mike] Wooten fired.” Nor is there any mention of the fact that Palin was hit with a contempt citation by the Alaska Legislature only a few weeks before the start of the race and that as many as a 1,000 state emails copied to him are the focal point in a legal suit brought by government watchdog and former Palin ally, Andree McLeod, demanding their release to the public. That court decision is still pending. Nor was there any mention of the fact that Sarah Palin was recently forced to pay back to the state of Alaska the costs of trips made by her children to the Iron Dog in 2007 and 2008 –races in which their father, Todd, participated. In spite of those remarkable holes in his coverage, Donahue does allow that there’s “a political resonance to the whole [Iron Dog] scene.” On two race sleds are bumper stickers reading AMERICA. LOVE IT, DEFEND IT, OR GET THE HELL OUT. On another there’s a mock ALASKA TERRORIST HUNTING PERMIT, good through 2050, with the license number 9-11-01. Tina Fey is not here amid the wafting aroma of two-stroke motor oil. Neither is Michelle Obama . What’s that supposed to mean? Like they aren’t tough enough? That outside women aren’t welcome at the Iron Dog? Or that there isn’t a single African American participating in the race? It’s an odd juxtaposition. When Sarah Palin was named John McCain’s running mate, husband Todd was heralded as a “world champion” athlete. Donahue’s description of the Iron Dog reveals it for what it is, something closer akin to a long-distance motorcycle poker run, with a handful of requisite rest stops along the way, during which the contestants eat hardy meals, refuel, sleep in warm beds and, that’s right, even shower along the way. It’s quite a cast, but World Class athletes? Have a look. I’ll leave that for you to decide. But it looks more like a slow-pitch softball team to me–or something that belongs on the wall of the local post office. More on John McCain

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Geoffrey Dunn: Sports Illustrated’s Big Palin Suck-up

WASHINGTON — More groups than ever are contributing money to presidential and congressional candidates as their strongest growth in a generation reflects the fervor over last year’s White House election and a desire for access and clout on Capitol Hill. The Federal Election Commission says that on Jan. 1 there were 4,611 political action committees, which are formed by companies, unions or other groups to raise and spend money to help presidential and congressional candidates. That was 9 percent more than the 4,234 PACs a year earlier. Many of the ones created last year reflect the types of issues that President Barack Obama and Congress, now largely controlled by Democrats, hope to tackle this year. Among those forming new committees were the National Asphalt Pavement Association and several local branches of the International Union of Operating Engineers, whose members could benefit from paving new roads; the Patriot Coal Corp. of St. Louis, a large coal producer concerned about energy issues; and Varian Medical Systems of Palo Alto, Calif., a producer of medical devices for treating cancer, which could be affected by Obama’s health care plans. One of the 540 committees started in 2008 was set up the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations, which represents businesses that handle human resources tasks for other companies. Its members hope lawmakers will make it easier for them to collect payroll taxes for their clients. “It’s achieved what we wanted to do,” Milan Yager, the association’s executive director, said of the $21,000 his group reported in contributions, a relatively tiny sum. “We’ve been able to go to some events” _ fundraisers _ “and meet members of Congress and their staff and have face time.” Such access is precisely why many groups form the committees, says Paul Herrnson, a professor of government at the University of Maryland who has written about campaign finance. “The hope is that a member of Congress will consider them part of their policy team, in the sense that they’ll take a phone call or meet with a representative of the group,” Herrnson said. While it is natural for the number of such committees to increase in presidential election years, last year’s growth was the strongest in a presidential year since 1984, when there was a 14 percent boost. The two-year election cycle of 2007 and 2008 also saw record spending of nearly $1.2 billion by PACs, compared with $1.1 billion the previous two years, the election commission said. In the previous presidential campaign of 2003 and 2004, PACs spent $843 million. Of 2007-2008 spending, $234 million went directly to Democratic candidates and $178 million to Republicans. The rest went to indirect expenditures for candidates, contributions to parties or other PACs, and other expenses. Most of the new committees spent small fractions of the huge sums expended by established groups. The PAC run by the National Association of Realtors contributed $3.9 million to candidates in 2008, the year’s top amount, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The strongest growth among committees was in those formed by ideological or political groups, which grew last year by 23 percent to 1,594. Largely reflecting activity in last year’s campaigns, such new groups included OurGreatestFear.org, which raised money to oppose the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin, and PLR PAC, which helped finance conservative radio advertising aimed at the Hispanic community. ___ On the Net: Federal Election Commission: http://www.fec.gov

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Number Of Political Action Committees Hits Record

Will Ferrell delivers his penultimate farewell to President George W. Bush tonight on Broadway, and perhaps it is no coincidence that at approximately 9:11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, HBO will face its own decision during the first ten minutes of its live broadcast of You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush . Dick or no dick. And we don’t mean Cheney. If you read earlier press reviews of Ferrell’s smashing Broadway debut (directed by longtime SNL and Funny or Die collaborator Adam McKay), then you know that the duo decided that their version of W. would be so carefree and full of confidence upon exiting the White House that he could do anything in his own one-man show, including showing the audience a photo of his own penis. Of course, it’s not actually a photo of W.’s reproductive organ in action, or inaction, as it were. Because even on the big screen above Ferrell, as he describes the “shock and awe” from the audience and declares “that’s my stimulus package,” the sight itself is not all that impressive. Which, of course, is part of the point. A few audience members reportedly left the theater in early shows during the eight-week run. I was in attendance at Friday night’s show and no one raised a fuss, just lots of gasps, giggles and guffaws. Will anyone complain, though, if they see the reputed prick live on their TVs this Saturday night? And will HBO dare to go full-frontal during the live broadcast? They’ll have more than one opportunity during the 90-minute performance to be TV or be HBO. When stand-up comedian Ari Shaffir unexpectedly dropped his pants to reveal his ultimate punchline during a taping last-summer of HBO’s Down and Dirty with Jim Norton , it caught everyone in the theater by surprise, including the network. Shaffir even walked offstage with his pants still around his ankles to make sure everyone saw his manhood. When Shaffir’s episode aired, however, HBO had made some quick edits and chose judicious camera angles so the home audiences never really got a good glimpse of his full-frontal nudity. HBO sources were tight-lipped about whether they’d show the “Bush penis” photo during tonight’s telecast. But they did acknowledge that Jason Segal’s baring turn in last year’s hit movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall , may have softened their stance on the matter. So to speak. What do you think HBO should do? And if you’re reading this after Saturday night’s broadcast, do you think HBO made the right decision? Further reading: My review of Will Ferrell’s Broadway debut based on the performance from Friday, March 13, 2009. More on Will Ferrell

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Sean L. McCarthy: Will HBO Beam "George W. Bush’s Penis" Live From Broadway?

Many people who never knew there were blogs in Alaska fell in love during the McCain/Palin campaign with a very insightful one called The Mudflats (Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics).  On Friday, The Mudflats had this to say about the thrilla from Wasilla: I have used this term in the past, but never before has the phrase “Palin’s war on wildlife” seemed so chillingly accurate. It is well known that Sarah Palin has stacked the board of game with “harvesters” while shunning conservationists.  But, the detailed article in Alaska Dispatch by conservationist and author Bill Sherwonit is absolutely chilling.  I don’t say that lightly. Most Alaskans understand and respect subsistence hunting. I know people for whom moose was, and is, a staple food that carries their family through the winter.  And most Alaskans don’t frown too much at some degree of sport hunting, because it’s understood that we, as humans, are predators too, and we somehow fit into the amazing ecosystem that surrounds us. The balance of nature is generally respected by hunters and non-hunters alike, and these two groups tend to have an uneasy, but workable alliance.  At least, that’s how it’s been in the past. But now, in the spirit of free market sport hunting in the Mat-Su Valley, the Palin administration has figured out how hunters can compete even more effectively with natural wild predators. Kill them. Kill a LOT of them. Sherwonit at the Alaska Dispatch writes : The Board of Game and Department of Fish and Game aim - or at least hope - to kill up to 60 percent of the 2,500 to 3,000 black bears that, in their opinion, prey upon an unacceptably high number of moose calves in Unit 16B, a huge area that extends from the foothills of the Alaska Range to Cook Inlet and from the Yentna River southwest to Redoubt Creek (which flows off the rumbling Redoubt Volcano). Sixty percent! If that’s not a slaughter, what is? (The state admits it is unlikely to reach that goal, but why not shoot for the moon, eh?) Mudflats again: The Board also voted to extend the bear baiting season in Palin’s  Unit 16. And they’re also gearing up to start gassing wolf pups in their dens . Probably makes it a lot easier to dispose of them that way, than waiting for them to grow up so they can get shot from helicopters.   Once more, just for old time’s sake, think about that person being a mere melanoma recurrence away from the Presidency. + + + + + The rescue begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion does not necessarily indicate my agreement with a particular Diary. The intent is to provoke discussion. + + + + + Framing expert Jeffrey Feldman took note that hate-radio personality Michael Savage Says Green Workers To Be Obama’s Nazi Brown Shirts : “Media Matters has a clip up of Michael Savage comparing Obama to the Nazis – saying that green workers who will be trained to weatherize windows (e.g.) will be equivalent to a ‘private army’ and no different than Hitler’s brown shirts.  He also calls Van Jones a ’street thug’ – that’s the Van Jones who says that we should train people to weatherize windows.” gmoke wrote Community Gardens as Permaculture Nurseries : “Community gardens could become community nurseries in a permacultural redesign of the cities. My community garden on Watson Street garden could provide raspberry plants for the City Sprout gardens throughout the schools, if they don’t have raspberries already.  It could supply the city and its citizens with a wide variety of seeds, seedlings, and saplings.” + + + + + + The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story, Obama DOJ Defends Rummy In Torture Case .

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Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread

The former president is certainly a suitable subject for public debate. His supporters credit him with forcing down the Iron Curtain, so it is odd that some of them have helped create the Soviet-style chill embedded in the idea that we, as a nation, will not allow critical portrayals of one of our own recent leaders. — New York Times editorial, Nov. 5, 2003 . Anyone feeling a cold blast tonight? I am, and it’s coming courtesy of Sen. John McCain, the man who might have been sitting in the Oval Office tonight as the 44th president — if the economy had only waited two months longer to tank, and had Sarah Palin not made the acquaintance of one Katie Couric. In his race for the White House, McCain’s effort to prove to the GOP’s right wing that he wasn’t really a moderate-to-conservative-to-liberal-to-conservative-again flip flopper led him to grab the Ronald Reagan mantle so hard he practically ripped it right out the fireplace. He said he’d been a foot soldier in the “Reagan Revolution” and made a fantastical claim about celebrating Reagan’s political ascent from his Hanoi prison cell. But as I learned when I was researching my book ” Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future ,” McCain was ignoring the reality that as a center-right newcomer to Congress in the 1980s, he frequently criticized the Gipper and opposed him as often as one-third of the time. Whatever..it was politics, and it still didn’t get him to the White House. But the election is over now, and I find this pretty disturbing. McCain is saying that he may vote against an Obama appointee for the sole reason that the nominee made what strikes me as a fairly tepid criticism of the 40th president, in a comment that was really aimed at George W. Bush. Check this out : Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain today denounced as “highly offensive” remarks about Ronald Reagan made by President Barack Obama’s nominee for the number two spot at the Department of the Interior. At a nomination hearing for David Hayes for deputy secretary of Interior, the former Republican presidential candidate read aloud from an article that Hayes wrote in April 2006 which drew unfavorable comparisons between former President George W. Bush and Reagan. When the headline came over in a Google news alert today and I read the first paragraph, I prepared to cringe — what Hayes said about Reagan, who died on 2004 and whose widow Nancy is still alive — must have been truly awful, right? But here’s what Hayes wrote in 2006: “Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations–the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.” Where’s the blasphemy? Reagan and much more so Bush really were urban cowboys with a strange obsession for brush clearing that seemed to evaporate the same hour their presidencies expired, when the Reagans headed for a tony, supporter-built mansion in the L.A. hills while Bush abandoned Crawford for the mall district of Dallas. “Bravado” can be a politically loaded word, to be sure, but….”highly offensive”? Really, John McCain (who once told this joke about Chelsea Clinton , but I disgress…)? McCain actually said he may not vote for Hayes because of the Reagan remark. Last time I checked, this is America, not the Vatican. We are a nation with heroes by the boatloads, but not a single saint. No public figure, living or dead, should be immune from legitimate criticism — to seek to block a person from a political office for making such a relatively innocuous public writing is chilling indeed. That such an anti-speech move would come from the man who almost placed his right hand on the Bible to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution…” is appalling. America will never solve its problems of the present without honest appraisals of past leaders like Reagan, warts and all. As a quick footnote tonight, on the same subject of tearing down myths , kudos to a Republican state senator from California named Roy Ashburn, who voted for a budget that included tax increases to keep the Golden State from plunging into the abyss. Ashburn staved off a recall drive by noting he was just following the example of Reagan , who enacted the largest tax increase in U.S. state history as California governor in 1967. I guess facts really are stubborn things , after all. More on John McCain

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Will Bunch: McCain’s Move to Canonize "St. Ronnie"

An urgent reminder to our liberal, moderate, and not-conservative-enough readers: please keep in mind that Friday is ‘ We Surround Them ‘ day, the day when newsperson Glenn Beck, noted not-Hollywood not-celebrity Chuck Norris, and a collection of ultrapatriotic Randian nobodies are going to flex their muscles and show all of America the tremendous power of their particular brand of ultra-conservative movement. I believe this power will manifest itself primarily through outdoor barbecues, but nobody’s been very clear on that. And the barbecues have something to do with resisting socialism, where socialism is defined as… well, that’s not really been made too clear either, but I think it has something to do with the Bush tax cuts being allowed to expire, or making fun of Sarah Palin one too many times. For that matter I don’t know what the hell weekday barbecues have to do with fighting socialism in the first place, but I’m presuming it’s a roundabout way to say Bring Your Own Damn Beer? In any event, there may be as many as multiple dozens of people involved in these demonstrations of conservative power, so the rest of us might want to stock up on canned goods, or set the national threat level to “doughy” or something. Be warned: we can expect to be really, really surrounded. As a public service, we at Daily Kos will be keeping you informed of all breaking “We Surround Them” news throughout the day. We will have reports on how surrounded you should feel, what areas of the country are in the most danger of being surrounded, and whether or not sharing the same ketchup bottle makes you a communist. We’re also asking you, our users, to keep us updated. Let us know how surrounded you are, during this possibly gigantically super-important flexing of conservative power. So be sure to keep your browsers open to this site for all the breaking updates.

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URGENT: Ultraconservatives Rally; Possible Surrounding Imminent

My late father, a curmudgeonly Montana cowboy, used to say about snow: “It’s always muddied and dirty around your house; out there on the horizon, it’s pure and white.” So it would seem for Sarah Palin’s presidential ambitions. While personal and political controversies are muddying up her political agenda in Alaska, the distant horizon of national politics looms ever so pristine–and inviting. Just this week, the Alaska legislature essentially nixed Palin’s 2009 legislative priorities this week, but her national political action committee, SarahPAC, made its first national email pitch yesterday touting Palin’s accomplishments in the Last Frontier. And it came with a surprise announcement: “Governor Palin will soon be traveling the country and working to support leaders who share [Palin's] vision.” That might come as news to Alaskan voters, who expect Palin to be focusing on statewide issues as she prepares to run for re-election as governor next year. But as anyone who’s watched Palin’s uninspired performances in Alaska recently will tell you, the campaign trail was far more exciting for Palin than dealing with cantankerous legislators and the Last Frontier’s political gadflies. And after last year’s Cinderella moment, no one expected Palin to stay down on the farm for long. Someone, of course, is going to have to pay for the Governor’s traveling, since she can no longer do it on the state’s dime, and that someone would be you: [W]e can’t do it without you. Will you join Governor Palin’s team and make a contribution so SarahPAC - the official Sarah Palin PAC - can support the Governor’s efforts to reform government and help elect leaders who share our conservative values? Notice the reference to the “official Sarah Palin PAC”–that’s because at least two other unauthorized Palin PACs have already started collecting money, too. One, of course, is the notorious right-wing TeamSarah , and the other, 2012 Draft Sarah Committee , made a pitch for dough this week out of Connecticut. (Palins’ Facebook page contains only a direct link to SarahPAC, not the others.) But SarahPAC has also been caught up in some controversy that’s gone mostly unreported this week. It’s treasurer, Tim Crawford, of Arlington Virginia, and a longtime conservative operative, was unceremoniously forced out of his position last week as the Republican National Committee’s finance director, apparently because of his overt ties to SarahPAC. Moreover, Sarah PAC is being coordinated by the conservative Donatelli Group, aka Campaign Solutions , also of Arlington, which raised money for the McCain-Palin ticket in the 2008 race, and to which McCain has been connected since his 2000 presidential bid. A much more soiled legacy of Campaign Solutions was its role in the “swift boating” of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential contest. It also played a significant role in the behind-the-scenes campaign to secure confirmation of Sam Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Campaign Solutions is run by Becki Donatelli , wife of Frank Donatelli , a well-known conservative uber-lobbyist who currently serves as Deputy Chairman of the Republican National Committee and whose previous clients include Exxon-Mobile. He also served as adviser to several Republican bigwigs, including Reagan, Dole, and Bush Sr. Perhaps most significantly, Donatelli assisted James Baker in the 2000 Florida recount on behalf of the Bush-Cheney team. This is mainstream Republican muscle. We’re talking real dye-in-the-wool “Washington insiders.” And Palin is clearly jockeying for position in 2012. If anyone is wondering what issue Palin intends to run on, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s going to be “conservative values.” That was the phrase that polled biggest for Palin among Republicans (it certainly wasn’t her expertise on the domestic economy or foreign policy), but when it comes to the cultural wars, Palin is the Annie Oakley of the evangelical right. Think bright red meat. As Washington, D.C., partisans continue to fight and bicker over “politics as usual,” Governor Sarah Palin is working every day to reform government in Alaska and fight for the conservative values we all cherish. The SarahPAC email triumphed Palin’s recent photo-op jaunt to the Alaskan bush with Franklin Graham, on which she delivered supplies to Alaskan natives and championed the activities of faith-based organizations like Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse. As you can see, Governor Palin is working each day in Alaska. Her bold actions have helped thousands across the state and is the example of strong, conservative leadership needed throughout the country. That might come as a surprise to Alaska’s native populations, whose pleas for assistance went virtually unheeded by Palin until Graham’s faith-based crew showed up for the cameras. (A harsh critique of Palin’s policies toward Native Alaskans was appeared in the superb Alaskan web site The Mudflats ). But Palin is clearly looking beyond the confines of Alaskan politics towards something bigger in the future: Thank you for being a part of our team. Governor Palin believes our brightest days are ahead and she is honored to have you by her side. More on Sarah Palin

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Geoffrey Dunn: Pandering for Palin: SarahPAC Makes First Sales Pitch

On Tuesday I wrote : I’ve now heard from multiple sources that the AFL-CIO and other labor unions have promised to stand firmly with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter if he becomes a rare crossover Republican vote on EFCA when that issue hits the floor of the Senate. This is a life-and-death issue to unions, many of which are dwindling in membership, and they’re willing to give cover to one of the most endangered Republicans if it helps passage. Today, Greg Sargent got more confirmation of labor’s plans to shield Specter next year if he sticks with them in the EFCA battle. Senior officials with the powerful AFL-CIO have privately assured GOP Senator Arlen Specter that they’ll throw their full support behind him in the 2010 Senate race if he votes for the Employee Free Choice Act, a senior labor strategist working closely with the AFL on the issue tells me. This is significant, because it represents a big incentive for Specter to switch parties — and to support Employee Free Choice. Specter may be facing a serious GOP primary challenge from Club for Growth head Pat Toomey. If he loses that — or pulls out of the GOP first and becomes an Indy or a Dem — supporting Employee Free Choice could give him the organizational muscle from labor and Democratic support he needs to prevail in a general election and hold his seat. The labor strategist tells me that top AFL-CIO officials have told Specter they’ll back him to the hilt if he supports their top priority. “If Senator Specter supports working people — particularly voting with us on Employee Free Choice — the AFL-CIO will support him 100 percent of the way, whether in a primary or a general election,” the strategist says. As I wrote back on Tuesday, labor support would be far more valuable in a Democratic primary, with Gov. Ed Rendell providing further efforts to clear the field of any viable opponents for Specter. In a Republican primary, labor support could actually be a hindrance, giving possible opponent and Club for Growth President Pat Toomey further ammunition to use against Specter with a far more radicalized Pennsylvania Republican Party. Last year, 239,000 moderate Republicans switched to the Democratic Party, and those “moderates” would be unable to vote for Specter in his state’s closed primary system. Given Specter only beat Toomey by 17,000 votes in the 2004 primary, it’s clear Toomey is now in a much more dominant position. Maybe the same kind of deal is being worked with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski? She is now suggesting that she’s open to supporting EFCA. And while her state has few Democrats that could give her a serious challenge, there is rumbling of primary challenges, even perhaps from Sarah Palin herself. Alaska has the third highest union density in the country, with 23.5 percent of its people unionized (including pretty much all of their oil field workers). Only Hawaii (24.3 percent) and New York (24.9 percent) have higher union density. No other state is above 20 percent. It would behoove Murkowski to have that kind of muscle on her side. And if labor is offering that deal to Specter, there’s no reason Murkowski wouldn’t have it also.

