Big Dog Is Faking It

As politically brilliant as Bill Clinton is, he sure is acting like he doesn't understand the Tea Party threat at all. It's an act, of course.

Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the Republican Party is embracing "ideology over evidence" and pushing out pragmatic voices that would make even his White House successor seem like a liberal.

Clinton, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis, said there was no mistaking that Republicans have tacked hard right and questioned whether former President George W. Bush would fit in among the party's candidates this year.

"A lot of their candidates today, they make him look like a liberal," Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd at a downtown hotel as he campaigned for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton.

Well no foolin' Bill, that's exactly why the Tea Party is winning primaries, because they are getting votes from people who think Bush really was too liberal.  The GOP is happily running away from Bush's record and blaming it all on Obama.  Blaming Bush is working wonderfully...for the Republicans.

I know Bill Clinton isn't this stupid, so I can only assume he wants the Tea Party to post such shocking wins that the Democrats come crawling back to Hillary and Bill in 2012 and ask them to save the country.

Don't act all shocked, folks.  Neither Clinton is a fool.  They know they have a much better shot to convince Obama not to run if he loses both chambers of Congress to these nutbags.  Everyone has an agenda.

Including the Clintons.

It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World

This is what Delaware could be about to elect to the Senate in seven weeks.

A person who thinks masturbation is evil and that you shouldn't be allowed to do it.



A person who thinks anyone to the left of her is a Socialist.



The United.  States.  Senate.  Folks.  Six-year term.  She thinks there's just as much evidence for creationism as evolution, if not more.

Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.

Scared yet of this woman crafting laws for all Americans?  You should be.  You should be goddamn terrified of this woman if you disagree with her in any way.  She will be making laws for all of America, for all of us.  And the best part?  There's a lot more where that came from.

Still think there's no reason to vote?  What about Carl Paladino as Governor of the second most populous state in the country?

Carl Paladino -- a millionaire developer who has acknowledged forwarding racist and sexist emails, who has proposed turning empty prisons into dormitory space for welfare recipients, and whose state party didn't even want him on the ballot -- has won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in New York.

Think he can't win?

In April, Paladino acknowledged forwarding emails including images of bestiality and derogatory characterizations of President Obama, including one offering a video clip of African tribesmen dancing that characterized the video as "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal."

The Tea-Party backed candidate reportedly sent an e-mail depicting a horse having sex with a woman and another that included a pornographic video and the headline "Miss France 2008 F[***]ing." He also reportedly sent out an e-mail depicting President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as a pimp and prostitute and one showing an airplane landing near black men with the caption "Holy Sh*t. run ni**ers, run!"

He did this and still beat Rick Lazio by over twenty points. What makes you think he didn't win specifically because he did this?  What makes you think Americans don't agree with him on that?

In Orchard Park, a Buffalo suburb, Darryl Radt, who described himself as a regular primary voter, said he had come to the American Legion post to vote for Mr. Paladino “because he’s mad as hell and so am I.”

Ron Wojcik, 67, a retiree, said he was frustrated with Albany and Washington and wanted someone different. “I want somebody who’s honest and hasn’t been sucked into the system already,” Mr. Wojcik said. “The system always seems to change people.”

"Hey honey, you see this Paladino guy?  Hell Martha, one of THEM'S in the White House!  I like this guy, he ain't afraid to say what everyone's thinkin'!"

And so a multi-millionaire real estate tycoon bought his way onto the ticket and won votes for being a racist jagoff.  Don't think he can win the general?  Keep telling yourself that.  Millions of pissed off Tea Party folks are going to make their votes count in November.  For those of you who think the Tea Party is harmless or as one friend told me last night "It's just the pendulum swinging back the other way" then you're badly underestimating what's going on here.

The turnout models mean nothing.  They are all badly underestimating the number of people now willing to vote, and vote for hard-core nutjobs just to flush out the two-party system.  They're literally drinking the drain cleaner.  They're blaming the Democrats and the Republicans and they want a third option.  That third option is people like Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino.

Democrats have completely failed to tap into this anger.  Now it will be used against them with devastating results.  People who have never voted in anything but Presidential elections are going to be out in massive numbers in November for the Tea Party.  They are pissed.  They are looking to punish the system.  They will vote against their own self-interests, but they will vote.

What are YOU going to do?

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

See this?



No, that's not a road. It's a Mississippi River waterway choked to the gills, literally, with dead sea life.

What you see above isn't a rural gravel road. It's a Louisiana waterway, its surface completely covered with dead sea life -- a mishmash of species of fish, crabs, stingray and eel. New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV reports that even a whale was found dead in the area.

