I Hate What You Just Said

Given how corrupt and ineffectual the federal government has been lately, adding yet another government office hardly seems like the solution to our problems.

But this isn’t a bad idea. From Geoffrey R. Stone, in the NYT:

Presidents have a wide range of official advisers. There is a secretary of defense, a secretary of labor, a national security adviser, to name just a few. The next president should create a new executive branch position: a civil liberties adviser. Within the highest councils of every administration there should be a respected public official whose charge it is to defend our civil liberties against all comers.

Ideally, people like the members of congress, the attorney general, and the president should make it their business to protect our civil liberties. You know, because it is sort of their job. But in warrantless-wiretapping, Patriot-Act America, having an official solely dedicated to protecting our constitutional rights might help. After nearly 8 years of the Bush assault on civil liberties, we need all of the help we can get. And let’s just hope that if we do get an official civil liberties adviser position, the appointment will be made by this guy.

* * *

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

-Simone de Beauvoir

I would venture a guess that most Americans think that the Environmental Protection Agency is involved in, you know, protecting the environment.

Not under the Bush administration.

Take this example. According to today’s Washington Post, last December the EPA tried to submit a proposed rule to “limit greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds that they pose a threat to public welfare.”

The EPA emailed the proposal over to the White House for inspection. According to the Post,

[U]pon learning that EPA had hit the “send” button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, I just sent that official, scientifically-vetted policy proposal seconds ago!”

Not to worry, the White House has a plan for this kind of thing. The New York Times explains what happened next:

The White House . . . refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

“What email? Anyone see an email from the EPA about CO2 around here?”

“Do you mean the study that was the direct result of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that stated ‘greenhouse gases are a pollutant’ and subsequently ‘ordered federal environmental officials to re-examine their refusal to limit emissions of the gases from cars and trucks’?

“Yeah, that one.”

“Nope, haven’t seen it anywhere.”

Don’t worry, America; the Bush administration is in the reality business. Everything is going to be OK in the end:

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

If you’re in the White House and see a plan that makes us healthier, saves the environment, AND is good for the economy, there is only one thing to do: Delete.

Steny Hoyer took some time off from fellating the Bush administration and the legal teams of several of the country’s major telecoms to gratify himself . . . with a goose-stepping interview over at Politico. The subject? What a great job he and the Democrats did on that FISA legislation that just passed the House:

In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party — one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens.

Hunter, over at DailyKos responds:

Call me old fashioned, but I’m suspicious about anything “protects” the civil liberties of American citizens by acknowledging that those civil liberties were being violated — then declaring amnesty for those acts. Or by protecting those civil liberties by granting that they can be taken from you using secret evidence, presented secretly, banning review, explicitly banning judicial leeway to determine whether laws were violated, or civil liberties infringed upon, or to determine anything at all but whether the administration said it was OK to do the thing in question. Oh — and that evidence is to be presented by the same people who broke the law in the first place, of course.

Greenwald is in the mix too:

In other words, Democrats achieved a “significant victory” because — by giving Republicans everything they demanded — Republicans are no longer able to criticize Democrats on this issue. What a shrewd strategy: “if we comply with all their demands, then they can’t criticize us for anything.” That’s the Democratic Party’s plan for winning, according to Hoyer.

I wish we had a few more like Chris Dodd in Congress.

Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid rally the Democrats under a new banner:

This just gives me the warm and fuzzies:

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

Thank you, Jack Bauer.

The Rude Pundit explains how I feel about the Democratic compromise capitulation on the FISA bill.

From James Wolcott:

[M]ovie reviewing now has its own Doug Feith,* a blogger who goes by the handle “Dirty Harry,” which is rather sad, considering how far Clint Eastwood himself has evolved beyond such bullet-chewing vigilantism. It’s like being a fifty year old who recreates scenes from Red Dawn in the backyard, reliving those glorious imaginary guerrilla days of adolescence while fending off a coronary. [. . .]

*a.k.a. The Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Face of the Earth

The White House website contains a handy “fact sheet” titled “Reducing Gas Prices and Foreign Oil Dependence.” (This administration cares about “facts” all of a sudden? C’mon, guys. Give us a little credit. How stupid do you think we are? Wait - don’t answer that).

“Fact Sheet” sez:

Today, President Bush called on Congress to help American families by removing barriers to domestic production of oil and gasoline. For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than high gasoline prices.

Mm hm.

Price of oil on the eve of the Iraq War: about $30 per barrel.

Price of oil today: about $130 per barrel.

Just sayin’.

So - what is the “solution?” “Fact Sheet” tells us the solution lies in a bunch of proposals that will expand domestic oil exploration in fragile environments and eventually add to carbon emissions global warming. And these long-term proposals will do nothing to lower the price at your local filling station tomorrow, next week, or next year. But the additional kick in the pants is that the “solution” to our oil problems will also…

wait for it…

wait for it…

add to the historically obscene profits of oil companies. You know - oil companies - those guys who have already greatly benefited from the massive rise in oil prices in the first place. They’ll benefit from the “solution” to the problem, too.

When Bush and Cheney were, ahem, “elected,” there were plenty of people who were a little squeamish about having two oil men running the executive branch. But did anyone really expect this? An eight-year oilgasm?

I think if we want “facts,” it might be better to consult, say, The Sierra Club.