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PA-Sen: AFL-CIO to back Specter if he backs EFCA

“We are in the renewable energy business.” - Interior Secretary Salazar, 3/11/09 It was more good news from the Obama Administration yesterday when Department of Interior Secretary Salazar announced the agency is forming an energy and climate change task force to advance clean energy in America. This means solar and wind on land, as well as offshore renewable energy resources in our oceans. The announcement includes steps to protect ecological treasures on land as part of the process for advancing renewable energy. It does this by involving the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the planning process. However, the same safeguard is not in place for sensitive ocean habitats. There is a simple fix: Secretary Salazar should reach out to involve NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the lead ocean agency, in deciding where and how to site offshore renewable energy. Involving NOAA from the start in deciding where to develop offshore renewables will help increase production of the clean energy we need in a manner that protects the marine environment. NOAA has the expertise and information needed to make sure we are implementing offshore power in the most environmentally sensitive way. NOAA can help do offshore renewables right by designating “red” and “green” zones for development. “Green zones” would identify areas where offshore renewable power could move forward because the conditions are right to produce large amounts of energy without hurting sensitive areas in the sea. And “red zones” would indicate areas off-limits to development because they are too ecologically important. By identifying these green and red zones, we protect special ocean places and also help facilitate the deployment of offshore renewable technologies, by providing industry with increased certainty. So - Secretary Salazar is on the right track, but he needs to involve NOAA, the ocean agency, to ensure that offshore power is developed in a way that protects ocean resources. By doing this, we can maximize the clean energy we get out of our oceans and minimize its impacts. This post originally appeared on NRDC’s blog .

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Sarah Chasis: Next step for Salazar’s offshore renewable energy plan: NOAA

Bristol and Levi Johnston have broken up ? You’re kidding! This recent award-winning image by photographer Melina Mara takes us back to Campaign ’08’s biggest snow job. I mean, it’s all there: the smirk; the fact sister Willow was mostly the one schlepping Trig; and the irony — since Bristol’s since had her own baby — of being left holding the bottle. (And then, contributing to the family values, remember First Dude’s tendency — out of the spotlight — to put all kinds of distance between himself and little Trig?) (With a few more winning shots in mind) I imagine Sarah — simply a natural when it comes to children — must be thrilled . Blast from the not-so-distant past: For more visual politics, follow BAGnewsNotes via Twitter . (image: Melina Mara: Winner of the White House News Photographers Association - 2nd Place/Political Portfolio ) More on Republican Convention

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Michael Shaw: Reading The Pictures: Palin’s Place (Revisited)

I don’t get to brag on my fellow Kentuckians nearly as often as I would like. However, last week Representatives John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler stood up against Mountaintop Removal in sponsoring the Clean Water Protection Act . That’s one reason to cheer. And they’re not the only ones from the Bluegrass State trying to end the abominable practice of destroying for all time the grand mountains, their delicate ecosystems, and unique culture. From the (blue) grassroots to the halls of Congress, this looks like the time to finally halt MTR. As one of many passionate supporters, film star Ashley Judd has signed on with the Sierra Club to help end — that’s end — mountaintop removal mining. You can watch a video of Ashley addressing the issue here . But hurry back, because Ashley Judd has volunteered to spend the next hour live on the site, answering your questions about how we can finally save what remains of the beautiful Appalachians. If you’re only familiar with Ms. Judd from her film roles, you may not know that she’s been a tough campaigner for many progressive causes. She’s worked hard for pro-choice candidates and causes, been a global ambassador for the prevention of AIDS, and famously took on Sarah Palin while working with Defenders of Wildlife. Today she’s going to tackle Daily Kos. So welcome her into the community.

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Ashley Judd: Q and A Live

Van Jones, founder and head of Green for All and a YES! magazine contributing editor, is joining the Obama administration as a special advisor on green jobs. At YES!, we were a bit startled when the rumors started to fly about this appointment. We had just gone to press with the Spring issue of YES! which included an interview I did with Van shortly after the election; in that interview , he actually laughed out loud when I asked him if he would join the Obama administration. “No, no!” he assured me. “Even though we have a great president, we also need a great popular movement to support that president. … We’ve got a lot of work to do out in these communities, and that’s what I plan to do.” So why did Van Jones change his mind and accept this appointment? It took three requests from the Obama administration to get him to agree, his colleague Alli Chagi-Starr told me this week. On Tuesday, the day the announcement became official, YES! managing editor Doug Pibel interviewed Van Jones about what had changed his mind. Excerpts from the interview follow. The full interview , plus his earlier interview in which he assured me he would not be going to Washington, can be found here . Doug: The last time YES! readers heard from you was in an interview right after the election. In that interview you said that you had no intention of going to work for the Obama administration. What changed your mind? Van: Not only did I say I had no intention of going, when they asked the question, I burst out laughing because at the time it seemed completely ludicrous that it would even be an option. I think what changed my mind was interacting with the administration during the transition process and during the whole process of getting the recovery package pulled together. I began to see that there was an important role at the table, inside the process, to do make sure all the great things the president wants to do can get done well. Doug: In your November interview, you pointed to the experience of Nelson Mandela and the ANC as a cautionary tale for movement people thinking about going into government. Why is your situation different? Van: I think that certainly is a big cautionary tale. When Nelson Mandela came out and the ANC took over, people left the townships and went into parliament and the movement politics and the township politics really suffered. I think that it had a negative impact. You know, the overwhelming rush from the townships into parliament, I think had a negative impact on the ability of the ANC to govern well. The reality is that the grassroots movement in this country is not shrinking, it’s expanding. People got a taste of engagement. People are actually looking for new ways to get involved–the Obama organization is still active, Green for All is growing, and other organizations are growing. So my initial concerns–again, this is before Obama was even sworn in–that we would stop, that somehow the grassroots movement would stop–those concerns are not strong for me. 70,000 people were marching in New York City last week. 12,000 students went to the Power Shift conference, there was a major civil disobedience action–or planned civil disobedience action–that resulted in a huge change. You know, there’s all kinds of great stuff that’s happening across the country, so I’m not as concerned about the grassroots movements sputtering out. And that also creates more options. Doug: While you’re in DC, what can folks who have been following Green for All and working with you or on your initiatives, what can folks do to keep the movement going? Van: Continue doing the things we have planned. We’re working to implement the green recovery in a just way. We need to get those recovery dollars out fast and fair. Anybody who’s interested can got to the website greenforall.org and you’ll see lots of opportunities to get involved and also lots of information about how to get those recovery dollars working in your own community. And that’s going to be an important part of what Green for All does going forward. Doug: You have two young sons. How does your family feel about moving across the country? Van: They’re on board. They’re excited. It’s always a big effort, but they’re excited, and I’m excited too. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. YES! Magazine has played such a huge role in my life. In fact the essay that I wrote right after the 2004 election about how we were going to rise again actually was one of my first commentaries on national politics. I’d always focused on local stuff. And that actually started, in some ways, this whole journey toward my having a more national role. So I wanted to make sure–I’m not giving a lot of interviews–but I wanted to make sure that, since you guys were running an interview that I’d just given you, and the facts had changed, I just wanted to make sure that you had the information that you needed to be current and fair to your readers and to your listeners, and I appreciate the opportunity. Doug Pibel is YES! managing editor. You can find video, audio, and more from Van Jones here . More on Climate Change

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Sarah van Gelder: Why Van Jones is Going to Washington

Gov. Sarah Palin’s biggest initiatives for this legislative session appear dead on arrival, at least for this year. Top lawmakers say they aren’t likely to pass the governor’s bills dealing with an in-state gas pipeline and consolidating the six Railbelt utilities to pursue megaprojects like the Susitna River dam. More on Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin’s Biggest Legislative Initiatives Appear Dead On Arrival: Alaska Daily News

Answer: they are all on Falafel Bill O’Reilly and Bernie ” Baseball Bat ” Goldberg’s top three media enemies list. Links: On DKTV Transcript of the duo bashing validating Daily Kos: O’REILLY: Alright number three, go ahead. GOLDBERG: Number three is the Daily Kos. And they are very significant in this current media world in which we live. They have one of, if not the biggest left wing political web sites. They are rabidly anti-conservative. Yet, its founder Markous Moulitsas has so much clout that not only does he get on the most mainstream of shows, Meet the Press, to talk politics but the Democrats who are running for President of the United States went there and made speeches to the Daily Kos convention. That’s how afraid they are of offending the Daily Kos. O’REILLY: And it’s about as hateful as you can possibly…You can’t get a more hateful web site than them. GOLDBERG: They started this rumor that Sarah Palin’s child with Down Syndrome may not have been her child, but the daughter’s. It’s just terrible, terrible stuff. Congratulations are in order for everybody who made this glorious distinction possible!

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What do MSNBC, New York Times, and Daily Kos have in common?

Michelle Obama made headlines last week by using those famously toned arms of hers to sling some mushroom risotto, steamed broccoli and fruit salad at Miriam’s Kitchen, a D.C.non-profit that serves homemade meals to 4,000 homeless people a year made with fresh local and organic foods instead of processed or canned foods, as the New York Times reported . Obama told the press who gathered to watch the First Lady ladle: I want to urge people who are listening that if you have an opportunity, to come by — not just this soup kitchen but any soup kitchen in your community. And helping is an easy thing to do. Collect some fruits and vegetables. Bring by some good healthy food. You know, we want to make sure that our guests here and across this country are eating nutritious items. Today we had fresh risotto with mushrooms. We had broccoli. We had fresh baked muffins with carrots in it. And my understanding is that this facility is able to provide that kind of meal for about $1.50. And that’s an incredible thing to remember: that we can provide this kind of healthy food for communities across this country, and we can do it by each of us lending a hand. (hat tip: Obama Foodorama) Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Everybody knows that our reliance on cheap processed foods is causing all kinds of diseases that disproportionately affect poor folks who can’t afford pricey produce. Hey, even George Will–who still can’t wrap his head around the fact that greenhouse gases are cooking our collective goose–has suddenly gotten the Gospel According to Pollan and connected the dots between our dumbass agricultural policies and fat-assed populace . Other conservative commentators were, however, deeply disturbed by the whole event. An AP photo which showed a man using his cell phone camera to document the historic occasion of his being served by Michelle Obama sparked a tizzy in the wingnutosphere, which took offense at the idea that an individual affluent enough to afford a cell phone should be receiving free meals at a soup kitchen. Wonkette dished up a taste of these brain-dead tirades , including one from Kathy Shaidle, a blogger whose curdled rantings suggest she’s learned at the fetid feet of Limbaugh. She begins by expressing that holier-than-thou-but-not-so-Christian contempt for the poor that is the hallmark of a certain kind of conservative: Today’s “poor” are the rich Jesus warned you about: fat, slovenly, wasteful of their money and other people’s. I prefer to call them “the broke.” A lot of (really naive) people are wondering (or pretending to wonder, when they’re in public) how this “homeless” guy could “afford” a cellphone: It would be better phrased: why is a guy with a cellphone homeless? Because then the question answers itself. He spends all his (our) money on cellphones and, most likely, tattoos and drugs and booze and other crap, and has no money left for a home and food. And why should he bother? We pay for his shelter and food anyhow. She goes on to validate my theory that wingnuts see wholesome foods as part of a vast left wing conspiracy: What’s really funny in that news story by the way is what they’re serving at the soup kitchen: risotto with brocolli. Obviously some rich white liberal did the cooking that day, feeling all proud of herself, and what thanks did she get? Some lowclass loser going, “You expect me to eat this weird crap?!” To which Salon’s Alex Koppelman responded: For the record, it was actually mushroom risotto. And her nasty “weird crap” remark? It’s rice cooked in chicken stock with some vegetables, something most cultures are quite familiar with, no matter what you choose to call it. Come on. This, in turn, elicited the following response from Shaidle: Salon’s Alex Koppelman is obviously a delusional liberal pantywaist who can’t stand to have his romantic notions about “poverty” challenged (by someone who knows what they’re talking about firsthand, and is also a better writer than he is.) I’d rather be right than “nice” and “polite” — and so would any intelligent adult who values the truth. I’m betting Alex Koppelman is a grown man who still rides a bicycle. By choice. On the sidewalk. This all seems like a trivial bloggy brouhaha, but it’s indicative of a knee-jerk conservative mentality that feels compelled to malign liberals as broccoli-eating, bicycle-riding degenerates. It may not be a deliberate, coordinated campaign; then again, maybe it is. Why is it that when progressives talk about the benefits our country could reap from say, investing in mass transit, or overhauling our school lunch program so that it might actually nourish our kids instead of poison them, too many folks on the right start to spew the kind of rancid rhetoric I’ve quoted here? When did such wholesome and innocent things like riding a bike or liking vegetables turn into symbols of liberal decadence? Then again, take a look at the de facto head of the Republican Party, a man who evidently hasn’t been on a bike or eaten a bite of fresh produce in decades. The Obamas, with their in-your-face fit physiques and ostentatiously heathy eating habits, must drive him crazy. Deepak Chopra rightly declares Limbaugh a symbol of anti-morality and offers an astute analysis of Limbaugh’s appeal to his followers before concluding: By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. Maybe Limbaugh will suffer a heart attack and have an epiphany that healthy foods and exercise are not, in fact, subversive liberal causes to be derided. Or maybe he’ll just suffer a heart attack and die, like poor Tim Russert. That may be the only way we’ll ever get Limbaugh to go organic, is when he dies and rots–from radio host to compost. More on Michelle Obama

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Kerry Trueman: Why Ridicule Risotto?

Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love . Before I get to this week’s installment (”Rough Edges”), let me tell you that last night, I dreamed that my friend Kerri and I were being chased through Brooklyn by the angry ghost of Ben Henrickson. And I don’t mean Douglas Smith, the actor who plays Ben. I mean the character himself was after us, and it was terrifying. Does this mean Ben is going to die? If he does, then look for me behind a crystal ball at a boardwalk flea market near you, because I clearly have the Gift. Anyway, my unsettling dream echoes what went down in this episode. Just like ” Come, Ye Saints ,” which was more about redemption than power, “Rough Edges” has forced me to change the rules of Wife Watch! once again. This week, the show centered less on the fight for control than on families blowing apart. Everywhere you looked, there was fallout, so this week’s First Wife is the woman who shoveled the most warheads on the fire. Weirdly, that means the winner isn’t Lois . My girl usually stirs up all kinds of trouble, but this week, she was a healer. While she and Wanda were preparing Kathy’s body, she matter-of-factly assured Wanda that she wasn’t a monster for having wished Kathy ill while she was alive. And then at the funeral, when everything was going to hell, what with Joey accusing Roman of murder and all, it was Lois who stood up, made a beautiful speech that honored both Kathy and her own dead daughter, and reminded us all what that coffin up there was about. Meanwhile, somewhere between bridge building and bridge burning, we’ve got Barb . In the comments section of last week’s Wife Watch!, llisa made the excellent point that this whole thing about the letter Ted stole has been an engine for Barb to fully embrace the polygamous life she once doubted. I like how she transitioned gradually, rather than having a tidy “revelation scene” where everything was suddenly different. That’s much more honest. And because she never hosted an “I Love Polygamy” parade, it’s still a surprising to see Barb fighting her sister so fiercely.Surprising, but great. While she was dissing her birth family, Barb also maintained the rift with Nicky by staying so angry at her. However, she gave Sarah some sound advice about how doing nice things for other people is a great way to get over your own sadness. Generous moments like that remind you why Teeny nominated her for Mother of the Year. In other news, it’s interesting that while Nicky gets the showy bits of dysfunction, Margene is quietly backing out of the house as well. She’s launching a jewelry business with a woman we’ve never met. She’s pawning off childcare as much as possible. And let’s not forget that she forced the issue with Nicky and the D.A.. She’s the one who told him that she was the real Margene, thereby facilitating the episode’s major blowout. She’s quiet about it, but Margene is a volatile force in this world. And her lack of true Mormon faith makes her especially dangerous. What if she finds the same acceptance the Henricksons give her with other people? How long can any of us force ourselves to parrot beliefs that we’re not sure we possess? Her character represents that troubling question. Of course, that question can be overshadowed by the ever-glorious Nicky , who has become one of my favorite television characters of all time. She’s easily top five, along with Lisa Simpson, Lenny Briscoe, Angela Chase, and Snarf. But that’s another post. What I love about Nicky is that she exists in contradictory worlds. She yearns for romantic love, but she fears it. She wants to be sisters with Wanda, Margene, and Barb, but she’s also compelled to berate them. She hates Juniper Creek, but she doesn’t want to be ejected from it. That means Nicky embodies one of the series’ driving forces. Just like her, it wrestles with competing desires to honor and escape the past, and just like with her, the consequences are often messy. Speaking of messy… hoo, lordy. Nicky’s around for all sorts of trauma this week. With her secrets about spying and philandering both revealed, her father and her marital family condemn her, leaving her to trudge pitifully to Albee’s door. And then there’s the appearance of J.J., the first husband we only learned existed a few episodes ago. Turns out he’s Wanda’s brother, and he brings the memory of another broken family from Nicky’s past. (Also, he’s played by Zeljko Ivanek, who already has appeared this season on Heroes , Damages , True Blood , and The Mentalist . Look for him as “Andy Rooney” on 60 Minutes !) But you know, for all the wreckage in her wake, I can’t quite name Nicky this week’s First Wife. The more I think about it, the more I think about Margene’s role in pushing things to a head. Nicky may be a rock, but this week, Margie was the sling shot. And so Margene retains her crown for the second week in a row. That’s a Wife Watch! first. Do you think she can ride it out for the rest of the season? For more, please join me at The Critical Condition.

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Mark Blankenship: Big Love Wife Watch!: Round Eight (Spoilers!)

The next major election on the calendar with any national implications is the U.S. House race in New York’s 20th Congressional District, with a special election to be held on March 31st. (That’s just around the corner!) Though the race has yet to garner heavy netroots attention, it has been the beneficiary of some excellent coverage from The Albany Project and Daily Kos diarist devtob (who also posts regularly at TAP). The race pits New York Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco (a 26-year Republican veteran of Albany gridlock) against Democrat Scott Murphy, a young venture capitalist and former political operative in his home state of Missouri. Tedisco started the race as a huge favorite based on near-universal name recognition, but has started losing ground to Murphy as voters get to know the Democrat better, and as Tedisco repeatedly shows himself to be nothing more than a Republican machine politician with virtually no political backbone. Tedisco has consistently refused to take a stand on President Obama’s stimulus package. His would-be constituents like the stimulus, and Scott Murphy supports it enthusiastically. Sadly, the bosses of his party in Washington, DC are on record as being diametrically opposed to the StimPak, and these are people who absolutely do not tolerate any degree of independence from conventional Republican groupthink. So it’s an awful bind for Tedisco. Unfortunately, being a leader involves having to make tough decisions, and Tedisco has proven himself to be no kind of leader at all .    Tedisco’s primary challenger, Democrat Scott Murphy has said how he would’ve voted (in favor); why not Tedisco? The answer probably lies in a political calculation: It would be hard for voters to believe that Tedisco would have voted for the bill, because no other Republican in the House did. But acknowledging that he would’ve voted against it would undoubtedly alienate some voters who embraced the stimulus wholeheartedly; or others, like us, who felt that the potential benefit of spending so much money — albeit, some imprudently — outweighed the risks of spending none. But regardless of Tedisco’s thinking on the stimulus — and if he didn’t have any, he hardly deserves to go to Congress — voters are entitled to hear about it. It’s one thing to be a minority Assembly member, able to say anything knowing it has little chance of being taken seriously by an omnipotent majority; and quite another to be a minority congressman who, in Washington, is expected to be a responsible part of the debate. Voters need to know, in advance, what kind of minority congressman Tedisco wants to be. His refusal to take a position no matter how many times he is prodded, no matter by whom. The local papers have skewered him for it, Murphy has hammered him, and now the DCCC is out with a new ad: Here’s the thing, though: some people, at least, seem to think they know where Jimmy Disco stands on the stimulus package, and it ain’t with us. This is why the “Our Country Deserves Better PAC” (hell of a name, kids), a Sarah Palin-friendly right-wing outfit horizontally opposed to the stimulus, has jumped in here for Jimmy. Even though he may, for all anyone knows, have voted for the stimulus. Phillip Anderson tries to sort the bizarritude: OK, let’s try to unpack this. The Palinites don’t like the stimulus. Check. Scott Murphy has said that he supports the stimulus efforts. Check. Palinites spend big bucks on radio* attacking Murphy for this. Check. This is making at least some sense so far. But, why, given that Tedisco has steadfastly refused to take a stand one way or the other on the stimulus package, would they endorse Tedisco if their big issue is, ya know, the “pork laden” stimulus package? Do they know something we do not? Has Tedisco made his position known to the Palinites but kept it hidden from folks who actually live and work in the district? Have they read his mind on the issue? It just seems rather odd to attack one candidate for his position on a particular piece of legislation and then endorse the opponent who refuses to take any position whatsoever. You know, strange as it seems, disgraced presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani also seems to know something the voters don’t know about Tedisco’s stimulus plans. Rudy hates it, and Rudy likes Disco Jim’s “fiscal discipline”:    Giuliani ripped into leaders in Washington about the recently passed stimulus plan and also taking a few shots at house speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also says Washington should be spending less and cutting more taxes. It’s something he thinks Tedisco can accomplish in D.C. “We need someone like Jim in Washington who understands the need for fiscal discipline and who really understands the need for the things that are really going to stimulate business,” said Giuliani. So how is the brave refusal to ever talk about the stimulus working out for Tedisco? Well, he started this race with a 21-point lead, and at 50% in the polls. According to Kossack outside , Democratic internal polls show his lead is now at seven points, with Tedisco down to 42%. That’s a bad trend, and it goes to show you that voters notice when their would-be leaders don’t show any leadership initiative. Murphy, though fiscally conservative in his own right, is on the record as supporting the stimulus, and he has been pulling in some slick endorsements because of it. He got the AFL-CIO endorsement earlier this week, and now he has pulled in AFSCME. From a press release:   Danny Donohue, President of CSEA/AFSCME Local 1000 said, “CSEA is proud to join with our AFSCME brothers and sisters and stand strong with Scott Murphy.  We need an individual in Washington who will roll up his sleeves and get down to the serious work of rebuilding our economy without partisan bickering.” Joining him was Anthony Gingello, President of AFSCME District Council 66, who added, “We are facing tough times and difficult choices.  Scott Murphy brings a new perspective through his experience and talent in creating jobs.  He understands unions and is committed to the working people of the 20th District.  We believe wholeheartedly he is the right candidate for the job.” In accepting the endorsement, Scott Murphy stated, “”Coming from a union family, I am especially proud to receive the endorsement of AFSCME, because I believe all working families should have the opportunity to live the American Dream,” Scott Murphy said. “I look forward to partnering with Senator Gillibrand and President Obama in Washington on behalf of working families all across the 20th District, where I will fight to create jobs, provide middle class tax relief, and offer new ways to meet our most pressing challenges, so we can turn our economy around.” It’s not surprising that organized labor supports Murphy, the son of two union members and a labor-friendly candidate himself. It is, however, useful in countering one of Tedisco’s best talking points: that he’s a worker-friendly, middle-class friendly candidate from a working background (Tedisco’s father worked in an iron foundry). Though Murphy’s from a middle-class background himself, there have already been attempts to portray the Harvard-educated Democrat as a Wall Street elitist. Murphy has made up a lot of ground in this race, in a very short time. It’s still going to be an awfully tough race for a Democrat to win, as the district leans Republican and was designed to protect a Republican incumbent. Still, he’s got a real shot at victory, and he has run the more successful campaign so far. On the web: Scott Murphy for Congress

