The Pursuit Of Perfection

Who says there's nothing perfect left in these troubled times? The Detroit Lions have found their perfectly awful season as their 31-21 loss to Green Bay yesterday sealed their place in history at 0-16.

The 1976 expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 0-14, were the last team to complete a season without a win.

“I’ve got to live with this,” Lions center Dominic Raiola said. “This is on my resume.”

It’s also on the resume of Lions coach Rod Marinelli, whose job is in jeopardy.

The Lions’ last loss didn’t come without a fight. After falling behind 24-14 midway through the fourth quarter, Kevin Smith’s 9-yard touchdown run put Detroit back within a field goal.

But Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers responded with a 71-yard touchdown pass to Donald Driver, and the Lions’ Dan Orlovsky threw an interception on fourth-and-27 with 3 minutes left, dooming Detroit to futility of historic proportion.

“It’s just kind of numb,” veteran kicker Jason Hanson said. “It’s here. It’s been coming, though, a train rolling down the tracks for a while. We tried to stop it. We couldn’t.”

The Lions were building toward this for years and now have lost 23 of their last 24 games.

The 0-16 record will be a lasting testimony to the Matt Millen era.

Is there any more appropriate symbol of 2008's crushing futility than to see the most financially ravaged major city in the country field the worst team in modern NFL history and complete the dubious record on the last weekend of arguably the worst year in America in generations?

If the smashmouth, fight back Pittsburgh Steelers and their 3 Super Bowl wins represented America's soul during the blue-collar 70's, the showtime Broadway Joe-led San Francisco 49ers the team of the high-flying 80's with their 4 wins captured America's spirit, and the domination of the Aikman-era "Science of Football" Dallas Cowboys epitomized the high-tech 90's with their 3 wins in 4 seasons represented our rise to the "unipolar moment" of the Clinton era, the NFL team that represents this country's very essence during the Big Zeroes may indeed deserve to be the Detroit Lions, a team that steadily grew worse from 9-7 in 2000 until this year's nadir of absolute zero as we head into the worst financial storm in generations.

If that's not a perfect parable for this country over the last eight years under its current management, I don't know what is.

StupidiNews!

• A third day of Israeli airstrikes rock the Gaza Strip with ground troops ready to enter as Hamas continues to launch Kassam rockets.
• First Lady Laura Bush calls the shoe tossed at her husband by an Iraqi reporter "an assault".
• One in ten Floridians is on food stamps and many more qualify.
• California's $42 billion budget shortfall and 8.4% unemployment rate is taking its toll across the state.
• 2008 marked the first year the internet overtook print as America's primary source of news.

The Real Problem With Israel And The Palestinians

As we learn today that the Egyptian government has fired on Palestinians fleeing Gaza through the Egypt crossing, it's time to reflect on the views from the wingnut section of the universe. There's a distinct chunk of people out there who honestly believe that the problem with Israel is that they haven't killed enough Palestinians yet.

No, really, that's the argument. That's the sentiment you're seeing on wingnut blog after wingnut blog. Jules Crittenden mocks "liberal hand wringing" and bemoans:

I don’t know about you, but I sure hope Palestinians lobbing missiles and Israelis retaliating doesn’t amount to a serious challenge of Obama’s ability to lead the free world, or we’re in trouble.

Nice guy, Jules. The guys at Power Line seem to think the problem is those terrible Hamas guys keep ending up in places where Israeli airstrikes have no choice but to flatten Palestinian civilians.

Hamas' conduct is illegal and evil. Under the circumstances, the Bush administration's instruction to Israel to avoid civilian casualties at best represents a kind of confusion regarding the challenges Israel faces on each of its borders. The challenges are akin to those the United States faces in its own engagements in the region, so it is hard to believe that the problem is one of intellectual clarity rather than political cowardice.

If only the Israelis would just have enough balls to turn Gaza into a parking lot, this whole thing would be over. And that's the mild stuff compared to the completely unhinged Pamela Geller over at Atlas Shrugs, who honestly believes that Hamas's rockets are in fact proof of the Second Holocaust and completely fails to see the irony in wanting to exterminate Palestinians from the face of the Earth.

If only the Palestinians would have the grace to just die already. Rounding up a million and a half people, putting a huge concrete wall around them, starving them out and then dropping bombs on them until they stop complaining about their "merciful" conditions is a perfectly logical thing to some people.

And folks wonder why there's no peace in the Middle East.

Thanking Dubya

Condi Rice still carries the "work wife" torch for her boss, as she explains to CBS that Americans of all stripes will soon "start to thank the President for what he's done" over the last eight years.

"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that aired on CBS' "Sunday Morning."

The secretary of state brushed off reports that suggest the United States' image is suffering abroad. She praised the administration's ability to change the conversation in the Middle East.

