Last Call Of The Decade

And the decade ends on a perfect note:  FOX and Time Warner are both refusing to budge, and if nothing happens by midnight, no New Year's Day bowl games on FOX stations here in Cincy.

The FCC has decided to step in and say "Hey look, guys..."

And the free market screws over the American consumer:  your microcosm of the last ten years.  The next ten?  Not looking much better.

Have a good night and a safe New Year, folks.

Not A Bang But A Whimper

And the charges against the Blackwater Five have been thrown out.

A federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges Thursday against five Blackwater security guards in the 2007 deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghad square, finding that prosecutors wrongly used the men's own statements against them.

The September 2007 shootout in Baghdad's Nusoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and two dozen wounded. The killings led Iraq's government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the government's case was built largely on "statements compelled under a threat of job loss in a subsequent criminal prosecution," a violation of the Fifth Amendment rights of the five men charged.

"In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation," Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors "repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case" in doing so, he found.

Urbina also sharply criticized prosecutors and federal agents who developed the case, calling their explanations for using the guards' statements "all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

So that's it then.  17 dead and there's not enough evidence to even convict on manslaughter charges.  Of course it's not like it mattered...they're just Iraqis, after all.  Why would anyone think that would matter?

Gosh, it's almost like the Bushies put together such a terrible, incompetent case in 2007 that it was destined to fail, then handed it to Obama.

Now, where have I seen that play before?

Recycled Tags

Shorter entire PUMA Nation/Firebaggers:

"We were right all along about the utter failure of your Magical Black Man.  We expect the Republican Congress in 2010 we help to bring to power will convince you to drop him for Hillary vs Sarah in 2012." 

It's the formal return of my dusty ol' Palinocrats tag, but I expect it to get plenty of use in the new year.

Going Five For '10

Via Barry Ritholtz, here's Joseph Stiglitz's look back on the global economy in 2009 and what we should have learned:

1. Markets are not self-correcting, and without adequate regulation, they are prone to excess.
2. There are many reasons for market failures. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions had perverse incentives: Privatized gains, socialized losses.
3. Keynesian policies do work. Countries, like Australia, that implemented large, well-designed stimulus programs early emerged from the crisis faster.
4. There is more to monetary policy than just fighting inflation. Excessive focus on inflation meant that some central banks ignored what was happening to their financial markets. The costs of mild inflation are miniscule compared to the costs imposed on economies when central banks allow asset bubbles to grow unchecked.
5. Not all innovation leads to a more efficient and productive economy – let alone a better society. Private incentives matter, and if they are not properly aligned, the result can be excessive risk taking, excessively shortsighted behavior, and distorted innovation.

Stiglitz ends with this warning:

We will soon find out whether we have learned the lessons of this crisis any better than we should have learned the same lessons from previous crises.

Regrettably, unless the United States and other advanced industrial countries make much greater progress on financial-sector reforms in 2010 we may find ourselves faced with another opportunity to learn them.

Amen to that.  We're going to be right back in the 2008 hole sooner rather than later.

Epic Reading Is Fundamental Fail

The problem with Wingnut bloggers is that given only part of a story about Barack Obama, they'd rather make complete fabrications up than actually go looking for the real answers.  They also assume you're just as lazy and stupid.  To whit, Jesse Taylor's takedown this morning:

The new New World Order is afoot!


Barack Obama signed an Executive Order amending one of Ronald Reagan’s executive orders, which rescinded the exclusion INTERPOL would otherwise have from American tax laws.

Short version: INTERPOL employees are no longer liable for American taxes.  That’s about it.

Now, the great part is where the Wingers go with this:

Predictably, the fact that Barack Obama has allowed the World Police to operate within our borders and given them all of West Virginia to use as concentration camps (READ BETWEEN THE LINES, PEOPLE) is setting off alarms among the most vigilant of our civilian security forces.  The Anchoress is worried that this is the beginning of Kristallnacht, and that INTERPOL and ACORN are somehow going to join forces to form the ultimate acronym, CLARINET PORNO.  Confederate Yankee is pretty damn sure that they still have actual Nazis running INTERPOL, and that somehow these tax regulations will allow them to kidnap American soldiers for gay sex in Amsterdam.

The Astute Bloggers believe Barack Obama has empowered INTERPOL to capture George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.  Protein Wisdom is pretty sure that Obama plain hates the constitution and was a shitty law professor, which burns most of all.

It doesn't really matter what the truth is to these jagoffs.  They just make it up and then spread it around.  They are not interested in facts, just destroying Obama.  That's all that matters, and the end justifies the means.

Facts are for pussies because you can't prove Obama's not really the Kenyan Usurper Muslim Antichrist who will destroy the country and sell our nubile blonde women to the 12th Imam, can you?

Yeah, take that, facts!  EPIC FAIL!

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

From TPM:

A new Rasmussen poll finds that voters want to go to great lengths against Flight 253 bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, with a majority saying he should be waterboarded to extract information.

The poll asked: "Should waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques be used to gain information from the suspected bomber?" The result was 58% yes, to only 30% who said no.

Just a little reminder that this truly awful decade ending or not, the problems this country still has will take a very long time to fix.  In just ten years we have gone from a reasonable people to a bloodthirsty, fanatical mob that believes torture is justified.

More Bill Killing

Politics Daily's Matt Lewis and radio host/blogger Taylor Marsh present Useful Idiots Are Useful theater on MSNBC.



Bonus points as Cap'n Crunch plays the "Even the Liberal Taylor Marsh wants to kill Obamacare" card.

It’s the end of the year, and we should focus on what unites us, right? Increasingly, ObamaCare has begun to fill that role. Matt Lewis of Politics Daily debates Taylor Marsh, but only in the narrowest sense of “debate.” They may have different reasons, but they both agree that ObamaCare is a disaster and should be killed by the Senate at the earliest possible moment.

Keep up the good work, gang!  I'm sure the GOP will thank you in November 2010.

[UPDATE 11:30 AM]  And Kevin K. beats me to this two days ago.

Dear America:

"If Martha Coakley wins Ted Kennedy's former seat next month by anything less than forty points, it's Excellent News For Republicans in 2010."

--Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics

Bonus Verbatim Stupid: "Nevertheless, in the absence of any polling done in the past month, I embarked on a little thought experiment."

Yes, it's called "pretending the GOP has a chance to win Ted Kennedy's seat."

[UPDATE 11:24 AM] As the Rumpies note, GOP candidate Scott "Big McLargeHuge" Brown has errm....bigger...problems.

In Retrospect, That Journalism Major Back In 94 Wasn't A Great Idea

Went into computers instead, but I was at one point I was a budding newsie.



I'm kinda glad I stuck with the IT stuff and became a dirty f'ckin hippie blogger instead.

Zandar's Thought Of The Decade

Really, there are two kinds of Americans:  those who believe America was destroyed soon after January 20, 2001, and those who believe America was destroyed soon after January 20, 2009.

Political Cartoon Of The Decade

Jen Sorenson's Slowpoke is as usual, right on the money.

The '09 Rooties

Over at B&P, Media Czech has the 2009 Rooties Awards winners up for the year in Kentucky politics.



Just go already. Also, Rand Paul is still creepy as hell.

One Of These Is Not Like The Others

As Digby notes, Gallup's most influential man of 2009 was Barack Obama, who got 30% of the vote.  The problem is, in a poll where Obama, Nelson Mandela, the Pope and yes, even Dubya are rubbing shoulders, there's one guy in there who should scare the hell out of you.

Glenn Beck got fourth.

Nelson Mandela only gets one point higher than Beck --- who's tied with the pope?

No Limbaugh, no Hannity, no O'Reilly. Beck.

That actually freaks me out a little bit.

You're not the only one.  Dubya I can understand.  Even Dick Cheney I can see getting a percentage point or two. Limbaugh?  Sure.

But Glennsanity?  Really, America?  Of all the living men on Earth, he ranked number 4?

Oh, and if you're keeping score at home, Zandar's with Zandardad on this one:  Dr. Steven Hawking.

Sticking It To Dick

The White House is not taking Dick Cheney's nastiness lying down.

"It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House's official blog. "Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer."

Ouch.  Oh, but Pfeiffer works his way inside Cheney's reach and goes for the body blows:

"To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," Pffeifer writes. "Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."

Pfeifer also takes issue with the former vice president's contention that Obama "pretends we aren't at [war]," saying the president and members of his administration have referred to being at war with al Qaeda several times.

"There are numerous…public statements that explicitly state we are at war," writes Pfeifer. "The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

Pfeiffer's completely salient point aside (Sorry Dick, you and Dubya blew it for seven years) I'm liking this new Democrats Now With Spines thing.  They've finally figured out that no matter what they do, the Republicans will punch them in the mouth for it.

It's long past time to punch back.

If It's Thursday...

Jobless claims actually down to 432K.  People are making noises like there's going to be a positive jobs number for December next week.

Keep in mind however that until that positive number is +200K or more per month, we're in trouble.  We have a long way to go.

Epic Time Compression Win

Lee Camp gives us the decade in about 3 minutes of EPIC FAILS.

Zandar Versus The Decade

Looking back on my predictions for this year, I went out on a limb and fell off the tree.  Two for ten...health care hasn't passed yet and the stimulus did.

So, here's my ten for '10:

1. Democrats maintain control of the House and Senate.  The teabaggery is just too much for the middle to take and Republicans filibustering the jobs bill is just too much. Harry Reid and Chris Dodd lose however.
   
2. Thompson Prison in Illinois gets some Gitmo inmates.  The plan to close Gitmo proceeds...slowly.
3. Health care reform passes, but gets tied up in court immediately by Republicans and threatened by state efforts to nullify the law.
4. Cap and Trade dies.  It will however be the major fight in 2011.
5. Unemployment in 2010 will hit 11% at some point.  It won't be pretty.
6. Apple releases the iTablet...and nobody cares.  Also, the iPhone will be released on other networks besides AT&T.
7. Tim Geithner gets fired.  Yeah I know, I said this last year, but c'mon.
8. The stock market will turn back down again and the Dow will close under 10k on Dec 31, 2011.
9. Obama will sign another stimulus for states facing massive budget holes.
10. This blog will roll on for another year.
    

We'll see how I do this year.

StupidiNews, Last One This Decade Edition

• Make it so!  Actor Patrick Stewart will be knighted by the Queen of England.
• 13 state Attorneys General are threatening to sue the Obama administration over the Senate health care bill.
• A series of bombings in Anwar province that killed 24 and injured dozens threatens the stability of Iraq.
• AIG's general counsel is stepping down after disputing the government-imposed pay cap, and is taking her $3.8 million severance.
  
• AT&T comes not to praise landline phone services, but to ask the FCC to bury it.
  

Last Call

Seems El Rushbo is in a hospital in Honolulu with chest pains.

The guy's a scumbag, but I don't wish ill health upon anyone. I do bet however the man has a pretty good health care plan, a lot better one than most of his listeners...and critics...ever will.

Maybe the guy will change for the better as a result.

FOX News Fails At Spelling, Too

Apparently the acceptable alternate spelling of Yemen is "I-R-A-N".

Thanks FOX News!

Alright Jimbo, I'll Take That Bet

Jim Pethokoukis is betting the GOP will pick up 41 plus seats and take back the House.

As political forecaster Charlie Cook has noted, what happens in the House depends a lot on there being more Democrat retirements in competitive seats. The GOP needs a 40-seat pickup. The more Dem members that stick, the less likely a changeover. If the numbers start going north of 12-15, a warning signal should sound for Democrats. (In 1994, Democrat departures created 31 open seats, 22 of which were won by the GOP.)  For now, Cook sees a possible 20-30 seat pickup in the House for the GOP and four to six in the Senate. (Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln and Chris Dodd look especially vulnerable). But Cook may be underestimating how the dreadful New Normal in the economy will create a New Normal in politics in 2010.

I'm betting the Teabaggery in 2010 will so alienate the center that the Dems will hold both chambers easily.

We'll see who's right.  Into the future files you go!

Red Ink In The Bluegrass State

It's not just California facing a 2010 budget disaster.  As Yellow Dog reminds us, Kentucky's budget is shaping up to be nearly as bad from a percentage standpoint:  A $1.5 billion dollar hole over the next two years when the state's annual budget is just $9 billion.  For just FY 2010, it's an $890 million shortfall...ten percent of the state's budget.  The Dog's advice:

But so far no one is facing the stark truth: spending cuts won't close this giant pit of no revenue. Not unless you want to shut down prisons, hospitals and schools.

Raising taxes on things most voters won't mind, like cigarettes and liquor, won't avoid this crisis, unless you want to tax both of those manufacturers right out of business.

Nothing less than radical, burn-it-to-the-ground-and-start-from-scratch reform of the tax system is going to fix this.

Agreed.  Any system that allowed a shortfall this bad is broken fundamentally.  And keep in mind there are plenty of other states out there facing situations as bad or worse in 2010:

A new report from the Pew Center on the States warns of “fiscal peril” in 10 states which, if unaddressed, will hamper the nation’s economic recovery:

These states’ budget troubles can have dramatic consequences for their residents: higher taxes, layoffs or furloughs of state workers, longer waits for public services, more crowded classrooms, higher college tuition and less support for the poor or unemployed. But they also pose challenges for the country as a whole. The 10 states account for more than a third of America’s population and economic output. And actions taken by state governments to balance their budgets — such as tax increases and drastic spending cuts — can slow down the nation’s economic recovery.

Those states, if you're wondering, are California, Arizona, Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Oregon, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois.

Might as well add Kentucky to that list, too.  2010 is shaping up to be the second half of this economic disaster double feature.

Epic A Pair Of Big Ones Win

Finally, the Dems have achieved testicular fortitude on the Underwear Bomber issue.

As GOPers begin increasingly using the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner to score political points, 2 Dems are blaming the Bush admin for events that led directly to the failed attack.

While many Dems stay silent and let the WH lead the way, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) say the previous admin let down their guard.

"In general, we are facing the consequences of the Bush administration's failures to deal with al Qaeda," Van Hollen told Hotline OnCall. "The Republicans have no business in pointing fingers at the Obama administration on terrorism and national security."

"The Obama administration has been much more aggressive about going after al Qaeda than the Bush administration, which turned its focus from al Qaeda to Iraq," he added. The Obama admin has "been on the offense in places where the Bush administration had taken its eye off the ball."

Meanwhile, Massa has taken on ex-VP Dick Cheney, who he says is directly responsible for releasing the top al Qaeda figures in Yemen who aided and trained the Nigerian-born suspect.

"I would remind the American public that the apparent leaders of the al Qaeda cell in Yemen were 2 terrorists who were released by Vice President Cheney in secret. I think there's a level of accountability that has to be levied personally on the vice president," Massa said in an interview. "He is personally responsible for that."

Hell yes. Now that is what I'm talking about.

And the truth shall set you free!

EPIC WIN.

The Stupid Zandar Is Versus

Daily Telegraph's Toby Harnden:

Barack Obama Gets 'An F' For Protecting Americans

There is no more solemn duty for an American commander-in-chief than the marshalling of  “all elements of American power” – the phrase Obama himself used on Monday – to protect the people of the United States. In that key respect, Obama failed on Christmas Day, just as President George W. Bush failed on September 11th (though he succeeded in the seven years after that).

Hey Toby?  When Bush "failed", 3,000 people died.  When Obama "failed" a Nigerian man's underwear was set on fire.

Meet the Village, London Auxiliary.

The Return Of The Joker

Time's Joke Line Joe Klein is back, baby!

In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos.

But there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation of these extremes — a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left.

"Well yes, I am a Villager.  The Village exists, and you guys are right about us.  But Jane Hamsher means I'm better than you now.  High fives all around!"

My god, it's like they saved up the worst columns of the year just to keep guys like me from being able to write "Worst Village Idiocy of 2009" posts on December 27th.

Going All In While Going Over The Edge

Newt Gingrich pushes all of his credibility chips (all one of them) into the national security argument pot while holding an off-suit 2-7 level screed over at Human Events.

Over eight years after 9/11 and 30 years after the Iranian illegal seizure of the United States embassy and the 444 day Iranian hostage crisis, Washington is still avoiding being intellectually honest about the war we are in.

A war where men in funny underwear terrify Newt to the point of pissing his own funny underwear, apparently.

The scale, persistence and sophistication of the enemy requires an honesty, a clarity, and a scale appropriate to the response.

We need more people in funny underwear in Tehran's airport.

Today, because our elites fear politically incorrect honesty, they believe that it is better to harass the innocent, delay the harmless, and risk the lives of every American than to do the obvious, the effective, and the necessary.

Because as we all know, the real way to avoid harassing the innocent is to simply declare all Muslims in the country as guilty.

(More snark after the jump...)

Quote Of The Week

Media Matters' Jameson Foser:

I have no idea what Maureen Dowd is talking about.

Nobody does, bro.  Nobody does.  And MoDo The Red goes completely off the charts this week, we're talking "Patsy from AbFab" bender here.

America seemed to have lost her ingenuity, her quickness, her man-on-the-moon bravura, her Bugs Bunny panache.

And it gets worse.  The trainwreckiness is delectable, like Milano cookies soaked in brandy.

Brandy from hell.

Eat The Public

Yggy finally starts circling around the conclusion I've had for a while now about the GOP efforts to repeal health care:  they may not be able to repeal it, but they CAN make sure it is implemented so badly that the public demands they effectively kill it if they get back into power.

Maybe. It should be said, though, that there’s really no precedent for a GOP president taking the ax to a major program. Small, highly targeted programs like Section 8 housing vouchers or legal services for the indigent get the axe when Republicans run things. But cutting spending has not normally been an important priority. Cutting taxes, busting unions, gutting enforcement of various regulations, hiking spending on baroque missile defense schemes, that’s what conservative governance is all about.

The only reason you would try to seriously pare back subsidies is if you felt that increasing budget deficits were a bad thing. But conservatives don’t think deficits are a problem so there’s really nothing here.

But from a political standpoint, making the program implemented in such an odious manner as to be far worse than the status quo and then blaming the Democrats will work if the GOP gets back into power.  Now, whether or not they can get back into power remains to be seen.

Merry Bankermas And A Bailout New Year

Bloomberg's David Reilly takes a look at Barney Frank's House financial reform bill, and determines that the banks should be gleefully rushing to make sure it gets passed. (emphasis mine):

Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:

-- For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.

-- Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

-- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.

Hooray!  The next bailout will be twice as much!

And of course there will be a "the next bailout".  You're paying for it.  That's being arranged ahead of time.  This is the lesson Congress has taken away from the bailouts:  they need to have legislation in place ahead of time to give the banks trillions.

The Napolitano Mambo Italiano

Somebody please tell Sully that while I said I could see the argument for firing Janet Napolitano, if we really wanted to hold people accountable, we'd be A) firing GOP Sen. Jim DeMint for blocking the TSA from even having an accountable department head and B) firing Bush again for setting up the TSA in the first place, and C) we'd fire ourselves for being idiotic about the fact the odds of a terror attack on an airline are a fraction of being hit by lightning.

Also, John Cole speaks truth.

Accountable for what? What did she do wrong? Napolitano didn’t change any procedures which then led to the bomber getting through security. She didn’t shift the DHS budget in a way that impacted security. She didn’t botch the response. And her statement is factually correct, and only wrong if you completely distort what she said?

Is Sullivan operating with a different definition of accountable than I am? Because his definition of “accountable” looks a helluva lot like my definition of “scapegoat.” He wants her fired not for her job performance, but for giving Republicans (with yet another assist from the liberal media) a sound bite that is easy to demagogue. That is not how adults operate.

Adults?  Where are the adults?  There are no adults here.

Jesus wept.

[UPDATE 11:23 AM]  John Cole is on a roll today, calling Newtie's tweet a good hour before he complains about Obama's "witch hunt" in our intel agencies.

What Bob Cesca Said

On the underpants gnomes (emphasis mine):

The wingnut freakout over the president's response to the Underpants Bomber is proof that the far-right is only interested in a childish game of paybacks. They're simply taking criticisms of Bush and using them to attack President Obama, regardless of whether there's any real similarity (there isn't).

We ripped Bush's response to Katrina, so they're ripping President Obama's response to the failed Underpants Bomber. Of course this begs the comparison -- Katrina? Underpants Bomber? Similar, right?

This is all about, "See how you like it, liberals! NAA-NAA!"

Furthermore, at this point there should be no doubt that if there's ever a successful terrorist attack that the Republicans will call for the impeachment of President Obama. Or that they would have if Gore was president on 9/11.

Don't forget that after the successful terrorist attacks of 9/11, Bush's approval ratings shot up to 90 percent. The Underpants Bomber was a total fail, and, reading the wingnut blogs and Twitters, you'd think President Obama put him up to it. But the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil was a major win for Bush. How does that work?

Hell, I got five bucks says they call for his impeachment on general principle for not being a Republican.

In all seriousness, if the GOP wins control of the House while Obama is President, there will be impeachment proceedings.  You can absolutely guarantee it, because the Teabaggers will demand it.  You think they're going to say no?

That's why I find this whole backlash on the Left thing against Obama to be mystifying from a political standpoint.  The Quest For Purity is going to put us right back into impeachment hell again if we're not careful.  Your choices are the insanely evil GOP, or the somewhat shifty Democrats.

In the grand scheme of things, the Dems are at least sane.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

You have to ask yourself why our "liberal media" is running a story on a President with a 90% plus approval rating among African-Americans where the central tenet of the story is this:

But when asked how they personally feel about Obama's presidency, only 42 percent of black respondents say they're thrilled, with nearly half of those questioned saying they are happy but not thrilled.

The 42 percent who are thrilled is down from 61 percent in January, when Obama was inaugurated.

"African-Americans are still big fans of the first black president in U.S. history, but the thrill is gone," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Really.  The thrill is gone.  Not even 90% plus is good enough if you're Obama.  His approval ratings are slipping!  Even black people are starting to turn on him!

You realize what CNN's done here...substitute "thrilled" with "strongly approve" and you have a Rasmussen presidential daily tracking poll.  Obama's numbers among blacks down 19 points since January!

Honestly.  I weep for this country.

I Need Your Boots, Your Clothes, Your Motorcycle And Eight Billion Dollars

Via Atrios, Ahnold says he needs $8 billion in stimulus cash from the Feds or he's going all Terminator on the state's social programs.

Facing a budget deficit of more than $20 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for deep reductions in already suffering local mass transit programs, renew his push to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast and appeal to Washington for billions of dollars in federal help, according to state officials and lobbyists familiar with the plan.

If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back -- if not eliminate -- CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.

Schwarzenegger also will propose extending a cut in the state payroll that is scheduled to expire this summer. That cut has translated into 200,000 state workers being furloughed three days a month, the equivalent of a 14% pay cut. Lawmakers would have the option of extending the furloughs, imposing layoffs or some combination of the two.

The governor is scheduled to unveil his plan publicly early next month. Administration spokesman Matt David declined to comment on the details.

That's because the details apparently involve Ahnold extorting $8 billion out of Obama in a state where it is quite literally impossible to ever raise taxes to pay for things that are broken.  And remember, it's the goal of Republicans to functionally destroy government so that it can never work, and make the people hate it for all time...thus paving the way for the private sector to profit off public utilities.

Funny how that works, eh?  Starve government until it can't work, then blame it for the shortcomings designed into the system.  Currently 1/7th of America lives under that system.  The other 6/7ths of us are due if the GOP has its way.

The Thing From The Bunker Returns

You knew Dick Cheney was eventually going to open his mouth on last week's attack and say something wildly disgraceful and stupid.  He did not disappoint this morning, and Steve Benen is equally merciless in shutting the Dick down.

It was only a matter of time before Dick Cheney decided to trash the president again.

"As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war."

Let's review a few pesky details. First, it was Cheney's administration that released some of the alleged terrorists who plotted the attack into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" in Saudi Arabia, only to see them become terrorist leaders in Yemen. It was also Cheney's administration that gave Abdulmutallab a visa to enter the United States in the first place.

Second, let's compare some "low-key responses." President Obama addressed a failed terrorist attack three days after it occurred. Eight years ago, when a terrorist tried to blow up an airplane under nearly identical circumstances, then-President Bush waited six days before making brief, cursory public remarks. Five days after the attempted terrorist attack, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused substantive comment altogether, telling reporters, "That's a matter that's in the hands of the law enforcement people." A White House spokesperson would only say at the time that officials were "continuing to monitor events."

Democrats, at the time, didn't launch an assault against the Bush administration, and we didn't see Al Gore condemning the White House. It simply didn't occur to Democrats in 2001 to use the attempted mass murder of hundreds of Americans to undermine the presidency.

Eight years later, Dick Cheney believes his principal responsibility is to destroy President Obama -- the man Americans chose to clean up the messes Cheney left as a parting gift after eight years of abject failure.

It's gotten to the point where Cheney is a national embarrassment.  I can't honestly think of any single person with less credibility on American national security right now than Cheney, and that includes Bush, who has wisely kept his mouth shut.  Every time Cheney criticizes Obama, he does so with eight years of buffoonery hanging around his neck.  Any American's response to this nonsense needs to be that of Benen's:  your failures in office made this attack possible, so you have no leg to stand on.

Cheney needs to be dismissed out of hand.  The White House's continuing policy of ignoring the old douchebag is the right one.

He is irrelevant.

Obama Derangement Syndrome, Explosive Clothing Edition

Politico's Dan Gerstein points out Obama is getting crap-hammered by angry Republicans for last week's failed airliner attack...but eight years ago, Democrats were much more supportive of Bush after shoe-bomber Richard Reid's failed attack.

Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of Sept. 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.

That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.

Democrats have seized on the disparity and are making it a centerpiece of their efforts to counter GOP attacks on the White House. “This hypocrisy demonstrates Republicans are playing politics with issues of national security and terrorism,” DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan said. “That they would use this incident as an opportunity to fan partisan flames…tells you all you need to know about how far the Republican party has fallen and how out of step with the American people they have become.”

The Democrats’ counterattack is aimed largely at two Republican congressmen who have been particularly critical of Obama, Reps. Pete Hoekstra (R-N.Y.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.). But neither GOP lawmaker will concede applying a double standard to Obama.

Of course not.  Didn't you know Obama is the worst human being on Earth?  Didn't you know that Muslim terrorists have super powers?  Didn't you know that everything wrong in the last 15 years was either Clinton or Obama's fault?

But that's just how the GOP rolls.  Everything is just another opportunity to attack the Kenyan Usurper.

[UPDATE 10:09 AM]  John Cole notes that the day before, Politico was playing the Obama Blew It Angle just like the rest of the Village.  Calvinball, indeed.

Possible Bug-Out In Tehran

Developing news out of Iran today, Radio Netherlands is reporting that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has an escape plan to Russia should things continue to go south for the regime.

The media organization reports that the Supreme National Security Council ordered a check-up Sunday of the jet on standby to evacuate Khamenei and his family should the need arise.

If Khamenei does depart the country, it would be reminiscent of an historic event in Iranian history: Jan. 16, 1979, when the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi fled Iran following an increase in violent protests. The anniversary of that event is coming up soon.

The plane check is already being viewed by some as an indication that Khamenei will in fact leave Iran, as protests continue.

I'm rather skeptical about this one.  A bug-out plan that's public knowledge is worse than not having one at all.  Nobody does this, the odds of the Iranian resistance having somebody that high up the food chain to provide such a document is pretty much nil.

But it makes for great propaganda though, doesn't it?  Gives the people hope.  Maybe it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I doubt it.  We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• U.S. and Yemeni officials are looking at new strike targets in light of last week's failed airliner attack.
• Brazil has passed a major carbon reduction law that will lower emissions by 29 percent by 2020.
• President Obama's plans to shutter Gitmo and move some detainees to Illinois may now be on permanent hold.
• Talks between Fox and Time Warner are getting more heated as the January 1 deadline approaches.
• Protests over America's H1B visa program are taking to the internet, with both good and bad results.

Last Call

Good to see Harry Reid call the GOP out for once.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will force the confirmation of a Transportation Security Administration chief back into motion as soon as the Senate reconvenes on January 19th.

Talking Points Memo reports: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will schedule a formal Senate roll call vote on the nomination of Errol Southers," the Obama appointee who Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has blocked for the past four months over worries about TSA employees being able to unionize. Reid will file a cloture motion to overcome DeMint's block.

Clever.  That will put the GOP on voting record as against the TSA having a department head just after a failed terror attack.

Chad McGowan, a Democratic candidate for South Carolina Senate, said of his opponent in a statement: "This is not the time to have nobody in charge of America's air security. Terrorists don't care if we're Republicans or Democrats -- they only care that we're Americans. Senator DeMint needs to understand that."

Firedoglake's David Dayen also notes that almost all security industries, including police, firefighters and EMTs, as well as flight attendants and pilots, are currently members of labor unions, seemingly without detriment to their effectiveness.

Even better.  Democrats need to listen to D-Day there and push the first responder union angle.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Josh Marshall doesn't get it either.

Look, Josh, are we really to the point where we're hoping that a logical argument from Democrats for goverment mandates and increased taxes is going to beat Republicans lying with impunity and convincing Americans to vote against their own long-term self-interests, in a country where millions of us believe the President is a Kenyan Muslim?

Have you been paying attention to the last three decades of political history?

I'm completely with Digby on this one.  The Dems have to sell this health plan -- really, really sell it and do it effectively -- or the GOP will use it to take back over.  It doesn't actually matter if they repeal it if they take back over Washington and pass laws to make sure it's never really implemented, does it?

The point is, if they take over, health care reform is not the only thing we're going to lose here.  They've taken back over Washington is the point.

A Lesson In Perspective

The cowboy Wingers at Flopping Aces are going nuts:

First we had the Muslim shooting at the Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas killing one soldier in June. Then, in November, the Muslim massacre at Fort Hood killing 13 soldiers and wounding 30. Now, the botched Christmas Day attack on the airliner carrying 300 people.

One might make the case that the tempo and seriousness of these attacks is on the rise.

And yet, from the beginning of the Obama Administration, they have downplayed the seriousness of the problem. Obama and company refused to call this a “war on terror.” Janet Napolitano, Sec. of Homeland Security choose to call these attacks “man caused disasters.” It’s no wonder that Mark Steyn dubbed Ms. Napolitano “Janet Incompetano” after she claimed “the system worked” in the wake of the failed underwear bomber (bomb photos here). Let’s not forget that Sec. “Incompetano” seemed to be more concerned with “rightwing extremist activity” than she was by Islamic terrorists who have killed thousands of Americans.

Perspective is supplied here by Blue Texan at FDL:

If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack, which even the likes of Pantload doesn’t, 16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting (1), the Holocaust Museum shooting (1), and Dr. George Tiller’s assassination (1), the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists.

On the other hand, 45,000 Americans died because they didn’t have health insurance and 600 died from salmonella poisoning.

Clearly, providing health care to all Americans is beyond our capabilities, so when do we launch the $700 billion-a-year War on Salmonella?

American lives are American lives.  Zero tolerance of "terrorism" is an absolute requirement!  Saving Americans without health care?  Not so much, if you're a Winger.

Here endeth the lesson.

And The Peasants Cheered

And people wonder why the Dems get rolled on issues they should be fighting back against.  Greg Sargent's blog:

We finally found one Democrat willing to defend Obama’s national security approach from Republican attacks.

Rep. Jane Harman’s office sent us over her statement responding to the attempted bombing of Flight 253, where she raised concern about Al Qaeda in Yemen but also warned about the costs of overreaction:

The intelligence on Mr. Abdulmullatab did not result in putting him on a “no fly” list, a process which must be tightened.  But civil liberties matter, and we must stay mindful that an overreaction has the potential to overwhelm the system and fail to make us more safe.

So, like, one down, couple hundred to go.  Anyone else want to not look like a wussy on national security?

[UPDATE 1:32 PM] John Cole has more:

If elected Democrats are anything like left-wing bloggers, the reason they are not defending Obama is because they are too busy flaming him for not turning America into Utopian Commie Franceistan in the first eleven months. Or they are busy screaming at the people who try to defend him.

Also, they probably hate Rahm Emanuel, too.

Lack of spinal column, and lack of ponies for all.  Great.

The Real Deal Appeal Of Repeal

Yggy argues that the GOP running on repealing health care reform is just not going to happen:

Steve Benen had a good rundown yesterday of the pressure conservative activists are putting on politicians to say they’ll “repeal” health care reform. This strikes me as very unlikely to happen. To see why, you have to ask what “repeal” would mean. Nobody’s going to mount a challenge to an incumbent member of congress by promising to start letting insurance companies deny more claims, or charge women higher premiums. You could promise to repeal Obama’s death panels, but that would be hard to follow up on since they don’t exist. You could promise to repeal the provision forcing hospitals to be more transparent about what they charge but . . . why would you do that?

The juicy political target to hit would be the individual mandate which certainly can easily enough be made to sound like a terrible thing. And this would probably make reform unworkable if you could do it. But industry players aren’t going to want that. Nor is anyone going to want to see lower subsidies for middle class families.


What does seem realistic is that future, more conservative, congresses might do other kinds of conservative stuff that will impact health reform. Rather than repealing the specific tax provisions that finance reform, you’ll see drives to cut taxes for the rich. Rather than bringing back the good old days of rescission, you’ll at a minimum keep hearing talk about the idea of de facto gutting insurance regulation by “selling plans across state lines.” And instead of complaints about how reform is going to blow up the deficit, you’ll see a combination of tax (cut! cut! cut! especially for the rich) and spending policies that do in fact blow up the deficit. But nothing will be “repealed.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you'd better believe that the Teabaggers will try.  Yggy is wrong on this one.  They'll fail in 2010 but not because they are going to lack the attempt.  They will have no choice but to do so, or they know they will be primaried right out of existence in 2012.  Yes, they don't care if it means less subsidies for the middle class.  They will say "We can afford tax cuts if we stop the subsidies.  You want magical job creating tax cuts, right?"

Look, unless the Dems make the case that this plan is vital and will be helping Americans now, they are going to turn on it in droves and go right along with the "repeal it now" mob.  The GOP is betting they'll have enough clout in 2011 to do just that...and should they fail, well the problem is "We could have repealed it but Obama vetoed it" and we go through all this again in 2012.

When you have a logical Democratic argument on one side and Republican bullshit on the other, betting against the bullshit is a losing proposition unless it's so flagrant that the Republicans trip over themselves.

[UPDATE 12:02 PM] And of course if the economy's still in the trash can in November...and it will be, as I've been warning for a while now...yes, Americans will blame the Dems and vote against their own self-interests because the Republicans and the Village will have convinced them that the Dems have only made things worse.

The Balance Of Shame

More Benen today on Republicans making political hay off singed underpants:

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, has been desperately trying to exploit the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas for political gain. But even by Hoekstra's low standards, this is one of the more craven displays of any politician this year.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) is now jumping upon the Northwest Airlines attack -- and using it to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign, the Grand Rapids Press reports.

In the letter, Hoekstra denounces the Obama administration on a whole range of national security issues -- ranging from Flight 253 itself to Guantanamo Bay, investigation of the interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration, and what Hoekstra calls Obama policies that "impress the 'Blame America First' crowd at home and his thousands of fans overseas."

First, when a Republican's first instinct in the wake of an attempted attack is to blame the president and U.S. officials for the terrorist's actions, he's more or less joined the "Blame America First" crowd.

Second, as a substantive matter, Pete Hoekstra is completely, demonstrably wrong about every aspect of national security policy.

And third, just how pathetic does a politician have to be to try to raise money off the attempted murder of hundreds of innocent Americans? Just how desperate does that politician have to be to see a plot to blow up an airplane over American soil and think, "You know, maybe I can exploit this to pick up a few checks."

Steve, Steve, Steve, my friend, bro...there's a distinct segment of the population where the balance of shame of having a black man with a funny middle name in the White House is more than the shame of Pete Hoekstra's attempt to capitalize on this attack.  Hoekstra is playing to this segment.  He has no choice.

This distinct segment of the population controls the political future of Republicans like Hoekstra in 2010 and 2012, period.  Republicans like Hoekstra must cater to this segment or be replaced by someone who will.  This is pure Hoffman Effect, plain and simple.

Look, one of two things will happen in 2010:  either the Republicans will be able to hold on sliding around Teabagger's Corner at top speed making their right turn into destiny and make massive gains in the House and Senate, or they will wipe out, flip over and smash into the wall.  In a sense, it doesn't really matter what the Dems do at this point, and that's just another sign at how messed up the universe is.

Dem success in 2010 is entirely reliant on the GOP crashing and burning and the centrist voters just saying "You know what?  Even the Dems are better than these assholes."  That's not something I'd absolutely bet on happening before November 2010.  Now, 2012...different story.  That's almost assured with Obama himself presumably running again.

He's Got It, Down Pat

Spencer Ackerman's blog has been essential for national security reading for a couple years now, and if you wonder why, here he is calmly stomping the crap out of Pat Buchanan on Morning Joe today.



Earned himself a long overdue place on the ol' blogroll there, and that's a pretty critical oversight on my part for not including his blog long ago.

Regardless, it's still a pretty epic smackdown on Buchanan there.

Orly? Ya Rly! Part 5

With her love life in tatters, the Queen of Birthers makes the call we've all been waiting for:

What is the real intention of this Kenyan, Indonesian communist usurper? Is it to provide security for us or to destroy our security? Judge for yourself.

Seeing targeted destruction of our economy, our security, dissipation of American jobs, massive corruption in the Government, Congress Department of Justice and Judiciary, it might be time to start rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bare arms and organise in militias.

And there we are, citizen militias to rise up against Obama.  It all comes back to Tim McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph for these guys in the end.  Tim at Balloon Juice adds:

Orly needs to come up with something new and outrageouser just to keep up. Once your camp basically agrees that expanding health insurance coverage is literally worse than Hitler, where do you go? Even in America there are some things that you can’t quite say out loud. Did team teabag paint itself in a corner? Will a few overenthusiastic martyrs to the few speech laws we do have prove good for the cause? We should find out in a month or two.

It's going to be mighty ugly when it happens, too.  There are, quite frankly, people out there who are going to think that this is a great idea...hell there are already people out there in the militia movement today.  If the Teabaggers go down this road (and I always believed it would be inevitable that they would) then the reaction from the center of the political spectrum is key.  We know the Right will be lost to this, but the center still decides elections.  If they recoil in horror, the Teabaggers may have finally crossed the Rubicon here.

But man, it scares the crap out of me to think that the only thing keeping America together is counting on the people in the middle to think that the Birthers have gone too far down the Obama Derangement Syndrome path.  Ours is not a healthy country.

You've Got A Hold On Me

Steve Benen notes this morning that it's not just the filibuster that allows the minority to control the majority in the Senate, it's the art of the hold too.

That would be mind-numbing enough if it were an isolated incident, but inane Senate holds on qualified nominees have become painfully routine. The General Services Administration has been without an administrator because Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) blocked the president's nominee -- he wanted more funding for a federal office building in downtown Kansas City. The president's nominee for the U.S. ambassador to Spain faced a hold because Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wanted more information about the dismissal of AmeriCorps' inspector general.

The nominee to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission faces a hold. Judicial nominees have been subjected to holds for no apparent reason. Dawn Johnsen was nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, but she's spent nine months in procedural limbo. Patricia Smith is prepared to be the Department of Labor's Solicitor, responsible for enforcing workplace protections, but there's a hold on her, too.

There isn't even anyone in charge of the TSA right now, because of another Republican hold. (More on that later.)

Put simply, the failed and discredited Republican minority is effectively breaking the United States Senate.

It bears repeating that this has been the GOP plan in action now for only a year and it has been executed beautifully.  The Republicans are betting that by putting holds on executive branch agency heads and stalling nominations and legislation through the filibuster, they either force the Dems to look like One World Order fascists who are trying to rob the Republicans of their Constitutional rights, or they have to accept the permanent sabotage of the government by the GOP and the Dems get to take the blame for it, after all, they're in charge, right?  

Either way the Democrats and the government itself become the enemy, and the Republicans cash in.  "You know, when Republicans ran things, government worked."  And by "worked", I mean "worked over the average American to the point where the Republicans were thrown out of office en masse."  But the electorate has a short memory...especially if the Village tells them what to have a short memory about.  "You're miserable today, right?  Who's in charge of America today?  There's your problem, obviously.  How is this Bush's fault?"

It's gotten so bad that frustrated progressives are attacking Obama for not fighting hard enough on beating these holds.  What's Obama going to do, exactly?  There really isn't much he can do when there's zero reason for the GOP to play ball and every reason to continue to sabotage the Obama administration.  What, pray tell, should Obama do?  Complain about broken government when he's the President?

And even the phrase "broken government" implies neglect or accident or incompetence.  What we have here in the Senate GOP is sabotaged government.  There's a difference.  It's being done on purpose for political gain and it's being done professionally.  As a matter of fact, Obama's state of the union address needs to do just that:  call the GOP out on the carpet and say "Look you assholes, you're destroying this country for political gain."

If Dems don't call the GOP on this, they will be out in the wilderness for another 14 years while Bachmanniac, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint finish this country off.  Calling out the GOP entails some risk.  Continuing to allow the GOP to sabotage the government is a 100% failure proposition for Obama and the Dems.  They have no choice.

What Digby Said

Today's episode of What Digby Said involves profiling Middle-Eastern Muslim men on flights.(emphasis mine:)

If you add in Africans (as you must by this logic) that's about half of the global population right there. But then how do we know that some guy named Bob isn't a Muslim? Or that some young woman named Samira isn't a terrorist? It gets really complicated. The only profiling that will really work is to not let anyone in the US at all and to require all US citizens to wear designations on their clothes to indicate which religion they are. Anything short of that just won't get the job done.

Alternatively, we could invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

Short of that, I would guess we're going to have to continue to do the delicate balancing act between security and civil liberties and sharpen up the huge unwieldy anti-terrorist bureaucracy. As someone who was once lauded as a super-hero terrorist fighter always said, "it's hard work."

Once you go down the profiling road, you become obligated to use it against everyone. You have to take it to its absurdist endpoint, because the logic is absurd.

All's Fair In Love And Birther Nonsense

Dave Weigel watches the stabilizers come off the Orly Taitz Satellite O' Love...

The word for this is “strange.” For much of 2009, a disbarred attorney named Charles Lincoln played key roles in Orly Taitz’s multiple “birther” lawsuits against President Obama. Lincoln claimed to be a “law clerk” for Taitz, and he showed up again and again to file documents or assist her in court.

Last week, Lincoln went on his personal blog and filed a lengthy, emotional post confessing that he had fallen in love with Taitz — who is married — and been used by a “disloyal and treacherous person.”

By mid-October, when we were in New York together and Lucas Smith published his “declaration”, I had wrapped my life around Orly’s and I guess I honestly believed she had wrapped hers around mine and she said over and over again how much she was committed to me and how she never wanted us to separate. Three weeks later she had abandoned me, and yet some people have the nerve to call ME mentally unstable!  I am honest about where I come from. Orly is not. Orly used her words and promises to induce me as long as she wanted and then she dumped me with no regard to her promises whatsoever.

And it gets worse from there, if you can imagine.  The Queen of Birthers is also the Queen of Breaking Hearts.  Who knew?

StupidiNews!

• Iranian protests continue as parliament officials call for "the harshest punishment" against those who protest.
• House Homeland Security chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson is openly questioning the plan to close Gitmo in the wake of this weekend's failed bombing.
• U.S. intelligence officials say time is running out for stopping the Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Kazakhstan is the latest country to come to the World Bank looking for a loan.
• Amazon's Kindle will have stiff competition in 2010 as the e-book reader market heats up.
  

Last Call

That can't be comfortable underwear.

Primed For Failure

Steve Benen makes yet another important point about the sturm und drang concerning this weekend's terror attack and the warning the suspect's father gave U.S. officials.

We're dealing with a situation in which Abdulmutallab's father, justifiably concerned, felt like his son might become dangerous. He didn't have any information about a specific plot, but he wanted the authorities to be aware of the potential problem. U.S. officials added Abdulmutallab's name to a list -- a rather long list.

And therein lies the point. U.S. officials learn about all kinds of potentially dangerous people, all over the globe, every day. Most of these people have never committed an act of terrorism, and never will. A tiny fraction will consider violence, a tiny fraction of them will actually attempt mass murder. It's literally impossible to launch investigations into every one of them. It's not that officials "had real details about an Islamic maniac and did nothing about it"; it's that officials had vague details and lacked the capacity and wherewithal to take immediate action.

There's a lot of information out there, and results like this one are practically unavoidable. Blaming U.S. officials for not leaping to action in response to the father's concerns is a mistake.

It's worth exploring why this is the case, why the TSA doesn't have more funding to process more leads like this.

The answer is simple:  The Republican party.

As Republicans seek to put the blame for the widespread perception of ineptness at the Transportation Security Administration on the Obama administration, Democrats are arguing that Republican legislators bear part of the blame and that they're politically vulnerable on the subject.

Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the agency: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.

Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process, a Democrat points out. A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Joe Wilson.

Republicans seem to think the TSA having funding is not worth it, and yet they complain the TSA dropped the ball on this issue.  Furthermore, they continue to have the TSA chief's nomination on hold.  Republicans complain incessantly about the government not functioning properly, when they refuse to take any responsibility and in fact actively move to stop it from functioning smoothly so that they can then blame the President when the government agency in question fails in some duty.

Amazing how that works.

Unhappiness Is Feeling Blue

It's pretty telling that CNBC's ranking of "Unhappiest States" includes median income, unemployment rate and state sales tax rate...and 9 of the 10 unhappiest states are blue ones.  The lone red exception:  Indiana.

As it turns out, some of the highest income states are among the unhappiest, according to a recent study by economists Andrew J. Oswald and Stephen Wu, of the University of Warwick and Hamilton College, respectively.

Taking into account both subjective and objective factors such as sunshine, congestion and pollution in a survey of 1.3 million Americans between 2005 and 2008, the researchers determined which states have the happiest – and unhappiest - residents. Among the happiest are Louisiana, Hawaii and Florida.

"Some might be surprised that states in the south with lower income ranked as high as they did," said Wu, economist at Hamilton College. "States with high income rate fairly low on the happiness levels. To some it might seem counterintuitive; it's not just about income levels, but those places might be more crowded, more congested on the roadway, [have] less available land."

Really?  Sunshine?  That doesn't favor Southern states or anything.  And it's really interesting to see CNBC using 2009 unemployment stats on a 2005-2008 study.  Funny how that works.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Carolina Panthers QB Jake Delhomme broke his finger earlier this month and pretty much saved Coach John Fox's job as a result.

The Specter Of Past Associations

People forget sometimes that Snarlin' Arlen Specter was a Republican up until this spring, and he has a pretty interesting take on what the early GOP response was to President Obama in GOP Senate caucus, which was basically "Oh screw THIS guy."

During his appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) appeared to give out some inside dirt from his days as a Republican -- alleging that the GOP plotted early to stop any bipartisan cooperation with President Obama, and to instead look towards the 2012 election.

"I'd like to pick up on what Sen. DeMint says about the process. I think the process was very bad. But the process was really caused, in large measure, by the refusal of the Republicans to deal in any way," said Specter.

"Sen. DeMint is the author of the famous statement that this is going to be President Obama's 'Waterloo,' that this ought to be used to break the president," said Specter, referring to the political battle over health care. "So that before the ink was dry on the oath of office -- and I know this, because I was in the caucus -- the Republicans were already plotting ways to beat President Obama in 2012."

Yeah, lack of bipartisanship was all the Democrats' fault for being elected, you see.

Be A Winner In The Game Of Life

Gallup's 2009 list of political winners and losers is out, and topping the list is Michelle Obama, Hillary, Sonia Sotomayor, and President Obama.

They were followed by Helicopter Ben, Glennsanity, Moose Lady, San Fran Nan, Harry Reid, The Entire GOP House Contingent, Joe "You Lie!" Wilson, Gov. Mark "Don't Lie For Me, Argentina" Sanford and coming in dead last, those obnoxious White House party crashers.

Interesting factoid:

45% of Republicans thought Hillary was a winner in 2009.  Those guys should get together with the 21% of Democrats who loved them some Moose Lady, and they should trade hugs.

Commence The Mass Urination

Roy Edroso fries himself up a heaping order of Wingnut over at the Village Voice today.

Rightbloggers, for obvious reasons, are less interested in calming fears than in exacerbating them, and proclaim, as is their wont, that the Obama Presidency has failed and that America will only be safe when it has come to an end.

Some merely blocked out Napolitano's repeated distinction that the system worked well after the incident, and read it to mean that letting Abdulmutallab on board with his crotch-bomb was part of the plan.
"WTF?" cried Be John Galt. "The system is SUPPOSED to seat terrorists wearing explosive clothing right next to the fuel tanks???" "What system worked?" said Weasel Zippers. "The only thing that stopped him was the fuse on the bomb malfunctioned..." "If the 'system' had 'worked,'" said Michelle Malkin, "Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S..." "Maybe she's not talking about OUR system at all," said deadenders. Etc.

Debbie Schlussel claimed that Napolitano was "already declaring that Abdulmutallab wasn't involved in any larger terrorist plot," which is a great stretch from Napolitano's "Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues" -- to which Schlussel actually linked her charge -- but Schlussel isn't running Homeland Security, thank God, and thus had no need to be careful about her wording.

Robert Stacy McCain went further, claiming that Napolitano's cautious statements meant the Administration was planning to play a "Lone Nut Card" to absolve its friends in Al Qaeda. "So far, I've seen no evidence of the 'victim card' being played on behalf of Abdulmutallab," he admitted, "but this Associated Press biographical profile of the suspect portrays him as having had a 'saintly aura' as a student in England. Give the media time, though. Their best spinmeisters are still on holiday."

We guess this alleged media plot to exonerate Abdulmutallab is of a piece with the alleged media plot to exonerate the Fort Hood shooter, who despite the awesome power of the traitor-press remains in custody.

"If the election were being held today in the light of the terrorism on the Delta flight from Amsterdam," said Pajamas Media's Roger L. Simon, "I have little doubt that John McCain -- whatever his deficiencies as a candidate -- would have been elected president, possibly in a landslide." Ah, what might have been, in an alternate universe!

Nothing but fear.  It's Obama's Katrina!  You're all going to die!

Except nobody died.  At some point we have to accept risk and move on.

The Hoffman Effect Rolls On

McClatchy's Ed Fletcher takes us to Placer County, California where the Great Purge of the GOP continues unabated.

In GOP-rich Placer County, the Placer County Republican Central Committee chairman views himself as a brand manager of sorts.

"We need to protect our brand," said Tom Hudson. "We need to stand for something."

Hudson, 42, takes pride in unmasking and ousting people he says are liberals posing as Republicans.

With the elected committee's backing, Hudson has drafted candidates to run against sitting GOP officeholders he views as not conservative enough, orchestrated a controversial endorsement during the primary for the 4th Congressional District seat, and played a role in the decision by two Placer County officeholders to drop their Republican Party membership.

"When you have Republicans that are supporting higher taxes and more fees and more salary for themselves … you have to say, 'What issues do they agree with us on?' " said Hudson.

In recent weeks, a quiet skirmish became much more visible in the county with the second-highest percentage of card-carrying Republicans in the state when two elected leaders – county Supervisor Jim Holmes and Rocklin City Councilman Peter Hill – left the party and reregistered as "decline to state."

Both men said the questioning of their party credentials contributed to their decisions.

They'd rather purify the party than win elections.  That says something about the Republican big tent these days, and what it says is that fanatics are now running the asylum.  More and more of these state-level purge actions are occurring, with the intent that it will eventually force the GOP to change on the national level.  Just imagine, a Republican party full of Bachmanniacs!

[UPDATE 12:17 PM]  Or imagine a GOP full of people like Republican Senate candidate Andy Martin of Illinois, running for a shot at Obama's old seat against primary opponent and current Congressman Mark Kirk:

Andy Martin, a conservative public interest lawyer, put out a spot on local radio in which he pushes a "solid rumor" that fellow Senatorial aspirant, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), "is a homosexual."

"I helped expose many of Barack Obama's lies in 2008," the ad goes. "Today, I am fighting for the facts about Mark Kirk. Illinois Republican leader Jack Roeser says there is a 'solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual.' Roeser suggests that Kirk is part of a Republican Party homosexual club. Lake County Illinois Republican leader Ray True says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals."

"Mark Kirk should tell Republican voters the truth."

And keep in mind Mark Kirk is a Republican too.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Josh Marshall asks:

I don't think Newt Gingrich necessarily speaks for the GOP these days. But he said over the weekend that he's sure every Republican in 2010 and 2012 will run on a pledge to repeal Health Care Reform. And though he was less definitive, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said close to the same thing. Now given the relative unpopularity of the bill at this moment (which I strongly suspect will change) and its extreme unpopularity among partisan Republicans, that's not a very surprising statement. What's interesting to me, though, is that Democrats started saying last week that they plan to run on the same platform -- namely, that if you vote for Republicans they'll repeal Health Care Reform.

In a sense, none of this should surprise us. This is pretty much how things should be -- you get the main issue of the day and the different parties vote for and against. But it's pretty seldom that's the case. It's not that common that both parties think the same issue is a winning one for them.

I think Dems can win this issue if they pick out the changes that are overwhelming popular -- bans on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, etc. But what has to be worrisome from a Democratic standpoint is the issue Gingrich focuses in on here ...

I suspect every Republican running in '10 and again in '12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill. The bill--most of the bill does not go into effect until '13 or '14, except on the tax increase side; and therefore, I think there won't be any great constituency for it. And I think it'll be a major campaign theme.

How do you develop a constituency for a bill before people have seen it in effect?

Really, Josh?  You don't get the plan here?  You blame every health care related death, every premium dollar spent, every nightmare story, ever insurance company rejection, everything wrong with the system on this bill, and then you say "Unless it is repealed before 2013/2014, it will be far, far worse."

In short, you lie.  It's what Republicans do.  If you haven't noticed, for the last two decades the GOP has set up quite the operation here based on constituency building through abject bullshit.  Now here's the great part:  Republicans are betting they'll win running against this and that you'll want the status quo back by 2012.  Democrats are betting the opposite.

Logically there's no way the Dems can lose on this.  But this is politics, not logic.  So yes, the GOP will be running to repeal this bill, and so will state GOP Republicans, who will run on making sure their state is excluded from all provisions and that they simply ignore the federal laws.  It will succeed in a number of states, I assume.

[UPDATE 1:25 PM] Greg Sargent reminds us that the Teabaggers now have their battle cry for the next several years.

It’s now becoming clear that this could be a major issue for Republicans in 2010: the Tea Party movement, as well as high-profile conservatives, are going to demand that candidates call for a full repeal of the Dem healthcare reform bill, presuming it passes.

Multiple figures on the right are beginning to make this demand explicit.

In an interview with me just now, Max Pappas, the Vice President for Public Policy of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, said that if the bill passes, politicians should call for a full repeal.

“This has an unusual ability to be repealed, and the public is on that side.” he said. “The Republicans are going to have to prove that they are worthy of their votes.”

Again, this will accompanied by state Teabagger effort to nullify health care reform. The cry of "leave it to the states to determine their own healthcare" when of course state budgets are strapped across the board is exactly what the Teabaggers want:  a helter-skelter patchwork where some states have their own plan, some states have the federal plan, and some states have no plan.  It will effectively doom the federal plan, which is the point.