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NY-20: The Science of Republican Stonewalling

The next major election on the calendar with any national implications is the U.S. House race in New York’s 20th Congressional District, with a special election to be held on March 31st. (That’s just around the corner!) Though the race has yet to garner heavy netroots attention, it has been the beneficiary of some excellent coverage from The Albany Project and Daily Kos diarist devtob (who also posts regularly at TAP). The race pits New York Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco (a 26-year Republican veteran of Albany gridlock) against Democrat Scott Murphy, a young venture capitalist and former political operative in his home state of Missouri. Tedisco started the race as a huge favorite based on near-universal name recognition, but has started losing ground to Murphy as voters get to know the Democrat better, and as Tedisco repeatedly shows himself to be nothing more than a Republican machine politician with virtually no political backbone. Tedisco has consistently refused to take a stand on President Obama’s stimulus package. His would-be constituents like the stimulus, and Scott Murphy supports it enthusiastically. Sadly, the bosses of his party in Washington, DC are on record as being diametrically opposed to the StimPak, and these are people who absolutely do not tolerate any degree of independence from conventional Republican groupthink. So it’s an awful bind for Tedisco. Unfortunately, being a leader involves having to make tough decisions, and Tedisco has proven himself to be no kind of leader at all .    Tedisco’s primary challenger, Democrat Scott Murphy has said how he would’ve voted (in favor); why not Tedisco? The answer probably lies in a political calculation: It would be hard for voters to believe that Tedisco would have voted for the bill, because no other Republican in the House did. But acknowledging that he would’ve voted against it would undoubtedly alienate some voters who embraced the stimulus wholeheartedly; or others, like us, who felt that the potential benefit of spending so much money — albeit, some imprudently — outweighed the risks of spending none. But regardless of Tedisco’s thinking on the stimulus — and if he didn’t have any, he hardly deserves to go to Congress — voters are entitled to hear about it. It’s one thing to be a minority Assembly member, able to say anything knowing it has little chance of being taken seriously by an omnipotent majority; and quite another to be a minority congressman who, in Washington, is expected to be a responsible part of the debate. Voters need to know, in advance, what kind of minority congressman Tedisco wants to be. His refusal to take a position no matter how many times he is prodded, no matter by whom. The local papers have skewered him for it, Murphy has hammered him, and now the DCCC is out with a new ad: Here’s the thing, though: some people, at least, seem to think they know where Jimmy Disco stands on the stimulus package, and it ain’t with us. This is why the “Our Country Deserves Better PAC” (hell of a name, kids), a Sarah Palin-friendly right-wing outfit horizontally opposed to the stimulus, has jumped in here for Jimmy. Even though he may, for all anyone knows, have voted for the stimulus. Phillip Anderson tries to sort the bizarritude: OK, let’s try to unpack this. The Palinites don’t like the stimulus. Check. Scott Murphy has said that he supports the stimulus efforts. Check. Palinites spend big bucks on radio* attacking Murphy for this. Check. This is making at least some sense so far. But, why, given that Tedisco has steadfastly refused to take a stand one way or the other on the stimulus package, would they endorse Tedisco if their big issue is, ya know, the “pork laden” stimulus package? Do they know something we do not? Has Tedisco made his position known to the Palinites but kept it hidden from folks who actually live and work in the district? Have they read his mind on the issue? It just seems rather odd to attack one candidate for his position on a particular piece of legislation and then endorse the opponent who refuses to take any position whatsoever. You know, strange as it seems, disgraced presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani also seems to know something the voters don’t know about Tedisco’s stimulus plans. Rudy hates it, and Rudy likes Disco Jim’s “fiscal discipline”:    Giuliani ripped into leaders in Washington about the recently passed stimulus plan and also taking a few shots at house speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also says Washington should be spending less and cutting more taxes. It’s something he thinks Tedisco can accomplish in D.C. “We need someone like Jim in Washington who understands the need for fiscal discipline and who really understands the need for the things that are really going to stimulate business,” said Giuliani. So how is the brave refusal to ever talk about the stimulus working out for Tedisco? Well, he started this race with a 21-point lead, and at 50% in the polls. According to Kossack outside , Democratic internal polls show his lead is now at seven points, with Tedisco down to 42%. That’s a bad trend, and it goes to show you that voters notice when their would-be leaders don’t show any leadership initiative. Murphy, though fiscally conservative in his own right, is on the record as supporting the stimulus, and he has been pulling in some slick endorsements because of it. He got the AFL-CIO endorsement earlier this week, and now he has pulled in AFSCME. From a press release:   Danny Donohue, President of CSEA/AFSCME Local 1000 said, “CSEA is proud to join with our AFSCME brothers and sisters and stand strong with Scott Murphy.  We need an individual in Washington who will roll up his sleeves and get down to the serious work of rebuilding our economy without partisan bickering.” Joining him was Anthony Gingello, President of AFSCME District Council 66, who added, “We are facing tough times and difficult choices.  Scott Murphy brings a new perspective through his experience and talent in creating jobs.  He understands unions and is committed to the working people of the 20th District.  We believe wholeheartedly he is the right candidate for the job.” In accepting the endorsement, Scott Murphy stated, “”Coming from a union family, I am especially proud to receive the endorsement of AFSCME, because I believe all working families should have the opportunity to live the American Dream,” Scott Murphy said. “I look forward to partnering with Senator Gillibrand and President Obama in Washington on behalf of working families all across the 20th District, where I will fight to create jobs, provide middle class tax relief, and offer new ways to meet our most pressing challenges, so we can turn our economy around.” It’s not surprising that organized labor supports Murphy, the son of two union members and a labor-friendly candidate himself. It is, however, useful in countering one of Tedisco’s best talking points: that he’s a worker-friendly, middle-class friendly candidate from a working background (Tedisco’s father worked in an iron foundry). Though Murphy’s from a middle-class background himself, there have already been attempts to portray the Harvard-educated Democrat as a Wall Street elitist. Murphy has made up a lot of ground in this race, in a very short time. It’s still going to be an awfully tough race for a Democrat to win, as the district leans Republican and was designed to protect a Republican incumbent. Still, he’s got a real shot at victory, and he has run the more successful campaign so far. On the web: Scott Murphy for Congress

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NY-20: The Science of Republican Stonewalling

When Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican Party, lost his bearings and called Rush Limbaugh’s style ugly and incendiary, everyone knew it was the truth. But it was a perfect example of an inconvenient truth. The right wing has long used ugly, incendiary speech the way baseball players use steroids: to artificially pump themselves up. Limbaugh has taken to saying that he wants Obama’s policies to fail because they spell the end of an America based on personal freedom. This isn’t just a grotesque exaggeration; it disguises the very thing the right wing has been doing when it curtailed civil liberties in the name of national security. Yet I know people who listen to Limbaugh every morning. They don’t believe a word he says. They deplore his rhetorical sins. They detect the whiff of hypocrisy. Basically, they tune in out of sheer incredulity. Limbaugh has been plowing the field of moral outrage for decades, but unlike Billy Sunday and the other hot-headed radio preachers who cashed in on social resentment in the Great Depression, Limbaugh threw out God. With no religious tradition to anchor himself, he can swing wider. Anything Limbaugh judges against is condemned, not by scripture, but simply by him being pissed off. Whatever Limbaugh hates — however petty, personal, and arbitrary his animus — is ipso facto wrong. This represents a huge social shift in American values. Before the Eighties there were a handful of right-wing outlets on the air; now there are well over a thousand. They exist purely as steam vents. The common citizen gets to be pissed off by the millions, unrelentingly, without cease or solution, and in return, he is praised. To be outraged is to be morally superior. The Limbaugh effect fueled the anti-morality of the Bush years. Under ordinary morality, the wretched plight of illegal immigrants, for example, must be considered along with the fact that they are breaking the law. Being poor, illiterate, and desperate, their human condition makes them more sympathetic than ruthless lawbreakers would be. But under anti-morality, if you hate immigrants because they are foreigners who don’t look American enough, the argument is over. Your anger strips away tolerance, sympathy, and regard for “the other.” Hence the almost imperial bearing of Limbaugh, the bland certainty that because he never stops being angry, he never stops being right. The same goes for a wide range of “others” who mightily tick off Limbaugh’s listeners: Muslims, feminists, people of color, gays, and environmentalists. There’s no need to understand them or try and accommodate their views. Just put them through the wringer of Limbaugh’s perpetual judgment and, poof, there’s no problem anymore. Of course, the whole scheme is delusional. Problems aren’t solved by remaining perpetually ticked off. Accords can’t be reached when you demonize the other side. By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. And yet, the next time you tune into Limbaugh’s censorious circus of insensitive scurrility, give him a kind thought. As far back as Mark Twain, the American character has been ornery. We secretly love rascals, bank robbers, tricksters, swindlers, hell raisers, and outlaws. And when we feel so inclined, we laugh at them. Rush Limbaugh may represent a toxic form of entertainment — and the bile he spews bears no resemblance to true morality — but the fact that America makes room for him is something to be proud of. I don’t pray that he goes away. I pray that we can keep laughing, even if our grin is crooked, at the pranks of the eternal shadow who is our companion for life, whether we want him or not. More on Religion

Originally posted here:
Deepak Chopra: Rush Limbaugh: Icon of Anti-Morality

When Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican Party, lost his bearings and called Rush Limbaugh’s style ugly and incendiary, everyone knew it was the truth. But it was a perfect example of an inconvenient truth. The right wing has long used ugly, incendiary speech the way baseball players use steroids: to artificially pump themselves up. Limbaugh has taken to saying that he wants Obama’s policies to fail because they spell the end of an America based on personal freedom. This isn’t just a grotesque exaggeration; it disguises the very thing the right wing has been doing when it curtailed civil liberties in the name of national security. Yet I know people who listen to Limbaugh every morning. They don’t believe a word he says. They deplore his rhetorical sins. They detect the whiff of hypocrisy. Basically, they tune in out of sheer incredulity. Limbaugh has been plowing the field of moral outrage for decades, but unlike Billy Sunday and the other hot-headed radio preachers who cashed in on social resentment in the Great Depression, Limbaugh threw out God. With no religious tradition to anchor himself, he can swing wider. Anything Limbaugh judges against is condemned, not by scripture, but simply by him being pissed off. Whatever Limbaugh hates — however petty, personal, and arbitrary his animus — is ipso facto wrong. This represents a huge social shift in American values. Before the Eighties there were a handful of right-wing outlets on the air; now there are well over a thousand. They exist purely as steam vents. The common citizen gets to be pissed off by the millions, unrelentingly, without cease or solution, and in return, he is praised. To be outraged is to be morally superior. The Limbaugh effect fueled the anti-morality of the Bush years. Under ordinary morality, the wretched plight of illegal immigrants, for example, must be considered along with the fact that they are breaking the law. Being poor, illiterate, and desperate, their human condition makes them more sympathetic than ruthless lawbreakers would be. But under anti-morality, if you hate immigrants because they are foreigners who don’t look American enough, the argument is over. Your anger strips away tolerance, sympathy, and regard for “the other.” Hence the almost imperial bearing of Limbaugh, the bland certainty that because he never stops being angry, he never stops being right. The same goes for a wide range of “others” who mightily tick off Limbaugh’s listeners: Muslims, feminists, people of color, gays, and environmentalists. There’s no need to understand them or try and accommodate their views. Just put them through the wringer of Limbaugh’s perpetual judgment and, poof, there’s no problem anymore. Of course, the whole scheme is delusional. Problems aren’t solved by remaining perpetually ticked off. Accords can’t be reached when you demonize the other side. By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. And yet, the next time you tune into Limbaugh’s censorious circus of insensitive scurrility, give him a kind thought. As far back as Mark Twain, the American character has been ornery. We secretly love rascals, bank robbers, tricksters, swindlers, hell raisers, and outlaws. And when we feel so inclined, we laugh at them. Rush Limbaugh may represent a toxic form of entertainment — and the bile he spews bears no resemblance to true morality — but the fact that America makes room for him is something to be proud of. I don’t pray that he goes away. I pray that we can keep laughing, even if our grin is crooked, at the pranks of the eternal shadow who is our companion for life, whether we want him or not. More on Religion

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Deepak Chopra: Rush Limbaugh: Icon of Anti-Morality

Why Obama Won: The Making of a President 2008 By Greg Mitchell Sinclair Books, New York $16.99, 222 pages Usually, I’m not a big fan of compilations of previously published work, and contemporary political events are even more subject to an accelerated expiration date than other forms of columns re-purposed for a book. But in Greg Mitchell’s case, with Why Obama Won: The Making of a President 2008 , the format works; in fact, simply republishing the best of his observations from the campaign season–and he’s proven himself over the years to be a particularly astute campaign watcher–is the ideal way to re-ride the unpredictable roller coaster that was Campaign Season 2008. In Why Obama Won we’re treated to precisely one year–November 2007 to November 2008–relived as if in real time, with columns and blog posts unfolding in the order of events. With the exception of an explanatory introduction, the amazing year is relived from the vantage point of the untouched and unremarked-upon original columns, from when Mitchell covers the five prominent political writers who predict Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee (and Barack Obama doesn’t even qualify for one of them–not one of them–as the dark horse early in the game), to the analytical entries about what led to Obama’s tremendous victory. It is good to be reminded of what we lived through and, in our new president’s campaign words, how he and the grassroots movement he inspired fit in to “the unlikely story that is America.” Mitchell, editor of the esteemed trade publication Editor & Publisher (and Daily Kos diarist ), is in a unique position as a veteran of campaign coverage, to cull the best and the worst of the events on the campaign trail and cobble them together in a way that creates a smooth narrative. Along the way, there are many, many passages I came to think of as, “Oh, God! Remember that?” moments, from the brouhaha over Hillary purportedly not leaving a waitress a tip to the hype about “superdelegates,” from David Shuster talking about how Chelsea Clinton had been “pimped out” to the hand-wringing over who John Edwards would ultimately endorse, from Rich Lowry and his Palin starbursts to Sinbad (Sinbad!) contradicting Hillary’s account of the danger of her Bosnian trip. Seriously, in some ways, the book reads like an account of fleeting hallucinations remembered from delirium, which is somehow fitting, as we all were swept up in campaign fever. These “Oh, God! Remember that?” moments serve as reminders that what seems earth-shaking and deal-breaking one day winds up being trivial footnotes to history in the end. There are also “I honestly don’t remember that” moments. Did Bill Kristol really suggest Clarence Thomas to fill out John McCain’s ticket at vice president? Really? Well, Mitchell, thank God, was keeping track, and by gum, he did (”He [McCain] could persuade the most impressive conservative in American public life, Clarence Thomas, to join the ticket.”). I confess as a full-fledged, card-carrying political junkie, I want that fact and that quote at my fingertips for mockery ammunition for the rest of my life. Nowhere is Mitchell’s analysis more valuable than when he watches the watchers, i.e., keeps an eye on the media coverage and its meaning as the election moves through its paces. He notes how Americans are contradictory consumer of news–”Yet the more Americans complain about the media, old and new, the more they seem to tune in, or click through, for campaign coverage”–and he is astutely critical of the traditional media and its rote and predictable responses to every aspect of news. In “Pundits Blow Debate Analysis Again,” he mocks how the talking heads on TV would tell us–the American people–who the American people would think won the debate, only to be contradicted moments later when the insta-polls came in. In my favorite section, Mitchell takes Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell to the woodshed for her nauseating–and inaccurate– mea culpa in which she “confessed” to liberal media bias in favor of Obama throughout the campaign, proven (in her mind) by the fact that there were more references to Obama in her newspaper. Searingly, he observes: Except for a week after the end of the GOP convention, before Palin-mania collapsed, Obama was ahead in the polls, eventually by a lot, and he always led in the fundraising (overwhelmingly), in the size of his crowds (ditto), and in putting more states in play. He couldn’t help but lead in favorable coverage–if that coverage was thoroughly dominated by the horse race (which it was)… Does anyone doubt that if McCain had roared to the lead in October and stayed ahead until the end that the results of the studies would have been completely different? Yes, the press is biased–in favor of recognizing who is winning and stating that perhaps far too often. It’s not all woodshed and simple process moments. There is serious analysis packaged in these pieces, about the influence of new media and new technology, about the relationship between funding and the small donor revolution and the meaning of it for the future of political movements and elections. And always, there is Mitchell’s wry, understated sense of humor, with its companionable undertone for his fellow followers and lovers of politics. For example, in mid-March, during the kerfuffle over the Samantha Powers’ remark about Hillary being a monster, and Powers’ subsequent resignation from the Obama campaign, Mitchell dryly observed: “At this rate, there will be no advisers left by June and Bob Shrum will be running both campaigns. At least then he would finally win one.” It’s hard to imagine political observation status getting more delightful and informative than this.

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Book review: Greg Mitchell’s "Why Obama Won"

It is difficult to muster any sympathy whatsoever for the goddamned banks. This is a crisis entirely of their own manufacture. Yes, the housing market went down — which anyone with an ounce of sense could have predicted, and did. Any bank betting the entirety of its assets many-times-over on that not happening deserves to fail as spectacularly as possible, its corporate leadership condemned to no greater future responsibilities than bussing tables. Of the two current largest zombie banks — Citibank and AIG, neither of which has any rational chance of survival, short of the government simply pouring cash down their gullets until they are well and truly satiated — I have a special loathing of Citibank. A bank dedicated towards building consumer debt in ever more creative ways, they helped to push for the infamous bankruptcy bill that made it impossible for the struggling middle class to get out from under credit card debts, explicitly. As it turns out, that was probably a wonderfully stupid move on their parts. What happens when people can’t pay credit card debts, and you pass a law saying they have to, period, no matter what? They don’t magically have more money than they did before the law was passed, so something else has to give. Something like, say… their mortgages? Well, there you go, brain trust. Well played. In any event, the American political arena is currently locked in mortal combat over such words as “nationalization”, because when given the choice between doing something according to common sense or according to asinine and petty mantra, no politician or pundit will ever chose the common sense approach. Call it nationalization, or socialization, or a bailout, or lemon capitalism, or temporary restructuring — call it beagleization or mangrove dispepticism for all any of us care, the fact of the matter is that insolvent banks are insolvent banks, and we have a choice: we can take them over, as form of government-backed insurance of the marketplace, or we can let them burn. Our hearts say let them burn, and with as many of those insufferable, rich-as-hell and dirty-as-snot Masters of the Universe inside them as possible. Our heads, though, say we don’t want to wait in Depression-style bread lines just for a bit of schadenfreude, and so we’re going to be taking over these banks. The alternatives are letting them fail, which is economically devastating, or simply printing new dollars by the trillions and giving it to them free of charge or restraint until all their debts suddenly become manageable, which is impossible. So fine; we’ll be taking them over, in at least some capacity. You know it, I know it, the politicians know it, and the banks know it. The expectation that that will be happening is, in fact, one of the few moderating influences on the current market. W hile their may once have been a time when Wall Street could have been considered the engine of American finance, it has become in actual practice little but a high-fashion casino. (Perhaps Bernie Madoff made it too explicit,  but in reality his Ponzi scheme functioned for so long, and with so little investigation, precisely because it did operate much as any of the other high-roller operations that it mimicked.) Credit default swaps (at least, as they were implemented) served exactly one purpose, which was to give uninvolved parties a roundabout way to bet large amounts of money on something that was, due to the inherently untangleable mess of the underlying “assets”, of unknowable value. Like much of the financial inventions of the last decade or two, it did nothing to stimulate any part of the economy other than finance itself. It created no jobs, except the jobs required to push paperwork from one desk to another. It created no new products, and invented no new technologies, and it gave no money to any party interested in doing either. And America boomed because of it. That is the nature of the new kind of “finance” that continued to represent a larger and larger share of America’s ostensible “prosperity”. We have become a nation incapable of effectively making textiles, cars, steel, electronics or other physical things, because those things only allow for a little profit. Instead, we choose to dabble in the strictly theoretical profits of high finance — imaginary profits on imaginary wealth. Finance became more and more speculatory, and less and less encumbered by physical products, or assets, or services. And the rich have done exceedingly well for themselves, in that new economy. As for the rest of the nation, the middle class found themselves subjectively in a recession for the entirety of the Bush years. Food prices, gas prices, housing prices — on every front, it became harder and harder for the middle and poorer classes simply maintain the status quo, and yet none of this counted as recession or poverty, because we simply kept redefining the terms to exclude such unpleasantness. What did we gain? Ask yourself — what, exactly, did the nation create during those years? What new projects did America embark on? What betterments did we make to the lives, or health, or happiness of our citizens? What did we do? The answer is jack-squat. We did nothing. We were attacked, and so we had a war. We suffered recession, and so we were told that to save our economy we should go to the malls and buy more things. We presided over the draining of our own wealth, and did nothing, and under what truly must count as the most dysfunctional American government — legislative, executive and judicial — of many decades, we actually were told we should feel proud over all of it, or at the very least to shut up about it. We are aware of Japan’s “Lost Decade”, a period of real estate collapse and economic stagnation. We have, though, been in our own Lost Decade since the turn of the millennium, and only now that the higher echelons of our society have found themselves in as unpalatable a situation as the rest of us have been in has anyone important deigned to notice. We have had a decade of doing nothing, and two decades of offshoring our every competence, leaving us to putter in our financial closets and declare ourselves kings of all we could see. I f there is anything to be learned from any of this, is that at some point, America simply must invest in itself again. If we can no longer build cars, so be it — but perhaps we can build a new energy infrastructure. If America is uninterested in even maintaining the highway infrastructure that a past generation built, fine — perhaps in this hundred years, we can evolve past them. We have already faced fifty years of price shocks, petro-dictatorships, and every sort of punishment as a result of our stubborn insistence that oil is the One and Only Possible Energy Source — why, exactly? How did America get, to put it too damn bluntly, so dumb? We once could reach the moon — now we cannot. We once could provide both pensions and healthcare to our citizens — now we cannot. We once led the world in technology in nearly every field — now we do not. We could be leaders, if we simply regained our interest in leading. If we were interested in technological leadership, or educational leadership, or having the best infrastructure, or having the best healthcare, or having the best anything , save military might, we could have it. We are gladly pouring over trillion dollars into propping up the necessary fictions of speculatory finance, money that exists in no form other than numbers in the computers and file cabinets of the world; what would a trillion dollars do, if invested towards infrastructure, of any sort? A trillion dollars could not only cure cancer, it could turn it into ice cream. A trillion dollars could not just build high speed trains to replace our crowded airports, but create an army of robots to wash your damn car while you were away. We could do anything , if we were as dedicated to the prospect of doing anything as we were to doing nothing . We have spent a decade — and yes, it should be said, under the proud banner of conservatism — doing nothing, as a nation. We have wasted our advantages, and put our own infrastructure in hock, and allowed the greediest and most crooked among us to dictate how the rest of us should live. We were told that giving money to the rich was good, and giving respite to the poor was sinful. We were told in supposedly serious books by supposedly serious men that giving up our jobs and industries would make our nation rich. We were told that our companies knew more about how to govern a nation than our citizens — and we let them draft our laws, and lobby our government, and we squeezed the middle class at every possible opportunity. We were told many, many stupid things by people who now, by any rights, should end up on street corners wearing nothing more than rags made out of their own past pronouncements, but who sadly will never be nearly as inconvenienced by their actions as you or I have been. W e are likely about to enter a second Lost Decade, one in which the pain will be far more widespread than the first. Still, though, the shining beacons of conservative thought have little to say other than meeting at CPAC and calling people gay; the party of Goldwater or the smashingly well-spoken racist Buckley now can only find wisdom in the dimwitted buffoonery of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Joe the Plumber. We seem bound and determined not to do anything too bold, or invest in ourselves too much. We can never expect a thimbleful of apology from those that led us into this wreck, but it also seems that we also should not expect even the base acknowledgement that things have gone wrong. It seems that in order to avoid a true Depression, we must more than anything else simply believe in investing in our own nation, as collective action. We may not even get that much.