"This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sorry, it isn't. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans' interests and values in the long run -- not for today's headlines, but for history's judgment," she said.

"And I am quite certain that when the final chapters are written and it's clear that Saddam Hussein's Iraq is gone in favor of an Iraq that is favorable to the future of the Middle East; when the history is written of a U.S.-China relationship that is better than it's ever been; an India relationship that is deeper and better than it's ever been; a relationship with Brazil and other countries of the left of Latin America, better than it's ever been ...

"When one looks at what we've been able to do in terms of changing the conversation in the Middle East about democracy and values, this administration will be judged well, and I'll wait for history's judgment and not today's headlines."

On its face, Rice's protestations are equal parts stupidity and delusion. She's been the weakest Secretary of State in modern history, serving as the Bush administration's Apologist-In-Chief more than anything else. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, the EU, Haiti, Indonesia, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa -- all places where our foreign policy has made things worse and in many instances has cost thousands of lives if not hundreds of thousands. Arrogance, ineptness, stubborness, stupidity, ignorance...these are the hallmarks of Bush foreign policy, and while Colin Powell certainly has his own crimes to pay for, Condi Rice bears a large butcher's bill herself, first as Bush's intel wrangler, then as Bush's cleaning crew.

But as ridiculous as Condi Rice's argument is (her assumption that Bush's policies will "stand the test of time" is both delusional and horrifying) she's correct on one level: I do thank Bush for being such a singularly terrible leader in every sense of the term that America chose to elect Barack Obama specifically to fix all the things Bush fucked up.

So, she's right on that account. We'll soon be thanking Bush for not being President anymore, and that soon will be about 12:01 PM on January 20.

Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right

A second day of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza has brought the death toll to over 275. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that the assault on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, will "continue for some time".

Israel will call up 7,000 reserve soldiers, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during the weekly Cabinet meeting. He told ministers he planned to present the measure to two Knesset committees, which must approve the action.

Meanwhile, Israeli ground troops and tanks were deployed around Gaza. However, there is no indication of a ground operation inside Gaza.

The U.N. called for a halt to hostilities, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the Cabinet meeting that the operation "is liable to continue for some time, perhaps more than can be foreseen at the present time."

Hamas, too, showed no signs of backing down.

For a second day, black plumes of smoke rose above Gaza City as makeshift ambulances screamed down rubble-strewn streets, taking wounded Palestinians to hospitals already crowded with hundreds of patients wounded this weekend.

It's clear at this point Israel has decided that with the cease fire expired as of December 19 and the US in no position to do anything during the transition, that the time for restraint has ended. Lebanon was too difficult a target to deal with in 2006, but the lessons the Iraelis have learned from that seem to be to pick on a much weaker target and to start the PR war early.

It's sad, really. Neither side is right, and the death toll willcontinue to rise...and the worst part is that the one country that could influence Israel to stop -- the United States -- has zero credibility after killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, putting anything Israel has done to shame.

Just how many wars will Barack Obama have to deal with on January 20?

Too Much To Take

It appears that Bush's planned (and then reversed) pardon of mortgage fraudster Isaac Toussie was more than even Malkinvania could handle.

"What's particularly galling is this man was involved in mortgage crimes and mortgage fraud, which, HELLO! has been the number one story of the year," Malkin said about Bush's year ending "embarrassment."

The conservative pundit wondered why the Bush vetters didn't do a basic Google search beforehand.

"It calls attention to the Bush administration's own role in allowing the subprime crisis to fester," said Malkin. "The fact is under Bush's watch, a lot of this did take place, and the Bush administration's policies themselves, particularly at HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban development, encouraged exactly this kind of behavior."

If even Our Lady Of The Muslim Concentration Camps is convinced Bush is at fault for this disaster of an economy, there's pretty much zero hope for his legacy.

But it gets worse. As Steve Benen points out, the nature of Presidential pardons are absolute, meaning that there's a strong legal argument that Isaac Toussie's pardon cannot be rescinded in any way.

Like it or not, presidents have broad authority when it comes to granting pardons. They also, however, have no authority to when it comes to taking pardons back.

Bush's clemency, announced this week, for Isaac Toussie is rather scandalous in its own right, given Toussie's background as a scam artist who got off easy running an illegal mortgage scheme and his father's contributions to Republicans earlier this year. But it's the president's decision to try and change his mind that's especially interesting.

Now, as a legal matter, it appears Bush can't grant a pardon and then rescind it. The process just doesn't work that way. The White House would have us believe, however, that his publicly announced, unconditional pardon for Isaac Toussie didn't really count. Bush was going to grant him clemency, but it hadn't actually happened yet, so the president interrupted the process before it could become official.

and as Josh Marshall reveals, THAT argument holds no water either.