Fish kills are fairly common along the Gulf Coast, particularly during the summer in the area near the mouth of the Mississippi, the site of this kill. The area is rife with dead zones -- stretches where sudden oxygen depletion can cause widespread death. But those kills tend to be limited to a single species of fish, rather than the broad sort of die-off involved in this kill.

And therein lies the concern of Gulf residents, who suspect this may be yet another side effect of the catastrophic BP oil spill.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser sounded the alarm bells Monday, distributing the photos here to the local media. Nungesser said that no testing is currently planned to determine how the kill may relate to the BP oil disaster, but he pleaded with officials from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to investigate.

But everything is fine in the Gulf of Mexico because the well is capped and the oil is gone.

Turning Japanese

Japan's central bank just got into the currency market overnight, buying dollars to stem the massive inflow into the Japanese Yen.

Fresh after victory in a party leadership contest, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan appeared to be stepping up efforts to wrench the country out of deflation by targeting yen strength, which has weighed on stock prices and corporate profits. 

Even as the U.S. dollar surged as much as 3 percent on the day against the yen, doubts lingered about the ultimate effectiveness of Japan's unilateral yen selling spree. A 15-month solo effort by Switzerland to weaken its currency did little to tame the Swiss franc.

In addition, Japan is trying to put a halt to yen strength while other major central banks such as the Federal Reserve may be considering additional steps to ease policy that could weigh on their respective currencies.

"It is far less clear that intervention will be effective in a world of zero interest rates and excess liquidity, but we think that it still makes sense for Japan to take action to try to arrest yen strength," Richard Jerram, chief Asia economist at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, said.

All bets are now off this week.  What will the Fed do to keep up?  What will the European Central Bank do to keep up with the Fed?  The carousel is spinning around faster and faster now, and when it breaks down, all hell will break loose.

More Primary Impetus, The Morning After

The primary votes for GOP NH-Sen are still being counted this morning, but the big news is that in Delaware, Christine "Masturbation is bad" O'Donnell has taken a six point win over 9-term Congressman Mike Castle for the GOP Senate nomination, and in NY's Governor's race, the GOP candidate will not be Rick Lazio, as everyone expected, but Carl "Debtor's Prisons" Paladino, who won by over 20 points.

Castle would have won the general easily, but in the dark blue state of Delaware, suddenly Democrat Chris Coons is the favorite.  The NRSC?  Now ignoring the race.

A National Republican Senatorial Committee source told TPM tonight that the party will be sending money and support elsewhere since O'Donnell, not moderate Rep. Mike Castle (R), is the nominee. O'Donnell, a perennial candidate who has never held political office, trails Democratic nominee Chris Coons.

NRSC officials say that if O'Donnell proves she is viable as a candidate in what is considered to be a blue state, "we would hope Sen. Jim DeMint and the Tea Party Express would invest in her race." If that happens, the NRSC would consider spending for O'Donnell.

The Tea Party Express hit back, calling it a "rash" decision and reminding supporters the NRSC attempted to help Sen. Lisa Murkowski during a close vote in the Alaska Senate primary she lost last month.

"It is because of inexcusable conduct in Delaware and Alaska that so many conservatives have turned to the Tea Party Express, offering their support and their donations," Tea Party Express officials told reporters. "These people have lost faith in the NRSC as just another big-government, Washington, D.C.-based organization that has contributed to the problems this country currently faces."

Meanwhile in New York state, Carl Paladino has the privilege of getting crushed by state AG Andrew Cuomo in the general despite Paladino's...extra curricular activities.

Paladino has generated some controversy since announcing his candidacy. He sent out a series of racist emails, suggested welfare recipients should be housed in prisons, and became quite outspoken in his opposition to the Park51 Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Lazio also focused much of his resources on opposing Park51, but it was not enough to overcome Paladino's personal fortune and appeal to populist anger.

We'll see if Paladino's "I'm mad as hell" slogan and personal wealth can put a dent in Cuomo's rather overwhelming lead. The TPM Poll Average shows Cuomo ahead in the general election matchup, 58.3%-25.9%.

We'll see how it shakes out, but frankly Delaware Senate is going to be a pickup for the Dems, and NY Gov will be a bright spot for them.  Seven weeks to go.  We'll see who's left standing.

StupidiNews!

• Eleven children have died in a boat accident in Brazil over the weekend.
• New York finally complies with new voting machine laws, but the process was anything but smooth.
• Energy industry lobbyists are blasting California's position on the state's new anti climate change measure, Prop 23.
• The former GMAC Finance arm, now Ally, thinks it too can emerge from receivership soon.
• UK officials have decided that ISPs have to help copyright content sources fight piracy to the tune of 25% of the bill.

Last Call

The postmortems on how Obama has already lost everything are getting annoying.

“He cannot save 2010,” the big-time Democrat is saying of Barack Obama. “It is gone. He must now concentrate on saving 2012. But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”

In my experience, the big-time Democrat has hardly ever been wrong. He does not dislike President Obama. On the contrary, like most big-time Democrats, he worked hard for his election in 2008 and would much rather see Democrats hold onto Congress this Nov. 2 than lose.

He just doesn’t think it’s going to happen. A few months ago, he told me Democrats could win the House in a squeaker and also retain the Senate. We talked again a few days ago, and things had changed.

“There is going to be a total wipeout, and it is totally going to be in Obama’s lap,” he said. “He should drop plans for Congress and plan for Nov. 3 and what he does next.”

And of course those plans for what Obama should do next are simple: completely capitulate to the GOP and roll back the last 75 years of social programs, civil rights, and declare war on Islam by bombing Iran. Right?

Because anything short of that will lead to impeachment hearings pretty damn quickly under a GOP Congress.

I know it's hard for Roger Simon and the Village to function under any other assumption that Republicans are always right 100% of the time and Democrats are nothing more than a curious, anachronistic relic of democracy kept around as court jesters to whisper "memento mori" at the GOP elite whenever they foul up the country as bad as Bush did.

Apparently the Tea Party is now in charge of that whole "reminding Republicans they too are mortal" thing, and so really the only political parties are A) Republicans and B) Tea Party Republicans, and they forget the rest.

It seems to me that any "big-time Democrat" who is willing to throw in the towel at this point was a Republican to begin with.

Hey, at what point do the Hillary Clinton PUMAs start turning out in droves for the GOP in November to force such a blowout in 2010 that she has to run in 2012?

Won't that be great?

There Are Nooooooo Cats In America

And the streets are paved with cheese!



Also, there are no racists in the Tea Party movement...



...and the streets are paved by magic!

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

ACORN has been defunct for over half a year now, yet 20% of Americans believe ACORN still will "steal the election" for Democrats.  Best part?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this is that only 40% of voters definitively say they think ACORN will not steal the election with another 40% saying they're not sure. I guess a lot of folks are just waiting to see if ACORN's really gone away or if it's just hiding in the bushes waiting for people to get complacent before it makes its move.

Sixty percent...3 out of 5 Americans...think there's at least some chance ACORN can steal the election for the Democrats.

Let's go over that again.

A majority of Americans think there's a chance that a defunct organization that has been completely disbanded will still be able to affect the election.  The Republican media campaign to discredit the Democrats as illegitimate has been so successful that most of us now believe in ghosts.

I am increasingly convinced that as a people, we deserve an overwhelmingly powerful Republican Congress that will dismantle everything since the New Deal and return us to Gilded Age serfdom.

Gold Rush, Part 11

Gold hitting yet another record high today...

Gold hit record highs Tuesday to settle above $1,271 an ounce, as the U.S. dollar declined broadly after upbeat data failed to convince investors to shift into risk-linked assets.

Gold is now on course for a 15 percent gain in 2010, fueled largely by investor nervousness stemming from the fallout of the euro zone debt crisis and from economic data that has suggested global economic growth may be losing momentum.  

"May" be losing momentum?  Nice.  People are starting to hedge their bets big time.  Gold jumped almost $30 an ounce today on an idle Tuesday.  The next Fed meeting is next week.  If the Fed is going to announce it will start buying securities in earnest then, all bets are off.

At this point we're just waiting for the trigger that will plunge us right back into September 2008.

The Tyrrany Of The Majority Continues

A new Qunnipiac University poll finds more Americans want to end 14th Amendment citizenship provisions for children of undocumented immigrants.

American voters say 48 – 45 percent that the United States should end the practice of granting citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Voters also say 68 – 24 percent that immigration policy should emphasize stricter enforcement rather than integrating illegal immigrants into U.S. society, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey finds.

Democrats favor granting citizenship to children of illegal immigrants 62 – 31 percent. Republicans, by 67 – 27 percent, and independent voters, by 51 – 42 percent, say these children should be denied citizenship. Women split 46 – 46 percent while men oppose this automatic citizenship 51 – 43 percent.

There's also some interesting numbers on Islam in America.

Only 38 percent of American voters have a favorable opinion of Islam, while 40 percent have an unfavorable opinion. But voters say 50 - 27 percent that mainstream Islam is a peaceful religion, rather than a religion which encourages violence to non-Muslims.