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America’s Lost Decade

Despite a reconciliation that gave them both cause for laughs, late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, 41, and comedian Sarah Silverman, 38, have split, a source confirms to PEOPLE. No reason was revealed for their second breakup. The funny duo dated for five years before they called it quits last July. But they rekindled their relationship just a few months later. “They’re taking it slow,” a source told PEOPLE last fall. “They’re on the road back to being together.” More on Jimmy Kimmel

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Sarah Silverman And JImmy Kimmel Split Again

They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. The Holy Bible , Matthew Many of my readers have been wondering what happened to the leaders of the Republican Party since the election when the party took such a beating. Here with a report. The leader whose career has generated the most interest is, of course, Joe the Plumber. Many people thought Joe would complete whatever training he needed to become a licensed plumber. That was not to be. Unlike John McCain, who returned quietly to the United States Senate to continue his life as a senator, and Sarah Palin, who went back to Alaska to resume being a governor, Joe went in a brand new direction. He became a correspondent for Pajamas TV . His first assignment sent him to Israel, a position for which he was uniquely qualified. Before the 2008 election he had an extensive interview with Shepard Smith of Fox News in which he explained why a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for the “death of Israel.” The interview was lengthy and I’ll not try to synthesize Joe’s cogent explanation in a few hundred words. It was no surprise, however, to learn that because of his incisive analysis of Mr. Obama’s position he was hired by Pajamas and sent to Israel. A quick review of Pajama’s webpage gives an idea of the kind of in-depth reporting Joe did from there. Joe posted many stories including “what he thinks Israel’s response [to the proposed cease fire with Hamas] will be based on his conversations with regular Israelis”, and an analysis of “what the media should and should not do in time of war.” After completing his assignment in Israel he returned to Washington where, according to a posting on Pajama’s website, on February 5 he was asked to “investigate the stimulus package” proposed by Mr. Obama. On February 11 the site said he had a report wrapping up “his investigation of the stimulus bill for PJTV.” His next big assignment was to be part of the Conservative 2.0 Conference that was being held in conjunction with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2009 convention that took place February 26-28. Joe was to participate in a panel entitled “Bias in Media and Education.” His appearance there was also listed in the CPAC agenda. Joe was not the only celebrity to be part of the CPAC meeting. Many of the failed presidential candidates from the 2008 election season were there to make their suggestions as to how to save the country from the plight into which George Bush had thrust it. Their main message was that whatever the new president was doing was wrong, ignoring the fact that the recent election suggests that much of the country thought everything they’d done during the preceding eight years was even more wrong. The main speaker was not, however, a failed candidate but an icon of the conservative movement and someone who said shortly after Mr. Obama’s inauguration “I want him to fail.” The speaker was none other than Rush Limbaugh. According to reports Mr. Limbaugh was slated to speak for an hour but because he had so much to say, he spoke for almost an hour and a half. Explaining what he meant by saying he wanted Obama to fail he explained that the president’s plans include “rampant government growth, wealth that is not being created yet . . . being spent” and it is that policy that he hopes will fail. It is clear what Joe’s future might be. He could be another Walter Cronkite. It is less clear what Rush Limbaugh’s future is. White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, observed that Mr. Limbaugh is the “voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.” He pointed out that whenever a Republican criticized Rush, the critic found it necessary to “run back and apologize to him and say they were misunderstood.” Mr. Emanuel was probably thinking of Michael Steele, the new Republican National Committee chairman. Responding to CNN’s D.L. Hughley’s statement that Rush is the “de facto leader of the Republican party,” Mr. Steele said that the title belonged to him and went on to say that Rush is a “mere entertainer” whose show is “incendiary” and “ugly.” Using his golden microphone, Rush went on the attack the following day referring to Mr. Steele as a “so-called Republican” and saying the party needed a little leadership.” In response to Rush’s attack Mr. Steele retreated saying: “My intent was not to go after Rush-I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. . . . There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” Now that that we all agree he’s the leader we can move on. It’s not too early to focus on the upcoming presidential elections in 2012 and it’s certainly not too early to suggest that an ideal Republican ticket would be led by Rush Limbaugh with Joe the Plumber as his running mate.

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Christopher Brauchli: Rush and Joe — The Republican Party’s Future

Public Policy Polling’s monthly tracking poll for the Democratic Primary in the Virginia Governor’s race shows former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe slipping into a razor-thin lead over former Delegate Brian Moran and a somewhat larger one over State Senator Creigh Deeds. McAuliffe, buoyed by an aggressive campaign including TV buys in the Hampton Roads and Richmond markets, edges Moran by two points and Deeds by seven. Almost half the electorate remains undecided, so there’s no frontrunner at this point. Public Policy Polling . 2/28-3/1. Registered voters. MoE 3.9%. (February numbers) Democratic Primary Terry McAuliffe 21 (18) Brian Moran 19 (18) Creigh Deeds 14 (11) The best news for Deeds and Moran supporters, of course, is that fully 46% of the state’s voters have not made up their minds in the primary. Given that such a small margin separates the three candidates, the race for the nomination remains wide open. African-Americans remain McAuliffe’s strongest demographic, as he leads with 26% among black voters to 16% for Moran. Meanwhile, Moran has a slight advantage with white voters, with 21% to 19% for McAuliffe. McAuliffe’s biggest weakness at the moment, per PPP, is with independent voters. However, PPP opines that the race will start moving when the candidates start dropping heavy media buys (even McAuliffe’s buys have been limited so far: “This race isn’t seeing a whole lot of movement yet,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.  ”Those undecideds will stay pretty high until the candidates really amp up their media campaigns.” McAuliffe seems likely to have the most to spend on paid media, so that may benefit him. On the other hand, Moran and Deeds have the best favorables and the most room to grow, so they could benefit more from an extended media campaign. Moran’s favorables are particularly strong, at 30/14, while Deeds is at 26/10. McAuliffe lags at 31/24, suggesting that while his name recognition is the best, he starts with the greatest number of people opposed to his candidacy. Though he’s in third place, Deeds may have the best talking points coming out of this. He held on to his State Senate seat, and so hasn’t been on the campaign trail the last several weeks, unlike his Democratic opponents. Yet he’s still fairly close, and no one has pulled away from him. Right now, the Virginia Governor’s race is a virtual tossup between the three Democrats. As the biggest race of the year, and one which has already attracted the attention of the nation’s most prominent Republicans (including Leader Of The Party Michael Steele Rush Limbaugh Sarah Palin), Virginia is going to be ground zero for the Rebuilding of the Republican Party. As such, the Democratic nominee will face a terrific fight in November, with all the wrath of the national GOP on his head. May the best candidate win.

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VA-Gov: McAuliffe With Very Narrow Lead In Primary

More data on how badly the GOP is playing their weak hand. Despite the tumbling economy, Barack Obama continues to enjoy a honeymoon with the American public in the face of the most trying crisis any newly inaugurated president has encountered since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The GOP, meanwhile, is viewed by a majority of Americans as the party of “no,” without a plan of its own to fix the economy, and even rank-and-file Republicans are concerned about the party’s direction, according to the first NEWSWEEK Poll taken since Obama assumed office . “People give Obama credit for reaching out to Republicans, but they don’t see Republicans reciprocating,” says pollster Larry Hugick, whose firm conducted the survey. “A surprising number said bipartisanship is more important than getting things done.” Obama job approval March 3/4-5, MoE +/- 3.5 Total         Rep Dem Ind 58 Approve     33 86 51 26 Disapprove  49  6 29 16 Don’t know  18  8 20 As always, look at the independents. What do they and everyone else think about the GOP? The biggest problem for the GOP, according to the poll, may be that 58 percent of Americans believe that Republicans who have opposed Obama’s economic-rescue plans have no plan of their own for turning the economy around. With the Republicans having lost the White House and both houses of Congress, public identification with the party has dropped to a recent low point of 26 percent, after running at or near 30 percent for most of the last 15 years. That’s the lowest level since the Watergate era and a striking loss of stature for the party, considering that self-described conservatives continue to outnumber liberals in the country by nearly two to one (39 percent vs. 20 percent). Is it your impression that Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama’s economic proposals have a plan of their own for turning the economy around, or not? Total                               Rep Dem Ind 31     Yes, have a plan of their own 45 22 29 58     No, do not                    42 72 58 11     Don’t know                    13  6 13 It’s so bad that in this poll, even Republicans aren’t enamored of Republicans. The poll and the write-up stresses the benefits of bipartisanship, or at least trying. Obama gets credit for that, the Party of No gets slammed. And, by the way, a majority (56%) want the banks nationalized, 73% want out of Iraq by next year, 54% think the recession will last 1-2 years, and the public says 49-42 that tax cuts for >250K earners should expire. Obama’s fav/unfav is 72/22, John McCain’s is 55/37 (Mark Halperin undoubtedly says this is good for John McCain) and Sarah Palin’s is 44/42. That’s, of course, because we are a center right country.

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Newsweek: Obama? Yes! GOP? Thanks, But No Thanks!

Lights! Camera! Action! The past week has been nothing short of the third season of a GOP reality show, which began with George W. Bush’s prolonged administration in its first season, continued with the McCain/Palin ticket in season two and now with Barack Obama’s election—making black the new black—begins season three with Michael Steele as the Republican National Committee’s first African American chairman sparring with radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Like Sarah Palin, Steele was to represent a new vision, new possibilities for a troubled party trying to find its mooring and sense of purpose in an America and a world that continues to demand change and evolution. Steele’s supporters no doubt had seen him as an obvious visual symbol of a party renaissance. A new school voice in a hackneyed institution. But then came the media. Then came Rush. In the show’s latest episode, it was the upstart Steele, “secure” in his position as the party leader ready to lead his charges. So self-assured had Steele been in his post that he actually attacked Limbaugh—a long-time GOP cast member—on D.L. Hughley’s just canceled CNN show, calling Limbaugh merely an entertainer whose remarks can be incendiary. In other words, he’s not to be taken seriously. Big mistake. Steele correctly acknowledged the toxic nature of Limbaugh’s daily political vitriol. He spoke the truth. The problem is that as the RNC chair he failed to realize the power of the media and the damage that a man like Limbaugh with daily access to the airwaves can do. After all, Limbaugh draws millions of listeners a week and boasts a 60% approval rating among Republicans. Putting it mildly, a man like Limbaugh can take out many a would-be rising GOP leader. Like any new character will learn, old school villains don’t die easily. In fact, nothing seems to rile them more than a new challenger who underestimates the villain’s prowess. Steele clearly did not calculate the impact his comments would have on Limbaugh’s loyal followers—who wrote in demanding that the talk show host respond to Steele’s remarks—or might garner the talk show even more support. Indeed, the Washington Post reports that amidst the controversy, Limbaugh’s listenership has increased this week to 25 million from 14.2 million. Riding cheers from his fan base, following Steele’s comments Limbaugh scolded Steele on-air: “Michael Steele, you are head of the RNC. You are not head of the Republican Party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the RNC and right now they want nothing to do with it, and when you call them asking them for money, they hang up on you. I hope that changes.” Ouch! In my native Alabama, Limbaugh’s lambasting is what we call “putting someone back in their place.” There can be racial or class undertones to such an exchanges. In this instance, it was Limbaugh’s not so subtle way of reminding Steele to get back in line and to do what he was told to do. On American Idol, it would be akin to Simon telling a contestant that they will never make it in the music business. Witnessing Steele capitulate so abruptly was quite painful yet entertaining. But he really had no choice if he wants a future in his party. It’s the price of the ticket in today’s GOP. Limbaugh is on the airwaves and the faster you can make peace with the man holding the mic the better. It’s like walking into a comedy club late and having the comedian call you out. The best thing to do is to sit down and be quiet until he finds another victim. Steele needed to shut Rushgate down and shut it down fast, hoping to stage a recovery in an upcoming GOP episode. Steele’s performance to date is largely reminiscent of that of Palin’s national debut. When Palin stepped into the national spotlight, she took no time proclaiming that 8 million holes had been punched in the political glass ceiling for women, referencing the number of Democratic primary votes earned by Hillary Clinton. The GOP hoped disaffected Clinton supporters would jump the Democratic ship. They didn’t. With Steele, the GOP arguably hopes that he will not only help the party galvanize its conservative base, but bring younger and more African American voters into the fold. The GOP knows it will never be the number one party of choice for blacks and other progressive voters. But as the 2004 presidential election demonstrated, peeling off just enough black support from Democrats in closely contested states like Ohio is all you need to win. That year 16% of black voters in Ohio supported Bush up from 9% in 2000, enough to give Bush a second term. After all, a win is a win. Yet the challenge for Steele is enormous. And to gain credibility in his party and the country before he becomes Palinized, he needs to reintroduce himself and he needs to act quickly and skillfully before it’s too late. Some GOP insiders—namely Dr. Ada Fisher, an African American RNC member from South Carolina—-are already calling for his resignation. Steele’s dilemma reflects the dicey road black, other minority leaders and women must oftentimes walk when attempting to navigate the treacherous political landscape and its landmines. Seeking to appeal to the larger population while still appearing loyal—or at least sensitive to—the issues most important to their respective ethnic or gender group is no easy task. Barack Obama did it brilliantly and won the White House. Obama’s win debatably has caused a sort of political schizophrenia for some black conservatives. Many don’t really want to be the on the wrong side of history as having vilified the country’s first black president regardless of party affiliation. But they still want to remain true to conservative principles. Yet Steele’s recent attempts at using hip hop vernacular won’t help the GOP woo black and younger voters anymore than parading Palin around spouting, “I’m just a soccer mom from Wasilla,” helped the GOP win over intelligent women. If there’s one thing young people detest, it’s a lack of authenticity. You can’t pretend to be down for their causes then promote policies that are perceived to disregard them. Young voters don’t want rhetoric. In these challenging economic times, Americans of all stripes want jobs, food, healthcare and access to education. The recent polls indicating the public’s support of how President Obama is handling the economic crisis, underscores what’s on the minds Americans. And until the GOP decides to get in touch with the American people, the rest of us will be content watching the show. Grab the Goobers, folks. It’s getting good. More on Barack Obama

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George Alexander: Is Michael Steele The Next Sarah Palin?

The newest spin from Fox spokesmodel Jon Scott (yes, the men there are models, too): “I mean, you know, it’s been pretty obvious since about September that he was going to win this presidency. It’s not like he hasn’t had some amount of time to gear up and get ready for the job he’s got.” There are so many things wrong with Scott’s spin. First, in September, Fox News was practically declaring the race over — and claiming that John McCain had won, thanks to the star power of Sarah Palin. Second, just because Fox News opposes President Obama’s agenda doesn’t mean he’s not prepared for the job. In fact, after running the most efficient transition operation in history, President Obama has now done more in 46 days as President than many presidents do in a full term in office. Third, and most importantly, George Bush and the Republican Party didn’t wreck this economy overnight, and President Obama and the Democratic Party aren’t going to be able to fix it over night. There’s a lot more work to be done, but even though Republicans are hell bent on blocking the administration’s economic recovery efforts, their efforts are going to fail. Despite Fox’s bleating, the American public knows that this is the Bush Recession we’re in, and they know that President Obama is leading the surest path to economic recovery, which is to bring this economy back to life through massive public investments in our future. The Republican strategy of cutting taxes for the wealthy and doing nothing for anybody else has failed us for the past 8 years, and only the jokers at Fox News want to see the failed Bush legacy continue.

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The newest nutty Fox spin

As someone who spent far too much of his youth earning a doctorate in sociology, I wince whenever I see an “academic” study that purports “findings” about the human psyche or human behavior that are all too readily accepted as social gospel. So it goes with the recent “study” conducted at the University of South Florida by psychologists Nathan A. Heflick and Jamie L. Goldenberg, just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , which proclaims that among voters focusing on Sarah Palin’s appearance there were corresponding “reduced perceptions of competence” of Palin, which in turn “reduced intentions to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket.” In short, they are arguing, that Palin’s looks–and the emphasis on her looks promulgated by the U.S. media during the campaign–had a negative impact on the outcome of the election. They also added a caveat: It is not possible to know whether such effects contributed to people’s actual voting behavior the day of the election, as there clearly are other factors that likely swayed voters in favor of Obama-Biden (in this study, all Democrats intended to vote for that ticket). However, given the media’s focus on Palin’s appearance prior to the election, it is possible that people came to see her as less fully human (more robotic) and competent than they would have without this focus, and in turn, that they became even less likely to vote for her as a result (a more robotic, less competent candidate is certainly less desirable). Suddenly there are headlines everywhere: “Palin Hurt by a Focus on Her Looks,” trumpets the Atlanta Constitution . “New Study Suggests Hot Sarah Palin Should Dowdy-Down for 2012,” says the L.A. Times (which HuffPo turned into “Palin’s Looks May Have Hurt GOP Ticket”). “Sexy Sarah Palin Needs to Get Ugly to Win in 2012,” declares First Post . “Sarah Palin Too Pretty to Attract Voters,” says AOL News . A more thoughtful and in-depth discussion of the issue, “Which Came First: The Objectification Of Sarah Palin, Or The Mistrust In Her Competence?,” is located at Jezebel . As an alumnus of graduate courses in the methodologies of the social sciences taught by a legend in the field, Dane Archer , I’ve grown to take such studies with a hefty block of salt. Many are predicated on false assumptions or simply bad science. So it is with the South Florida study. At best, it’s voodoo social-psychology. And, of course, the findings have been distorted and simplified by the media into a simple sound-bite: Palin was too sexy for the American electorate. Let’s look at the methodology itself. Heflick and Goldenberg assigned students to jot down a few lines about one of two American women celebrities, Palin or the actress Angelina Jolie. Half of the participants in each category were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person,” while the other half were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person’s appearance.” The participants were then asked to evaluate their subject (Palin or Jolie) in terms of various attributes, including “competence.” Finally, they were asked to identify who they were intending to vote for in the upcoming election. First of all, the study’s sample of 133 undergraduates was hardly large enough for an accurate conclusion to be drawn. Moreover, the sample group, presumably in their late teens and early twenties, is hardly reflective of the American electorate. Generational distinctions cannot even be identified or assessed with this study. Moreover, the sample was heavily skewed toward women (96 females compared to 37 males). While party affiliations were identified, there were no variant markers for race, class or geographical origin of each participant. In purely statistical terms, its reliability is extremely low. Moreover, the pairing up of Palin with Jolie also reflects significant cultural values and biases by the authors of the study themselves (who state as a matter of fact that “both [Palin and Jolie] are physically attractive”). Nor do they reveal their own political biases. Are they Democrats, Independents or Republicans? That Palin’s candidacy elicited a focus on her appearance cannot be understated. She was dubbed “the hottest governor in the coldest state,” and in other circles, the “Caribou Barbie.” Time magazine declared her a “sex symbol.” The response was clearly sexist and, just as clearly, irrelevant to the discussion of leadership competency. Let me also acknowledge what I trust should be obvious by now: That women are “objectified” by their looks. I made a documentary film a quarter-century ago (right about the time that Palin was Miss Wasilla) entitled Miss or…Myth? , which addressed the objectification of women through beauty pageants and their implications for larger society. There is no doubt that appearances impact perception. But in the case of Palin, there are far too many other variables that could well have contributed (both consciously and unconsciously) to this perception of her. Her performances in interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric scared American voters away in droves. So, too, did the viciousness of her comments on the campaign trail. None of this was mentioned–or addressed–in the study. That far too much media attention focused on Palin’s looks also goes without saying. That didn’t happen with any of the other candidates (although Joe Biden’s hair plugs certainly got far too much attention, too; as did McCain’s age and Obama’s race.) But more importantly, Palin played a role in her own objectification: her decision to appear in Vogue magazine (and participate in an accompanying photo shoot), contributed to her being dubbed “the hottest governor”; her own focus on clothing and hairstyling; and her winking to the cameras. The Republican National Committee also spent upwards of a quarter-million dollars on Palin’s clothing, hair and make-up. In short, Palin and the RNC also played the game. She was as much a perpetrator of this response as she was a victim. Ironically, one of the study’s finding was that, in the case of Democrats, Palin’s appearance had no impact on their decision to vote for the GOP ticket. Appearances appeared to play a role only with Republicans and Independents. And “appearances” don’t always cut along gender lines; I suspect that studies of the 1960 presidential election would reflect that looks were a variable in the choice between Kennedy and Nixon. Perhaps even for McCain and Obama. Because, let’s be candid here folks, men are objectified around looks, too. But were they determining or significant variables in the 2008 election? Therein lies the question. And in the case of Sarah Palin, I would argue, those variables were multiple and far more complex than those addressed in the South Florida study. I would argue that Palin’s response to Charlie Gibson’s questions about her foreign policy experience or her stumbling over a query by Katie Couric about the publications she read were much more significant contributing factors than her choice of clothes, shoes, makeup or hair dye. More on Joe Biden