But from what I can tell, the Pardon Attorney doesn't 'execute' anything. The current system of having the Pardon Attorney create certificates of pardon only goes back to the Eisenhower administration, and was then apparently only done to relieve the president of the chore of signing so many pardons and commutations. I spoke to former Pardon Attorney Margaret Colgate Love (1990-1997) who told me that "receiving the president's warrant and sending notifications to the petitioners is purely 'a ministerial act of notification.'" In layman's terms, at this end of the transaction, the Pardon Attorney's role is really just a matter of paperwork. "When we received the Master Warrant from the president," said Love, "what our job was was to notify them, by telephone, and eventually by written notification. The document evidenced the president's action. We never assumed that that document had any necessary legal significance."

So just as a factual matter, the idea that the Pardon Attorney needs to 'execute' the pardons seems to be bogus. End of story.

In other words, once Bush or any President grants a pardon, it's a done deal. Bush can't take it back. And as Digby pointed out yesterday, the whole point of reversing the Toussie pardon was to make sure Bush didn't have a fishy-looking Marc Rich-style controversial pardon like Clinton did so that the GOP could oppose the appointment of Eric Holder to AG. Holder was of course the Clinton Justice Department official who signed off on the Marc Rich pardon, and the plan was of course to make him pay for it during the nomination hearings and burn him to the ground.

Now the Bushies don't even have that. There's no way they can accuse Obama of glossing over pardon shenanigans to appoint Eric Holder when Bush's pardon of Toussie looms over the entire proceedings.

Insert foot, pull trigger. These Bush idiots can't even get a pardon right...a final, sad commentary on the complete political incompetence of the outgoing administration. Is it any wonder 75% of Americans are glad to tell Bush "Don't let the White House door hit you in the ass on the way out"?

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• Israeli airstrikes on Gaza claim over 150 lives as Israel retaliates for days of Palestinian rocket attacks.
• The US offers Viagra to win over Afghan warlords.
• An Iraqi prison revolt leads to 16 dead and 3 escaped Al-Qaeda members.
• Wal-Mart will be the next store to sell the Apple iPhone starting this weekend.
• Is it time for the FCC to go for good?

Earning Cred, Republican Style

So, suppose you're a Republican running for arguably the most powerful internal position in the GOP: Chair of the Republican National Committee. You're running for the job to be the person in charge of the GOP's new strategy to take back Washington. How do you go about raising your profile among GOP bigwigs over the holiday season?

Well, if you're former Huckabee campaign guru Chip Saltsman, you put out some swag bags complete with holiday tuneage.

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show.

Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members.
“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”

The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.

The song, which debuted on Limbaugh’s show in late March 2007, latches onto an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times of the same title. That column, penned by cultural critic David Ehrenstein, argued that Obama could serve as a balm to whites who felt guilty about past treatment of African Americans.

Limbaugh first highlighted the column the day it ran, according to a contemporary report by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog agency. Media Matters reported Limbaugh repeated the phrase more than two dozen times the day the column ran.

The following month, Shanklin debuted his version of the song, sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and performed in Shanklin’s impression of Al Sharpton.

“See, real black men, like Snoop Dogg, or me, or Farrakhan, have talked the talk, and walked the walk, not come in late and won,” one verse in the song says.

The GOP. Because being a racist asshole never goes out of style, and that's what passes as a positive among the party elite.

As I've said time and time again, if you think the campaign season was the worst the GOP could possibly get, wait until the wing of the party that honestly believes they lost because they were way too soft on the President-Elect finishes purging the moderates from the party, and galvanizes every racist, bigoted, homophobic, hate-filled impulse into a party platform and long-term strategy to "take the country back for real America and God."

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

What Digby Said

And lo, Digby said:

In case anyone's wondering why Bush retracted the pardon of his contributor's son, it's not because he had an attack of conscience or even because it looks bad politically to pardon a mortgage scammer.

It's sadly because the pardon would have made it harder for the Republicans to tank Eric Holder's nomination on the basis of the Marc Rich pardon. One of their most substantial hissy fits was that that Holder signed off on it when it hadn't gone through proper channels (something that was not unprecedented then either.) It turns out that this Bush pardon was granted under similar circumstances.

Remember, Rove is orchestrating the Holder strategy and he's made clear that the Rich pardon is going to be at the center of it.

This has been What Digby Said.

Four Years Down The Road

A lot has been made of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's shot in the GOP primaries in 2012, but if even Rick Moran over at Right Wing Nuthouse thinks Jindal's a loser, then he's in real trouble. Jindal reflects the basic problems with the GOP according to Moran.

Sizing up Jindal at this point is probably an exercise in futility since he will no doubt grow and change as his term in office continues. But what we know of him now is not very encouraging to me. I could never vote for someone who believes that creationism/intelligent design should be taught in schools – even if it is done in concert with the teaching of evolution with the goal of “letting the kids decide” which “theory” they wish to believe.