The Boston Globe reports that the first habeas petition that hit the federal appeals court system has gone against the government:

In the first Guantanamo Bay case to be reviewed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese Muslim known as a Uighur, undermining the basis for his more than six years in detention.

The appeals court directed the U.S. military to release Parhat, to transfer him or to hold a new proceeding promptly in light of the appeals court’s ruling.

Considering that this man has been held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, this seems like pretty poor evidence:

Parhat never fought against the United States and the government concedes there’s no evidence he ever intended to. He has been held for six years because he is linked to a Chinese separatist group that the military says has some ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Government attorneys say he can be held under the law authorizing military force against anyone who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” of 2001.

Seriously, that’s it? A guy whose enemy is Communist China just spent 6 years in a hole and the government admits that he never attempted, nor desired, to attack the US or our allies?

And before anyone in Congress starts wailing that a bunch of incense-burning, sitar-crazed, liberal judges were “legislating from the bench,” they should check out who the judges were:

Sentelle is an appointee of President Reagan, Garland was appointed by President Clinton and Griffith was appointed by President George W. Bush.

You just have to read this one.

Back in a 2004 State of the Union speech, President Shrub announced that the US was in the process of creating an Arabic news network that would “cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda” and present a truthier image of the US to the Muslim world.

Bush’s reference to “hateful propaganda” was a thinly-veiled reference to the Qatar-based world news organization, Al-Jazzera, which had a pesky way of talking about things like war crimes and torture–things that the US would never do.

Here’s the Plan:

Step One: Use Taxpayer Dollars to Create the Fox News of the Arab World.

So far, U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $500 million to fund those broadcasts. The television station, called Alhurra, and the radio network, Sawa, were meant to provide an American perspective on world events and counter the wave of global criticism that had been building against the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Step Two: Find Qualified Staff.

Alhurra’s reporters and commentators operate with little oversight. Alhurra’s president, Brian Conniff, does not speak Arabic and is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage. Conniff has no journalism experience and worked previously as a government auditor. His news director, Daniel Nassif, grew up in Lebanon and has no background in television. Before coming to the network, he helped promote the political aspirations in Washington of a Lebanese Christian former general.

Step Three: Create Appropriate Oversight.

During a visit to Alhurra’s studios in June, reporters, producers, cameramen and technical staff were busy preparing broadcasts for an audience half-way around the world. Conniff, who is the president of Alhurra and Radio Sawa, sat in on a morning editorial meeting but could not understand it – his Middle Eastern staff discussed the day’s stories in Arabic and no one offered Conniff a simultaneous translation.

“There is no adult supervision there by people who know what is on the actual broadcasts,” said William Rugh, who served as U.S. Ambassador in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. “You need bilingual managers who understand both languages and cultures and understand journalism.”

Financial accountability also appears to be lacking. In its four years, the network has been unable to provide full documentation to auditors to account for its spending, according to two people familiar with the records and a 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Step Four: Use this Finely-tuned Organ of Propaganda to Win Hearts and Minds

When Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah railed against the U.S. government and threatened Israel, Alhurra carried it live and unedited.

When U.S. combat deaths in Iraq surpassed 4,000 in March, Radio Sawa interviewed an anonymous militant who told listeners: “Occupation is occupation. We need to resist them and kill more than 4,000.”

In March, Alhurra aired a documentary on the “The Crusades” — a series of military campaigns that Christian Europe waged against the Muslim world during the Middle Ages.

Step Five: Get Sweeeet Haircuts.

Some low-level staff members were highly paid, including a hairdresser from Lebanon who coiffed the anchors for $100,000 a year.

Sorry for the rather blunt title. But each day he seems to find a new way to prove it. In his column today, he takes on the new MoveOn.org ad.

He summarizes the ad this way:

The ad is simple. A mother speaks as she holds her baby boy:

“Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

Predictably, Kristol is offended by the idea of a mother not wanting her son to die in a phony war of choice, built on lies, mismanaged calamitously, and seemingly with no end in sight. I mean - the gall! How dare she?!

An example of the extreme dickitude:

Now it might be pedantic to point out that John McCain isn’t counting on Alex to serve in Iraq, because little Alex will only be 9 years old when President McCain leaves office after two terms.

Pedantic? You think?

Then he repeats this crap:

And it might be picky to remark that when McCain was asked whether U.S. troops might have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years, he replied, “Maybe 100” — explaining, “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world. …”

In other words, McCain is open to an extended military presence in Iraq, similar to ones we’ve had in Germany, Japan or Kuwait. He does not wish for, nor does he anticipate, a 100-year war in Iraq.

And the crescendo of dickness continues with this:

But it is surely relevant to point out that the United States has an all-volunteer Army. Alex won’t be drafted, and his mommy can’t enlist him. He can decide when he’s an adult whether he wants to serve. And, of course, McCain supports the volunteer army.

Right. Because that’s how that works, Bill. You dick.

In one brief column, Bill has reaffirmed that his views on the Iraq war completely disconnected from reality, that he is a snotty bastard, and that he believes (or more likely, is willing to pretend) that America has no class system. From Bill’s point of view, since there is no class system to worry about, and economic opportunities are open to all, the concept of an all-volunteer army is perfectly democratic and lovely.

I officially endorse the draft - of William Kristol.

And I stand by the title of this post.

The current trajectory of wealth distribution in America must certainly be making this man proud. For the rest of us, The Nation has devoted its June 30 issue to the growing problem of profound inequality.