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Geoffrey Dunn: She’s Too Sexy?: Sarah Palin and Voodoo Social-Psychology

The Hill’s Reid Wilson has the hilarity of the day: RNC members are officially calling for Steele to resign , amid his endless series of screwups, misstatements, and apologies . In an e-mail to fellow RNC members obtained by The Hill, Dr. Ada Fisher, North Carolina’s national committeewoman, said Steele is “eroding confidence” in the GOP and that members of his transition team should encourage him to step aside. Fisher added Steele’s personal e-mail address to the e-mail. Apparently, Steele’s transparent attempts to court the youth vote and the black vote via genuinely tragic attempts to appear hip are, well, not working: “I don’t want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn’t going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish,” Fisher wrote. What, the stimulus bling wasn’t “off the hook”? Apparently Fisher, one of three (3) black members of the RNC (shocking!), was not impressed by Steele’s righteous vernacular. And it surely doesn’t help that Steele picked a fight with the de facto leader of the Republican Party: Calling the Limbaugh-Steele clash a “Republican Horror Show,” Fisher expressed what some other GOP strategists have until now only said privately: “I have never seen such ineptness in our GOP leadership,” Fisher wrote. “And I though we handled the 2008 elections very poorly.” Gee, when Republicans are referring to your ineptitude as making McCain/Palin look like masters of message, it may be time to hang up your spikes. This, however, is the state of today’s GOP; their most prominent politician is a national punchline (even if she is so farsighted see Russia from her wolf-hunting helicopter). Their nominal leader is a politician so criminally inept that he made Ben Cardin look exciting and Mitt Romney look culturally sensitive . Their most prominent working-class icon is…well, Joe the Plumber speaks for himself. And their de facto captain is the drug-addled successor to Charles Coughlin as the chief demagogic blowhard of the political arena . If Steele fails to seal the deal in the March 31 election in New York’s 20th Congressional District - the first test of his chairmanship, in a Republican-leaning district, on which Steele has staked his reputation - the GOP will bring on the Katonocalypse .

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Republican Long Knives Out For Steele

Let me first admit this is not your typical political column except in the longshot possibility that it could instigate a recall vote for whomever really makes the player (i.e. $) decisions for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. Sure the plummeting economy has hit families in Philadelphia hard, but it hasn’t been near as hard or as heartbreaking as losing future Hall of Famer, Brian Dawkins, a 13 year veteran and heart and soul of the Eagles. 99% of Eagles fans are suicidal. The other 1% have already consummated the act. Philly is a blue collar town that bleeds Eagle green and if a working man couldn’t afford to pay his mortgage, he’d figure out a way to keep his Eagles season ticket. Undeniably professional teams have dropped veteran players who they feel have lost a step before, no matter how talented, no matter how beloved. But none of those was named NFL’s (Defensive) Player of the Month the final month of their last season, the team’s leader and was a power on and off the field through the playoff run. Since the Eagles did make him a offer to play next season, it wasn’t that they didn’t want them, it was that they didn’t want to pay him…enough. The Denver Broncos did. And at the same time, the Philly fan lost feeling in his left arm, grabbed their chest and called 911. Yet there are writers and sports talk show hosts who think any fans who question the Eagles decision are idiots. (Time to get political) Think of Jonah Goldberg or Bill O’Reilly when anyone criticized George Bush’s glorious war plan the four years following our invasion of Iraq. Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer implied those who thought the Eagles should have re-signed Dawkins were drunken, high school dropouts. Longtime WIP Sports Radio host, Howard Eskin, the Michael Savage of Philly sports talk, who regularly denigrates callers whenever he doesn’t understand the caller’s point (which many times seems to be quite understandable to most listeners) has had his lips permanently affixed to the Eagles management team’s butt. Last night he had team President Joe Banner on his radio show. Unfortunately, much like when Sean Hannity interviewed Sarah Palin, Howard forgot that he was allowed to ask followup questions. Banner said the Eagles never had a chance to counter Denver’s offer. Maybe that’s because they didn’t pick up the phone when Dawkin’s agent called to tell them of the offer (three unreturned calls made to Eagles, according to Dawkins). But let’s take Banner at his word and he didn’t call. I understand these phone machines today work both ways. Was Dawkins important enough for Banner to call Dawkins or his agent? Don’t know. Eskin didn’t ask. Was Dawkins expensive? For his age, maybe. A bit. For his worth to the city, Dawk was a bargain. His animated and enthusiastic appearance onto the field electrified the crowd. Wonder if Fitzpatrick who called it “like a kangaroo on crack” ever watched Dawkins emerge from the stadium tunnel. I’ve never seen a kangaroo on crack, but I doubt it would crawl like a wolverine - a comic book character he fancied - which is how Dawkins usually emerged from the tunnel. On the field he could be counted on to make the most brutal hit of the game. On the sidelines he would lead the crowd in their cherished E-A-G-L-E-S cheer. Was he affordable to the Eagles? For his career output, the Eagles have been underpaying him for years, but even so, in the world of pro-football, a couple million here and there won’t kill the bottom line. Except on the field, especially at wide receiver (unless you’re Eskin), this team is not in need of a Stimulus Package. As they were last year, the cash cow Eagles are far under the spending cap, so money was available. Banner has admitted, they are so far under the spending cap they’d have difficulty spending it all. Sure, as most apologists like Fitzpatrick and Eskin will trumpet, football is a business. But there is good business and bad business. For Warren Buffet sakes, the stock market is an indicator of business. The 14,000 point market was, so is the present 6000 point market. Part of business is the goodwill a company holds for their customers. The Eagles and its defenders think goodwill is worth little. And that, Mr. Lurie (Eagles Owner) and Mr. Banner, is bad business. Award-winning TV writer Steve Young is author of “Greaty Failures of the Extremely Successful” (www.greatfailure.com and blogs at the appropriately-named SteveYoungonPolitics.com

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Steve Young: Philadelphia Eagles Need A Heart…To Replace The One They Just Ripped Out of the Philly Fan

PHOENIX–Arizona is not a sexy state. Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, DC, these are the locales people pay attention to. Arizona politics barely gets attention in Arizona. So, when non-party-hacks start following Arizona party politics for the entertainment value — and not just regular politics but inside baseball party politics — then something is happening. Whether it’s good or bad depends who’s asked. Clearly, if you ask the Republican who has been hired to hire the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) Executive Director, he’ll probably tell you it’s all good. In January, Arizona politicos were stunned when party outsider Paul Eckerstrom came from the far reaches of the Arizona desert to beat out long-time party hack Don Bivens in the election for Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) Chair. Well, technically Eckerstrom is not a party outsider, and technically he is from Tucson (Pima County), which is not the far reaches of the desert. He’s the former Pima County Democratic Chair, and Tucson is the second largest city in Arizona. As far as the ADP leadership is concerned, though, anyone outside of the Phoenix metropolitan area… well, they’re treated with about as much respect as the desert Fremen in Dune. Eckerstrom accidentally propelled himself into the chairmanship when he threw his hat into the ring in a split decision on the spot at the party reorganization meeting. Party business meetings are usually staid and stuffy, but Eckerstrom gave a rousing speech pillorying state party leaders for bungling the 2008 Arizona elections . He railed and thundered at the podium until the assembly was on their feet hollering, whistling, and stomping. Saying that spurned former chair Don Bivens is unpopular, is a colossal understatement. If the ADP were polled, Bivens would probably have a lower approval rating than Jindal or Palin. Yet, only 2 weeks after Eckerstrom became possibly the most popular party chair in Arizona history, he sent new shockwaves through the party by resigning from the chairmanship, saying: With my family and work obligations in Tucson, I cannot do the job that is required. I thought I could, but after being on the job for the last two weeks, I realized that I would be only hurting the Arizona Democratic Party that I love if I continued as chair. The elation of having a new, inspiring state party leader quickly dissolved into frustration and furor. The outrage, suspicions, and conspiracy theories clogged up telephone lines and blogs nearly instantaneously. There was wild speculation that plutocrat Jim Pederson and other fat cats threatened to bankrupt ADP if Eckerstrom would not step down. Others conjectured that party staff thwarted Eckerstrom. Other scuttlebutt was too incredible to mention. Meanwhile, six young politicos gathered to talk shop. Mostly they griped about the disarray of ADP. The mistakes made by Bivens’ team. The loss of the new party leader. The Democratic legislative seats lost to the Republicans in November. The feeling of despair settling over too many Arizona Democrats…. Then, unexpectedly, one of them had an epiphany: Maybe instead of complaining about the party, we can come up with some possible solutions. All six had worked on various campaigns across Arizona in 2004, 2006, and 2008. One was a campaign director, another a field director. They all have hands-on campaign experience and felt their ideas were grounded in genuine on-the-ground experience, but ADP leaders don’t exactly have a great reputation of listening to people on the ground. They set out, in the beginning, with the idea that they would put their ideas on paper and then worry about who would read them. They hoped to find someone to read their ideas — anyone really. Sean Bowie took copious notes and then went home and typed up the first draft. Seven pages. It took another month and seven more rounds of revisions by Joel Edman, Geoff Esposito, Matt Herlihy, Devin Mauney, and Todd Phillips, and the Building a Stronger ADP: A New Way Forward plan was hatched. They had hoped a new candidate for chair would materialize who might be willing to read their plan and listen to their ideas. So far, though, no new candidate has materialized. Ousted Chair Don Bivens is once again running unopposed as time runs out for this Saturday’s special election. As the plan to share their proposal with a new chair dissolved, they did what today’s generation of young adult politicos typically do: They put their proposal on the web anonymously . Something unexpected happened. In only a couple of weeks, “Stronger ADP” became a rallying cry for rank-and-file Democrats across the state. Arizona Democratic activists are fired up and ready to go. Unfortunately for the party leadership, many of them are fired up and ready to march on party headquarters. Only party insiders are chary of Stronger ADP. Party honchos have standoffishly avoided endorsing even the simplest elements of the plan. Every powerful party hack in Arizona is pointing the finger at each other, certain that their political rivals are hoping to gain an edge over them. Phillips sounded off about the paranoia, Everyone is assuming it’s their rivals. We thought by being anonymous, the debate would be about the issues, but now too many people are only talking about the anonymous authors. As you probably guessed from the list of names in this article, the Stronger ADP coauthors are coming forward today to allay suspicions — to let everyone know that they are ordinary grassroots activists, not powerful political players. Todd Phillips of Tucson, one of the coauthors, said although each of the coauthors has worked on campaigns in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the group didn’t feel well known or “famous” enough to push their proposal. Their goal was meager: to promote a healthy discussion and debate, one that they felt ADP has never engaged in: We want people to focus on what is inside the plan, not the names at the top of the plan. We’re just six guys. We don’t have all the answers. We encourage everyone to read the plan. Just read the plan. It’s not about the authors. It’s not about us. It’s just about the plan. The proposal has four primary prongs, which are expanded upon within the full plan ( download the PDF here ): (1) An open and transparent hiring system for all state party employees, including Executive Director. (2) A renewed organizational focus, aimed at developing a system of priorities and guidelines that will help shape the future of the state party. (3) The formation of Project 2010, an all-encompassing statewide voter outreach campaign that is focused on targeted voter registration, PEVL sign-up and new PC recruitment. (4) A strong unified message campaign for 2010 that challenges Republicans and in simple terms tells Arizonans what Democrats would do differently. Ironically, #1 is already a complete bust. ADP First Vice Chair Harriet Young (now the interim Chair) hired Republican David Bruno to search for the next ADP Executive Director, and then she sent out a memo saying, The Executive Board of the Arizona Democratic Party has approved the use of a search firm for filling the position of Executive Director of the party. According to members of the Executive Board, not only did they not make the decision, they didn’t know it was under consideration. One Board member, who was contacted by a local activist, said did not believe it was true at first: I would have known if we had hired someone. I was certain we would hire a Dem firm. I felt like an ass, begging activists for what info they had on the subject. Board members were especially angry that the decision was made only a couple of days before a scheduled Board meeting in which the idea could have been debated and voted upon. At least five out of eight ADP Vice Chairs were caught seemingly unaware of the decision. Party insiders contend that both potential Democratic candidates for governor, Jim Pederson and Attorney General Terry Goddard, knew that Bruno is a Republican and gave their blessing. It is unclear whether they knew that the Executive Board was circumvented. More disturbing is the fact that David Bruno seems to have been awarded this contract allegedly because wealthy donor Bill Roe allegedly offered to pay for the cost of the contract upon the condition that his friend Bruno get the fee. Roe may have good intentions. Many were quick to come to his defense, but without the openness and transparency that the party grassroots has been demanding, these types of deals appear, from the outside, to be influence peddling. Bowie, like many others, expressed disappointment in the process, It’s as far away from transparent and open as it can be. When people see these kinds of things happening, they are less likely to put their time and energy into the party. The move to hire a headhunter may or may not have been motivated by the desire of some party leaders to undermine the ability of the incoming party chair to select his own Executive Director (specifically, the unpopular probably-re-incoming former chair Don Bivens). This type of impropriety, coming on the heels of what was seen as a party takeover by the grassroots is discomfiting. After all, complaints of “inside baseball,” a lack of transparency, too many high-cost consultants, and nepotism have consistently been high on the list of complaints against ADP. Unfortunately, it seems that ADP leadership is answering those complaints by subverting more transparent processes, hiring more consultants, and engaging in more nepotism. Is it any wonder that Arizona was the only state in the country to turn redder in 2008? If you’re a democrat in Arizona, then this comedy of errors either has you depressed or gearing up for a fight on Saturday. The authors of Stronger ADP are not sure what to expect Saturday. They do not endorse or oppose Bivens. Rather, the authors simply express a hope that the new chair, whoever he or she may be, will read the Stronger ADP proposal and take it to heart.

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Dawn Teo: Six Activists, A Mysterious Proposal, And Dem Party Mutiny in AZ

There he was, standing at the podium at CPAC, dazzling die-hard conservatives despite the fact that he is a member of a group not usually favored by Republicans. No, not Michael Steele. I’m talking about Jonathan Krohn, conservative wunderkind and theater geek. (I use the term with great affection, being one myself — “theater geek”, not “conservative”.) But this theater geek doesn’t get taunted in gym; this one is invited to appear on Fox and Friends. Adorable and untainted by the last eight years of Republican failure, he is the answer to a conservative’s dream. I’ve watched the clip of the precocious thirteen-year-old’s CPAC address several times now. I can’t get enough. I know that kid — a smart, effusive, eager-to-please adolescent who thinks he knows everything and has no trouble lecturing adults. Heck, I was that kid… albeit in the liberal Long Island, Jewish variety. If Krohn’s delivery felt like an address from the president of the Drama Club, that’s no accident. From his bio on his website, www.defineconservatism.com : Jonathan Krohn is a 13 year-old home schooled young man who has been performing on stage since he was eight. Inside Edition’s Debora Norville named him “Atlanta’s Most Talented Child” in 2006. Jonathan has had 3 call-backs for the Broadway part of Michael Banks in Mary Poppins. (Oh, to be back at the age when you can claim credit for the jobs you didn’t get….) Yes, he’s a Broadway Baby. But in his search for a role model, Jonathan somehow settled on Bill Bennett instead of Nathan Lane. He listened to Bennett’s radio program every morning for three hours, a fact that offers a revealing glimpse of the home schooling revolution. Jonathan made a huge splash at CPAC (Arianna called him “the highlight” of the convention) and this could be only the beginning. After sending Bobby Jindal out to address the nation, as Paul F. Tompkins described it, “like a loving dad reading a bedtime story to a baby with a severe learning disability,” the GOP could now brand itself as the party of children. Not children’s issues - like health care and education - but a child’s view of the world, unsullied by adult reality or experience. They won’t address us just as children, but by children. Here’s young Jonathan on his blog responding to Obama’s call for health care reform: Uh oh! Here it comes… Obama is going to expand government’s interference into your doctor’s office. Government will tell you what you can and cannot get at the doctor’s office. Obama, Dodd, Kennedy, Pelosi, Reid, and Biden, just a few of the people who will be out their telling you what you’re healthcare benefits will be. President Obama has told us that he wants to boost the economy, but when he talks about universal healthcare all he is discussing is a government monopoly of the healthcare industry; meaning a loss of jobs and a major dent in the economy, not to mention policy commonly described as typical socialism. What’s striking here is not that Jonathan Krohn’s writing sounds like standard-issue conservative punditry; it’s that most conservative punditry sounds like the writing of a thirteen-year-old. The argument, in addition to being wildly inaccurate, fails to recognize that those of us lucky enough to have health insurance spend too much of our time fighting for the coverage we paid for. (When our daughter suffered from a simple case of croup, the insurance company claimed it was “a pre-existing condition.”) Government regulation of an industry that has run amok and is determined to deny service whenever possible doesn’t play as a scary specter of socialism. For a home-schooled thirteen-year-old not to recognize this is understandable. For a political party, it is a shortcut to irrelevance. No wonder CPAC swooned. They’ve had a problem of late matching principles with experience. Small businessman Joe the Plumber and family values champion Sarah Palin are two obvious examples. Jonathan Krohn won’t be victim to the same biographical contradictions. He’s thirteen. He’s supposed to have no experience. I worry. The kid is already the most appealing conservative spokesman on the scene and he is ripe to be exploited. The questions will come. Did he really write that book by himself, “giving up his summer” to do so? Was it right for Krohn’s parents to indoctrinate him so intensely in Republican thinking at such a young age? Should anyone be exposed to that much Bill Bennett? Are his parents just making a buck off their son’s talents, pushing him like a right wing Baby June? (Last fall, he and Mom went on a book tour of northeast Georgia. The sky’s the limit now.) And is this all because he didn’t get cast in Mary Poppins? (Did rejection from the nanny musical lead to rebellion against the nanny state?) I don’t pretend to know what’s really going on inside this bright young kid or who he’ll turn out to be when he grows up. But it will be interesting to see if his ideological certainty holds up, particularly if he follows his passions for both conservative politics and musical theater. It won’t always be easy (see “Eckert, Scott”). Will this budding Alex P. Keaton maintain opposition to the National Endowment for the Arts or gay marriage if it means fewer opportunities to play Boq in Wicked? Life will do its dirty work on Jonathan Krohn. If and when he emerges from his home-school-and-talk-radio cocoon, he will be challenged by people and events that stubbornly refuse to abide by his principles. And that could be the best thing that ever happened to him. Perhaps his already obvious gifts will enable him to forge a new conservatism, one that melds old principles with the realities of today and a keen awareness of the mistakes of yesterday (the way Obama did at his inaugural). And who knows? Maybe someday this kid will make Republicans act like adults again. More on Bobby Jindal

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Jonathan Tolins: And a Child Shall Lead Them

CHICAGO — A man who stabbed his first wife to death more than two decades ago used a Civil War replica gun to kill his current wife and her son before committing suicide in their upscale suburban home, police said Tuesday. Richard Wiley left a 40-page, handwritten suicide note indicating he shot and killed Kathy Motes, 50, and Christopher Motes, 17, and saying he refused to go back to prison, Wilmette police Deputy Chief Brian King said. Police in Wilmette, an upscale community north of Chicago, found the three bodies inside the family’s home Monday while conducting a well-being check. The family lived next door to their church, where Kathy Motes also worked. King said Wiley, 54, apparently killed his wife and stepson Saturday afternoon, then shot himself Sunday. Wiley stabbed his 25-year-old wife, Ruth, to death in 1985, and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison two years later, according to news reports at the time. He was paroled in 2000. At his murder trial, Wiley said he suffered from a rare mental disease called “intermittent explosive disorder,” but the judge rejected his claim that he was insane. Wiley reportedly called police himself after the 1985 killing and was found “leaning over the victim, hugging her and crying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’” Wiley suggested in his suicide note that he killed Kathy Motes during an argument, then killed her son. “It’s a kind of a dissertation of the difficulties that Mr. Wiley was having,” King said of the note, adding that it included “hints of remorse.” Wiley met Kathy Motes through their church, First Presbyterian of Wilmette. The pastor, the Rev. Sarah Sarchet Butter, said church members knew about Wiley’s past but added that “our faith community welcomed and loved him.” Butter said Kathy Motes, who worked at the church as an office coordinator, was “beloved of our congregation,” and that Christopher “enriched our congregation in every way.” The bodies of Wiley and Kathy Motes were found in a second-floor bedroom, while Christopher Motes was found in an upstairs bathroom; all three had single gunshot wounds to the head, King said. The murder weapon, found by Wiley’s body in a second-floor bedroom, was a black-powder, muzzleloading Civil War replica gun that may have belonged to Christopher Motes, a Civil War buff, King said. Wiley apparently had sawed off the barrel, King added. Despite Wiley’s criminal history, King said police had no previous complaints of violence at the Wilmette home and there were no orders of protection against Wiley. “There’s nothing that predicted this level of violence in that home,” King said at a news conference. But James Morici, who prosecuted Wiley for the 1985 murder, told the Chicago Tribune he remembered Wiley as a menacing figure. “Sometimes people have asked me over the years if there is anybody I was afraid would come after me,” Morici said. “And the only one I could think of was Richard Wiley. I could picture him sitting in the penitentiary, biding his time.” Christopher Motes’ classmates at New Trier Township High School were in shock, District 203 Superintendent Linda Yonke said Tuesday. “Chris was a well-known and well-loved senior. … He was an easygoing student who had many friends,” Yonke said. “New Trier staff and students are devastated by this tragedy.” He participated in the Boy Scouts, belonged to a military history club at New Trier and had been accepted to attend Roanoke College in Virginia, Yonke said.

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Wilmette Murder-Suicide: Husband Shot Family With Civil War Replica Gun, Had Killed Previous Wife

CHICAGO — A man who stabbed his first wife to death more than two decades ago used a Civil War replica gun to kill his current wife and her son before committing suicide in their upscale suburban home, police said Tuesday. Richard Wiley left a 40-page, handwritten suicide note indicating he shot and killed Kathy Motes, 50, and Christopher Motes, 17, and saying he refused to go back to prison, Wilmette police Deputy Chief Brian King said. Police in Wilmette, an upscale community north of Chicago, found the three bodies inside the family’s home Monday while conducting a well-being check. The family lived next door to their church, where Kathy Motes also worked. King said Wiley, 54, apparently killed his wife and stepson Saturday afternoon, then shot himself Sunday. Wiley stabbed his 25-year-old wife, Ruth, to death in 1985, and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison two years later, according to news reports at the time. He was paroled in 2000. At his murder trial, Wiley said he suffered from a rare mental disease called “intermittent explosive disorder,” but the judge rejected his claim that he was insane. Wiley reportedly called police himself after the 1985 killing and was found “leaning over the victim, hugging her and crying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’” Wiley suggested in his suicide note that he killed Kathy Motes during an argument, then killed her son. “It’s a kind of a dissertation of the difficulties that Mr. Wiley was having,” King said of the note, adding that it included “hints of remorse.” Wiley met Kathy Motes through their church, First Presbyterian of Wilmette. The pastor, the Rev. Sarah Sarchet Butter, said church members knew about Wiley’s past but added that “our faith community welcomed and loved him.” Butter said Kathy Motes, who worked at the church as an office coordinator, was “beloved of our congregation,” and that Christopher “enriched our congregation in every way.” The bodies of Wiley and Kathy Motes were found in a second-floor bedroom, while Christopher Motes was found in an upstairs bathroom; all three had single gunshot wounds to the head, King said. The murder weapon, found by Wiley’s body in a second-floor bedroom, was a black-powder, muzzleloading Civil War replica gun that may have belonged to Christopher Motes, a Civil War buff, King said. Wiley apparently had sawed off the barrel, King added. Despite Wiley’s criminal history, King said police had no previous complaints of violence at the Wilmette home and there were no orders of protection against Wiley. “There’s nothing that predicted this level of violence in that home,” King said at a news conference. But James Morici, who prosecuted Wiley for the 1985 murder, told the Chicago Tribune he remembered Wiley as a menacing figure. “Sometimes people have asked me over the years if there is anybody I was afraid would come after me,” Morici said. “And the only one I could think of was Richard Wiley. I could picture him sitting in the penitentiary, biding his time.” Christopher Motes’ classmates at New Trier Township High School were in shock, District 203 Superintendent Linda Yonke said Tuesday. “Chris was a well-known and well-loved senior. … He was an easygoing student who had many friends,” Yonke said. “New Trier staff and students are devastated by this tragedy.” He participated in the Boy Scouts, belonged to a military history club at New Trier and had been accepted to attend Roanoke College in Virginia, Yonke said.

The rest is here:
Wilmette Murder-Suicide: Husband Shot Family With Civil War Replica Gun, Had Killed Previous Wife

“The Sarah Silverman Program” will be back for a third season on Comedy Central, following the resolution of four-day day standoff over planned budget cuts. The cable channel has ordered a 10-episode season of its signature live-action series, which will now be co-financed with gay-oriented sister cable network Logo. More on Comedy Central

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Sarah Silverman Saved, Returning For Season 3

“The Sarah Silverman Program” will be back for a third season on Comedy Central, following the resolution of four-day day standoff over planned budget cuts. The cable channel has ordered a 10-episode season of its signature live-action series, which will now be co-financed with gay-oriented sister cable network Logo. More on Comedy Central

More here: 
Sarah Silverman Saved, Returning For Season 3

This reaction to Governor Jindal’s speech focuses on subjects I’ve taught: democratic government and public finance. His response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address presented a paradox he did not recognize. His mantra is “American can do anything.” Our democratic government is “the freest political system in the history of the world.” He celebrates its success in response to terrible crises: slavery, world wars, depression, and terrorism.” We triumph because when Americans: “pull together, there is no challenge we cannot overcome.” The context of the paradox was his claim (despite macroeconomic theory and experience that proves the opposite) that nations suffering from severe recessions should respond solely with tax cuts and not stimulate demand through public expenditures. My focus is on the rationale he offers, which is that our democracy is illegitimate. When Jindal says “Americans can do anything,” he actually means “except through democratic processes.” But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach [of making solely tax cuts]. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history. We oppose the National Democrats’ view that says — the way to strengthen our country is to increase dependence on government. When Americans spend money individually we make “wise decisions” but if “government” spends money we are worse off because we become “dependen[t]” on it. The “government” spends money because it doesn’t “trust us.” Jindal cites the U.S. victories in the two world wars as proof that we can do anything. We won because we used public expenditures to raise, feed, train, equip, and transport armed forces to Europe and Asia. If we had cut taxes and “trust[ed]” citizens to “make wise decisions” with “our own money” we would have lost the wars. Jindal says that ending slavery was one of our greatest triumphs. Lincoln would not have saved the Union and ended slavery if he had responded to secession with tax cuts. Lincoln, the greatest Republican, dramatically expanded the federal government in order to win the Civil War, preserve the Union, and end slavery. The Confederacy, of course, wouldn’t have let Jindal’s parents into Louisiana. Public finance explains why governments are needed to provide a “public good” like national defense. Private markets cannot make a profit on “public goods.” “Public goods” have two defining characteristics — there is no practical manner for a private firm to exclude non-payers from the benefits and “consumption” of the good or service is “non rival.” Public finance also explains why additional “collective action” problems, such as “free riders” ensure that “trusting” citizens to “make wise decisions with our own money” will never produce an effective national defense. Jindal proclaims that another triumph is that the U.S. “won the struggle for civil rights.” He overstates, but government actions have brought progress. The initiative typically came from the targets of bias, but the targets’ strategy nearly always centered on the enlistment of the federal government as an ally. Absent the federal government’s support, the struggle for civil rights would have been lost. Public finance and political theory explain why this is true. Bigots that secure the support of local and state governments render their targets politically powerless. Such discrimination can prevail indefinitely. Private market actions cannot defeat it, and will often reinforce it. Private intimidation, often aided by local law enforcement, can make the bigotry lethal and far more effective. Federal government intervention was essential, and effective, in reducing such discrimination. Discrimination against disfavored groups causes great harm not only to the direct victims, but also “negative externalities” that harm the overall economy, society, and polity. Jindal emphasized the importance of education: To strengthen our economy, we also need to make sure every child in America gets the best possible education. Public education is the single most important reason for our nation’s success. Jindal appears to understand that. Republicans led the charge for free public education. The slave states generally opposed public education. Slave states often made it illegal to educate slaves. Slave states repeatedly blocked passage of the Land Grant Colleges act. Lincoln was finally able to pass it because of secession. Education provides “positive externalities.” Your child’s superior education helps society. It makes her a more likely to be an informed voter and a better contributor to the economy. Better-educated kids are less likely to have children out of wedlock or enter shotgun marriages, more likely to marry, more likely to defer having children to a time when they can afford to care for them with their own resources, less likely to become criminals, and less likely to divorce (Cahn & Carbone 2009, Red Families v. Blue Families, forthcoming). The only way “to make sure every child in America gets the best possible education” is to provide free public education. Jindal also addressed “the crisis in health care.” Republicans believe in a simple principle: No American should have to worry about losing their health coverage — period. We stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage. We oppose universal government-run health care. Health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients — not by government bureaucrats. We believe Americans can do anything — and if we put aside partisan politics and work together, we can make our system of private medicine affordable and accessible for every one of our citizens. No one has a window to another’s soul. We can only rely on how they act. Congressional Republicans do not act to ensure that “no American should have to worry about losing their health coverage — period” or to provide “universal access to affordable health care coverage.” Millions of Americans lose their coverage every year (an estimated four million since the official start of the recession). Republican Governors like Jindal and Palin have opposed efforts to prevent these losses of health care coverage. They have opposed Obama’s plans to provide medical care coverage to the millions of Americans that have no coverage. The U.S. does not provide “universal access to affordable health care coverage.” We went the wrong direction on access under Bush. Republican policies ensure that there will be no universal access. The system they protect makes insurance companies wealthy. Jindal’s rhetoric: “health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients — not by government bureaucrats” is doubly duplicitous. The assertion that “bureaucrats” make the health care decisions in other advanced nations is false, but his understanding of America is equally poor. Insurance company bureaucrats frequently make our health care decisions. Poor and working class Americans that have no health care coverage do not cherish their “freedom” to decide. They are forced to ask themselves: is my child so sick that I should take her to the emergency room and pray that the bills won’t force me to declare bankruptcy? Jindal’s jingoism ignores the reality working class Americans live. We believe Americans can do anything — and if we put aside partisan politics and work together, we can make our system of private medicine affordable and accessible for every one of our citizens. It is strange that Jindal, in a speech emphasizing federal budgetary limitations, assumes that poorer Americans “can do anything” by ignoring their budgetary limits. Poorer Americans inherently cannot afford expensive health care or education. That is an economic fact that has nothing to do with partisanship. We can succeed, if we “work together” through government. Only government funding can make “private medicine affordable and accessible for every one of our citizens.” Health care provides substantial positive externalities, so the private sector will not provide it adequately. Jindal proclaims that we have “the most powerful military.” We do — because of federal government spending, funded by taxes. Jindal, implicitly, concedes that government action is essential and has been effective in this field. Here’s his key phrase again, he asserts that government services represent a failure to “trust[] us to make wise decisions with our own money.” What he misses entirely are the concepts of democracy and voter competence. We are bright enough to understand the concept of “public goods”, “externalities” and “collective action problems.” As a result, we realize (1) that we need an effective national defense, (2) that the private sector is incapable of providing it, (3) that we can direct our democratically elected government representatives to provide for that defense, and (4) that we must fund that defense through taxes. We are making “wise decisions” — we use government to provide useful goods and services that the private sector cannot adequately provide. We follow Jindal’s advice, because when we use democratic government to: “pull together, there is no challenge we cannot overcome.” It is Jindal that does not “trust” Americans and our democratic system of government. Americans can do anything if we work together. One of the essential ways in which we work together is through the government programs that produced each of the triumphs Jindal urges us to celebrate. More on President Obama

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William K. Black: Americans Can Do Anything: Jindal’s Lack of Faith in Democracy (Part 1)

It’s no surprise to anyone that job creation under George W. Bush was godawful . Only slightly less obvious is this view of job creation since World War II. What does it show? Under Democratic presidencies, job creation goes up. Every Democrat who followed a Republican did better than the Republican who preceded them. Every Republican who followed a Democrat produced fewer jobs than their predecessor. And before anyone jumps on the “but that was because they got all the jobs that were started up under the previous administration,” notice that where Republican followed Republican, the second administration came out worse than the first. When Democrat followed Democrat (for which we don’t have nearly enough examples) job creation improved in the second administration. And we can be thankful that McCain didn’t follow Bush. Based on the pattern, we’d be down 8 million jobs by the time Palin finished off the first term.

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Jobs by President

This past week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. was supposed to mark the beginning of the reemergence of the conservative movement. Attracting a record setting crowd of individuals, the event took on a decidedly urgent tone: don’t write the GOP obituary just yet. But behind the defiant veneer and talk of a conservative Renaissance stood a more difficult truth: the conservative movement and the Republican Party are in deep disarray — in search of galvanizing figure, clinging to traditional ideas, in favor of tactical combat over policy debate, and intensely concerned about the future. “We’re fast becoming a regional party instead of a national one,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “There’s a name for a regional party. It’s called a minority party. Being in the minority might be okay if you’re in a college debating society… But I assure you: it’s not good for America when we’re the minority, and none of us should be content to stay there.” Indeed, little seemed to unite the CPAC crowd beyond opposition to President Obama and a commitment to vaguely worded political principles. The conference’s presidential straw poll, one of the earliest indications of the pulse of the conservative movement, provided a third-straight win for Mitt Romney. But doubts about the former Massachusetts’s governor persisted, even as CPAC’s lead organizer, David Keene, affectionately declared him “one of the family.” “Do we want a CEO who laid off thousands of workers” at the top of our ticket? one attendee asked. Added Craig Shirley, a longtime Republican strategist and head of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs: “If he is a member of the family, it is through adoption and not birthright.” In the end, the numbers underscored the softness of Romney’s ‘frontrunner’ status. The former Massachusetts Governor won only 20 percent of the CPAC vote; four other individuals — Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich — earned ten percent or more. And all were overshadowed by Rush Limbaugh. The boisterous talk show host was the belle of the CPAC ball, earning the unofficial title of GOP spiritual leader following a winding and brash 90-minute speech. But his appearance, while loved in the ballroom, only exacerbated the intra-party fissures. As the crowd ate up Limbaugh’s red meat, other Republicans watched in horror; the figurehead of their movement — a rambling, sweaty and at times angry man — was calling once again for the intensely popular president to fail. “If we don’t modernize conservatism, we are going to have a party of 25 percent of the vote going to Limbaugh rallies, joining every applause line, ripping the furniture up, we’re going to be in permanent minority status,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist, declared the next day on Meet The Press . Democrats, more gleeful than mournful, felt the same way. “I actually think that if they follow Rush they have a chance of extinguishing their party and they’ll have to start over with a more moderate party,” former DNC Chair Howard Dean told the Huffington Post. That Dean and Murphy would hit the same note shouldn’t be understated. There are, they argue, few more important moments of political introspection than that currently facing the GOP. Out of power in both Congress and the Oval Office the party is torn over what constitutes the best path back: take a fresh approach or revert to what worked once before? Adopt new policy ideas or fine-tune political tactics? Tap into the fresh talent or turn to the veterans? Asked to make a choice, the CPAC crowd by and large went with the past over the future, the quick fix rather than the long haul. Newt Gingrich, one decade after an ignoble exit from Congress, walked through a wild CPAC crowd to the tune of Eye of the Tiger before delivering his speech. His face would adorn the cover of New York Times Magazine a few days later. Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was largely ignored when he implored conservatives “to be moderate” in their temperament. “We are not going to win votes, we are not going to win elections, by calling Barack Obama a communist,” he declared. Hours before, Cliff Kinkaid, head of a conservative group Accuracy in Media, had made just such a suggestion. Minutes later, out in the halls, few would argue that Obama was anything less than the rebirth of Karl Marx. “He is a fascist, socialist, and a Marxist,” said Pat, a female attendee from Philadelphia. “He is well beyond European style socialism. I’m not going to sugar coat it.” Even Tucker Carlson, in the process of urging conservative journalists to be more accurate in their approach, was booed when he complimented the New York Times for its reportorial standards. The message seemed clear: in this, the era of Obama-proclaimed post-partisanship, the GOP was not at all interested in losing its traditional foes. The New York Times would remain a liberal rag and the President, a socialist. Rarely, it seems, would blame be laid at the Republican Party’s doorstep. And on the occasion that the GOP did deserve rebuke, it was only because its leaders had faulted on their principles and commitments. “We keep hearing that Republicans have to come up with new ideas and that we have to use new technology to take those ideas to voters who haven’t been coming our way lately,” said Rep. Mike Pence, during his Thursday speech at CPAC. “Yes, we need to offer positive alternatives. Yes, we need to take our message to every community in America. But more than anything else, we need to be willing to fight.”

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A Republican Party In Civil War

Fascinating: DL Hughley: You know what we do, we talk like we’re talking now. You have your view. I have mine. We don’t need incendiary rhetoric. Like rush limbaugh, who is the de facto leader of the republican party. Michael Steele: No, he’s not. Hughley: I will tell you what — Steele: I’m the de facto leader of the republican party. Hughley: I can appreciate that. But no one will actually decry down some of the things he says. Like when he comes out and says he wants the president to fail. I understand he wants liberalism to fail. I get it’s not about the man. But it is still about the idea that he would rather have an idea fail so his idea will move to the forefront. And that to me is destructive. Steele: How is that any different than what was said about George Bush during his presidency? Hughley: You’re absolutely — let me say something. You’re absolutely right. Steele: Let’s put it into context here. Rush limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes he is incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly. Hughley: He influences the party. I will tell you what, you’re the first republican I have talked to, and I have talked to a lot, to say he’s not the leader of his party. When you have to proclaim that “I’m the leader of the Republican Party”, then you are not. Clip around the wingnutosphere, and Rush Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC is being treated with starbursts. Hugh Hewitt , for example, waxed poetic about “The Speech” which would be “talked about for years and even decades”. And there’s a reason they’re so excited at the speech — Rush makes conservatives feel good about themselves . He tells them that they don’t need to change anything they’ve done in the past. From his speech: One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them. Problem is, there isn’t a lot of GOP clock cleaning these days. In fact, it’s sort of been the opposite. And it’s clear that the American people have long since given up on Republicans. You don’t get numbers like these without REALLY screwing things up. And in return, we have a GOP that is deifying Rush Limbaugh , sainting “Joe the Plumber”, lusting after Sarah Palin, and cheering their “unity” at opposing the very popular president’s very popular agenda. Meanwhile, the GOP’s supposed leader, Steele, alternates between ridiculous hip hop fantasies and actual nuggets of wisdom (such as pointing out that “unity” isn’t the GOP’s salvation, it’s actually its biggest problem ) — yet it’s all irrelevant because no one cares what he thinks or says. Well, they didn’t until Steele called out Rush for what he is — “incendiary” and “ugly”. Now, the backlash has begun , and Steele doesn’t stand a chance in hell of surviving that battle with any shred of credibility intact. Not only has he lost the GOP’s base, but he never had the establishment with him for support. He’s gone out on a limb, and there’s no one around willing to give him a hand. The ball is now in Rush’s court, and he’s not the type to let things slide . Limbaugh, asked to respond, said he’d save his counter-attack for his listeners. “I’ll handle it on the radio,” he wrote in an e-mail. This struggle for the hearts and minds of the GOP is too one-sided to hold any drama, but the fireworks will still be fun regardless.

