Last Call

FOX has been pushing Thursday's new Sarah Palin interview news special, "Real American Heroes".  It features interviews by LL Cool J, Toby Keith, and Jack Welch.  There's only one problem.

Sarah Palin doesn't actually interview anyone.  TPM's Jillian Rayfield:

The interviews appear to have been filmed awhile back for the "Real American Heroes" website, which is owned by Fox News.

It now seems that there was a lack of clarity on how the interviews would be used, and by whom.

A spokesperson for Keith told HitFix today: "We were never contacted by Fox. I have no idea what interview it's taken from. They're promoting this like it's a brand new interview. He never sat down with Sarah Palin."

Are you serious?   Could FOX just not find anybody softball enough to sit down to talk to Sarah Palin for 7 minutes?  Nobody?  A sports star?  A Republican from...somewhere?  Victoria Jackson?  You're telling me FOX is running an interview show with Sarah Palin...and she's not in any of the interviews?

I keep saying "Boy, the Right Wing Noise Machine must really, really think Americans are the stupidest people on Earth."  I never expected FOX to turn around and actually prove that adage on an idle Wednesday in March.

Oh, it gets worse.

Last night, LL Cool J slammed Fox News on his Twitter feed:

Fox lifted an old interview I gave in 2008 to someone else & are misrepresenting to the public in order to promote Sarah Palins Show. WOW

Fox News responded:

Real American Stories features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith's interview fit that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.

Because the overarching vibe you get from FOX News is the sterling sense of journalistic professionalism they exude like a newspaper-scented Glade Plug-In.   And actually, I'd bet Toby Keith or LL Cool J could do a better job interviewing "Real American People" than Moose Lady, the failed Governor of Moose World, the Moosiest Place On Earth.  Honestly, how many people immediately associate the words "Real American People" with "Half-Term Governors Who Quit From Alaska"?

If there were any justice, this woman would be reduced to the occasional guest villain role on "My Life On The D-List with Kathy Griffin".  Instead, I'm hoping she's the woman who gives Barack Obama four more years.

Lesson Unlearned

On the surface, today's decision by President Obama to lift a ban on some offshore drilling seems like a perfect follow-up to health care reform:  it's something that makes pragmatic sense, it doesn't require any arm-twisting in Congress, it appeals to moderates and it neatly traps the GOP (after all, it was their idea in the first place.)  Most importantly, Obama sees it as a compromise step towards climate legislation.  It's low-hanging fruit, and Obama could surely use something easier after the year-plus long slog through the marshes on health care reform.

All of this of course proves Obama didn't learn a friggin' thing from his last 14 months in office.  If he had, he never would have even attempted this.  In fact, this decision worries me about Obama to the point where I have to openly question if the guy's been paying attention at all to the Republican party.

I love Obama, but I honestly am shocked that he did this.  It's a carefully calculated political move, but the political calculus demanded that his next act needed to be something that would excite the Democratic party base, not piss it off and bring out the firebagger brigade while guaranteeing the Republicans would just attack Obama for not going far enough.


And that's exactly what happened today.  MoJo's Kate Sheppard:

So far, Obama’s gesture at bipartisanship has been met with scorn on the right. On Wednesday, John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader, fired off a statement saying that Obama's plan did not open up enough off-shore territory for drilling and chiding him for "delaying American energy production off all our shores." Obama’s previous offering to Republicans and apprehensive Democrats, a major expansion of government support for nuclear power, was met with similar disdain.

While Obama's overtures aren't earning him much goodwill among detractors, his drilling plan is sure to anger the Senate's progressive, coastal state senators, who last week fired off a missive to the senators working on a climate and energy package that said expanded off-shore drilling was a deal-breaker. New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg today condemned the plan as a "Kill, baby, kill" approach to energy policy.

Why Obama's first reaction towards starting the next leg of his policy agenda is "Step 1)  Compromise With Republicans By Telling Progressives To Eat This Bullshit" after the empirical evidence of HCR with all zero of its Republican votes for the finished product, I can't explain.

Well no, I can explain it, and all the explanations make me rather depressed for the rest of the Obama presidency.  I really do want to know who in the Obama braintrust thought this would be a good idea that wouldn't completely explode in the President's face.  I also want to know why the rest of Obama's crew didn't immediately say "Hey, no offense, but compromising with the Republicans seems to only encourage them to complain about not getting 100% of their own way 100% of the time, maybe this is not such a good idea."

What it says to me is that somebody's learning curve is a flat-line, and at this point in the Presidency going forward, that's unacceptable.

Angry Johnny Gets Hoffmanned

There's no better example of the Hoffman Effect -- that is the GOP primary races turning so sharply to the right that whoever wins the primary becomes increasingly unable to capture the middle in the general election and loses in a spectacular fashion -- than John McCain.

In his nasty primary battle with JD Hayworth, McCain has gone so far over to the right on most issues you'd mistake him for Jim DeMint or Jim Inhofe.  The latest issue is immigration, pretty much the hot-button issue in the Arizona Republican primary, and McCain's gone all in.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), under fire from the right for not being tough enough on immigration in his Senate primary race, has called on Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to dispatch National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a letter sent to Napolitano's office yesterday, McCain says that rising drug violence across the border in Mexico endangers the lives of American citizens. He says the situation now calls for troops to be sent to the "southern border region."

"The people of Arizona and the United States demand and deserve secure borders," he writes. "I hope that you will take a personal interest in ensuring that Arizonans can feel safe and protected on their own property and not live in fear of the increasing violence along the border." 

This is the same guy who wrote the DREAM Act in 2007, you know before it became a complete disaster as the wingers screamed "SHAMNESTY!" at the top of their lungs and practically cost McCain the 2008 Presidential primary before it even started.  He's now calling for armed National Guard troops on the border with orders to...do what, exactly?  Shoot to kill?  Tank columns on Interstates 19 and 8?  Airstrikes to burn down Coronado National Forest?  Landmines in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument?  Laser defense grids?

Don't we have a US Border Patrol already for this?  McCain's been in the military (did you know he was a POW?) so he should of all people want to tread cautiously on militarizing our borders.  And yet here he is, trying to one-up his primary opponent and tossing all that out the window because, well, he's got a primary to win.

And people wonder why I think Republicans are cynical and think American voters are stupid.

This Is Terrible, You Have To Try It

So when Ezra Klein says something is the worst op-ed he's ever read, I have to go read it.  Surprise, Shelby Steele's screed really is horrendous to the point of being self-parody.

Of the two great societal goals—freedom and "the good"—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.

This is an old formula for power, last used effectively on the presidential level by Lyndon Johnson. But Johnson's Great Society was grasping for moral authority after the civil rights movement. I doubt any white president could use it effectively today, and even ObamaCare passed by only a three vote margin in the House and with no Republican support at all. Worse, in the end, it passed not to bring the nation better health care but to pull a flailing Democratic presidency back from the brink.

There has always been a narcissistic charge around Mr. Obama, the sense that in embracing him one was embracing something special in oneself—and possibly even a larger idea of human perfectibility. Every politician wants this capacity to attract identification. But it is also a trap. What happens when people are embarrassed for having seen themselves in you?

The old fashioned, big government liberalism that Mr. Obama uses to make himself history-making also alienates him in the center-right America of today. It makes him the most divisive president in memory—a president who elicits narcissistic identification on the one hand and an enraged tea party movement on the other. His health-care victory has renewed his narcissistic charge for the moment, but if he continues to be a 1965 liberal it will become more and more impossible for Americans to see themselves in him.