The handy “guide” to extreme inequality is filled with useful links.

And the piece titled “The Rich and the Rest of Us,” by John Cavanagh and Chuck Collins, is on the money (bad pun intended):

Over the past three decades, market-worshiping politicians and their corporate backers have engineered the most colossal redistribution of wealth in modern world history, a redistribution from the bottom up, from working people to a tiny global elite.

Indeed. And part of the problem is about changing the discourse:

To reverse this reckless course, we need to change our nation’s dominant political narrative and restore faith in the critical role that government must play to protect the common good. But we can’t stop there. We need to confront directly the threat posed by this inequality.

That won’t be easy. Too many Americans see the enormous concentration of our nation’s wealth as a symptom of a sick society, not a cause. Indeed, most of our politicians and pundits refuse to treat it as any sort of problem at all. They may sometimes bewail particularly unseemly CEO paychecks. They may twitter occasionally about the latest bilious billionaire extravagance. But that’s it. The Senate couldn’t even manage to eliminate a tax loophole for gazillionaire hedge-fund managers last year. And even progressive wish lists tend to call only for a return to pre-George W. Bush tax rates, a step that would undo a mere one-sixth of the rise in income inequality we have experienced since the late 1970s, according to the Brookings Institution.

(I seem to recall some other dude striking similar notes recently).

In any event, we best address our nation’s economic woes quickly. That way, we can get back to tackling the really serious issues, like the War. On Christmas.

Ah, who isn’t just a bit nostalgic about the great Gold Rush of 1849?  You remember the fun we used to have claim jumping, exploiting Chinese workers, and once we got warmed up, strip mining?

For my money, it doesn’t get any better than the old Amalgamated Copper Mining Company mine in Butte, Montana, now known as the Anaconda Mine with its main attraction, the Berkeley Pit.

Is there nothing better than seeing American ambition from outer space?  Yeah those were good times indeed, when men were men, the West was wild and digging massive holes in the earth’s crust was but a glint in the eye of Copper King William Andrews Clark.

So let us then hail the arrival of the next Gold Rush, renew our rugged individualism and place our claims once again:

Today, record gold prices, widespread economic turmoil, and the enduring optimism of America’s entrepreneurial classes have combined to entice fresh swarms of prospectors to head west in search of hidden riches beneath the picturesque hills and ravines of the Golden State.

The “new 49ers,” as today’s wave of fortune-seekers are known, are a breed apart from their historic predecessors, driving trucks and SUVs down the dusty tracks first created by trains of horse-drawn wagons nearly 160 years ago. But they share with them a timeless predisposition for what veterans call gold fever. “It’s like going to Vegas, except with this, we actually get to win something,” said Mike Dunn, clutching almost an ounce of nuggets unearthed from the south fork of the Feather river last Sunday. “We’ve just hit a halo of gold, and this lot alone must be worth between $500 (£250) and $1,500. I’ve just about paid for my trip already.”

The Independent

I just felt a tingle down my spine.

Dreams won’t be the only things broken. Last week, three men were killed trying to reopen a 19th-century mine in rural Madera County. Police said the men, all in their twenties, died from carbon monoxide poisoning while using a petrol-powered pump to drain the 20ft-deep shaft.

And no risk.

“There is so much of that stuff out here you wouldn’t believe,” said Ekhard Davisky, who pans for gold near Paradise in Butte County. “The trick is finding it. I think it was Mark Twain who said a gold mine is just a hole in the ground owned by a liar, and I think he just about got it in one there. But if you know what you are doing, and you are prepared to listen and learn about how to do it properly, there’s never been a better time to be looking for gold. Back in 1849, an ounce of gold was $18.80, which was about enough to buy a man a nice suit and a steak dinner. And when you think about it, that’s the price of it now. These are happy days.”

Damn right they are.  Meet me and Jedadiah at the Buttercup Pantry in Placerville and we’ll strike it rich.

This tells you all you need to know about the Military Commissions down in Guantanamo Bay:

The Bush administration wants to rewrite the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees, allowing it to shore up its cases before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time.

The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed.

Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.

The decision follows last week’s Supreme Court ruling, which held that detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court, not just before secret military panels. At a closed-door meeting with judges and defense attorneys this week, government lawyers said they needed time to add new evidence and make other changes to evidentiary documents known as “factual returns.”

Attorneys for the detainees criticized the idea, saying the government is basically asking for a last-minute do-over.

Robert Hurt is a Texas rancher and a father of 14 children. Ten years ago, he visited our nation’s capital for a Promise Keeper’s rally and was shocked at what he found:

Washington is a town filled with boobs.

They’re everywhere, from the bare-breasted ladies who decorate the fountain at Dupont Circle to the peekaboo statue in the Justice Department’s Great Hall to the countless nudes in our museums. But while those of us who live here hardly blink at the public nudity, it can shock some of our visitors. Such was the case for Robert Hurt, who last week tried to add the issue of artistic indecency in the nation’s capital to the platform of the Texas GOP.

When he saw “unclothed people” at the National Gallery and the bosomy figures of Valor and Sacrifice at the Arlington Memorial Bridge–well, Hurt had had enough:

“You don’t have nude art on your front porch,” the Dallas Morning News quoted the delegate as telling the platform committee at the state party convention. “So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?” [. . .]

“I believe art affects a country indirectly. I have been studying the decline of morals in this country. It’s sending the wrong message to children that nudity is fine, that nakedness is fine. . . . There are degrees of vulgarity, and it opens up the door for the other stuff.”

We can’t have children thinking that their bodies aren’t shameful factories of sin! And Hurt is right: tits are the gateway to the other, hard-core forms of patriotic porn.

Take heart America, even though the boob-draping Attorney General John Ashcroft is gone, titular moral sheriff Hurt is on the case. He’s even promised to return to Washington, “possibly . . . to videotape the evidence.”

“I’m not going to stop until I succeed,” Hurt proclaimed,” I’m prepared for a long fight.”

From baking to the dap:

That’s what politics is all about, baby.  Build that bridge girls.

Cindy McCain cribbing cookie recipes?  Color me shocked.  Michelle Obama’s amaretto-laced shortbread bombs?  Raised my roof doggg!  So, now that Hilary is out of the race, the remaining women revert to a fucking bakeoff (not that there aren’t a number of kick ass feminist bakeries dotting our fair country)?!

If John McCain loses in November, his wife Cindy may catch some of the blame after apparently cheating in a high stakes presidential cookie bake-off.

Every four years, in the approach to the presidential election, kitchens across America are busy testing cookie recipes submitted by candidates’ spouses for the Family Circle magazine competition.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the past four presidential elections the magazine’s readers have successfully predicted America’s next first lady. Hillary Clinton’s chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies beat Barbara Bush’s effort, and Laura Bush’s cowboy cookies triumphed over Tipper Gore’s ginger snaps. In 2004 Mrs Bush won again with oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies.

The Independent

Of course Hillary once disparaged baking (and, goddamnit, drinking tea, for which I have never forgiven her), but the recipes that she later released to quell the backlash of a horrified American public could never fully dispel the taint of “uppitiness” that so manifestly makes her unsuited for public office.

Update: This story has legs! Mary Todd may have been a Hellcat but her gingerbread is the shiznit.

Have no illusions, McClatchy plays for keeps:

The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn’t the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.

It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.

The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. It ruled last Thursday that preventing detainees from challenging their detention in federal courts was unconstitutional.

The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council,” drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.

And the document dump proves it.

On Fox News Sunday, our friend Bill Kristol made it clear that John McCain and Lindsey “Huckleberry” Graham will be offering new legislation to Congress this week that will seek to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush.

It was this decision, of course, that struck a serious blow to the administration’s claim to virtually unlimited powers of arbitrary detention. Kristol remarked:

And I think you will see Senator Graham, accompanied by Senator McCain, come to the floor of the Senate very soon, like next week, and say, We cannot let chaos obtain here. We can’t let 200 different federal district judges on their own whim call this CIA agent here, say, ‘I don’t believe this soldier here who said this guy was doing this,’ you have to release someone,’ or, ‘Let’s build up — let’s compromise sources and methods with a bunch of trials. I mean, it’s ridiculous.

Those pesky judges, always dispensing their so-called “justice” whenever their America-hating whimsy kicks in. Just listen to Justice Kennedy, legislating from the bench:

Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to separation of powers.

Unbelievable! We can’t let these evildoers get O.J. style trials here in the US!

I bet, if he had been alive in 1830, justice Kennedy would have ruled in favor of those savage Indians. Thank Christ we had a real, tough-as-hickory American patriot like president Andrew Jackson to give those meddling Supreme Court oligarchs one of those go-up-your-own-ass gestures.

Check out this 18th century hippie, going by the name of Alexander Hamilton:

the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, [has] been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

If they had douchebags in the 18th century, this guy would’ve owned five.

Remember, it was this guy and a bunch of his fist-jabbing terrorist buddies that kept resisting God’s selected leader, King George, during the 18th century. One of the things they were pissed off about was that George kept throwing their fellow natural law extremists into jail without cause or trial. They even had the audacity to write him a strongly-worded letter telling him to stop!

Those assholes just didn’t understand freedom.

Rick Shenkman is out with a new book entitled Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter.

Courtesy of Boing Boing, it’s the Talking Jesus Doll. And don’t forget those traditional sandals!

You might be forgiven for not having registered the significance of the Irish public’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, viewed by some as the failed 2005 “constitution” of the European Union in drag, last week. Perhaps you saw an article flit by the New York Times website over the weekend before the issue took a backseat to Kobe’s ongoing experiment in athletic eugenics at the NBA Finals or the latest journalist (yes I’m thinking about you Kristol) to elegize the passing of Tim Russert. And damn, wasn’t that a clutch put Tiger sunk to force a playoff?

Meanwhile, somewhere outside Donegal all hell broke loose in European politics. A relatively small European country, Ireland (the only country to put the ratification of the treaty to a referendum so far) is an exemplary case of what is at stake, as the treaty seeks to further centralize key policy positions–such as labor regulations and foreign policy–at the expense of member state autonomy:

The Lisbon treaty is complex. It offers sweeping changes to the way the union runs—creating a new full-time “president” to represent member states, and a foreign-policy chief to speak for Europe round the world. It also sweeps away national vetoes in some important areas of policy, such as cross-border policing and justice. Many Irish no voters voiced suspicions that the treaty would, in reality, rob their small state of clout at the EU’s top tables.

The Economist

“EU leaders were to be heard crowing last year that they had made it “unintelligible” in order to smuggle it past voters,” The Economist continues, rightly noting that this was a much easier task in most European countries, eighteen of which had already shoved it through their respective parliaments with little or no debate.

“So pay no attention to the wailing in Brussels,” writes Anne Appelbaum, “If the most enthusiastic Europeans in Europe didn’t care enough to read the treaty they’ve just rejected, then maybe it’s just as well it didn’t pass.” I guess Applebaum figues that libertarianism European-style means more centralized government and concentrated economic and military power. Apparently, European citizens lack the free-thinking gene possessed by all rational, Cato Institute supporting Americans that allow them to cut through hundreds of pages of bureaucratic doublespeak. But I digress.

Predictably, establishment politicians have been wringing their hands over the result, especially from the larger states, who stood to gain the most. Nicholas Sarkozy, the immigrant-bashing-top-model-marrying-archconservative president of France is especially pissed off. He’s threatening to travel to Ireland to learn firsthand why they had the temerity to say no to even more big business payola and the prospect of increased European military integration. Guess which countries would assume effective control of the latter? Now you’re getting the picture. Stay tuned, France assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union in July.

Just when it seemed that Gordon Brown’s troubles couldn’t get much worse, he received the ultimate kiss of death.

From the Guardian:

George Bush yesterday heaped praise on Gordon Brown as the prime minister announced that Britain would intensify sanctions against Iranian banks, dispatch 230 extra troops to southern Afghanistan and keep British troops in southern Iraq until the build-up of Iraqi security forces justified a withdrawal.

Big cuts in British troop levels in Iraq were not expected until next year, military sources said as the US president insisted there was no difference between British and American policy in Iraq.

Bush said he appreciated the prime minister being “tough on terror”, saying that Brown understood that the spread of freedom was transformative, and it was wrong to think that “only white guy Methodists” wanted self-government. He branded such thinking as the ultimate form of political elitism.

The last thing a guy with these poll numbers needs is an endorsement from, er, this guy.

The right wing freakout over the recent Supreme Court decision to permit habeas petitions for Gitmo detainees reached a skull-splitting crescendo today. Mike “gamecock” DeVine, so-called “Legal Editor” for the site Minority Report, posted the most laughably insane and transparently stupid argument ever crafted with a keyboard.

Today’s infamous 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court granting terrorists the right to an O.J. trial in U.S. civilian courts cries out for the present Chief Executive to so paraphrase Old Hickory’s similar defiance of John Marshall 176 years ago with respect to removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

The nation survived President Andrew Jackson’s defense of his constitutional executive powers against the first Judicial Oligarch. Should President Bush succumb to Justice Kennedy’s attempted coup to assume the role of Commander in Chief, it will be much harder for our nation to survive, much less thrive, as it has since 1832.

Beyond the fascistic, mindlessly authoritarian vision DeVine articulates for our country, I can only hope that he failed history class. Otherwise, he’s seriously advocating the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears as positive models for presidential behavior. That story is one of the darkest stains on the fabric of American history.

I suppose it’s only fitting that someone use it to justify unlimited, unchecked, and arbitrary executive detention — probably the most un-American and un-democratic thing that I can imagine.

Making me feel safer:

Europe this month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, changes that are forcing U.S. industries to find new ways to produce a wide range of everyday products.

Taking it all away:

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

From the NY Times:

Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” and NBC’s Washington bureau chief, has died. He was 58.

A bright spot of green today in the news:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

UPDATE:

From McClatchy:

The Supreme Court’s landmark Guantanamo Bay decision Thursday could free foreign prisoners while it inflames Capitol Hill.

Some consequences are immediate, for a case that’s big legally, politically and militarily. Within hours of the court’s decision in the combined cases known as Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, attorneys were preparing to demand hearings for detainees long held without charges.

These habeas corpus hearings before federal judges will force the Bush administration to reveal its evidence and expose publicly how the detainees have been treated. Some attorneys think that the administration simply will start releasing detainees to avoid the potentially embarrassing hearings altogether.

But before everyone reaches for the party favors, the sad truth is that it is entirely possible that these individuals are guilty of a host of criminal acts. The truly despicable thing is that this administration jeopardized the prosecution of all of these individuals by the use of torture and hearsay evidence procured through torture. All their evidence is contaminated– “fruit from the poisonous tree.” And now, to cover their own asses, they’d rather let potential terrorists go–without trial–to avoid being prosecuted themselves for ordering crimes against humanity.

We should all tell this administration to go Cheney itself.

UPDATE II:

Glenn Greenwald with a good question for all the authoritarian-craving conservatives who rejected the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday:

[H]ow and why would any American object to the mere requirement that our Government prove that someone is guilty before we imprison them indefinitely or execute them? That is all that yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling required — not that detainees be released, but that their guilt be proven in a fair proceeding. The fact that the Right is so enraged by this basic requirement vividly reveals the authoritarian impulses which define them. After all, key McCain ally Lindsey Graham is actually threatening to amend our Constitution to limit the right of habeas corpus in response to yesterday’s ruling. The authoritarian radicalism of this faction can’t be overstated.

Nobody can deny the rhetorical potency of a pithy bumper sticker:

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.

Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and “novelty items” such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.

You can laugh, but somebody has to combat those seductively hilarious “I Brake for Jihad” messages.

From J.K. Rowling’s graduation address to Harvard University:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

Michael Ledeen–arch neocon douchebag–has penned an editorial at the Washington Street Journal. It’s entitled –I’m not kidding– “Iran and the Problem of Evil.”

The folks over at Sadly No! gave it a very kind review:

Ledeen has squeezed nearly every moronic analogy, utterly batshit conviction, shopworn trope, and demagogic twistification that neocons have had about foreign policy in the last eleventy years into this column. Pretty much the only thing missing is a claim that one or all of the many Hitlers of the Muslim world possess WMDs. But then Ledeen already used that one to great effect, didn’t he?

Keep in mind that this is the same Michael Ledeen who facilitated the sale of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra scandal.

An indisputable outcome of the economics of the post-Friedman/Thatcher/Reagan era has been inequality - profound and rapidly growing inequality. In the name of economic growth and neo-liberal orthodoxy, the welfare state has been under threat, labor union membership has plummeted, and deregulation, low inflation, and low taxation have become quasi-religious principles.

Yet in American, and to a lesser extent British political and economic discourse, the answers to the problems of inequality and stratification ring hollow. The dominant underlying assumption has been that we need more of what got us here in the first place - more “free” trade, more deregulation of financial markets, ever lower taxes on capital gains and on the income of the wealthy, and a weaker public sector.

As a result, politicians in Britain and America never address the serious implications of the gradual transformation of capitalism from a commodity production system into a financial market shell-game.

The problem, then, is at least twofold: first, no serious solutions to the problems of inequality created by our current and recent economic policies are on the table. And second, those very policies have enabled the system of finance-dominated capitalism that has both created, and will continue to exacerbate current and looming economic crises.

In short, the economies of Britain and the United states are deeply unhealthy.

Jerome a Paris at the European Tribune offers an insightful and important analysis of what ails us. Jerome has coined the term “Anglo Disease” to describe the problem. His analysis is convincing, and his predictions have been on target. As this selection illustrates, the current economic crises are rooted in the very nature of contemporary financial capitalism and the inequality, phony globalization, and culture of debt that it has created:

Thus the financial world imposes its unrelenting focus on profits and shareholder value on all economic activities; the domination of “return on capital” criteria ensures that many activities outside finance are in decline, as they struggle to reach the required returns on potential investments. Financial analysis sees labor as a cost, reducing profits, and pushes for its reduction, either via outsourcing, offshorisation or wage stagnation. Similarly, government regulations are seen as restrictions on profit to be fought and eliminated, as, naturally, taxes.

To boost domestic demand in the face of flat incomes, debt has been pushed on households as the way to keep on increasing their spending, to the further benefit of the industry that provides the loans. The combination of expansionist monetary policies in the West and mercantilist policies in China has made it possible to find the holy grail of no inflation and rapid asset price increases, thus generating massive (and increasingly less taxed) corporate profits. The reality was, of course, that of huge global imbalances and a massive bubble, but for the longest time it looked like perfect growth, further validating the policies that underpinned it.

The model of financial capitalism is thus all-encompassing, not only grabbing an increasing share of the economic pie, but also dominating all political and economic discourse.

The reality, unfortunately, is that a massive inequality, declining or stagnant living standards for the majority, which spend more than they earn, and, as a consequence, a massive bill pushed out into the future. Well, that future is now, and the imbalances will only be unwound if incomes match spending, which can happen via lower spending or via higher incomes.

In the financial capitalism model, incomes are a cost and should not increase; if that logic prevails - if the Anglo Disease is not cured from our body politic - spending will crash and a recession is not only inevitable but likely to be very painful, as the real economy slows down brutally, and the financial bets that ride it suddenly look highly unreasonable, and turn into losses (as is happening already in the subprime sector).

Jerome’s Anglo Disease theory deserves, and almost certainly will not receive, much wider public discussion. It runs counter to current economic orthodoxy, it challenges the prerogatives of some of the most powerful interests in the west, and it smacks of “Old Europe” social-democratic thinking.

I think we could use a little social-democratic thinking right now.

Here’s hoping that congress and a future Obama administration may someday find the courage to discard one of the well-intentioned bad ideas to come out of the Clinton administration. This appeals court decision underscores the need for real change of policy:

BOSTON—A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by 12 gay and lesbian veterans who had challenged the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The plaintiffs had all been discharged under the policy, instituted by Congress.

1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey Howard said in the decision issued Monday that while some people may question the wisdom of the policy, the court had to defer to congressional decision making.

It was meant as a compromise, and a step in the right direction. But “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a slap in the face to all gay and lesbian service people and veterans, as well as a stubborn refusal to face reality.

Glenn Greenwald just eviscerated David Broder over at Salon–exposing him as as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the Washington media.

In a Washington Post “chat,” a citizen from Crestwood, NY wrote in with a fine point about the “Phase II” Senate investigation into pre-war intelligence:

So the Senate report — supported by two Republicans — supports the conclusion that we all reached several years ago, that Bush and Cheney used propaganda and ginned up intelligence to trick the country into war. If this is not an impeachable offense, what do you define as one? And if an impeachable offense is committed, isn’t it the height of irresponsibility for the Democrats to put possible harm to their electoral chances (negligible, in my opinion) ahead of their oaths to the Constitution? How will history look back at this disgraceful chapter in both the executive and legislative branches?

Broder’s response:

You’ll have to forgive me, but I am reluctant to see every big policy dispute turned into a criminal or impeachable affair. There needs to be accountability but there also needs to be proportionality. This country is engaged in two wars and has serious, serious domestic problems. To stop everything and attempt to impeach and remove a president who has less than a year to serve would not strike me as the best use of our energy. And for what? So Dick Cheney can be president?

Greenwald’s response was blistering, but I’ll only quote a portion:

The only news made by that Senate report is that, in our country, a report like this — documenting that the Government lied us into a war — is no longer news at all. Extraordinary conduct of that type has been converted by the David Broders of the world into commonplace “policy disputes.”

And:

When Scott McClellan used the term “complicit enablers” to describe our press corps, this is the face of that: soothingly assuring the public that there is nothing at all unusual or radical about what’s going on in our Government, that everything from torture to warrantless, illegal spying to process-less detentions and the abolition of habeas corpus and even lying our country into war are just standard “policy disputes” that should be resolved in a gentlemanly manner through respectful and civil discourse, not by excessive and mean-spirited weapons such as investigations and prosecutions. As Broder said, the notion that there should be a “sense of urgency” is for people who “get carried away by their own rhetoric.”

Read the whole post. Greenwald is the best, most insightful, and important voice speaking in the twilight of the Bush regime.

It seems like Hartford, CT has had its own Kitty Genovese moment:

A disturbing surveillance video showing an elderly man getting hit by a car and then being ignored by bystanders has shocked — and shamed — many in Hartford, Conn.

Angel Arce Torres, 78, was trying to cross the street when a Honda plowed into him, sending him flying and leaving him lying crumpled and bleeding in the middle of the street. The driver of the car did not stop; but, even more disturbingly, passing cars and people on the sidewalk nearby did nothing to help Torres.

As Torres lay in the street, nine cars passed him without stopping. More than 40 seconds went by before anyone even stepped off the sidewalk to get a closer look. But no one went over to Torres’ body to try to help or even divert traffic.

Slate has video.

BUMP!  The Rocket weighs in on the “dushbag” media as some of his email correspondence with Brian McNamee is released.  Nice 22.

Let me first confess, that I have never particularly liked Roger Clemens. Since the first time I laid eyes on his rookie card, my young brain sensed that there was something profoundly douchey about this cocky young lantern-jawed ballplayer. Throughout the 80’s he cultivated a reputation as an intimidating tough guy, whose intensity on the mound seemed almost personal, such as the infamous bat throwing episode with Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series. And don’t EVEN bring up his asking out of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. We all know Billy Bucker was the goat of that game right?

Rather than discuss his career as a Yankee, I will only refer to the photograph below as exhibit A as evidence of his serial douchbaggery in the Big Apple:

Yes, there has always been something shifty and mercenary about the career of Roger Clemens, a man who has made going to the highest bidder sound like a homecoming. In sport, where such straightfaced pronoucements are commonplace, Clemens went the extra mile when he trotted out his family as the deciding factor when signing his record-setting 4 year $31.1 million deal with Toronto in 1996:

“I’ve always enjoyed this city,” Clemens, 34, said in his gentle Texas twang. “When we came here for the All-Star Game (in 1991), obviously playing here, my wife and my boys have loved this area. That was the most important factor.”

Clemens said fans have always been gracious toward him when he’d go out for dinner after games, when he hit the links (he’s a five handicap) and when he was at the ballpark. Hey, Canada, politeness pays.

Another factor was that the Jays are only too happy to let him bring his kids (he has four, Koby, 10, Kary, 8, Kacy, 2, and Kody, seven months, all starting with K, the letter used in baseball scoring to indicate a strikeout) onto the SkyDome carpet to bang the ball around on game days.

“I wanted it to be Roger’s call but if it had been New York we probably wouldn’t have come to the ballpark an awful lot,” said his wife, Debbie. “We would’ve lived in Connecticut and watched TV.”

Toronto Star, 14 December 1996

“If I was single, maybe New York,” admitted Clemens yesterday. “Nothing against New York, but I can’t see me going out at 2 p.m. and playing catch with my boys out on the field there.”

Debbie insists the Rocket is a great dad, but that doesn’t stop him from maintaining some of his image while with the kids. Back when Koby and Kory were small, the family would reportedly act out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle episodes. Roger’s role? He played Shredder, the Turtle’s enemy.

When he’s not playing with the kids, Clemens is working out.

Toronto Sun 14 December 1996

Fast forward to 2008 and fill in the blank. When he’s not playing with the kids, Clemens is ____________.

The New Jersey Daily Trentonian hit the nail on the head with its 14 December 2007 headline: “He Took it in the Butt.” Yes, the steroid scandal that has erupted around “Shredder” only demonstrates the pain he has suffered in his quest for greatness and now an unfeeling world has somehow turned his selfless sacrifice into a gaudy scarlet A. But let us not feel too much pity for dear Roger, who has the moral support of the first family of America, whose patriarch George H.W. Bush “found me in a deer blind in south Texas and expressed his concerns that this was unbelievable, and stay strong and hold your head up high.” Winged words indeed.

As Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform grooved easy questions to Clemens during his appearance, the Rocket Man waxed emotional, reiterating that “my family is and has always been my top priority,” while also adding, for good measure, that “I have had the privilege and honor to visit our troops in Kuwait, Qatar, and Afghanistan and salute them as our nation’s true role models.” What? You thought this hearing was about steroids? No, this is about a man teetering on the edge of a messy public self-douching. “If I am guilty of anything, it is of being too trusting of others; wanting to see the best in everyone; and being nice to everyone. If I am considered to be ignorant because of that, then so be it.”

Rest easy, Roger, you are not ignorant, but if you thought a scorched earth defense again Brian McNamee was a good idea, perhaps you trusted your lawyer and your high and inside fastball a bit too much. Once you started playing hardball the my-family-is-everything defense has blown up in your face. Do not ask for whom the douche tolls, Rocket Man, it tolls for thee.

Roger Clemens Doucheroll:

• Wannabe Texan
• Spokesman for a car dealership
• Former New York Yankee
• Reported serial adulterer
• All his kids’ names begin with the same letter “K” (Bonus: in honor of his many strikeouts)
• Reported user of performance enhancers

McClatchy news service is reporting something very disturbing from the long-awaited “Phase II” of the Senate report on the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.  In short, the Bush administration refused to accept the product of our intelligence agencies and repeatedly went off the reservation to inappropriately dabble in their own fact-finding. And these activities may have opened them up to becoming the bitches of Iranian intelligence operatives:

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

You have to read the whole thing. No wonder they want to attack Iran.

From Think Progress:

On right-winger Mike Gallagher’s radio show today, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who is currently facing charges of money laundering and conspiracy to launder money, launched a fringe attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) by claiming that he is a Marxist. “I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist,” DeLay declared.

Tom DeLay, former Houston pest exterminator and disgraced member of Congress, is a closeted gay who once appeared as a masked man in a Japanese “sharking” video.

I’ve said that publicly, and I will again, unless Delay proves me wrong.

UPDATE:

I see Hunter, over at DailyKos, has more allegations.

From today’s Politico:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is moving on two fronts to make transparency a linchpin of his campaign, opening his fundraisers to reporters and clamping down on the Democratic National Committee’s fundraising from Washington insiders. [. . .]

His likely opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), closes his fundraisers to the press. Beginning last night, Obama will open all of his fundraisers to at least a pool reporter, who will share the information with the rest of the press corps.

Beginning Thursday, the DNC will no longer accept checks from federal lobbyists or political action committees, mirroring the strict standard Obama adopted for his presidential campaign.

From the AP today at 11:27 am:

Hillary Clinton will say on Tuesday night that her rival Barack Obama has enough delegates to secure the U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination.

From the AP today at 11:28 am:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is “absolutely not” planning to concede the campaign to Barack Obama on Tuesday night, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN on Tuesday.

“No one has the number to be the nominee of the Democratic party right now,” he said.

Have you ever looked deep into someone’s eyes, and then - all of a sudden - you just knew? Well, George W. Bush famously had such a romantic experience. As we all know, in 2001 Bush got one look at the stars in Vladimir Putin’s eyes and did nothing less than get “a sense of his soul.” Ah. Love.

Ever since that fateful day, there have been signs that these two crazy kids might just be soul mates. For one thing, their administrations both like to help their citizens understand the news, by shaping it for them. But this New York Times story shows that there is pure magic in the air(waves).

On a talk show last fall, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail G. Delyagin had some tart words about Vladimir V. Putin. When the program was later televised, Mr. Delyagin was not.

Not only were his remarks cut — he was also digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily, leaving his disembodied legs in one shot.)

Mr. Delyagin, it turned out, has for some time resided on the so-called stop list, a roster of political opponents and other critics of the government who have been barred from TV news and political talk shows by the Kremlin.

The stop list is, as Mr. Delyagin put it, “an excellent way to stifle dissent.”

You really can see a lot by looking into someone’s eyes.

And I can’t confirm this, but last time Bush and Putin met, I could have sworn I heard George singing this lovely little Ella Fitzgerald ditty to his comrade:

I never cared much for moonlit skies
I never wink back at fireflies
But now that the stars are in your eyes
I’m beginning to see the light.

George hearts Vlad. Sweet.

From the trenches of the War on Empiricism:

An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency’s public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers’ findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general’s office said yesterday.

I wonder if Geri Ferraro and this woman shared a cab?

Geraldine Ferraro is back.  And she has an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe. Read it and you’ll be glad that Mondale lost.

Her argument begins innocently enough:

Here we are at the end of the primary season, and the effects of racism and sexism on the campaign have resulted in a split within the Democratic Party that will not be easy to heal before election day.

This is the part of the argument where you think Ferraro will strike a conciliatory note by acknowledging that both candidates had unique challenges: Hillary had to deal with a sexist segment of the population and Barack Obama with a racist one. But you’d be wrong. That’s not the racism that she’s talking about. She means the “reverse” kind:

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Obama = Malcolm X.

And, Geri, that isn’t what you said in March. You argued that the only reason Obama was beating Clinton was because he’s black:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Sorry to be such a sexist, Geri, but it seems to me that you are the one with the racial resentment.

It gets worse:

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to [Reagan Democrats]. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.

Hope, change, and inspiration don’t do it. A speech on racism might persuade editorial boards, but to these voters it’s “just words.” Obama has less than six months to make the case.

Yikes!

Do Reagan Democrats even exist? Or are they a rhetorical screen or some kind of ventriloquist dummy that people use to obscure their own opinions?