Last Call

Orange Julius in April:

When pressed for a number, Boehner said he believed the GOP could win as many as 100 seats in this fall's elections."At least 100 seats," Boehner said when asked how wide the playing field for districts is. "I do," the top House Republican answered when asked if he thinks there are 100 seats in the U.S. "that could change hands."

Orange Julius today:

"I think winning the House is still an uphill fight, but I can tell you that we have great candidates across the country and we have a great opportunity," Representative John Boehner told CBS television's "Face The Nation."

Wait, I thought Republicans taking the House was a given.  I thought we had all moved on to "Speaker John Boehner" and the only question was now if they could take the Senate too, the House was a lost cause, 80-100 seat GOP pickup, Fire Nancy Pelosi, massive Republican tsunami coming, huge Tea Party wave, Democrats no longer a viable political party after November and all that jazz.

And now all of a sudden it's "an uphill battle to take the House" now for the GOP?

You mean that hey, the American people are waking up to what a GOP Congress would really do if it was in charge and what they would do to Obama, and how it would turn into a complete circus of insanity where the GOP would target the most needy of us and put them on the block?

Gosh.  Almost sounds like now that real election season is here, that Orange Julius realizes that defending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and making the other 97% of us pay for them through social cuts isn't going to be a winning hand anymore.

Imagine that.  And just a couple days after Obama decides to finally start fighting back, too.  Could it be that all the Democrats had to do was to stand their effing ground on this all along?

Imagine that, indeed.

To The Point Of Making Your Ears Bleed

Newt Gingrich isn't Barack Obama's bigest fan or anything, but I wasn't aware he had totally thrown away any and all credibility he had left (which was microscopic to begin with) by descending into the ranks of the birthers.

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.

Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

And not only has he descended into the circle of Birther Hell, he's doing so in order to cynically and specifically stoke dog-whistle us vs them racism as well.  He's all but accusing the President of being a Kenyan citizen here and not even American, of having "played a wonderful con" and lying to all of us.  It's the most base form of Obama Derangement Syndrome here.  "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome Kenyan?"

At this point Newt is just blowing the racism dog-whistle so loudly that it's bursting eardrums.  It's disgusting to see our politics and politicians playing at this level, but the 2010 campaign season is officially here and the insane GOP is going full out to portray Barack Obama as the scariest black man who ever lived.

It's sad.  Of course, nobody will say a word to Newt about this.  He'll be joined by a majority of the GOP soon enough.  Birthers are now the official mainstream position of the Republican party.  But there's a reason for that:

Gingrich bases his portrayal of Obama as a Manchurian foreigner programmed by his Kenyan father to wreak Africa’s revenge for Western colonialism on an article in Forbes by Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza’s argument was given its proper name—ideological birtherism—and utterly destroyed by Daniel Larison here.

But pointing out that ideological birtherism is wholly based on lies won’t deter its champions from using it as a political strategy. Why? Because that’s all they’ve got. 

It's the new Southern Strategy, and they are blowing that whistle until the dogs rip free from their frayed leashes and savage the country.

On the other hand, Steve seems to think Newt's just projecting his own crap onto Obama.  He's got a pretty fair point.

Recovery.gov, Old School

Here at the Cincinnati Zoo with my parents, enjoying the day. The zoo itself is an historical landmark, well over a century old. There are more than a few markers here from the WPA days of the zoo in the 40's.

You know, back when investing in infrastructure and public works like a zoological and botanical garden was considered better than arguing over how long to extend unemployment benefits because apparently spending money on make work projects when the private sector isnt creating jobs is horrible socialism.

Your history lesson for today. Still has truth for today too.

Pulling The Plug And Letting It Die

More and more Republicans believe they will win a House majority and are looking forward to forcing Obama to shut down the government for as long as it takes to get their spending cuts and defunding of government programs they don't like permanently into law.  Republicans like Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia can't wait to throw Americans under the bus in this economy in order to pay for more tax cuts for the rich:

If we hold the line, if we get those courageous men and women to be part of our majority. If we say look, the American people we’re listening to the American people, this is what we’re going to do. If government shuts down, we want you with us. We want you with us. We gotta have you because later on you all will call us and say look I didn’t get my check. Daddy can’t go to the VA. You know, the National Parks are closed. We need to be sure that you are with us because let me tell you this, all Americans need to understand. We need to understand this and I hope you can help share this analogy with people. Just as when you talk about what is going to possibly happen, you know I was unfortunate to cut myself with a chainsaw. I don’t know how many of you have cut yourself with a chainsaw. Chainsaw is not the cleanest instrument if you’re going to cut yourself. [...]

He said this is going to sting a little bit and it hurt like crazy. But you know what, if he didn’t clean out that wound, it would have never healed. I would have got gangrene. I would have died from it. And what has happened with this country, we have put bandaids on things that need to be cleaned out. It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.

And Westmoreland and other Republicans want to make sure that pain is felt primarily by working class Americans, the elderly, the disabled, and our injured veterans who fought in the Sandbox for us for close to a decade now.  Meanwhile the wealthiest Americans will continue to get a bigger share of the wealth as their taxes are cut.  They won't suffer at all.

The last 30 years have all but destroyed the middle-class.  The wealthiest one percent of Americans control upwards of 24% of the wealth in this country.  And as home values and wages get smaller and Social Security cuts and Medicaid/Medicare slashing gets bigger to keep the rich getting richer, we're the ones who will bear the brunt of the pain.

The Republicans are telling you that it will be good for you, and it will be necessary.  Meanwhile their fat cat donors continue to rake in billions.  Republicans are all but promising austerity measures that will be borne the most by the least able of us, those on fixed incomes, veterans, and the infirm.  But that's how Republicans roll.

There's a choice in this election.  Sane ideas to fix the economy, or shutting it down and amputating the weakest members of society.

This Should Settle It

The argument that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is being happily consumed by bacteria or is being otherwise made harmless by Mother Nature was always a crock, and now scientists have found the stuff.  The dispersants may have dispersed, but the oil got back together and simply settled on the seafloor in a massive sheet over hundreds of square miles.

The Research Vessel Oceanus sailed on Aug. 21 on a mission to figure out what happened to the more than 4 million barrels of oil that gushed into the water. Onboard, Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, says she suddenly has a pretty good idea about where a lot of it ended up. It's showing up in samples of the seafloor, between the well site and the coast.

"I've collected literally hundreds of sediment cores from the Gulf of Mexico, including around this area. And I've never seen anything like this," she said in an interview via satellite phone from the boat.

Joye describes seeing layers of oily material — in some places more than 2 inches thick — covering the bottom of the seafloor.

"It's very fluffy and porous. And there are little tar balls in there you can see that look like microscopic cauliflower heads," she says.

It's very clearly a fresh layer. Right below it she finds much more typical seafloor mud. And in that layer, she finds recently dead shrimp, worms and other invertebrates.

So there's millions and millions of gallons of slimy, gooey crap on the floor of the ocean, literally suffocating anything on the bottom.  The effects on the Gulf's ecosystem will be catastrophic.   Unless there's some way to dredge at a depth of thousands of feet across hundreds of square miles of seafloor, that toxic mess is staying down there for a very long time, killing the basic building blocks of sea life.  That's going to go up the chain and soon.

The total effects may not be known for decades, but one thing's for sure, out children and grandchildren are goig to be shaking their heads at how stupid we were to let this happen and keep drilling anyway.

Eric, Prince Of Insufficient Light

Former Blackwater CEO Eric Prince has gone the full Palpatine route, vowing revenge against the Democrats who actually thought that having a nutbar fundie with his own private army wasn't conducive to America's aims in the Middle East.  Well, he's going to make those meddling kids pay!

The owner of Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, is writing a book that will allege officials in the Clinton and Obama administrations "approved of his most sensitive and controversial operations," says a report in the Washington Post.

The Post's Jeff Stein cites two unnamed sources who say Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, is hurrying to sell his company before he can go public with a book that takes aim at the Democratic Party.

One of the sources told Stein that Prince and his friends "think this will destroy the Democratic Party in the elections."

The source, who is described as having a "business relationship with Xe," said Prince had "given his people three weeks to complete the sale of the company and the book will be released then," in time for the November elections.

Only the problem is nobody seems to give a crap about Blackwater anymore, and let's be perfectly honest, we've already got America refusing to give a damn about the fact Obama's got his own assassination squad working to take out terrorists like Bin Laden and hey, even Americans who may be helping him.  That's been public knowledge for months now and nobody seems to give a damn.

I kind of fail to see what Prince is going to pull here, but it should be more depressing than anything else.  Or darkly funny in an unintentional manner.  Still, there are a few folks who are a bit antsy about this, according to Jeremy Scahill at The Nation (who has been following Prince for a while now and has written a book on him.)

We'll see if ol' Eric here can deliver.

Well That's Rather Depressing

If you think I'm a killjoy when it comes to Obama and the Dems, apparently I have nothing on Peter Daou's depressing-as-all-hell Twitter feed.

Thanks for the perspective, Rumpies.

Still Crazy After All These...Weeks

While I've been mostly concentrating on Rand Paul's unique brand of laissez-faire lunacy here in Kentucky ("Hey who needs federal mine safety, environmental protections, or drug enforcement anyway?") it seems Christine O' Donnell has been coming on strong as the Tea Party candidate in Delaware's relatively late-in-the-year GOP Senate primary against 9-term Rep. Mike Castle on Tuesday.

O' Donnell definitely is missing a few parts out of the box.  She's a hard-core fundie even among hard core fundies, railing against porn and even masturbation while repeatedly insinuating Mike Castle is gay, she's of course picked up the endorsement of Moose Lady and now via Oliver Willis we learn she has also picked up the endorsement of the NRA.

But the oddest part is O'Donnell's continued attacks on Castle's masculinity.

In an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin, O'Donnell called on her opponent "get your man-pants on" in the contentious election fight.

The comment came in response to news that the state Republican party of Delaware -- a firm supporter of Castle's campaign -- filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing O'Donnell of breaking the law in coordinating her political operation with the Tea Party Express.

O'Donnell blasted the legal action as "cheap, underhanded," and "unmanly." She added, however, that she would expect no less from "Obama's favorite Republican -- Mike Castle."

The conservative Senate candidate concluded: "Mike this is not a bake-off. Get your man-pants on."

Castle's fighting for his political life here.  The GOP is more than happy to throw a nine-term Congressman out on his ass in favor of a nutbar like O'Donnell here.  Oliver sums it up nicely:
 

The biggest Tea Party success to date, Scott Brown, knows that at the end of the day that he’s the senator from Massachusetts. Besides his health care opposition, he’s made a few votes that have broken the GOP logjam in the Democrat’s favor and on social issues supports things like abortion rights. Brown’s position is similar to Democrats in conservative districts and states. But O’Donnell? She’s trying to get statewide office in a state that went 61% for Obama and re-elected Biden while he was running for vice president, and she’s no moderate – not even by the media’s conservative definition of what a moderate is.

Not sure if she'll win the primary OR the general, but this may be yet another Hoffman Effect pickup for the Dems.  This right here is exactly why I don't see the "GOP tsunami" coming to "permanently wipe out the Democrats" anytime soon, because the Republicans are doing a fine job of sabotaging themselves.

I say bring on the lunatics.  The fact that Democrats are running very competitive races in these states thanks to how hard-core crazy these fools are means that there's a very good chance the Dems can limit the damage.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Canadian marijuana activist Marc Emery has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to sell charge in Seattle and will server at least a year in prison.
• A federal court has ruled that content makers can opt out of first sale rules, meaning that they can specify users are only renting software and don't own it.
• The Pentagon has relaxed tough restrictions on reporters covering Gitmo trials.
• Several major mobile carriers are planning to team with Samsung to take on the iPad.
• Nano-particles may be the key to engineering the atmosphere, scientists say.

Last Call

This (week's) violent domestic terrorist wingnut story is uncomfortably close to where I grew up in North Carolina.  Concord is just outside of Charlotte.

A Concord man was charged with describing how to make explosives, in an effort to bomb an abortion clinic, after FBI agents found instructions on the man's Facebook page and caught him in a sting, officials said Thursday.

Justin Carl Moose, 26, is a self-described "extremist, radical" and the "Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden," according to an affidavit filed by FBI agents. Agents arrested Moose, who lives in a northwest Concord neighborhood, on Tuesday.

His arrest followed an investigation that began after Planned Parenthood alerted the FBI to a Facebook page registered to Moose, which the group said was advocating extreme violence against abortion providers.

Agents began monitoring the page and Moose's private messages. They say he collaborated last week with a confidential informant to plan the bombing of an abortion clinic in North Carolina.

Moose's relatives were reached by phone Thursday and declined to comment. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on federal charges of distribution of information relating to explosives.

Yeah.  Called himself the "Christian counterpart to Bin Laden" and plotted to blow up an abortion clinic.  But remember, we have to worry about Muslims because every single one of the mosques in America are "potential terror hubs" and stuff.  Meanwhile, while the unruly mob is busy determining just how many civil liberties we can collectively take away from American Muslims because they're not really Americans, it's people who call themselves Christians who are actually plotting terror attacks on American soil.

So under "Park51 is too close to Ground Zero" logic, we now have to ask "Well they can, but is it right for Christians to build churches anywhere near Atlanta after what they did to Millennium Park at the Olympics?"

We now have to ask if Charlotte is being taken over by Christian fundamentalists who want Dominionist law, right?

Guess this is what Markos Moulitsas meant by his book "American Taliban" huh.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Hey folks?  Col. Mustard is actually right for once.

I know.  Call the Ripley's people.

The fact that Rush Limbaugh went to the same high school at the same time with Pastor Terry Jones means absolutely jack.  Both men are complete assholes, yes.  Somehow, I don't think it has anything to do with Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the high school, or the people there.

It has everything to do with the choices these men have made of their own free will.  It means both men graduated the same high school in 1969.  That's it.  That's all.

Making something more out of it is moronic.  That's the kind of guilt by association stupidity that is used too many times to attack Democrats.  And who started this?  Olbermann.

C'mon Keith.  I expect better.

Worth Paying For

When conservatives tell you that government is useless and that public infrastructure spending is money taxpayers are throwing down the rathole, consider last night's San Bruno gas line explosion and the true cost of maintenance.

There will be investigations and there will be denials and equivocation, but I've managed to put this much together from tweets and reports posted to journalists' blogs:

• The ruptured main belongs to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)
• The pipe that ruptured was installed in 1948
• Residents in the area had smelled gas for 3 weeks. When it was reported, some were told to shut their garage doors; others were told not to worry about it. (note: those tweets were people reacting in real time to TV reports and interviews)
• People are still missing. Expect the death toll to rise.
• The force of the explosion also stopped the water supply, making it much more difficult to fight the fire.
• PG&E's president was interviewed, but managed to cover himself and duck any hard questions in the process about whether reports of a gas leak had not received priority attention.
• At the time of this writing, it is reported that 45 homes have been lost with hundreds more damaged.

A neighborhood exploded. Just like that. It was there one minute, gone the next, apparently the victim of a deteriorating 62-year old cylinder in the ground that wore out, blew out, and exploded after rupturing the ground above it. That cylinder is just one of many old, deteriorating lines.

And right now, early in the game, we're left with questions about whether that pipe was properly maintained, whether the right amount of attention was paid to reports of a gas leak in the area, and whether PG&E has adequately invested in keeping their equipment safe and up-to-date.

This is a company that spent $46 million dollars to buy a California ballot initiative in the primary to keep municipalities from maintaining their own utilities. 

But the free market means that PG&E has every reason to spend money in order to maintain their infrastructure, right?  So they would never let anything crazy negligent happen like a massive gas line eruption that would destroy dozens of homes and kill people, right?  Especially after the efforts to get public spending for infrastructure maintenance pulled in order to save taxpayer money, because people in Los Angeles should be spending their tax dollars to fix problems in San Diego, and that's a wasteful and inefficient misappropriation of funds and all that?

After all, if you want to use infrastructure, you should pay for it individually, because that's the only equitable and fair way.

In what Mr. DiSimone called his Free Limit Plan, he would give Nevadans and nonresidents the option to drive up to 90 miles an hour on state roads. The privilege would cost $25 a day and would conservatively generate more than $1 billion a year in new state revenue, he said.

“A year ago, when I put this plan together, every time I saw a highway patrol by the roadside, I’d pull over and ask them about it,” he said. “I stopped counting around 27 or 28 conversations, and based on what they told me, I estimate about 30 to 40 percent of drivers would be interested in doing it.”

The Invisible Hand of the Free market guarantees that people driving at 90 won't cause any problems, right?  Just like it prevented anything bad from happening in San Bruno, California.  After all when you change the motivation for infrastructure spending to profit margins and not safety tolerances...well...you literally get what you pay for, yes?

Just like the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.  Just like toxic waste disposal facilities.  Just like chemical plants and oil refineries.  Just like...where you live and work and drive.

HAMPered Recovery

If there's one real total and complete foul-up that can laid directly at the feet of Obama and not "inherited from Bush" or "but it was blocked by the GOP in Congress" it's the President's failed HAMP program.  It's been a complete disaster all the way around, and it's now producing horror stories like this.

"It was really stressful," Mike Kahara, 34, recalled. "We kept asking our creditors what we could do to work things out. They just said we should make more money."

The couple received a notice of default on their mortgage from Wells Fargo in August 2009. But a bank rep said there might be some hope. The Kaharas were advised to seek assistance through the Home Affordable Modification Program, a federal program intended to help homeowners by modifying loan terms.

In December, they were notified by Wells that they were eligible for a three-month trial loan modification that would lower their monthly payments to about $1,400. The Kaharas managed to make all subsequent payments in full.

After the three months were up, Ellen Kahara said, they were told by Wells that their case was still under review and that they should keep making the $1,400 payments. They did.

The bank continued requesting paperwork as part of its review process. Ellen said she called Wells on Aug. 9 and for days afterward to check on the status of their loan modification but never got a call back.

The Kaharas received a letter from Wells dated Aug. 11 saying that their application for a permanent loan modification had been rejected. The letter said the Kaharas would have 30 days to discuss other options available to them.

"No foreclosure sale will be conducted and you will not lose your home during this 30-day period," the letter said.

But on Aug. 18 there was a knock at the door around 8 in the morning. Mike Kahara said a young man wearing a white polo shirt and dark slacks introduced himself as Sebastian Cruz of the investment firm Pacifica Cos.

Cruz said his firm had purchased the house and that he would offer the Kaharas $1,500 if they'd agree to vacate the property within two weeks.

He produced a document with Pacifica letterhead informing the Kaharas that their home "has changed ownership through the foreclosure process." It threatened legal action if the couple didn't move out.

"I thought it was a scam at first," Mike Kahara said. "Then I realized he was serious."

Dead serious.  HAMP has failed totally, only allowing a small fraction of Americans to keep their homes and just making things easier for the banks to get theirs the other 99% of the time.  HAMP is absolutely something that needs to be hung on this President's neck.  And strangely, he seems to be making no effort to alleviate the massive economic problem that is millions of Americans losing their homes despite a program specifically designed to keep them there.  The folks behind it?  Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

So unless the hiring of Austan Goolsbee is to replace both men (which it's not) then we're still in a crapload of serious trouble.

Man, That Must Be Some Prime Stuff He's Smoking

Because whatever Brent Budowski is consuming, the effects on his writing are completely friggin' awesome.

Within hours and possibly minutes I expect the president will name Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer protection agency, and if he does, the Democratic base will erupt and turn out to vote in far greater numbers than any current poll suggests.

I could be wrong; Obama might give up at the last minute, which would be the last betrayal of the Democratic base and very possibly the death knell of the Democratic House of Representatives. But if he names Warren, the pundits be will amazed, astonished and flabbergasted by the lift this would give to the Democratic base and by the voter turnout that would follow.

If Obama names Warren, consumers would have the strongest possible friend fighting for them all day, every day, at a time of major consumer rip-offs and disastrous consumer confidence that would be lifted with the Warren selection.

If Obama names Warren, veterans and military families who have endured rip-offs and abuses would have the strongest possible friend with Elizabeth Warren.

Am I missing the metasnark here?  Is this some big colossal joke I'm missing?  Elizabeth Warren is the key to the entire election?

How about taking a strong stance on DADT and gay rights, or abandoning Bush policies on civil liberties, or getting more troops out of the Middle East, or using economic solutions that aren't taken from the Republican playbook?

The President's last response in today's press conference on Park51 for example was brilliant.  That's the kind of thing we need more of.  Not the milquetoast wishy-washy split the middle crap that he spouted in the first half of the presser.  Half the frustration is we know Obama is fully capable to great moments, it's that he chooses to not pursue them on purpose.

Only now with the Dems' collective backs against the wall is he coming around.  Strength inspires people, Barack.  Not "compromise".

[UPDATE] We need more of this.

The Old And The New

The 9/11 reflections begin today with the web copy of Ted Koppel's thoughts on the anniversary, and in a way it's a perfect microcosm of the problem the Village still has nine years later.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

It did not have to be this way. The Bush administration's initial response was just about right. The calibrated combination of CIA operatives, special forces and air power broke the Taliban in Afghanistan and sent bin Laden and the remnants of al-Qaeda scurrying across the border into Pakistan. The American reaction was quick, powerful and effective -- a clear warning to any organization contemplating another terrorist attack against the United States. This is the point at which President George W. Bush should have declared "mission accomplished," with the caveat that unspecified U.S. agencies and branches of the military would continue the hunt for al-Qaeda's leader. The world would have understood, and most Americans would probably have been satisfied.

Nowhere in Koppel's article do you see an admission of the major problem here:  it was the media itself after 9/11 that helped sell the connection between 9/11 and Iraq and got us into that deadly war in the first place.  Koppel in fact completely glosses over this, just like the media has been doing for, oh, nine years now.

What role did Koppel and his show Nightline play in selling the Iraq War to the American people?  it wasn't a small one, nor was it a small role for Koppel's employer, ABC News.  We know now that Dick Cheney's shop in the White House packaged and sold the Iraq War as a "product" to the Village media.  Getting public support for the invasion of Iraq was absolutely critical to invading and the media shaped that opinion.

In other words, the last person qualified to moan about how Bush should have stopped after Afghanistan and pulled out there was anyone involved in selling those trillion dollar quagmires to the American people....people like Ted Koppel.

Look in the mirror, man.  A healthy chunk of this blame falls squarely on the shoulders of you and your media colleagues.