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Leadership struggle between Steele and Rush

It’s great to be back in San Francisco, after a two-week vacation driving through the Southeast. I’ve always had an enthusiasm for the open road; as Willie Nelson put it, “goin’ places where I’ve never been; seein’ things that I may never see again.” I feel rejuvenated after this experience, ready to get back to work … as I return to the office today. Looking back on these two weeks, there’s a lot that I learned … some profound, and some just plain obvious. I always have fun on these trips, but it’s good to report back on the educational components. So without further ado, here are my Top Ten insights from Miami to Memphis … (1) Key West Needs Rent Control: Whenever you have (a) an attractive and quirky area, (b) huge demand from everyone who wants to be there, (c) a very finite supply of land, and (c) little to no capacity for growth, it’s no surprise the cost of housing goes through the roof. I’ve seen it happen in Manhattan and San Francisco, and Key West is experiencing the same phenomenon … Cruise ships have brought a new influx of tourists to the area … endangering Key West’s low-income people who have been there for generations. Rent control is not the affordable housing panacea, but it allows communities to thrive and maintain their diversity. It’s tough being in Key West if you’re poor, and the city has no tenant protections. Key West is wonderful because you’re on an island at the edge of the world … with all kinds of funky and artsy people. It’s crucial to keep it that way, and rent control is a solution. Sadly, Florida has a law that bans local jurisdictions from passing rent control — one of those pre-emptive statutes the real estate lobby quietly passed in state legislatures before any city could implement it. A lot of other states did the same, and progressives should have really been paying closer attention. (2) Florida Has Ruined What Was a Precious Wetland: Before the white man drained the wetlands and built the worst definition of suburban hell , everything south of Orlando was like the Everglades … a vast expanse of marshes with all sorts of diverse wildlife. The Everglades National Park is only one-sixth of what it once was in its heyday, and after having spent a day there I know how beautiful and spiritual an experience it can be. It’s not just real estate development that killed the Florida wetlands … it was the scale and opulence of driving around everywhere that has wasted millions of acres of land. The new Obama Administration believes in saving the Everglades, unlike the Bushes. But let’s see how much progress can be made to preserve it. (3) Florida Should Invest in a Gulf Coast Route: California built Highway One on the Pacific Coast because it knew it had a gorgeous Ocean … and that it should be open for all. Oregon likewise has Route 101, and even Florida’s Atlantic Coast has A1A. But despite the Florida Gulf Coast being lovely, it’s hard to experience it by car from Naples to Tampa. Either you go to a side beach road and get stuck in traffic , or the beachfront is reserved for huge mansions. It’s less of an issue up in the Panhandle … Route 98 through the “Redneck Riviera” is well worth the drive … but it would be nice to have one scenic route the whole way, so all Floridians can enjoy it. (4) Off-Season at Panama City Beach is Truly Off-Season: You can go to Key West in the summer, or New Orleans when it’s not Mardi Gras … and still find a whole lot to do. But Panama City Beach when it’s not Spring Break? Dead as a doornail. It’s kind of sad to have such a “cyclical economy,” when these places should be busting with activity. The beaches are snow-white and gorgeous, but there’s no one around to enjoy them. (5) I’ll Never Make Fun of Alabama Again: Going to Mobile was meant to be a pit-stop … where I would just get a hotel room for the night and do my laundry. How was I supposed to know it was the home of the original Mardi Gras … before New Orleans made it famous? How was I supposed to know there would be a great parade Downtown, followed by hours of drunken revelry? Mobile even has three gay bars, and you’ll never guess who gave me directions on where to find them … an Alabama country girl who went to Christian College, calls herself a “devout Republican” and loves Sarah Palin. Mobile was a highlight of my trip … I’ll never tease Alabama again. (6) I Expect Obama to Do Something About New Orleans: Everyone knows our new President has a lot on his plate, but our national disgrace is what’s happened to places like the Lower Ninth Ward … more than three years after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is not a good place to raise a kid, because there isn’t much to look forward to. The City is desperately poor , and does not have the resources to repave its streets, re-open its crumbling schools and provide the kind of services we would expect from a world-class city. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal doesn’t even want federal stimulus money, which has made national headlines … but is simply another pattern of the Republican state’s general contempt for the City. Virtually any progress for the poor and blacks in New Orleans came from the New Deal and Great Society, federal programs that literally saved them from the state. My big test for President Obama will be what he can do to help New Orleans get out of its dire situation. On the other hand, the City still has a more bohemian lifestyle than New York or San Francisco, because it’s still affordable to live there. Which may not last forever … rents doubled after Katrina. (7) People in Cajun Country Don’t Speak French: I went to Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville to find folks who speak my mother tongue. I saw a lot of signs in French, but Louisiana’s French quirks … even in Cajun Country … is more a gesture to its past, rather than a reflection of any present-day reality. It’s not like going to French Canada or northern Maine, where everyone speaks the language. The few local Cajuns who speak French do so because their grandparents taught them, and “Cajun French” is really a garbled combination of English and French. Even the young folks who sing Cajun tunes in local bands mostly don’t speak the language … give them another two generations, and it’ll be like church choirs that sing Latin. But, I must say, the Cajuns sure know how to cook boudin and cracklin. (8) Mardi Gras Doesn’t Just Happen on Tuesday: Literally, Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday” … the day before Lent, where Catholics partake in drunken festivities and indulge before 40 days of ritual sacrifice. But you don’t just have a mass parade on one day … the real Mardi Gras celebration lasts for weeks, with various parades on each day that eventually culminate with total debauchery on Bourbon Street. Mardi Gras is a wonderful celebration in New Orleans, because the city could use some joy amid all its problems. Thankfully, folks don’t just wait for one day a year to let the good times roll … they make sure it drags on for much longer. (9) Casinos Have Ruined the Mississippi Delta: The Mississippi Delta — where the blues was born out of the misery of black sharecroppers — has always thrived on creating a rich culture out of its poverty. But in recent years, the new “cash crop” isn’t cotton … it’s the gambling industry, as riverboats head up and down the Mississippi River and dock in places like Vicksburg and Tunica. It’s unfortunate that an industry which gives false hope to people about “getting rich quick” has found such a niche in this region. After catching some authentic live blues in Clarksdale, this area has so much more to offer than tacky casinos. (10) Graceland is Less Opulent than Expected: Sure, Elvis Presley decked out his mansion with shag carpets and bright Seventies furniture more appropriate for a Las Vegas lounge. But the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s famous home was surprisingly quite modest . Elvis never forgot his humble roots, by honoring a promise to his parents who had struggled hard to raise him. He had them live with him at Graceland, and spent the next 20 years of his life making worthy charitable donations in the Memphis area. Say what you want about Elvis’ red-baiting politics … the guy still had a Heart of Gold, and his impact on music cannot be disputed. Long live the King! Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published . He also kept a personal blog of his Miami-to-Memphis road trip.

See the original post here:
Paul Hogarth: Miami to Memphis — My Top Ten Insights

It’s great to be back in San Francisco, after a two-week vacation driving through the Southeast. I’ve always had an enthusiasm for the open road; as Willie Nelson put it, “goin’ places where I’ve never been; seein’ things that I may never see again.” I feel rejuvenated after this experience, ready to get back to work … as I return to the office today. Looking back on these two weeks, there’s a lot that I learned … some profound, and some just plain obvious. I always have fun on these trips, but it’s good to report back on the educational components. So without further ado, here are my Top Ten insights from Miami to Memphis … (1) Key West Needs Rent Control: Whenever you have (a) an attractive and quirky area, (b) huge demand from everyone who wants to be there, (c) a very finite supply of land, and (c) little to no capacity for growth, it’s no surprise the cost of housing goes through the roof. I’ve seen it happen in Manhattan and San Francisco, and Key West is experiencing the same phenomenon … Cruise ships have brought a new influx of tourists to the area … endangering Key West’s low-income people who have been there for generations. Rent control is not the affordable housing panacea, but it allows communities to thrive and maintain their diversity. It’s tough being in Key West if you’re poor, and the city has no tenant protections. Key West is wonderful because you’re on an island at the edge of the world … with all kinds of funky and artsy people. It’s crucial to keep it that way, and rent control is a solution. Sadly, Florida has a law that bans local jurisdictions from passing rent control — one of those pre-emptive statutes the real estate lobby quietly passed in state legislatures before any city could implement it. A lot of other states did the same, and progressives should have really been paying closer attention. (2) Florida Has Ruined What Was a Precious Wetland: Before the white man drained the wetlands and built the worst definition of suburban hell , everything south of Orlando was like the Everglades … a vast expanse of marshes with all sorts of diverse wildlife. The Everglades National Park is only one-sixth of what it once was in its heyday, and after having spent a day there I know how beautiful and spiritual an experience it can be. It’s not just real estate development that killed the Florida wetlands … it was the scale and opulence of driving around everywhere that has wasted millions of acres of land. The new Obama Administration believes in saving the Everglades, unlike the Bushes. But let’s see how much progress can be made to preserve it. (3) Florida Should Invest in a Gulf Coast Route: California built Highway One on the Pacific Coast because it knew it had a gorgeous Ocean … and that it should be open for all. Oregon likewise has Route 101, and even Florida’s Atlantic Coast has A1A. But despite the Florida Gulf Coast being lovely, it’s hard to experience it by car from Naples to Tampa. Either you go to a side beach road and get stuck in traffic , or the beachfront is reserved for huge mansions. It’s less of an issue up in the Panhandle … Route 98 through the “Redneck Riviera” is well worth the drive … but it would be nice to have one scenic route the whole way, so all Floridians can enjoy it. (4) Off-Season at Panama City Beach is Truly Off-Season: You can go to Key West in the summer, or New Orleans when it’s not Mardi Gras … and still find a whole lot to do. But Panama City Beach when it’s not Spring Break? Dead as a doornail. It’s kind of sad to have such a “cyclical economy,” when these places should be busting with activity. The beaches are snow-white and gorgeous, but there’s no one around to enjoy them. (5) I’ll Never Make Fun of Alabama Again: Going to Mobile was meant to be a pit-stop … where I would just get a hotel room for the night and do my laundry. How was I supposed to know it was the home of the original Mardi Gras … before New Orleans made it famous? How was I supposed to know there would be a great parade Downtown, followed by hours of drunken revelry? Mobile even has three gay bars, and you’ll never guess who gave me directions on where to find them … an Alabama country girl who went to Christian College, calls herself a “devout Republican” and loves Sarah Palin. Mobile was a highlight of my trip … I’ll never tease Alabama again. (6) I Expect Obama to Do Something About New Orleans: Everyone knows our new President has a lot on his plate, but our national disgrace is what’s happened to places like the Lower Ninth Ward … more than three years after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is not a good place to raise a kid, because there isn’t much to look forward to. The City is desperately poor , and does not have the resources to repave its streets, re-open its crumbling schools and provide the kind of services we would expect from a world-class city. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal doesn’t even want federal stimulus money, which has made national headlines … but is simply another pattern of the Republican state’s general contempt for the City. Virtually any progress for the poor and blacks in New Orleans came from the New Deal and Great Society, federal programs that literally saved them from the state. My big test for President Obama will be what he can do to help New Orleans get out of its dire situation. On the other hand, the City still has a more bohemian lifestyle than New York or San Francisco, because it’s still affordable to live there. Which may not last forever … rents doubled after Katrina. (7) People in Cajun Country Don’t Speak French: I went to Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville to find folks who speak my mother tongue. I saw a lot of signs in French, but Louisiana’s French quirks … even in Cajun Country … is more a gesture to its past, rather than a reflection of any present-day reality. It’s not like going to French Canada or northern Maine, where everyone speaks the language. The few local Cajuns who speak French do so because their grandparents taught them, and “Cajun French” is really a garbled combination of English and French. Even the young folks who sing Cajun tunes in local bands mostly don’t speak the language … give them another two generations, and it’ll be like church choirs that sing Latin. But, I must say, the Cajuns sure know how to cook boudin and cracklin. (8) Mardi Gras Doesn’t Just Happen on Tuesday: Literally, Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday” … the day before Lent, where Catholics partake in drunken festivities and indulge before 40 days of ritual sacrifice. But you don’t just have a mass parade on one day … the real Mardi Gras celebration lasts for weeks, with various parades on each day that eventually culminate with total debauchery on Bourbon Street. Mardi Gras is a wonderful celebration in New Orleans, because the city could use some joy amid all its problems. Thankfully, folks don’t just wait for one day a year to let the good times roll … they make sure it drags on for much longer. (9) Casinos Have Ruined the Mississippi Delta: The Mississippi Delta — where the blues was born out of the misery of black sharecroppers — has always thrived on creating a rich culture out of its poverty. But in recent years, the new “cash crop” isn’t cotton … it’s the gambling industry, as riverboats head up and down the Mississippi River and dock in places like Vicksburg and Tunica. It’s unfortunate that an industry which gives false hope to people about “getting rich quick” has found such a niche in this region. After catching some authentic live blues in Clarksdale, this area has so much more to offer than tacky casinos. (10) Graceland is Less Opulent than Expected: Sure, Elvis Presley decked out his mansion with shag carpets and bright Seventies furniture more appropriate for a Las Vegas lounge. But the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s famous home was surprisingly quite modest . Elvis never forgot his humble roots, by honoring a promise to his parents who had struggled hard to raise him. He had them live with him at Graceland, and spent the next 20 years of his life making worthy charitable donations in the Memphis area. Say what you want about Elvis’ red-baiting politics … the guy still had a Heart of Gold, and his impact on music cannot be disputed. Long live the King! Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published . He also kept a personal blog of his Miami-to-Memphis road trip.

Read more here: 
Paul Hogarth: Miami to Memphis — My Top Ten Insights

In researching another issue, I happened to come across a few of my older (but still relevant posts) that I thought might be fun to revisit. We don’t get them all right, or always deal with memorable topics, and I’m certainly not the only one who could pull things out of the memory hole, but just for fun on a snowy day, herein are a few that stick around. For example, there’s this one from 11/8/08, entitled Conservative Wishful Thinking , suggesting the public’s desire for government to “do more” isn’t a White House invented phenomenon. In fact, it’s been building since the election (and one reason why the new guy won): In the meantime, the rallying cry of the right (this is still a center-right nation) continues unabated. What supports it is the idea that more people are willing to be labeled as conservatives than liberals. As long as they support progressive policies and progressive politicians (and they do - see the 2006 and 2008 election, and exit polls, and the considerable polling on the war, taxes and health care), the conservatives can take solace in that. And From Oct, 2008 there’s Conservatives Try To Come To Grips With Losing Part I: Sarah Palin and Conservatives Try To Come To Grips With Losing Part II: Christopher Buckley . See current budget proposals for relevance. Unfortunately, there’s What’s The Effect Of Recession On The Health Care Safety Net? from 1/07. That’s a question worth mulling over. We know the safety net, though poorly understood, appears stable . Yet we know that even before the recession hits (or hit, as we might be there already ) the net is threatened , and we know everyone, including the voters , are talking about the economy. But is there anything out there that helps us get a better feel for what’s likely to happen [to the health care safety net]? Recession? We were there. We’re more there now. And it sucks. From 9/08, we have Pew Poll: The Improvement In Iraq Has Not Changed Opinion About The War Being A Mistake . That’s worth remembering as we debate troop draw-downs (and the occasional political recriminations). In Soft Sell And Hard Truths from 9/08, we discuss this: The GOP, sensing a loss, is going to try to reignite the culture wars. They are starting with the old bromide about “the liberal media”, with Mark Halperin as proof. Go after the NY Times and the Daily Kos. Pick on Elizabeth Bumiller and Dan Balz. And it’s already started . This is standard GOP playbook. The problem is the tabloids in the supermarket are not on their side. Since that didn’t work, the GOP will try and ignite a class war. That won’t work either, but it will be just as ugly. In Historic Fail: Bush Leaves Office At 22% Approval , we are reminded of the weak bargaining position the GOP finds itself in, regardless of how many times they get to be on cable TV.  Bush is their creature, and he put them in a deep hole that it’ll take them years to dig themselves out of. In Proposed HHS Regulation Pits “Workers’ Religious Freedom vs. Patients’ Rights” from 8/08, we are reminded that elections matter : The Obama administration’s move to rescind broad new job protections for health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable triggered an immediate political storm yesterday, underscoring the difficulties the president faces in his effort to find common ground on anything related to the explosive issue of abortion. Just wait until SCOTUS appointments come up for discussion. In PUMAs Come To Denver , we take note of historic irrelevance. In Aug. 08, we noted the beginning of the GOP’s slide into regional status in Gallup: McCain Continues Strong In the South, But Nowhere Else , a topic first brought up in May (I credit Chris Cillizza as the first one that noticed.) In July ‘08, we tackled a favorite topic, How To Read Polls Without Hyperventilating : In the meantime, ask yourselves if the networks are cherry-picking polls they want to use to sell their narrative of a close race (particularly the usually ignored Q-polls) and ignoring the Rasmussen and Gallup polls today. The real picture requires looking at all the polls, not just the ones you like. See also Why Can’t The Networks Read Polls? from June ‘08. Finally, in March, we discussed When Can We Expect Health Care Reform (Whoever Wins)? , in which we discussed the continued difficulties of pushing through reform. That hasn’t changed either.

Read the rest here: 
Looking Back To Look Ahead

In researching another issue, I happened to come across a few of my older (but still relevant posts) that I thought might be fun to revisit. We don’t get them all right, or always deal with memorable topics, and I’m certainly not the only one who could pull things out of the memory hole, but just for fun on a snowy day, herein are a few that stick around. For example, there’s this one from 11/8/08, entitled Conservative Wishful Thinking , suggesting the public’s desire for government to “do more” isn’t a White House invented phenomenon. In fact, it’s been building since the election (and one reason why the new guy won): In the meantime, the rallying cry of the right (this is still a center-right nation) continues unabated. What supports it is the idea that more people are willing to be labeled as conservatives than liberals. As long as they support progressive policies and progressive politicians (and they do - see the 2006 and 2008 election, and exit polls, and the considerable polling on the war, taxes and health care), the conservatives can take solace in that. And From Oct, 2008 there’s Conservatives Try To Come To Grips With Losing Part I: Sarah Palin and Conservatives Try To Come To Grips With Losing Part II: Christopher Buckley . See current budget proposals for relevance. Unfortunately, there’s What’s The Effect Of Recession On The Health Care Safety Net? from 1/07. That’s a question worth mulling over. We know the safety net, though poorly understood, appears stable . Yet we know that even before the recession hits (or hit, as we might be there already ) the net is threatened , and we know everyone, including the voters , are talking about the economy. But is there anything out there that helps us get a better feel for what’s likely to happen [to the health care safety net]? Recession? We were there. We’re more there now. And it sucks. From 9/08, we have Pew Poll: The Improvement In Iraq Has Not Changed Opinion About The War Being A Mistake . That’s worth remembering as we debate troop draw-downs (and the occasional political recriminations). In Soft Sell And Hard Truths from 9/08, we discuss this: The GOP, sensing a loss, is going to try to reignite the culture wars. They are starting with the old bromide about “the liberal media”, with Mark Halperin as proof. Go after the NY Times and the Daily Kos. Pick on Elizabeth Bumiller and Dan Balz. And it’s already started . This is standard GOP playbook. The problem is the tabloids in the supermarket are not on their side. Since that didn’t work, the GOP will try and ignite a class war. That won’t work either, but it will be just as ugly. In Historic Fail: Bush Leaves Office At 22% Approval , we are reminded of the weak bargaining position the GOP finds itself in, regardless of how many times they get to be on cable TV.  Bush is their creature, and he put them in a deep hole that it’ll take them years to dig themselves out of. In Proposed HHS Regulation Pits “Workers’ Religious Freedom vs. Patients’ Rights” from 8/08, we are reminded that elections matter : The Obama administration’s move to rescind broad new job protections for health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable triggered an immediate political storm yesterday, underscoring the difficulties the president faces in his effort to find common ground on anything related to the explosive issue of abortion. Just wait until SCOTUS appointments come up for discussion. In PUMAs Come To Denver , we take note of historic irrelevance. In Aug. 08, we noted the beginning of the GOP’s slide into regional status in Gallup: McCain Continues Strong In the South, But Nowhere Else , a topic first brought up in May (I credit Chris Cillizza as the first one that noticed.) In July ‘08, we tackled a favorite topic, How To Read Polls Without Hyperventilating : In the meantime, ask yourselves if the networks are cherry-picking polls they want to use to sell their narrative of a close race (particularly the usually ignored Q-polls) and ignoring the Rasmussen and Gallup polls today. The real picture requires looking at all the polls, not just the ones you like. See also Why Can’t The Networks Read Polls? from June ‘08. Finally, in March, we discussed When Can We Expect Health Care Reform (Whoever Wins)? , in which we discussed the continued difficulties of pushing through reform. That hasn’t changed either.

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Looking Back To Look Ahead

Here’s Chris Matthews tearing into Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s non-state-of-the-union speech. “They had to outsource the response” says Matthews. Interesting choice of words. Of course, Matthews clarified he meant that they had to get a Republican who was not in Congress because the ones in Congress were all tainted, compromised, less-than-inspiring. But “outsourced”? To the nation’s only Indian-American governor? You could hardly miss the barb. (It’s not that Jindal was a total stranger to Congress either. He was re-elected to it in 2006 with over 80 percent of the vote.) I wonder if all-American hockey-mom Sarah Palin had delivered the Republican response, Matthews would have used the same phrase. After all, she has really never been to Congress. And Alaska is pretty offshore. I am no big admirer of Bobby Jindal, the new brown hope of the Republican party. We are not brothers under the skin. He’s bright, efficient, personable, a good family man and socially inflexibly conservative with a grin. But it is interesting how “outsourcing” has become accepted as the smear word of American politics. A business processing turn has acquired moral tones and found its place in the popular imagination as the new brown peril. The Los Angeles Times once quipped the US had “outsourced” its national security and the hunt for bin Laden to Pakistan. John Kerry hammered home the same point, with the same pointed reference to outsourcing during his presidential campaign. Outsourcing raises visions of your “sensitive personal data” falling into unwashed “foreign hands.” I once did a survey of Indian papers and American papers about that issue. The difference was clear. Papers in India often stuck to the acronym BPO (or business process outsourcing) while American media used outsourcing as the bogeyman. Of course what they were usually talking about was offshore outsourcing. Outsourcing technically could be done to the company down the street. But in the popular imagination of the call-center world, outsourcing usually meant brown people who looked like Jindal. Good evening and happy Mardi Gras, I am Bobby Jindal. How can I take away your economic stimulus today? In the current economic climate with Obama saying he would eliminate incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas, outsourcing is back as Public Enemy Number 1. The whipping boy is back. Matthews took that bait and tried to run with it. Jindal became the outsourced rebuttal - brown, foreign, therefore not to be trusted. Except this Bobby doesn’t just call himself Bobby when he’s selling your airline tickets or upgrading your Turbo Tax. This one legally changed his name to Bobby because he was a fan of the Brady Bunch. You can’t get more scarily American than that.

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Sandip Roy: Outsourced to Bobby Jindal

The economic downturn is jeopardizing “The Sarah Silverman Program,” one of Comedy Central’s signature series. The show’s creators — Silverman, Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab — have threatened to quit after the cable network told them the budget for their series would be slashed by more than 20%.