Mr. Obama's success has always been ephemeral because it was based on an illusion: that if we Americans could transcend race enough to elect a black president, we could transcend all manner of human banalities and be on our way to human perfectibility. A black president would put us in a higher human territory. And yet the poor man we elected to play out this fantasy is now torturing us with his need to reflect our grandiosity back to us.

Many presidents have been historically significant in retrospect, but Mr. Obama had historic significance on his inauguration day. His inauguration told a transcendent American story. Other presidents work forward into their legacy. Mr. Obama is working backwards into his. 

Steele's massively cynical theory that Obama is only doing this to live up to the equally cynical expectations that our first black president must have thrust upon his shoulders by an equally cynical populace.  It only works if you believe that government exists only to enrich politicians and is not capable of producing anything other than disaster...in short, you don't see a need for government at all and prefer rule by corporate plutocrat, and that the American people are equally both unable to see Obama scamming them all and yet are too stupid to see how all of politics exists only to placate the masses.

In other words, your standard Glibertarian douchebaggery.

Imagine finding that particular viewpoint in the Wall Street Journal.  He's our First Black President(tm) so he has to write his name in the moon with a huge laser or something, or he won't stand up to history's other First Black Anythings(tm).   Pretty depressing world Steele lives in.

[UPDATE 2:50 PM] And Adam Serwer does a masterful job of relating Shelby Steele's long history of douchebaggery and then dismantling him with such utter completeness and pure skill usually reserved for the Mythbusters.

If you're Shelby Steele, though, you can't actually abandon your thesis, no matter how much harm you're doing the cause of conservatism or your party, because you offer a specific product -- reassurance to whites that anti-black racism is a thing of the past and that they've fulfilled their ethical obligations to blacks. Therefore, any substantive expansion of the social safety net isn't about social responsibility but exploitation. So to respond to Ezra Klein, Steele is bound to a vision of a world where black people's existence is defined by exploiting white guilt for personal advantage. So it doesn't occur to Steele that extending health-care coverage to 32 million people is a good in and of itself worth fighting for, because he likely sees it as merely a crude redistribution of resources from one race to another under terms he sees as unfair.

If conservatives figure out Steele's product is useless -- nay harmful -- then he doesn't get paid for it, and his irrelevance as an intellectual becomes apparent. Steele accuses Obama of being a "bound man," but he finds himself bound to propping up a thesis that one tsunami after another leaves in ruins.

This is what is truly sad. Not only is Steele offering the same kind of reassurance to white conservatives that he accuses Obama of offering to whites in general, he doesn't even have the freedom to admit that he's wrong.

Nice. Very nice.

Game Time

If you haven't had a chance to pick up Shatter on the PC from Steam, do so.  You could also spend the $10 on the game's soundtrack, which I'm strongly considering once I beat the game.  Both are great.  Been on the PS3 for a while now, finally out on the PC.

Open thread and new tag:  Games And Hobbies.

What do you guys do to unwind?

Jobapalooza Preview

ADP's jobless numbers out today show a small decline, but Friday's official numbers may actually be positive for once due to Census hiring.

US private employers shed 23,000 jobs in March, missing expectations for an increase in jobs although fewer than the adjusted 24,000 jobs lost in February, a report by a private employment service said Wednesday.

The February fall was originally reported at 20,000.

The median of estimates from 35 economists surveyed by Reuters for the ADP Employer Services report, jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers, was for a rise of 40,000 private-sector jobs last month.

Stock futures, around flat prior to the release of the ADP number, quickly turned negative on fears that a turnaround in the jobs market isn't as close as some analysts expected.

ADP's Joel Prakken told CNBC that projections for Friday's nonfarms job report Friday could still show a gain in employment, largely due to government hiring of Census workers and weather-related depression of hiring.

It's one of those "could go either way" things, but the reality is we need years of 150K-200K a month job growth to get this country back on track...maybe even a solid decade of that.  And that's just to get back where we were in 2006.

No matter who's president in 2013 and 2017, they're going to have a long road.

The Comeback Kids

Across the river in Ohio, the Dems are making headway in the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

Democrats are having a mini-surge in Ohio as two possible candidates for the open U.S. Senate seat have come from behind to pass the Republican contender, and Gov. Ted Strickland remains ahead of Republican challenger John Kasich, 43 - 38 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

And President Barack Obama's job approval is up from a negative 44 - 52 percent February 23 to an almost even 47 - 48 percent today, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe- ack) University poll finds.

In the Senate race, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher leads Republican Rob Portman 41 - 37 percent, reversing a 40 - 37 percent Portman lead February 24. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner edges Portman 38 - 37 percent, reversing a 40 - 35 percent Republican lead.

Although Ohioans remain opposed to President Obama's health care plan, the margin is down from a 55 - 36 percent disapproval in November to a 50 - 43 percent thumbs down today. But voters say 38 - 25 percent they are more likely to vote against their congressman if he or she voted for the Obama plan.

"Perhaps it's the passage of the health care overhaul and the fact that people like being with a winner: There has been a small, but consistent movement toward Democratic candidates and causes in Ohio in the last month," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Whether this is the beginning of a long-term move or not won't be clear for some time, perhaps until November."

Ohio's still a swing state, so this makes sense.  You don't expect the state to remain heavily blue or heavily red for very long, and when it does go in one direction like it did in 2008, 2009 saw a big swing towards Republicans Kasich and Portman.  Now in 2010, the momentum has swung back to the Democrats.  Ohio politics is like Ohio weather:  give it a little time and it will change.

Obama's -8 approval rating differential was held up as the doom of the party this year, but anyone who's been paying attention to the Buckeye State knew that wasn't going to last.  Ohioans do indeed appreciate a winner who can get things done.  People still more or less split evenly on the guy here.

Of course, how long THAT will last is anyone's guess.  My guess is Obama will have to continue getting things done in order to keep that momentum going, and the GOP will be doing everything they can to stop him cold.  If no more legislation gets passed in 2010, Ohio will put the blame squarely on Obama's shoulders and not the GOP.  The places hurting the most in Ohio's 10.9% unemployment rate are the Rust Belt urban centers where labor and the Dems have always done well.  If they're still hurting in November, it's going to be tough for Gov. Strickland to keep his job.  If the jobless numbers are going down and Strickland is making an effort to fix the problem, Ohioans will probably give him another chance.

Enough people around here still remember John Kasich and aren't terribly fond of the guy.

Kay Will Stay, Okay?

Hotline On-Call is reporting that Texas GOP Sen. Kay Bailiey Hutchinson will remain in the Senate through the end of her term in 2012.

The move is a reversal of a pledge Hutchison made to step down as she challenged Gov. Rick Perry (R) earlier this year. Hutchison lost an early March primary against Perry by a surprisingly wide margin.

Hutchison originally said she would step down sometime last fall, before putting off her resignation thanks to the health care debate. Now that the health care debate is over, House GOPers in TX have urged Hutchison to reconsider in a letter sent to the incumbent last week.

Hutchison's decision means several candidates who hoped to replace her will have to put their plans on hold until her term expires in '12. At least 6 prominent GOPers who anticipated Hutchison's resignation have been running for months.

It also means Dems won't have the chance to pick off a seat because of the state's runoff laws. Earlier this cycle, the party hoped to take advantage of the chaos created by a crowded GOP field; but as Hutchison's resignation looked less likely, ex-Houston Mayor Bill White (D) dropped his SEN bid to mount his own campaign against Perry.

We'll see in 2012 if that was the smart move for the GOP.  It could be that by 2012, Obama has turned things around more sharply and has coattails momentum and the Tea party movement could have run out of steam.   Of course, the opposite could be true, meaning Hutchinson would face a stiff primary challenge to her seat in two years...if she decides to run again at all.

Still, this means the GOP keeps 41 votes in the Senate, so on the surface, this is a good move for the elephants in the short term.

Not Now, The Grown-Ups Are Fighting

Add Nevada to the growing list of states with a Democrat as AG (Catherine Cortez Masto) who thinks suing over Obamacare is a waste of taxpayer funding, and a GOP Governor (Jim Gibbons) who says "do it anyway or else."

Gov. Gibbons released the statement following Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto's decision not to pursue litigation.

"I am disappointed the Attorney General has refused to fight for the rights of Nevada citizens," Governor Gibbons said, "But I swore an oath to protect Nevada citizens and that is exactly what I intend to do."

"The Reid/Obama nationalized health care plan will bankrupt Medicaid in Nevada and will force us to make huge cuts to education and public safety," Gibbons said, "and it will force Nevadans to buy a product or face IRS penalties." Gibbons added, "This type of federal intrusion into our lives and our state must be stopped."

The Attorney General has suggested that Nevada need not file any legal action because other states already have. "I want a Nevadan in this fight against this federal intrusion," Gibbons said, "I will not surrender to this federal assault and I will not succumb to political pressure while the rights of Nevada citizens are trampled."

Earlier Cortez Masto delivered a four page letter to Gov. Gibbons. In it Masto writes, "In my professional judgment, joining the litigation filed by 14 other states, as you have suggested, is not warranted by existing law at this time."

It's amusing that the rights of Nevadans that Gibbons so vehemently sees as being trampled by the Obamacare law requires him to...trample the rights of his own AG and find some way to force her to sue over her professional objections.  Georgia governor Sonny Purdue has resorted to starting impeachment proceedings against his state AG Thurbert Baker for Baker's refusal to join in.

We're impeaching AGs for not filing frivolous, partisan lawsuits now?  Go go party of fiscal responsibility!

StupidiNews!

• President Obama tacks towards the middle by lifting the offshore oil drilling ban on parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Virginia coast.
• The FBI admits it had an undercover agent infiltrating the Hutaree militia group that led to nine arrests.
• A backlash has stirred from Cal State Stanislaus against a planned visit by Sarah Palin.
• A new report shows Ireland's banks still need $43 billion in order to dig themselves out of their own financial crisis.
• A new study suggests fatty, calorie rich foods may trigger addictive behavior.

Last Call

Newsweek's Howard Fineman just carries that water for the Obama administration...

A Democratic senator I can't name, who reluctantly voted for the health-care bill out of loyalty to his party and his admiration for Barack Obama, privately complained to me that the measure was political folly, in part because of the way it goes into effect: some taxes first, most benefits later, and rate hikes by insurance companies in between.

Besides that, this Democrat said, people who already have coverage will feel threatened and resentful about helping to cover the uninsured—an emotion they will sanitize for the polltakers into a concern about federal spending and debt.

On the day the president signed into law the "fix-it" addendum to the massive health-care measure, two new polls show just how fearful and skeptical Americans are about the entire enterprise.  If the numbers stay where they are—and it's not clear why they will change much between now and November—then the Democrats really are in danger of colossal losses at the polls.

Yes, and articles like this of course will make sure those numbers don't improve.  Perhaps Democratic Senators should stop speaking off the record to Fineman to begin with, or perhaps Fineman should dig a little deeper to see just why some of these Americans oppose the bill...but it's far easier to quote unnamed "Democratic Senators" and sink the knife in.

Your liberal media, ladies and gents.

Dems Have Just Been Handed The 2010 Elections

All they have to do is play this clip from Larry King.

Last night on CNN, Larry King discussed the rise of the tea parties with a variety of guests and featured footage from last weekend’s lobbyist-organized Tea Party Express rally in Searchlight, NV. Dana Loesch, a tea party organizer from Missouri, and another tea party organizer, Wayne Allyn Root, joined King for the discussion. Root and Loesch decried the “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional” reach of a health care mandate. However, King noted that programs like Social Security are mandatory and asked if the tea parties would like to “do away with” that program as well. Both tea party organizers enthusiastically said “yes, absolutely” and added that a compromise would be at least privatizing the system.

Privatizing Social Security, or doing away with it altogether.  If the Dems can't capitalize on that, then there really is no hope for them...or for us, either.  If you think they're going to stop at killing Obamacare, you're sadly mistaken.  The goal here is to turn the clock back eighty years to the Gilded Age and dismantle the New Deal, the Great Society, and every liberal social advance since FDR.  They've been preparing this ground for years.  Now they have their opportunity unless the Dems call them on it.

Feeling Randy, Part 6

Chris Cilizza notes that here in Kentucky, Trey Greyson is losing so badly that he's finally playing the Ron Paul card on Rand Paul.

Grayson, the underdog in the May 18 primary, began the back and forth with an ad that began airing over the weekend in which the narrator says that Paul "wonders whether 9/11 was our fault".

Grayson doubled-down on the attack today with a 90-second web video that splices comments from Paul, Texas Rep. Ron Paul (Rand's father) and, yes, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The Grayson ad and web video seek to make the case that Rand Paul believes that foreign policy decisions made by the United States in the years preceding Sept. 11, 2001 are partially to blame for the attacks.
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That position is, not surprisingly, a stone-cold loser in a Republican primary anywhere in the country but particularly in a state as conservative-leaning as Kentucky.

Knowing this, Paul has immediately launched a statewide television ad in which he expresses his "outrage at terrorists who killed 3,000 innocents" before accusing Grayson of a "lie" and a "shameful" tactic.

There is NO subject more fraught with potential political peril than the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The events of that day left an indelible mark on the collective consciousness of the United States -- changing the way we look at ourselves and the world.

Politics and politicians have struggled to adapt to that change. 

It's a telling sign that Grayson is resorting to this avenue of attack.  He doesn't have much of a choice, frankly.  Paul is killing him in the primary polls and Grayson's a horrible candidate.  "Mitch McConnell's junior sidekick" isn't exactly a popular platform to run on in Kentucky.

Having said that, it's about time somebody made Ron Paul an issue in this race.  Frankly, there's a lot of disturbing things that both Ron and Rand have to say, and watching Grayson and Paul tear each other up over this may finally be the break the Democrats need.

Well, that is if the Democrat in question was anyone other than Lt. Dan.  It's like nobody actually wants to win this seat, and everyone's playing to lose.

So Poor He Can't Even Pay Attention

Kevin K. of the Rumpies takes Truthdig's Chris Hedges to task for the latest out of the Useful Idiot Peanut Gallery.

The naively empathetic Chris Hedges, writing about the poor, put-upon teabaggers and their childlike “yearning for fascism,” ends his recent article at Truthdig with this ‘graph:

Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.

Honestly, does Hedges believe that these “transformations” are impending? We’re already there. We’ve been there for a long time.  “The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press.” I mean, yeah, how terrible would it be IF THAT EVER HAPPENED? Good christ, really?

Oh, it gets worse, folks.  Who does Hedges blame for the Rough Beast heading for Washington DC?  I'll give you three guesses, and the first seventeen don't count.

We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of legislators’ offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame lies with us. We created the monster.