This kind of anti-intellectualism that promotes ID as science on a par with Darwinism is just plain loony. Imagine in Cosmology if we taught the “Steady State” theory of the origins of the Universe alongside the “Big Bang” and expansion theories, allowing students to decide which theory is “true.” The question answers itself. One theory is clearly wrong and the other is clearly correct.

If parents want to home school their kids and teach them ID or send them to private religious schools where Darwin is a dirty word, fine. They will grow up sweeping the floors of Japanese, Swedish, or Chinese bio-tech factories rather than owning them. You can deny the efficacy of evolution all you want but since modern biology is based on it (and not on ID/creationism) it stands to reason that the coming revolution in bio-technology will proceed without your children being involved. This nonsense has already affected the numbers of students entering graduate level life sciences which a recent Rand study showed will necessitate US bio-tech firms looking overseas for engineers and biologists within the next decade.

But this debate is only a symptom of what ails the GOP. Much of the base appears to be battling modernity itself. Declaring categorically – and without even a scintilla of the requisite knowledge to do so – that Climate Change is a “hoax” bespeaks an ignorance that causes most voters to blanche in horror at the prospect of electing a Republican. Scientists who advocate the theory of catastrophic climate change may indeed be wrong. They may be close minded and not open to opposing views. But “hoaxers?”

This is not the first time that eminent scientists have gotten it wrong and refused to consider evidence the the contrary. The theory of plate tectonics – the continents sitting on plates, floating on magma, that rub against each other and migrate great distances over time – was belittled for a 100 years. But no one accused proponents of the Continental Drift theory of perpetrating a scientific hoax to advance that theory at the expense of plate tectonics.

And of course he's right. The GOP is at war with itself over science and religion. There's a deeply ingrained, fanatical section of the GOP that is Luddite to the core, that rejects science as the tool of evil, believing it to be what the elitist secular Liberals use to yoke the necks of the proud, self-sufficient, God-fearing American family.

We're talking about a group of people that honestly believe all the nasty things going on in the world are the result of the final coming battle, and that faith in God and only faith in God can save us. Anything else, including the whole exercise of intellectualism in any capacity, takes away from faith and is therefore inherently evil.

It's part preying on the fears of the small-minded and part being scared into religious fanaticism. People are scared because they are being scared on purpose by these clowns, and the worse the economy gets, the easier it's going to be to convince these folks that the real problem is not Bush and the GOP ripping the American people off, but lack of God's law being imposed on all Americans.

Moran belongs to the sect of the GOP that thinks it is smarter then that, but in the end, those are just the guys with the whip hand. Can you imagine a President that doesn't believe in evolution?

Oh Look, More Headaches

As if 2008 didn't have enough problems, here comes reports that the Pakistan Army is being directed to the Indian border region near Kashmir to defend against "anticipated Indian incursions".

The troops were deployed from Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan, where forces have been battling Taliban and al Qaeda militants in North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistan's armed forces have been on high alert in anticipation of a possible conflict with India following last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 160 people.

India believes the 10 men who carried out the attacks were trained at a terrorist camp in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir.

A senior official said the troops had been moved from areas where there are no active military operations, and emphasized that troop levels have not been depleted in areas where soldiers are battling militants, such as the Swat Valley and the Peshawar area in the North West region.

In addition to the move, leave for all military personnel has been restricted and all troops were called back to active duty, the senior official said.

Asked for a reaction to the development, Husain Haqqani. Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said, "Pakistan does not seek war, but we need to be vigilant against threats of war emanating from the other side of our eastern border."

Pakistan is clearly making a show of expecting to be attacked soon. Two bitter rivals, both nuclear powers mind you, getting into a border scuffle is not the kind of thing you want to see. Somebody needs to step up and defuse the situation, but what can honestly be done?

A fourth Pakistan-India war could be imminent.

StupidiNews!

• The worst holiday shopping season in decades could lead to unprecedented post-holiday sales this year starting today.
• California's looming budget default is causing state bond yields to skyrocket.
• Blago's lawyer plans to subpoena Obama aides in order to help clear the Governor's name.
• Reduced demand for commodities has stalled the recycled materials market.
• Singer and actress Eartha Kitt has died at the age of 81.

Obama's Holiday Message

StupidiNews, Christmas Edition!

• President Santa Bush dealt out some presents: jobs on government panels and committees for 3-6 year terms.
• A "blog miracle" this Christmas saved one family's home from foreclosure.
• Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman just got a lump of coal in his runoff election recount against Al Franken.
• Convicted Presidential pardon seeker Issac Toussie got his own lump of coal as the President rescinded his pardon.
• Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was looking for his own presents from Obama, but ended up with coal, coal, coal.

Have a Merry Christmas anyway.

Dear America:

"This economy proves Obama is the worst President ever. The fact that he's not actually President yet is just semantics."

--Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal