Palin and Giffords ...

Right on!

What we have here is an attempted assassination of a politician by an insane crank at a political event, in a state where the political discourse has been an unrelenting howl of eliminationist rhetoric and characterization of anyone to the left of Genghis Khan as a traitor and enemy of the state…and now, when six (including a nine year old girl) lie dead and another fourteen are wounded, now suddenly we're concerned that it is rude and politicizing a tragedy to point out that the right wing has produced a toxic atmosphere that pollutes our politics with hatred and the rhetoric of violence?

Screw that. Now is the time to politicize the hell out of this situation. The people who are complaining are a mix of lefty marshmallows whose first reaction to the fulfillment of right-wing fantasies by a lunatic is to drop to their knees and beg forgiveness for thinking ill of people who paint bullseyes on their political opponents, and right wing cowards who are racing to their usual tactic of attacking their critics to shame them into silence. This is NOT the time to back down and suddenly find it embarrassing to point out that right-wing pundits make a living as professional goads to insanity.

Stop apologizing, backing down and going all wishy-washy every time the right wing corporate bozos start their demented war dance.

Sign of the times? ...

Equity?

"The articles of Equity are three:

"I. The balance of power among the people being very much deranged, by one having too much and another nothing, we hereby resolve ourselves into a congress or court of equity, to restore as far as in us lies the said natural balance of power, by taking from all who have too much as much of the said too much as we can lay our hands on; and giving to those who have nothing such a portion thereof as it may seem to us expedient to part with.

My, once we have all the equity we can take perhaps we will share it a little, perhaps, maybe.

The above quote is from Maid Marion by Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), Gutenberg.org, EBook #966.

I'm about half way through Peacock's version of the legend. There's so much more there than what Hollywood passed on.

Well, that's a surprise isn't it?
--------------------------------

Oh, mustn't leave out the the 2nd article of Legitimacy.

"II. Our government being legitimate, all our proceedings shall be legitimate: wherefore we declare war against the whole world, and every forester is by this legitimate declaration legitimately invested with a roving commission, to make lawful prize of every thing that comes in his way.

Has a sorta Bush-ian ring to it, doesn't it? I think it appeals to Obama also from what I've seen.

Why we despise them ...

Glenn Greenwald summarizes it so well:

It makes perfect sense that the country loathes the political establishment. Just look at its rancid fruits over the past decade: a devastating war justified by weapons that did not exist; a financial crisis that our Nation's Genuises failed to detect and which its elites caused with lawless and piggish greed; elections that seem increasingly irrelevant in terms of how the Government functions; grotesquely lavish rewards for the worst culprits juxtaposed with miserable unemployment and serious risks of having basic entitlements (Social Security) cut for ordinary Americans; and a Congress that continues to be owned, right out in the open, by the very interests that have caused so much damage. The political establishment is rotten to its core, and the only thing that's surprising is that the citizenry's contempt isn't even more intense than it is. ...

Then he slams the incompetence and utter decrepitude of the media:

... But precisely because that dynamic so clearly transcends Left/Right or Democratic/GOP dichotomies, little effort is expended to understand or explain it.

The media can't/won't attempt to understand the world they inhabit because it may not suit their little preprogrammed minds.

What do the do in all those journalism schools? Teach journalistic creationism?

And so who should that surprise? ...

Obama’s Drug Strategy All Talk, No Walk

"We are a nation of cover-up artists."

You can say that again ...

We are a nation of cover-up artists.

Today's quote ...

Jon Walker, firedoglake.com: “What a strange ‘Democracy’ we live in that an idea is too popular for any to stand against yet it might bring down the whole party and health care reform because many so deeply hate their supporters.”

Today's quote ...

... It's so striking how most of the policies we undertake in the name of combating Terrorism -- including our various invasions, bombings and occupations, and our always-escalating Surveillance State -- have exactly the opposite effect.

-- The backfiring of the surveillance state by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Arizona Geology Stories for 2009 ...

... at Arizona Geology blog.

So we will be better off with a Crooked Evil Republican as president ...

... and the usual dumb, incompetent Democrats in Congress (as long as the VP is not Palin, or Lieberman)?

Jane Hamsher: George Bush couldn’t pull off the great Social Security robbery because of opposition from the left. But Obama has neutralized liberal institutional pushback by locking them in the veal pen, holding EFCA hostage to sideline the unions and relying on his own personal magnitism [sic] to to keep member organizations like MoveOn or the Sierra Club from making a strong move without fracturing their own ranks.

Sad but possibly so.

Today's Quote ...

Leadership, Obama Style

Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.

Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn't mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can't tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

We have seen the same pattern of pretty speeches followed by empty exhortations on issue after issue. ...

-- Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator by Drew Westen, Huffington Post

I once had a manager who fit this description. He acted like he was a very nice person. But he had an assistant, not unlike Rahm-boy, who he gave the 'dirty' jobs, the normal personnel related jobs that most managers must do and that many do well thus garnering respect and a reasonably smooth running organization. Playing the good guy while a subordinate plays hatchet man can have unintended consequences ... as we are seeing right before our eyes.

Today's quote ...

If this election serves as a reminder that pandering to right wingers is not a successful electoral strategy [for Dems], then Creigh Deeds will have done even more good for Democrats than if he had won the Governorship today.

-- What Happened in Virginia? by Ben Tribbett, firedoglake.com

"Why is the Chamber of Commerce refusing to stand up for small business?" ...

Simon Johnson asks the question in title above.

There is a long tradition in the United States of big business trampling on independent entrepreneurs, and of those entrepreneurs fighting back through the ballot box. This time around, big banks captured their regulators, badly damaged small firms, and look set to do it again.

Why is the Chamber of Commerce refusing to stand up for small business?

The question is, I think, not exactly on the up and up. When was the national C of C ever about small business? As far as I can see they've always been about protecting the most selfish interests of very large corporations while claiming, quite disingenuously, that they are about protecting small business. Local C of C vary. They tend to represent medium to large businesses. Their business is to protect themselves. Creating an environment for new entries is NOT their goal.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize ...

TPM has an interpretation of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize that helps with my reaction that isn't this too soon? That Obama actually talks to other nations, is not an embarrassment and has command of the English language are some of the things that I like about him:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

I guess I'm jaded but I still feel that the reward is being given before the performance. Then we just 'hope' that the performance follows. Not unlike the rest of political and corporate structure in these here --no-health-care, decimated-retirement funds, increasing joblessness, increasingly homelessness for the not-rich and not-elite-- United States.

Michelle Bachmann. A laugh a minute ...

Far be it from me to suggest that we just don't like the lack of morality that is a required part of being a Republican politician, a group to which Michelle Bachmann belongs in spades.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): It may bother them that conservative women are happy and don't need government in order to be successful in life," ... "I have a great husband, great kids. I had a great career as a federal tax attorney. And I don't need government to be successful. And it seems like they have a stereotype for women and I don't fit in their stereotype. [emphasis added]

Though she doesn't need no stinkin' government she does live off of it --directly and indirectly.

I'm not implying that many Dems are not corrupt. But it does not yet appear that being corrupt is a requirement to join the group, though the corrupt do appear ascendant.

Today's quote ...

You may have noticed that a lot of Liberty Counsel's claims are flat-out lies. Don't let that disturb you! There is, after all, nothing in the Bible/Torah about lying.

-- ARE YOU "THE UNKNOWN LIBERAL"? Pick me, pick me! at Amygdala

Build a prison, then hire a 'security' company to fill it ...

So that you can use the revenue to support a police department?

Can the farce get any worse/better/more absurd?

Hardin Official Fights 'Outlandish' APF Rumors

Today's quote ...

The idea that these alleged Democrats would actually insist that uninsured people be forced by law to write huge checks to to the loathed insurance companies is mind-boggling. They seem intent upon taking what should be an historic progressive achievement and turning it into a hated, regressive tax on their own constituents, which is so politically obtuse I don't know how to process it.

... The problem seems to be that political considerations and consequences are irrelevant to the political system. What do we do about that?

-- Politics Without Politics by digby, Hullabaloo

Wonder what Obama is reading ...

Is Obama prepared to consider anything beyond being obsequious to the corporations that now appear to absolutely control both the US Congress and the White House?

Obama could read and, perhaps, ponder articles such as this: The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited

The article's conclusion:

... there is a long and ignoble tradition of racist reactionaries taking the law into their own hands when the government fails to maintain their desired racial state. These same unregulated militias, for that is what is what they were, that were able to merge their racial agenda into anti-bolshevist crusades, fighting against the "yellow peril", union busting, or creating a Juan Crow system in Georgia are reemerging. The only difference that I can see is that this time their rhetoric is wrapped in the language of the American constitution and of the necessity of resisting tyranny. An increasingly hard-up working and middle class who were already living in terror of dislocation and poverty are now seeing threats to their well-being amplified by recession. The American dream (and reality) for such people was expressed through ownership of property. However meagre their actual possessions may be those possessions are theirs. And this, I think, rather than greed, is what fueled the "conspicuous consumption" model of post-World War II America. Anything that smacks of "socialism" really does seem to be both alien and menacing to such people. Abram and people like her desperately want to believe that they can maintain the lifestyle they've been taught they are entitled to so long as they maintain a punishing work schedule and unsustainable debt levels. As I watched the Abram video I was struck by her sincerity. She really does believe that a lifestyle that has gutted America's future is not only sustainable but that there is some sort of "free market" that can only exist under a strict construction of the American constitution. The current multiple crises in America are being brought about by treasonous, evil, and powerful others inimical to America and all it stands for and intent upon its "systematic dismantling". Abram and the town hall protesters are a symptom of something very dangerous of a long tradition of extreme right wing American militancy that, should it be allowed to once again flourish unchecked, will make the misdeeds of Timothy McVeigh pale into insignificance. [emphasis added]

These people were creepily asleep under George W. Bush. Is Barack Obama oblivious of where we may be headed. Does he think he's only dealing with the politics of ignore the Lefties and satisfy the Robber Barons. It's become increasing clear that Obama never intended to even try to satisfy his mandate to work for the people of this country. The people who elected him will desert him and the rest, including his Robber Baron friends most likely, will destroy his Presidency.

You want justice? ...

Think it used to be call the Rule of Law, or something.

I don't know about you, but I find it somewhat distasteful that such an important and serious matter is being tested in the press for political reaction. I guess it's better than nothing, but I would think that Justice Department investigations should be undertaken without regard to public reaction.

Well not in the Obama administration anymore than the Bush administration. The more we 'change' the more we stay the same ...

Good luck America. I don't know which will get us first --global warming or our own elected politicians.

-------------------------
As usual, Glenn Greenwald gets to the heart of the matter:

Prosecuting only obscure "rogue" interrogators while immunizing powerful, high-level officials would not be an act of courage but of cowardice.

I do have a quibble with the following though:

... If Holder is too frightened to include the parties truly responsible for America's torture regime in the scope of the investigation he orders, then he ought simply to appoint a strong and independent prosecutor with the mandate to investigate anyone and everyone who might have broken our nation's torture laws ...

I doubt Holder or Obama have the courage to even delegate the responsibility. It seems that they think their job is to cover up and therefore their inclination, or at least Obama's inclination, is to manage the public perception by play acting. The last thing they want is for their act to get a life of its own.

Then again they haven't gotten their stories straight about how to best screw the country and protect the thugs, yet.

UPDATE: Harper's Scott Horton, who has been working on this story for a couple of weeks using DOJ sources of his, now reports at The Daily Beast that Holder's investigation would be broader than suggested by other reports today: ...

Does this mean I'm not a liberal? ...

This appealingly funny quote made me laugh out loud:

"We're liberal Democrats -- we have a Buddha on our table."

Now since I don't have a Buddha on my table, or anywhere else, does that mean I'm not a liberal?