I have to just shake my head.  If you honestly believe that the Teabaggers are hurling epithets at black and gay members of Congress because the Democrats aren't liberal enough, there's literally nothing I can do for you.  That's stupidity bordering willful ignorance right there.  But to then blame the Democrats for these nutjobs and then justify their actions in any way makes you more than stupid, it makes you flat out evil.  It's the same idiotic, hyper-cynical "logic" we've seen from the Right in the last week or so, that the Dems brought this on themselves for daring pass this legislation...any legislation.

If we had passed single-payer health care, the teabaggers really would be taking to the streets en masse to "get them some tyrant blood for the Tree of Liberty" or whatever.  And you're blaming Dems for this lunacy?

How does this guy function with that block of cement on his head?

Mister Green(back) Genes

A federal judge has ruled against the entire notion that biotech companies can patent genes, which could put  nasty crimp in the plans of, oh, the entire industry.

Putting a point on things, Judge Sweet, as the New York Times notes, took up the argument of critics who say identifying and isolating a gene is enough to win a patent. That's too clever by half, according to Sweet, and constitutes, "a 'lawyer's trick' that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result."

If the judge's legal logic holds up, it could imperil thousands of patents. But this case is only the beginning of the legal wrangling. "Despite the complete victory for the plaintiffs, we have to keep in mind that this is just the first step on a long road for this particular piece of litigation, and for the future of gene patents more broadly," wrote biotech attorney Dan Vorhaus on the blog Genomics Law Report.

The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation. "The court correctly saw that companies should not be able to own the rights to a piece of the human genome," Daniel B. Ravicher, a lawyer with the Public Patent Foundation, said in a statement. "No one invented genes. Inventions are specific tests or drugs, which can be patented, but genes are not inventions."

In a statement, Myriad said it would appeal the ruling and is confident it will be reversed. The company also said it didn't expect the ruling to hurt its business because many patents on the tests are unaffected.

The bottom line is if you can patent a gene, you can then become the sole proprietor of tests involving that gene, which means you have an effective monopoly on anything that affects that gene: tests, therapies, new drugs, the whole nine.  Since you have a monopoly, you can charge whatever you want.  Everybody else has to play along.

And you wonder why health costs are rising so quickly.  Monopolies aren't exactly good for consumer prices, you know.  Maybe instead biotech companies can compete to see who can make the most effective test or therapy or drug to deal with that gene.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Bart Stupid-pak

Digby points out that Rep. Bart Stupak was played from the beginning by the Catholic Bishops in order to be the instrument of the death of Obamacare.

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones takes a look at the top lobbyist for the Catholic Bishops (they have lobbyists?) who advised Stupak on his bizarre quest to hold out for the Stupak Amendment over the Nelson Amendment for no apparent reason. It's a fascinating story.

And now it seems there is serious trouble in paradise:

Perhaps the biggest question hanging over the bishops' strategy is why they were prepared to see health care reform fail unless the Stupak amendment's abortion provisions were adopted. After all, there was virtually no difference between the Stupak amendment in the House bill—which Doerflinger insisted was the only acceptable option—and the Nelson language in the Senate bill, which the bishops warned would "require people to pay for other people’s abortions."

[...]

In the days since Stupak voted for the bill, relations between his bloc and the bishops have soured. "The church does have some work to do in dealing with frayed nerves and divisions on policy questions," Doerflinger told Catholic News Service. Last week, Stupak attacked the bishops and other anti-abortion groups for "great hypocrisy" in opposing Obama's executive order after having supported former President George W. Bush's executive order banning stem cell research in 2007. He told the Daily Caller he believed the bishops and the groups they were allied with were "just using the life issue to try to bring down health-care reform." In other words, he suspected he was wrong to trust that his former allies were acting in good faith.

Yah think?

Yes, it was difficult to understand why Catholic bishops who purport to care for the poor would do such a thing. Certainly the non-wingnut laity wondered. In fact, they were aghast. So were the nuns. So were the Catholic hospitals. Stupak and his bloc were apparently just fools.

The problem was, Stupak was far from being the only one, but he was the one who was going to take the fall.  The fact that in the end Stupak realized he was going to go down as the most hated goat in Democratic party history was the only thing that saved Obamacare from this particular method of execution.

Stupak honestly thought he was going to be a hero.  Lord, what fools the useful idiots be.

Pants On Fire

A lot of noise has been made on the right about the supposed millions of dollars yearly it's going to cost businesses thanks to Obamacare.  Caterpillar claims they will have to take a $100 million charge just this year.  AT&T claims they will have to write off a cool billion dollars in health care costs.  They are claiming they will have no choice but to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees.

There's only one problem.  It's all a snow job.

The provision upon which they're basing this claim closes a loophole written into Medicare Part D legislation when Republicans controlled Washington. And though the change will cost the companies a small of money each year, it doesn't take effect until 2013--the figures the companies released last week reflect the total sum of the costs over several years. And as a result, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman has welcomed executives from these companies to defend their claims on Capitol Hill.

Several firms have indeed claimed the reforms will cost them big bucks before the year is out. AT&T said "Included among the major provisions of the law is a change in the tax treatment of the Medicare Part D subsidy," in an SEC filing, adding that the company "intends to take a non-cash charge of approximately $1 billion in the first quarter of 2010 to reflect the impact of this change."

Verizon notified its employees by email that they may see changes to their benefits. The new law, they wrote, "may have significant implications for both retirees and employers," because of changes it makes to federal tax treatment of Medicare Part D subsidies.

The list goes on. But the reality is less striking than the enormous figures indicate.

When Part D was enacted in 2003, it contained a number of heavily criticized boondoggles for big businesses, but one such loophole offered companies subsidies to continue providing prescription drug benefits to retirees...and made those subsidies tax deductible.

Fast forward to 2010, the newly signed health care bill doesn't end the subsidies, or change the fact that those subsidies are tax free--it simply ends companies' ability to deduct them. The money that companies spend out of their own pockets on prescription drugs under Part D is still tax deductible.

In preparing for the hit, though, companies have summed up the permanent cost of this tax change and plan to write it down all at once. Now, conservatives are citing that overall cost to suggest that these companies will have to bear a billion dollar burden every year. And, of course, the kicker is that this change will not take effect under the terms of the law for three years. 

In other words, the GOP is lying to you again in order to try to make this look much worse than it really is.  There's a shocker, distorting the truth around Obamacare!

Good thing the Dems have called these CEOs out.

Waxman has invited the CEOs of four companies--AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, and Caterpillar--to defend their claims before his committee when Congress returns from recess next week. We'll look closely at what they have to say. 

Should be an interesting day on Capitol Hill.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

David Bobo Brooks asks:

Two things happened to Sandra Bullock this month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?

And he goes on to relate this to President Obama, with Obamacare of course being the professional triumph and his ruined presidency as the severe personal blow, proclaims lottery winners as more miserable than "hard workers" and ends with:

Governments keep initiating policies they think will produce prosperity, only to get sacked, time and again, from their spiritual blind side.

My answer for Brooks is simple:

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of considering the method in which our economy was tanked in 2007 and 2008.  The folks that "worked hard" and made billions collectively in bonuses wrecked our economy in the name of getting their share and made a great many of us miserable as a result.  I'm more willing to believe that the government has a spiritual side and duty to provide than I do the Gordon Gekko "Greed is good!" profit margin uber alles attitude of the markets.