The Muslim group has the right to build a mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero, American voters say 70 - 25 percent. But voters say 63 - 28 percent that it is wrong to do so. There is no sub-group which says it is "appropriate" to build the mosque near Ground Zero.

Once again, if you say the Park51 people have the right to build their community center but are not free to exercise that right, then they do not have the right. You cannot have this position without being a complete hypocrite.

Period. And yes, this means I'm calling tens of millions of Americans hypocrites. So be it.

The tyranny of the majority continues. When is it appropriate to exercise your Constitutional rights? Only when the majority says so. That's how America works now. When are you an American? Only when the majority says so.

The Constitution is now secondary to the Court of Public Opinion.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Shorter The Village:

"You know if you damn Liberals went back to your powerless days of 1994, the Republicans would completely stop being insane.  Why can't you Dirty F'cking Hippies just do what the Tea Party wants you to do and shut up already?"

Stick This In Your Pipeline And Smoke It

It's not a question of if another San Bruno gas pipeline disaster will happen in America, but where and how soon.

The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there.

Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting.

But the effort has fallen short. Critics say the regulatory system is ripe for problems because the government largely leaves it up to the companies to do inspections, and utilities are reluctant to spend the money necessary to properly fix and replace decrepit pipelines.

"If this was the FAA and air travel we were talking about, I wouldn't get on a plane," said Rick Kessler, a former congressional staffer specializing in pipeline safety issues who now works for the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.

Investigators are still trying to figure out how the pipeline in San Bruno ruptured and ignited a gigantic fireball that torched one home after another in the neighborhood, killing at least four people. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the pipeline's owner, said Monday it has set aside up to $100 million to help residents recover.

One has to wonder if PG&E would have rather spent that $100 million on inspecting the gas lines before rather than cleaning up the mess later.  The fact is inspection and replacement of buried gas mains like that is expensive and messy.  50 year old pipes in the middle of older neighborhoods where homes and businesses are built up can be a real pain to get to, especially in densely populated urban centers.

But the simple fact of the matter is utility companies are profit based, not safety based.  Skipping on inspections means the company saves money, not to mention laying off safety personnel (you don't need as many.)   It's a short-term gamble most companies are increasingly willing to take, and these companies want the government to back off and mandate fewer inspections.

At some point, government infrastructure investment becomes mandatory.  San Bruno was the result of why.  Infrastructure requires someone to pay for it and to direct it.  If companies aren't going to do it, who will?

Big Dog Versus Rachel

Hey look, Politico's trying to start a fight.  Imagine that.

Bill Clinton flashed irritation at MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and other liberals Monday for failing to appreciate the successes of his presidency.

“One of the leading television commentators on one of our liberal cable channels said I was the best Republican president the country ever produced, which would come [as] quite a surprise to the Republicans, half of whom still think I’m a closet communist,” Clinton said during an appearance with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Clinton didn’t mention Maddow by name, but she made that comment on her March 31 show.

“What she meant by that was I didn’t necessarily follow their ‘conventional wisdom,’” he said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?!’”

Clinton said he accomplished more for the poor and middle class than traditional, New Deal-era liberalism ever could have. He touted his welfare-to-work program, which he said cut the rolls by 60 percent.

“We had 100 times as many people move out of poverty during those eight years [I was president] than the previous 12 years because we had an earned income tax credit, not because we had another traditional anti-poverty program hiring people,” he said.

Big Dog has a point. The man did balance the Federal budget and he did so in a fair manner. It doesn't mean however he didn't pull a few Republican-style things, especially the end of Glass-Steagall.  That was all Clinton and Phil Gramm, and that on Clinton's way out created the bubbles that wrecked our economy over the last ten years, from dot-com madness to the housing bubble to the current meltdown.  All of that came from banks being able to play Big Casino games starting in 2000.

The results from all that (plus Bush's additional spending, plus the spending Obama has started to try to pull us out of the mess) is a massive deficit hole and a national debt approaching $14 trillion now.

None of that would have been possible without Clinton's last year in office.

StupidiNews!

• Embattled Harlem Democrat Charlie Rangel faces multiple primary opponents today in New York.
• A new Pew media study shows that the biggest long-term threats to FOX News's dominance in politics is...Stewart and Colbert.
• California Dem Jerry Brown is apologizing to Bill Clinton over Brown's remarks over the weekend involving Monica Lewinsky.
• Veterans Affairs had a deal with Prudential over lump-sum life insurance payments for over six million soldiers.
• Nintendo's console-defining smash Super Mario Bros. has a super 25th birthday this week.