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Rebellion Threatens Sarah Silverman’s Show

Do you wonder why the Republicans tell such whopping lies about President Obama and his economic recovery plan ? Isn’t one conservative value truth telling? Not when you are serving the “higher call” to save America for Jesus and/or perpetual war, as I explain in my book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back . You see the Republican “base” is living in an alternative universe. These are the folks that believe that: Guns make you safe, The earth is 6000 years old, Gays are evil and dangerous, Iraq had something to do with 9/11 Obama is a Muslim, Obama is a communist, Obama is the Antichrist, Lowering taxes for the super rich would help the economy, Deregulating banks leads to prosperity. Jesus is coming back soon to take all the evangelicals to heaven leaving anyone who can walk in a straight line and chew gum at the same time on earth, Sara Palin’s only problem was not that the “elite media” was unfair to her, Every word of the Bible is true — literally, We don’t need trains that work, infrastructure that functions and new energy, just Jesus… What I slowly realized (back in the 1980s before I fled the right) was that the religious right leaders that my dad and I were helping to gain power were not “conservatives” at all in the old sense of the word. They were anti-American religious revolutionaries. The right had once been led by people like James Buckley and Senator Barry Goldwater who stood for the separation of church and state. The religious right, as it emerged in the late 1970s — and consequently the Republican Party it took over — was all about religiously-motivated “morality” which it used for nakedly political (and fund raising) purposes. This was a throwback to an earlier ugly time when 1930s fascist xenophobic hate-mongers like Father Charles Coughlin and his vicious anti-Roosevelt radio program was influential. Father Coughlin would have loved today’s congressional Republican leadership. He started a radio “ministry,” moved it steadily to the populist right, then identified the “enemy”—in Coughlin’s case Roosevelt, in today’s Republican’s case — President Obama. Coughlin yesterday, Dobson and Limbaugh today: two sides to the same hate coin. In the 1970s and 80s the leaders of the religious right were gleefully betting on American failure in the way Limbaugh and the Republicans are now rooting for Obama’s failure in 2009. If secular, democratic, diverse gay-tolerant and pluralistic America survives, then wouldn’t that prove that the Republicans are wrong about God only wanting to bless a “Christian” (white!) America of low taxes, and unregulated markets and gun ownership? What began to bother me back in the 80s was that so many of my new “friends” on the religious right seemed to be rooting for one form of apocalypse or another. In the crudest form this was part of the evangelical fascination with the so-called End Times. The worse things got, the sooner Jesus would come back. But there was another component: the worse everything got the more it proved that America needed saving, by us! And now the religious right infection (of wanting failure to prove a moral/religious point) has become the the Republican illness: root for failure so “we” win ideologically! Today the Republican Party is rooting for doom. And since the Republicans are now anti-American members of an Obama-must-fail insurgency, lies become a self-fulfilling prophecy: talk doom, and keep the economy in a panic and we may get what we wish for. Don’t conservative Republicans object to the lies? No, because the Republicans don’t have any actual and traditional conservative followers left . The Republican base is now made up of the religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary backward — there-is-no-global-warming — rube reality. Actual conservatives have long since fled. The religious nuts are rooting for Jesus to “rapture” them, not for America, and the neoconservatives are rooting for war and the Israeli hard liners, not for America. Truth (and sanity) are out the window. So, what is the problem with lying to our faces, say, claiming that all American’s taxes are going up when 95% of American’s taxes are going to go down? Why not claim Obama is a socialist, even if he’s not? Why not say anything at all to drive our country into a pit when losing is seen as winning? That , is all the Republicans have to offer America: more lies on a path to destruction from which the Republican “leadership” plans to resurrect themselves and “save” America from Obama. Frank Schaeffer is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back Now in paperback.

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Frank Schaeffer: Why Are the Republicans Such Anti-Obama Liars?

The Republican Party, America’s second oldest political party and a force in American politics and government since the time of Abraham Lincoln, died on March 1. It was 155 years old. Death apparently resulted from injuries suffered during a violent mugging by 67 millions voters last November, when Illinois Democrat Barack Obama handily defeated Arizona Republican John McCain and Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and Senate. However, police did not rule out the possibility of suicide. Washington, D.C. Police Chief Kathy Lanier cited numerous reports that the victim had been severely depressed in recent months after suffering its worst defeat since 1964, when another GOP candidate from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, lost in a landside to President Lyndon Johnson. Chief Lanier said the Grand Old Party’s battered body was found in an alley next to the Omni Sheraton Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the victim was attending a Conservative Political Action Committee conference, after hearing a bleak forecast of its future by congressional leaders and conservative talk show hosts. The time of death was uncertain, but Lanier said it probably occurred shortly after several witnesses heard the victim declare, “If Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Ron Paul represent my future, I’ll kill myself.” Nevertheless, Lanier said she is investigating evidence of possible foul play following a tip that two top Democrats, House Speaker Nancy “Women Can Play Hardball Too” Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry “High Roller from Vegas” Reid, and Obama White House chief of staff, Rahm “Don’t Take It Personally, It’s Just Business” Emanuel, were seen making threatening gestures toward the victim in recent weeks. Lanier also said two top Republicans, House Minority Leader John “Tom DeLay Taught Me Everything I Know” Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch “At Least We Carried Kentucky” McConnell, are considered possible suspects because of their grudging support for GOP presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. “There are a lot of potential suspects who wished the victim ill will,” she declared. Lanier said she plans to interrogate former White House political adviser Karl Rove; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; New York Times columnist David Brooks, anti-taxation champion Grover Norquist and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “All of them had their own reasons for wanting McCain to lose.” But Lanier ruled out President Bush as a suspect, even though his low approval ratings proved to be an albatross around McCain’s neck and that of other Republican candidates. “He obviously didn’t help, but he had his own legacy to worry about.” Boehner, while denying that he or his House colleagues had anything to do with the victim’s demise, said he was not surprised that Obama carried his own state of Ohio by a 51-47 percent margin. “From Chillecothe to Cleveland, Obama was seen as the agent of change while McCain was seen as an old guy without any fresh ideas who would have served Bush’s third term,” Boehner said. “He was like Woody Hayes without a running game.” McConnell was even more critical. “In Kentucky, we have a saying that it’s the jockey, not the horse, that wins or loses a race. I think we just had the wrong jockey.” Other Republican leaders were equally downcast after the GOP lost the White House, which it had held for 20 of the last 28 years, and control of Congress, which it held from 1995 to 2006. “Ronald Reagan must be turning over in his grave,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which sponsored the three-day conference to explore ways of leading conservatives out of the wilderness. “But the American people will soon discover that Obama is no FDR or JFK, but a 21st century reincarnation of Marx and Lenin who is determined to lead the nation down the path of socialism.” Funeral services will be held on Wall Street next week.

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Al Eisele: GOP: R.I.P.

It’s been a while since we checked in on the Bush midnight regulations flurry. As a reminder, in the waning days of Republican rule in the White House, there was a concerted effort to inflict as much damage as possible in key, hot-button political issue areas. For example : A rule that relaxes enforcement against factory-farm runoff A rule that permits more waste from mountaintop mining to be dumped into waterways A rule seemingly designed to protect pharmaceutical companies from being held liable for marketing products they know are unsafe A rule that makes it more difficult for workers to take advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Act A rule that reduces access of Medicaid beneficiaries to services such as dental and vision care A rule that could limit women’s access to reproductive health services. Not to mention allowing trucking companies to make their drivers have 11-hour shifts, or the super-secret one issued in September that we just found out about this week, which shuts off a critical source of information about abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities to residents and families. The list of regulations is damned impressive, albeit immensely destructive. So far, the Obama administration has taken a few steps to combat some of these inherited hornets’ nests. The first was the first move that every incoming administration takes: to issue a memorandum directing all agencies to put a halt to those regulations in the pipeline. Critical first move, but it hardly stems the bleeding. According to Propublica, more than dozen of the close to 70 regulations they’ve compiled are in effect. Dealing with these is thornier , at best. Final rules present a more difficult problem. Executive branch agencies cannot throw out a final Bush rule with a stroke of a pen. They must conduct an entirely new rulemaking—the legal process by which regulations are made—which often consumes significant time and resources. Unless a rule’s effective date is suspended, which may be possible for a limited number of Bush rules, the rule remains law until a new rulemaking is completed. Congress also can intervene to block or undo midnight regulation. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to vote down Bush regulations completed after May 15, 2008, using special expedited procedures. Funding also may be withheld to block implementation or enforcement of undesirable rules. The last option for dealing with midnight regulation is the courts. Lawsuits are likely to challenge many of the Bush administration’s midnight regulations. The Obama administration will have to decide how to respond to these suits. In some cases, the administration may be able to enter into settlements that effectively torpedo Bush rules. Of course, it’s not just logistical hoops that have to be jumped through in this process, it’s dredging up long-standing political hot-buttons–those landmines that BushCo left scattered along the way. It always boils down to abortion, guns, and in the west, endangered species. The new administration has an increasingly narrowing tightrope to walk when approaching these. This week brought good news on the first of them, abortion. The “conscience clause” rule that would allow medical workers to refuse to provide even family planning counseling to patients was in effect as of January 20. This week the Obama administration moved to rescind it through another rule-making process, with a 30 day comment period. They are also saying they will consider “drafting a new rule to clarify what health-care workers can reasonably refuse for patients.” That’s getting weedier than Obama might want to go, and frankly not a good precedent. From my perspective, the government should not be in the business of determining what information health care providers can refuse to give their patients. The protection of being able to refuse to grant abortion services is more than adequate protection for the conscience of health care providers. It’s not an area for any more wiggle room. On the gun side, the administration might be looking to make a political trade, but one that’s not likely to succeed. An assault weapons ban is apparently back on the radar screen of the administration. Cue the the NRA , which is completely ignoring the actions by the new administration on one of their pet projects: guns in national parks. The Obama administration is legally defending a last-minute rule enacted by President George W. Bush that allows concealed firearms in national parks, even as it is internally reviewing whether the measure meets environmental muster. In a response . . .  to a lawsuit by gun-control and environmental groups, the Justice Department sought to block a preliminary injunction of the controversial rule. The regulation, which took effect Jan. 9, allows visitors to bring concealed, loaded guns into national parks and wildlife refuges; for more than two decades they were allowed in such areas only if they were unloaded or stored and dismantled. . . . In its reply, the Justice Department wrote that the new rule “does not alter the environmental status quo, and will not have any significant impacts on public health and safety.” They’ve got a bit of a problem with that argument, considering that at this very moment the Department of Interior is investigating whether this rule “alters the environmental status quo, and will not have any significant impacts on public health and safety.” This rule from the Bush administration didn’t undergo the requisite reviews. Period. Beyond that, “Secretary Salazar believes the Department should put forward its legal arguments in defense of the rulemaking procedure, and allow the courts to reach a conclusion,” Lee-Ashley wrote in an e-mail. “In addition, in order to ensure that the actions of the government are based upon the best information, Secretary Salazar has directed the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, under the auspices of the Office of Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, to undertake a 90-day review of any environmental considerations associated with implementation of these rules and to provide him a report on the results of that review.” In this instance, the DOJ should not have intervened. There was a clear violation in the earlier rule-making process, one that it is incumbent upon Secretary Salazar to address. His department was as highly politicized under the Bush administration as even the DOJ, and it is absolutely critical going forward that his department not only undo the damage done by the Bush administration, but that they scrupulously follow the law when doing so. The guns in national parks battle is peanuts out in the west, though, when compared to the hottest endangered species battle we’ve had since the spotted owl: the gray wolf. The Bush administration intended to delist the wolves in the Northern Rockies, but Emanuel’s memo froze that action. This issues pits hunters and stockmen against their usual foes in the environmental community who see stable populations of predator species like wolves as critical to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. As the granddaughter and daughter of a cattle ranchers, I have to admit some squeamishness on this one. Raising livestock in the high country is a dicey enough proposition without the threat of these predators. At the same time, restoring the ecosystem of this incredible place (to the extent that it can be done after a century of damage) argues for their ongoing protection. Regional politicians have been pushing hard for the delisting to go forward, particularly the blood-thirsty Idaho delegation , which is rivaled only by Sarah Palin in their hatred of wolves. On this issue, the Obama administration has to do what the best science tells it to do. It’s time to have that integrity restored to the public decision-making process. If the science allows for some sort of reasonable state management approach, and you have states you can trust to do that management, then that should be the guiding force for this decision. Moving forward on both undoing the Bush regulations, and on creating new ones, that same theme holds. Here are the recommendations from a panel of regulatory experts [pdf] coordinated by OMB Watch, based on six principles: Regulatory decisions should be timely and responsive to public need. The regulatory process must be transparent and improve public participation. Regulatory decisions should be based on well-informed, flexible decision making. Authority to make decisions about regulations should reflect the statutory delegation granted by Congress. Agencies must have the resources to meet their statutory obligations and organizational missions. Government must do a better job of encouraging compliance with existing regulations and enforce them fairly. It’s actually rather remarkable that this kind of common sense and good government needs to be reiterated for a president, but that’s what eight years of BushCo has left us with. In any case, it’s good advice, and change we can believe in.

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Around Midnight

I’m about to step into the shower as the doorbell rings. I open the front door in my robe, barefoot, unshaven, my hair askew. State Rep. Sarah Feigenholtz, one of 12 Democrats running to replace Rahm Emanuel in Tuesday’s primary election, opens her eyes wide, covers them with her right hand and turns her head away as she begins laughing.

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In His Bathrobe, Sun-Times Reporter Gets Visit From Emanuel Replacement Candidate Feigenholtz

Two Monty Python stars will be at the first screening of their classic film Life of Brian in a town where it has not been seen since a ban 30 years ago. Terry Jones and Michael Palin will join Aberystwyth mayor Sue Jones-Davies - who also starred in the 1979 film - at a charity showing on 28 March. Long before becoming mayor, she played Brian’s girlfriend in the movie. But she pledged to fight for the film to be shown when she found it had not been seen in the mid Wales town since. In 1979, opponents claimed Life of Brian made fun of Jesus, and they accused the Python team of blasphemy with its story about a Jewish man who was mistaken for the messiah and then crucified.

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Welsh Town Ends Ban On "Life Of Brian" After 30 Years

They’re young. They’re hip. They’re “bad.” They’ve got conservative vibes and a with-it vocabulary full of talking points and “buzz words” and they really know what’s happening, baby. They can bum out the seniors with some hairy entitlement alarmism, and then hang loose with the Jesus Freaks by coming on all traditional-values and stuff. And they can rap with the kids, too, tweeting their wiki down the google tubes and blogging their browsers in high-def in your facebook , luv. They work for The Man and even sometimes for The Woman. They function within the System, because they do their own thing, and the System is their thing. If it feels good, they tell you not to do it and then they do it. If it sounds good, they say it. If it polls good, they support it–or they say they do, or they say they did whether they did or not and hey: If it doesn’t add up, make sense, or prove true; if the scene goes bad or the vibe gets bummed, that’s your hang-up. They’re not “escaping Reality.” They’re building their own Reality. And they’ve been brought together by one man who believes they can get down, get funky, and get votes all at the same time. They call themselves the GOP Squad. Check out their happening thing: SARAH!–She’s young. She’s fine . She’s a mom and a governor and a rising star of the far right and a stone cold double-talking wolf-shooting fox . Her old man’s a hunk who used to want to secede from the Union, ’cause Alaska is outta sight . You know Sarah’s hip to the environment, ’cause she’s got a dead crab on her coffee table the size of a schnauzer. She blows off global warming, too, because it snowed somewhere last week and the chick is cool . Brains? She’s reads so many newspapers she can’t remember any of them. And feature this: the lady lobbies for scratch (for a bridge to, like, Nowhere , man) and then she hears it’s not groovy? She says she didn’t want it from Jump Street. And then cops it anyway! That’s ’cause she doesn’t dig the whole Socialism thing, and every time she lays some bread on her constituents via their annual share of the income realized from investing the royalty revenue from the oil companies’ exploitation of the Prudhoe Bay oil reserves, she hips them to it, and it’s beautiful. She talks the talk even when she’s too busy laying the groundwork for the 2012 campaign to walk the walk. So ask her anything. She’ll be lip-flappin’ and jive-talkin’ ’til you wig out bad , baby. MIKE!–What if they gave a Republican Party and everybody came? That’s Mike, Chairman-With-No-Hair-Man of the GOP. But hey. Never you mind that chrome dome, Jerome–Mike is five freaking months younger than Dem Chair Tim Kaine and that, in essence, is what-it-is . He’s black, you understand, so the brother possesses what most people can agree is a reasonable quantity of soul. The cat knows how The Machine works ’cause he was part of it– in state Government, that whole trip. Now he’s laying down some righteous riffs. Says government jobs aren’t jobs, they’re “work.” Says the Party needs to let the sunshine out with a boss and groovy Hip-Hop-type packaging approach of marketing and “branding” and so forth. Says the way to bring power to the People is to let Republicans lead ‘em out of the Big Economic Muddy they got us into because they got us into it. Says jobs that go away “come back.” You tell him: Hey, man. But that’s like a cop-out. Big banks are crashing and don’t know how to value their assets from a hole in the ground, and the Dow is barely more than half of what it was, and this bad trip is global . What does Mike say? He says, “Small businesses will get us out of this.” You say: Oh wow. The small businesses that are going bankrupt? The ones that need credit and can’t get it? The ones that only exist thanks to contracts with big businesses, as GM goes belly-up and CitiCorp gets nationalized? He says, There it is. That’s Mike’s bag. It’s a backwards-upside down-trickle up-psychedelic freakout . It’ll do a number on your head ’cause it’s got levels. Because everything is everything and This Is It. Far fucking out. BOBBY!–He’s young. He’s smooth. His ancestors were Indian and he looks kinda black and his parents were Hindu–like Ghandi . But there is no need to flip out or become up-tight. When Bobby speaks he sounds more like Mister Rogers than Mister Nehru, and he converted to Catholicism. Which is cool, and fab, and very, very gear, our-Judeo-Christian-heritage-wise. Meanwhile, are you interested in heavy? Bobby took part in an actual, somewhat documented, super-tuff exorcism. Not only can he talk to political conservatives, and to religious conservatives, he can talk to demons , okay? But that’s not the limit of the extent to which he is with-it. Bobby is an Intelligent Design head. The cat is a Rhodes Scholar and has a degree in Bio from Brown, so he can get down with the brainiacs. But folks who think the Earth is 6,000 years old and that God produced the beetles dig him, too. Accident? Hang in there, baby–it’s politics. There are no accidents. Contradiction? There are no contradictions, although sometimes there are. Schizophrenic? Yes and no. When it comes to irreducible complexity, Bobby’s as irreducible and complex as they come. Like Sarah, he can tell a story: Said he was there, when Katrina went down, in a sheriff’s office as the fuzz got righteously P.O.’d at a Fed bureaucrat for withholding boats to rescue folks from their flood-imperiled pads. Then it turned out he wasn’t there, only heard the pig yakkity-yakking about it on the phone days later. Like Mike, he has a mantra: “Americans can do anything.” It’s “Om mani padme hum” Looziana-style. Say it long enough and it changes the universe. Or at least folks think it does. Or at least Bobby thinks folks think it does. Because it’s all in your head. CAPTAIN RUSH: A gentle giant who’s only giant horizontally and is anything but gentle. Irascible-but-lovable-but-obnoxious-but-loud, with a crusty exterior concealing a heart of soft, warm hate, he’s the one in charge, the grown-up, the boss. This was his idea, to bring together these three non-conformist rebel-hot-heads-patriots-symbols-of-conservative-resurgence-with-racial-ethnic-and-gender-crossover-appeal. Of course he can’t do it alone. He’s got help. That’s where Joe “My Name Isn’t Joe And I’m Not a Plumber” The Plumber fits in. Rush knows that war is not unhealthy for defense contractors and other Republican things. He knows that reality is for people who can’t face drugs–and he faces drugs every day. He knows that if Obama fails to solve the problems created by Republican policies, then they weren’t created by Republican policies–and if he does solve them, then they weren’t problems. Like the I Ching says, you’re either on the bus or off the bus; well, dig–Rush is the bus. And he wants to throw America under it every day, in the name of “conservative principles.” If Sarah’s finances look hinky, Rush is there to blame everything on Clinton. If Mike goes off-message, Rush is there to call Harry Reid a socialist. If Bobby’s speech is a turn-off and a bring-down, with a come-on like a come-down you can put down as a put-on, Rush is there to dub him “the next Ronald Reagan.” The GOP Squad: Three misfits of gender and color, ready to take it to the streets and make the Party happening again. With Michele Bachmann as “Michele, The Embarrassing Secretary” and Mitch McConnell as “The Crypt-keeper.” Can you dig it? Peace out. Cross-posted at What HE Said

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Ellis Weiner: GOP Squad ‘09!

1. 60 million dollars to re-fund Project Bluebook (UFO research) to determine which planet Republicans transported Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal from (obviously space aliens trying to approximate human empathy and folksiness). 2. 200,000 dollars to off Rush. That breaks down to: 50,000 OxyContin ; 1,000 orders of Domino’s Cheesy Bread ; 200 Havana cigars; 100 angry, underpaid illegal immigrant servants with a grudge; 4 infected tranny hookers; and 1 large African American male who sporadically jumps out in undisclosed dark alleys to frighten him. Any of which may lead to his most fortunate demise. 3. 300 million dollars to develop automobile prototype that runs on stem cells ( Ford Fetus ? Chrysler Le Zygote ? GMC Blastula ?). Pro-Choice=Pro-Environment. 4. 30 million bucks for Rod Blagojevich to take a powder (includes two million dollars for hairdo maintenance). Disappearing till the end of Biden’s second presidential term when he reluctantly returns, after finally blowing all the cash, to participate in the Surreal Life Season 30 . 5. 100 million dollars for the September 2010 Oliver Stone Project. Tentative titles: ” Walking the Dog… at Abu Ghraib ,” ” The Not-So-Great Pyramids ,” ” Saving Mohammed’s Privates “. 6. 500 million dollars allocated to begin the process of adding Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn’s faces to Mt. Rushmore. Sally Hemings’ countenance will also eventually be displayed, though only as a locket around Jefferson’s neck (might have to chisel a little bit off Washington’s shoulder, but it can work). 7. Five more million for Volcano Research …for live human sacrifices. List includes: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (AKA “the Evil Trinity of Death and Destruction”). In order to see if offering their blackened, barely mortal souls may actually appease the gods. Either way, it’s a win-win, just for sh*ts and giggles. 8. Five billion dollars to begin the nationalization of Whole Foods and/or Trader Joe’s . So that the impoverished child in Cincinnati has access to the freshest, organic broccoli rabe and Oatmeal Cranberry Dunkers just like the rest of us. 9. 50 million dollars to study the effects of early-childhood acting trauma on endangered chimpanzees forced to live with the elderly . 10. 15 billion dollars to disprove the existence of “God” or any other version of divine entity, which has helped to fuel hatred, genocide and war. Establishing evolution as a Law might be handy (theories don’t get the respect they used to; might as well be a lowly hypothesis we’re talking about when dealing with these backwoods crackers). Also an anti-Faith pill, so people stop “Leaping” into la-la land ( see Kierkegaard ).

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Warren Holstein: Top Ten Earmarks for Progressive Liberal Lefties