I mean honestly.  It wasn't government that lost trillions down the subprime rathole, Bobo.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will sign the health care reconciliation fixes bill into law today.
• A Tennessee man has pleaded guilty to plotting to kill then candidate Obama in 2008.
• GOP Senator Lindsey Graham is confident his bill to have Congress regulate carbon emissions rather than the EPA will pass.
• Amnesty International says China and Iran lead the world in executions as capital punishment, followed by Iraq, and then the U.S.
• A new study shows that only 2.5% of Americans can handle talking on the phone while driving, and odds are very good you're not one of them.

Last Call

Methinks the Teabaggers doth protest too much.

Supporters of the Tea Party movement said Monday that critics have unfairly portrayed them as an uneducated and inarticulate band of activists with little knowledge of politics.

Mitzi Butler, an area coordinator of the Tea Party Express Tour, chastised critics who describe her fellow grassroots activists as, "a bunch of hillbillies with no teeth, and [say] we're stupid."

"We are not stupid," she said in an interview with CNN as the tour was preparing to pull into St. George, a picturesque Utah city nestled in a valley of cliffs. "We are well versed. And I think we're smarter than what we've been sending to represent us in Congress."

Gosh, sweeping and untrue generalizations about groups of people isn't fun when you're on the receiving end of it, guys.  Please keep that in mind the next time you feel like comparing the Dems to the Nazis, or terrorists, or traitors, or tyrants, or inhuman monsters.

Or all of the above.  You're not stupid hillbillies any more than Barack Obama is the Muslim anti-Christ, ya dig?

Throw The Book At This Guy

Norman Laboon, the man who put a death threat against GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and his family on Youtube?  Yeah.  Good for Obama's DoJ to go after this asshole, and I hope he goes away for a long, long time.

In the video, Norman Leboon says Cantor will "receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations."

The San Francisco office of the FBI received a copy of the video on March 26, according to the affidavit in the case. You can read the press release and affidavit on the case here.

The affidavit paints a picture of Leboon as a deeply disturbed person. When he was visited by federal agents on Saturday, he "stated that he is the 'son of the god of Enoch' and that his father speaks through him. Leboon stated that Eric Cantor is 'pure evil'; will be dead; and that Cantor's family is suffering because of his father's wrath."

He also told agents that "he had made over 2,000 videos in which he made threats."

Leboon allegedly told agents during their visit that he made the Cantor threat video "approximately three days" before, which would be March 24 -- last Wednesday.

The authorities have not made a connection between the Leboon video and the bullet that landed in Cantor's Richmond campaign office early in the morning last Tuesday after what police described as an act of random gunfire.

That incident occurred the day before Leboon allegedly made the video. Cantor described the bullet incident in a press conference Thursday, March 25.

Yeah, this guy?  Gone. You don't cross that line, folks.  It's not acceptable.  Absolutely good to see this being taken as seriously as it should be.  Not all lunatics are on the right, either:  turns out this guy is a Muslim convert.  Steve at NMMNB:

It appears that Leboon is a Muslim convert. So the right is going to have to stop talking about the failure of the feds under Obama to go after the real enemy for at least a few days. And no amount of right-wing violence short of another Oklahoma City will be said to equal the horror and viciousness of MusloliberoMarxist violence. And no one on the right will say that, well, maybe what's really going on is that the government is taking threats from all sides seriously -- merely suggesting that would be conservatively incorrect.

And in the center it will be considered a wash -- Leboon as a lefty, Hutaree as righties. Everyone's guilty, so no one is guilty. Or the Internet is guilty. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'd say there are spreaders of hate and poison and people who don't spread hate and poison. I see this in the jihadist movement and on the American right. This could change sometime, but I see much less of this on the American left.

Still,  it's worth remembering that the whole "Congress's approval at 17% thing" means people are pretty pissed with the Republicans too.  No excuse for this.

Oh, and before we start playing the "this guy loved Obama" card:

Videos tagged with his name involved everything from the stock market collapse to the kids' movie "Babe," and he seemed to have talked about politics and world leaders including President Obama. He also says in another video where he talks about child molestation, "Leaders you will perish" and " I control your jets your missiles, I control everything."

In yet another video, Leboon seems to threaten Obama.

"President Obama, you and Vice President Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and your Security Council say very bad things about me," he says "Your punishment is coming, the swine, it will be severe, and you will beg for mercy to your god. It will be severe, you will know god's swine, god has warned you."

The guy was just plain nuts.  He clearly hated the government...all of it.

He's Steele Undercover

At some point you just have to start asking if Michael Steele is the greatest Democratic party double agent of all time.  Greg Sargent:

The Republican National Committee has undertaken an investigation in the wake of news that nearly $2,000 in party funds was spent at a bondage-themed club that features topless female dancers imitating lesbian sex, an RNC spokesperson confirms to me.

The spokesperson adamantly denies that Michael Steele was the party who spent the money at the club and says Steele strongly disavows such actions.

The Daily Caller reported today that FEC filings show that $1,946.25 in RNC funds was spent in February at Voyeur West Hollywood, which features scantily clad waitresses and writhing performers amid a decor of orgy chic.

The really, really sad part is  the speed at which Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, the supposed "Right Wing Answer To The Huffington Post" that broke this story, is being thrown under the bus by the wingers for daring to report it.

Flooding The Market

Two stories today demonstrate that timing in the stock market is everything.

First, analyst Dick Bove says Citigroup's a buy.

Bove changed his recommendation for the stock to a "buy," saying the sale of the Treasury Department's stake was already priced in.

Until now, Bove had advised investors to wait for the unwinding of the government's 7.7 billion shares before buying the stock.

"I think the mathematics work out that (the government) probably can get rid of the stock without shaking the market too much," Bove told "Squawk Box."

Second, the Treasury does plan to sell all 7.7 billion shares this year.

The U.S. Treasury Department today announced its plan to sell the government’s 7.7 billion common shares in Citigroup Inc. this year. 

“Treasury intends to sell its Citigroup common shares into the market through various means in an orderly and measured fashion,” the Treasury said in a statement in Washington today. “The manner, amount and timing of the sales under the plan is dependent upon a number of factors.”

Morgan Stanley is advising the Treasury on the sale, the department said. The disposition will be “subject to market conditions” and spread out “over the course of 2010,” the department said. 

No offense there Dick, but when you put 7.7 billion of something on the market, the price of that something probably isn't going to go up, ya know?

Driehaus's Daring Decision Draws Disapproval, Demonstrations

WaPo's Krissah Thompson pens a piece on Cincy area freshman Democrat Rep. Steve Driehaus and the "welcome" waiting for him here as Easter recess begins for the House.

Outside his Cincinnati home, a few angry protesters wouldn't allow him a full escape from the raw and vitriolic discussions that have embroiled the health-care debate for more than a year. They showed up to decry the freshman congressman's vote for the overhaul, standing in the chilling rain most of the afternoon Sunday holding signs that read: "Driehaus Voted to Destroy Our Children's Future" and "Remember in November."

Sunday's gathering, which never included more than three people at a time, was anchored by Jim Berns, a libertarian who has run for Driehaus's seat three times and for the state legislature 10 times. He wore a suit and waved at the congressman's neighbors -- a couple of whom greeted him with a middle finger, others with a thumbs-up.

Berns set up a display that included stuffed animals, and he draped a U.S. flag over a card table and pair of black boots to "symbolize the death of our future." "He won't listen," Berns said, as he faced Driehaus's home.


Said Driehaus, in a phone interview from his home on a dead-end street: "The other side has waged a campaign of misinformation and fear, and that's what people are reacting to. I understand people are going to criticize my decisions -- I'm an elected official -- but my wife, my kids, my neighbors are out of bounds."

Driehaus was one of the last Democrats to agree to vote for the bill, holding out until President Obama agreed to reaffirm that no federal money would be used to pay for abortions. Driehaus called the three protests that have been held outside his home "threatening" and "personal." His wife stopped letting their three children answer the home phone last week because of abusive calls and forbade them to walk down the street alone.

The west Cincinnati neighborhood is predominantly Republican, and Driehaus did not win his precinct when elected two years ago, said his brother-in-law Zeek Childers, who lives a half-mile down the road. Strong support from the more urban part of the congressional district gave him the edge. "It's bad down here," Childers said. "This area of Steve's district is much more conservative. The black community loves him. Labor loves him. The old white guys hate him. You got that out here." 

I'm sure plenty of politicians have been treated more shabbily than Driehaus, but there was a reason why I said when the vote was taken earlier this month that Driehaus was a brave man, and that I was proud of him.  This reaction was exactly why.  And no, Steve...the truth is these guys don't think your family is out of bounds.

They believe your family is leverage.  Expect more of this as November approaches.

The Road To Kabul

President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan Sunday, where he met with troops and Afghan president Hamid Karzai.  It's telling that we're still sneaking the President in a war zone...

Air Force One touched down at Bagram Air Force Base overnight, after leaving Andrews Air Force base under cover of secrecy on Saturday. Accompanying Obama on the trip were members of Obama's national security team, including members of the White House national security team, including National Security Adviser Jim Jones. The White House said the trip had been planned since Thursday, but told reporters the flight was unannounced "for security reasons."

Obama and Afghan president Hamid Karzai appeared briefly before reporters in Kabul, where the Obama announced that Karzai will visit the U.S. for more talks next month.

In Afghanistan today, Obama met with Karzai one-on-one for about a half hour. The White House described the talks as "very productive" and "businesslike," and included discussions of about "governance, merit-based appointments of Afghan officials, and corruption," according to reports from the ground.

After the meeting, Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for the continued American efforts in Afghanistan. Obama said he was "encouraged by the progress that's been made" by Karzai's regime.

But it was clear from reports that one of the American goals on the trip was to push Karzai's government to do better. After Obama and Karzai met, the American delegation -- which also included U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eichenberry -- met with members of the Afghan cabinet to discuss the future, which Americans hope will include the scaling up of Afghan security forces and the scaling down of American involvement.

Jones told reporters on the ground in Afghanistan before the one-on-one meeting that Obama intended to take a hard line with Karzai and "make him understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since day one."

Good to see Obama hasn't forgotten about  Afghanistan, but with the surge and the offensive in Marjah it's not Karzai making things worse for America in the sandbox here, folks.

Strike Down

More and more campaign finance laws are being struck down in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision.  The latest victim:  the cap on annual limits to political advocacy groups.

The court found that the $5,000 annual limit on contributions to such groups is unconstitutional, writing that the Citizens United ruling "resolves this appeal," in favor of SpeechNow.org, a group that appears to have been created with the specific purpose of challenging campaign-finance regulations.

A report on SCOTUSblog concludes that the ruling "significantly broadens the impact of Citizens United, extending its constitutional reasoning from campaign spending to campaign donations."

Now, the good news that could turn bad: A three-judge panel of the D.C. District Court unanimously rejected a bid by the RNC to get the McCain-Feingold soft-money ban struck down. The RNC is seeking to raise unlimited contributions from corporations and individuals.

But the RNC seems to have expected the setback. It already announced earlier this month that it has hired top conservative lawyer Ted Olson for the inevitable challenge to the Supreme Court. And as election law expert Rick Hasen notes, today's ruling appears to offer the RNC encouragement that they may get a better result there. 

If the soft-money cap is eliminated, there really will be no limit to the amount of money that corporations and the wealthy can pour into campaigns.  The faster that gets struck down, the more millions will go to in effect buying elections.

Campaign 2010 is going to get really, really nasty.  And thanks to SCOTUS, there won't be any way to avoid the roadblock media saturation.

Four From Sixty-Four

And this is rapidly turning into the most interesting NCAA men's tourney in years.  The Final Four is now set:  Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State, and...Butler?!?!  SI's Luke Wynn breaks down victors.

We have our Final Four, each team playing its own role: Butler, the fairy-tale townie; Michigan State, the battered overachiever; West Virginia, the East Coast bully; and Duke, the headlining villain. This is the most unlikely of quartets to reach Indy, even though each team was in the top 11 of the preseason Associated Press poll. There were widely held reasons for them all not to make it to Lucas Oil Stadium. The Bulldogs were too meekly mid-major to beat Syracuse or Kansas State in the West. The Spartans stumbled through the Big Ten backstretch, and were without their floor general in the Midwest Region of Death. The Mountaineers weren’t rich enough in NBA talent to dance with John Wall & Co. in the East. The Blue Devils were, well, the Blue Devils of the past five NCAA tournaments — regular-season lions, postseason lambs.

All of those reasons, of course, were wrong.

Wynn has WVU edging out Duke to take on Butler after its narrow victory over the Spartans for the Championship game next Monday night.  Me?  I wouldn't count the Blue Devils out, but next Saturday is going to be outright impressive.

And So It Begins Again

FBI raids over the weekend in Michigan arrested seven as part of an investigation into a Christian cult militia group called "Hutaree".  If all this seems familiar, you're remembering the period before the Oklahoma City bombing.  These days, that's called Obama Derangement Syndrome.  The Detroit News:

At least seven people, including some from Michigan, have been arrested in raids by a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based Christian militia group, a person familiar with the matter said.

The suspects are expected to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Monday.

On Sunday, a source close to the investigation in Washington, D.C. confirmed that FBI agents were conducting activities in Washtenaw and Lenawee counties over the weekend in connection to Hutaree, a Christian militia group. Detroit FBI Special Agent Sandra Berchtold told The Detroit News the federal warrants in the case are under court seal and declined further comment.

Sources have said the FBI was in the second day of raids around the southeastern Michigan city of Adrian that are connected to a militia group, known as the Hutaree, an Adrian-based group whose members describe themselves as Christian soldiers preparing for the arrival and battle with the anti-Christ. 

But what does that have to do with Obama?  Hmm, wait, now where have I heard that before?

Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

Oh, right.  But that can't be the only hook to hang this hat on, right?

WXYZ-TV reports that helicopters were spotted in the sky for much of Saturday night, and agents set up checkpoints throughout the area. Witnesses told the station that it was like a small army had descended on the area. The Department of Homeland Security and the Joint Terrorism Task Force are also involved in the raids.

Mike Lackomar, of Michiganmilitia.com, said both The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia and the Michiganmilitia.com were not a part of the raid.

Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations. 

But what does the President have to do with...

57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim.

Doh, silly me. Starting to see a pattern here...

StupidiNews!

• Female suicide bombers are believed responsible for two subway station blasts that rocked rush-hour Moscow this morning, killing at least 35.
• Insurance companies are already arguing that health care reform means they do not have to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
• One in four families in the Memphis area couldn't afford food at some point in the last 12 months, the worst rate in the nation.
• Greece will sell seven-year bonds for the first time since the rescue package was worked out for the country's economy.
• Computer science is growing as a college major in the US, but PhDs are shrinking for the first time in nine years.

Last Call

Obama's finally playing hardball with Israel.  But Israel too can play hardball with the US, as David Sanger points out.

In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, declaring it could not live with the chance the country would get a nuclear weapons capability. In 2007, it wiped out a North Korean-built reactor in Syria. And the next year, the Israelis secretly asked the Bush administration for the equipment and overflight rights they might need some day to strike Iran’s much better-hidden, better-defended nuclear sites.

They were turned down, but the request added urgency to the question: Would Israel take the risk of a strike? And if so, what would follow?

Now that parlor game question has turned into more formal war games simulations. The government’s own simulations are classified, but the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution created its own in December. The results were provocative enough that a summary of them has circulated among top American government and military officials and in many foreign capitals. 

There's no accident to this report being in the news this week. The eleven-stage wargame the Brookings guys come up with after Israel strikes Iran fundamentally changes the game for all players involved:  the US, Iran, and Israel.

The aftermath is grim:

1. By attacking without Washington's advance knowledge, Israel had the benefits of surprise and momentum - not only over the Iranians, but over its American allies - and for the first day or two, ran circles around White House crisis managers.

2. The battle quickly sucked in the whole region - and Washington. Arab leaders who might have quietly applauded an attack against Iran had to worry about the reaction in their streets. The war shifted to defending Saudi oil facilities, and Iran's use of proxies meant that other regional players quickly became involved.

3. You can bomb facilities, but you can't bomb knowledge. Iran had not only scattered its facilities, but had also scattered its scientific and engineering leadership, in hopes of rebuilding after an attack.

4. No one won, and the United States and Israel measured success differently. In Washington, officials believed setting the Iranian program back only a few years was not worth the huge cost. In Israel, even a few years delay seemed worth the cost, and the Israelis argued that it could further undercut a fragile regime and perhaps speed its demise. Most of the Americans thought that was a pipe dream.

Sanger's piece serves as a not-so-subtle reminder that Israel can cause us lots and lots of trouble, drawing us into a third war we can't afford to fight...and cannot afford not to fight, either.  The timing is clear:  Obama is being told very clearly that he should tread much more lightly around Bibi and his government.

As BooMan says, we are facing a paradigm shift in Israel relations right now.

In effect, the president is utterly repudiating the aggressive rhetoric that Netanyahu displayed at the AIPAC conference. Bibi said that (East) Jerusalem is not a settlement. Obama says that it is.

By demanding that Israel cease building in East Jerusalem and stop razing Palestinians' property, Obama is asking Netanyahu to order something he is incapable of ordering. Or, at least, he's incapable of ordering it within his current coalition, which relies upon the Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas parties. At a minimum, the Obama administration is insisting that Netanyahu cut a deal with Kadima in order to gain the power he needs to stop construction in East Jerusalem. More likely, Obama just wants to force Bibi out of power. After all, he's insolent and indistinguishable from the neo-conservative lunatics that hijacked our own government and ran it into a ditch.

Sanger's piece is Israel's response to that shift.  "You know, we could make things much, much, much harder on you, Mr. President, if you continue to make things harder on us.  Have you thought about the consequences?"

Obama's being delivered a warning here.  How will he respond?

Sunday Funnies: I'm Yer Huckleberry (Hound) Edition

Bobblespeak Translations are up, where the continuing complete failure of the Obama adninistration is helpfully docmented by people who have no clue (like, say, Sen Lidnsey Graham.)

Gregory: Chuck AT&T proved this week that I was right all along - people are going to lose their insurance!

Schumer: No that’s a lie - just like death panels
and killing grandma

Gregory: Lindsey how do answer the charge that Republicans were right?

Graham: that’s a good tough question Gregory - Democrats are eliminating Medicare, student loans, and AT&T will have stop delivering the great customer service they are known for - it’s Armeygeddon!

Gregory: so will you repeal the law?

Graham: yes we will force the Democrats to
double funding for Medicare

Schumer: ha - oh noes!

Graham: states will have empty referendums on this bill!

Gregory: Chuck this bill costs $93 billion a year!

Schumer: that’s not very much Fluffy

Gregory: how do you answer the charge that this bill cuts the deficit but doesn’t cut it enough

Schumer: if we did nothing it would be worse bubblehead

Gregory: the CBO, the Concord Coalition and Count von Count from Sesame Street all say this will cut the debt - but how can that possibly be true when you cover millions of people?

Schumer: I heard you were a moron

Graham: I heard that too!

Schumer: from me

Guess McCain was busy this week, so hey, it's the folksy non-wisdom of Lindsey Graham. How does Huckleberry Hound keep getting on these shows anyway?

Must Be Nice Living In John Hinderaker's World

Where the unreality field protecting him from logic allows him to simply dismiss violent GOP rhetoric.

The Democrats have tried to change the subject away from their health care debacle by claiming that conservatives are threatening violence against them. Their complaints are pathetic where they are not out-and-out lies (e.g., Clyburn and Lewis), and they have taken a lot of well-deserved criticism. It is liberals, not conservatives, who rely on ad hominem attacks, outrageous allegations and violent imagery. We talked about this on our radio show today, and several callers reminded us of a particularly sorry episode of liberal violence that, for some reason, has not gotten much attention: the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul.

I attended the convention and remember the terrorist acts that were carried out by anti-Republican protesters very well. They threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below. Fortunately, no one was killed.

These were anti-Bush and anti-Republican protesters. Is it a stretch to think that some of them, at least, may have been inspired by over-the-top, hateful attacks on the Bush administration by Democratic Congressmen, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Michael Moore, who was a guest of honor at the Democrats' own convention, various show business personalities, and many other leading liberal figures? I don't think so. We haven't seen that sort of hate campaign since the Democrats went after Abraham Lincoln. It seems unlikely that none of the "protesters" who tried to commit murder were inspired by those liberal voices.

Yes, these acts at 2008 St. Paul were terrible and were condemned rightfully by both parties.  There were arrests made.  But here's the difference, John.  The voices stirring up the hatred on your side this time are called "Congressman" and "Senator."



It's one thing to have Michael Moore (on in the right's case, Ted Nugent) say violent things.  It's another entirely to have sitting members of Congress say them.  You don't get a pass on that.  You don't get to play the equivalence card and say "Democrats are just as guilty!"

They're not.   Start condemning these members of the Republican party.  Thanks.

Playing At Recess

President Obama's first act this weekend with the Senate gone for Easter is to make recess appointments of 15 of his nominees that the Republicans refuse to allow votes on.

Coming on the heels of Mr. Obama’s big victory on health care legislation, Saturday’s move suggests a newly emboldened president who is unafraid to provoke a confrontation with the minority party.

Just two days ago, all 41 Senate Republicans sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him not to appoint the union lawyer, Craig Becker, during the recess. Mr. Obama’s action, in defiance of the Republicans, was hailed by union leaders, but it also seemed certain to intensify the partisan rancor that has enveloped Washington.

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disprove of my nominees,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”

It was the first time the president has used his constitutional authority to fill vacant federal positions by making recess appointments, thus avoiding the requirement for the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Obama, who currently has 217 nominees pending and 77 awaiting action on the Senate floor, said Republicans had given him little choice.

“At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months,” Mr. Obama said. “I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”

With lawmakers back in their home states and Mr. Obama spending a quiet family weekend at Camp David, the White House issued the statement announcing the president’s intent to appoint Mr. Becker, and 14 others, mostly to fill positions on his economic and homeland security teams.

The White House said the 15 nominees had been waiting, on average, seven months to be confirmed. They are expected to begin work over the next week; the president’s action will enable them to serve without Senate confirmation until the chamber adjourns at the end of 2011. 

Bush did it, Clinton did it, Bush Sr. did it, Reagan did it...hell, up until Saturday, Obama had been the only president in modern history to NOT make recess appointments.  Glad he learned that the GOP was never going to allow a vote on any of his nominees from this point out.  Not like the GOP can call this unconstitutional, when the power to make recess appointments by the President really is spelled out right in the Constitution in Article II, Section 2:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Good to see Obama realizing he doesn't have a choice.  I foresee another 50+ recess appointments soon.  Not like any of the rest will get a vote now.

Health Care Is The Excuse

Obama Derangement Syndrome is the diagnosis.  Frank Rich sees the situation for what it is.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
 
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too. 

If there's a principled opposition to Obama's policies, they are being drowned out in the sea of false and hateful rhetoric from the Teabaggers.  It is in fact somewhat unfair that those on the Right who have arguments against what is going on are being tarred with the same brush as the extremists.  It's then the duty of the moderate, cooler heads in the Republican party to stand against these lunatics.

They refuse, instead they pander daily to the Pretty Hate Machine.  The leadership of the Republican party knows they will no longer be the leaders if they don't pay homage to the "Obama is a Socialist" crowd, and dozens of Republicans in Congress have given themselves over to this idiocy anyway.  They're not going to risk what little political power they have left by standing up to the rhetoric and the violence.

So it gets worse every week.  It will continue to do so until America finally says "enough".  Sadly, that's not going to happen until we all pay the price high enough to unite us in revulsion at the acts.

Gone In An Arizona Minute

The Minutemen Militia is calling it quits.

The Arizona-based border watch group that burst onto the national scene in 2005 sent an email to its members this week announcing the corporation has dissolved.

The group’s president, Carmen Mercer, of Tombstone, said she and the board’s two other directors voted to end the group’s five-year run because they were worried her recent “call to action” would attract the wrong people to the border.

On March 16, Mercer sent out an e-mail urging members to come to the border “locked, loaded and ready” and urged people to bring “long arms.” She proposed changing the group’s rules to allow members to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers instead of just reporting the activity to the Border Patrol.

“We will forcefully engage, detain, and defend our lives and country from the criminals who trample over our culture and laws,” she wrote in the March 16 e-mail.

Mercer said she received a more feverish response than she expected — 350 personal e-mails she said — and decided the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps couldn’t shoulder the responsibility and liability of what could occur, she said.

“People are ready to come lock and loaded and that’s not what we are all about,” Mercer said. “It only takes one bad apple to destroy everything we’ve done for the last eight years.”

When Mercer realized she had at least a short battalion's worth of yahoos ready to put holes in anyone making a run for the border, she wisely realized she went too far.  She knew exactly what she was saying with the rhetoric, but for some crazy reason she didn't expect anyone to actually take her seriously.  350 emails made quite a nasty electronic trail that would have made it clear beyond a doubt she was absolutely responsible for any violence that would have surely come if she had followed through.

It's a good thing she didn't go ahead.  I understand the need for border security in the United States in 2010, but armed militia groups providing it just was never the way to go.

Bachmann Fails At Economics Again

Michelle Bachmann continues to be one of the most amazingly uninformed, ignorant, and embarrassing members of Congress on either side of the aisle.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is continuing to denounce what she says is a pattern of government takeovers of the economy -- going so far as to say that the economy used to be totally private.

"And what we saw this Tuesday, once the president signed the health care bill at the 11th hour in the morning on Tuesday, that effected 51% government takeover of the private economy," Bachmann said on Wednesday, during an interview with North Dakota talk radio host Scott Hennen. "It is really quite sobering what has happened. From 100% of our economy was private prior to September of 2008, but as of Tuesday, the federal government has now taken ownership or control of 51% of the private economy."

What's sobering is how this woman got elected to office to represent hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans and continues to remain there while having no clue about how basic economics work.  One hundred percent of our economy was private prior to September of 2008?  51 percent of it is government controlled now?  That's either proof positive that she's blindingly ignorant, or that she thinks everyone is stupid enough to believe her just because she said it.  It's a complete fabrication.  Yet she's treated as a serious lawmaker.

Either way, Minnesota needs to elect someone else from that district come November.

Obama's Squeeze Play On Bibi

With the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and the US now having gotten somewhat serious, Obama's next stage of the plan may be to strike now with his major Middle East peace initiative.  But what's Obama's real game here?  McClatchy's Warren Strobel (emphasis mine):

Obama, fresh from his legislative victory on health care, is planning an attempt to turn the current disaster into a diplomatic opportunity, according to U.S. officials, former officials and diplomats.

The administration is said to be preparing a major peace initiative that would be Obama's most direct involvement in the conflict to date, and would go far beyond the tentative, indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks that were torpedoed earlier in the month.

"It is crystallizing that we have to do something now. That this can't go on this way," said one of the officials who, like the others, wouldn't speak for the record because of the issue's sensitivity.

Because of the U.S. political calendar, Obama has limited time to press Israel before it becomes a major domestic political issue during midterm elections. Netanyahu, who this weekend confers with his closest allies, has limited political space in which to operate, if he wants to stay in power.

His coalition at home is populated with Israeli politicians who support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, oppose any concessions on Jerusalem and are skeptical of an independent Palestinian state next door.

One irony of the current confrontation is that the administration, which had laboriously organized indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, had planned to use Biden's visit to provide "strategic reassurance" to Israel, in hopes of improving relations with the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East after a year of strains.

Now, trust between the two sides seems to be at a very low ebb.

"There's not a great deal of trust that he believes deeply in the two-state solution," a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House said of Netanyahu. "There's a belief that he's a reluctant peacemaker here."

The Obama administration is said to believe that Netanyahu has more control over Jewish settlements than he admits, and political flexibility to dump his right-wing partners and form a government with the moderate Kadima party if he chose.

"Fundamentally, he's going to have to decide between his coalition and his relationship with the United States," the former official said.

My distaste for unnamed sources aside,  there's a clear play here.  Obama's trying to squeeze Bibi out.

That's right.  Regime change in Israel.  Let that soak in for a moment.  Let's explore what that means:  it means the Obama administration sees Israel's refusal to come to the table and stop with settlement expansion as a direct threat to US national security.  So much so, that Obama's looking to put Bibi in an untenable situation where he has to decide between the US or his job.

The idea here is that the current government collapses and Netanyahu is forced to form a more moderate one.  The chaos would also prevent Israel from going after the Palestinians or Iran for a while.

BooMan has the right of things.

Given that, there is no way forward until not only Netanyahu goes, but the far-right lunatics he needs to form a majority go, too. Consider:

The Arab League is scheduled to meet this weekend in Libya and is likely to repeat demands for a freeze on Israeli building in occupied areas before giving a final endorsement to the return of the Palestinian Authority to peace talks with Israel. Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has sought pan-Arab cover for his decision to return to the talks.

With Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak recovering from surgery and unable to attend the Arab League talks, and with our Gulf allies (and Britain) still furious about the Mossad assassination team unleashed on Dubai, the administration must show naked resolve and displeasure with Israel in order to have any credibility whatsoever. Not to mention, humiliating Joe Biden when he traveled to Israel was bound to be returned in kind two-fold by a president who knows how to watch his number two's back. 

Obama's running the old squeeze play here and he's doing a pretty brilliant job of it.  We'll see how it turns out.  Either way, make no mistake:  Obama is out of patience with the Netanyahu government, and they are about to get a stark reminder about who really does run this relationship.