The ultimate shandeh far di goyim

Leonard Abess and Marty Samowitz may be two great guys. But Bernie Madoff is the Jewish guy they'll remember. You have to be a particularly egregious kind of scumbag to wipe out the foundation of a Holocaust survivor:

Nobody knows depravity like Elie Wiesel knows depravity.

And does he ever see it in Bernie Madoff.

Wiesel, whose charitable foundation was wiped out by Madoff, has until now mostly kept quiet about the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. But today, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient spoke passionately about his betrayal by Madoff, whom he referred to variously as "a crook, a thief, a scoundrel," as well as a "swindler" and "evil."

Wiesel acknowledged that in addition to having lost his foundation's assets, he lost his personal wealth to Madoff. "All of a sudden, everything we have done in forty years--literally, my books, my lectures, my university salary, everything—was gone," he said during a panel discussion hosted by Condé Nast Portfolio.

His foundation, the Elie Wiesel Foundaton for Humanity, lost substantially all of its $15.2 million in assets to Madoff; including his personal investments, total losses may be as high as $37 million. "We gave him everything, we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands," Wiesel said.

Moure about the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity here.

(h/t)

Mr. Jindal, your pants are on fire

This guy is supposed to be a Rhodes Scholar. Why does he feel he has to make shit up? Or is that just part of the conservative DNA these days?

Remember that story Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night -- about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims?

Turns out it wasn't actually, you know, true.

In the last few days, first Daily Kos, and then TPMmuckraker, raised serious questions about the story, based in part on the fact that no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue.

Jindal had described being in the office of Sheriff Harry Lee "during Katrina," and hearing him yelling into the phone at a government bureaucrat who was refusing to let him send volunteer boats out to rescue stranded storm victims, because they didn't have the necessary permits. Jindal said he told Lee, "that's ridiculous," prompting Lee to tell the bureaucrat that the rescue effort would go ahead and he or she could arrest both Lee and Jindal.

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

There's a larger point here, though. The central anecdote of the GOP's prime-time response to President Obama's speech, intended to illustrate the threat of excessive government regulation, turns out to have been made up.

So the Great Female Hope of the Republican Party makes shit up about saying "Thanks but no thanks" about the "bridge to nowhere", and now the Great Male Hope makes shit up about practically holding back the waters with his magical exorcising hands. Of course, if you look at who Republicans believe -- people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly, you realize that truth doesn't have a whole lot of resonance for these guys.

Whither the Democratic Party

It's time to put down the champagne and start looking towards the future just a bit.

Despite the attempts of cable newsbots to paint Barack Obama as a near-failure after the Tom Daschle debacle and other cabinet appointment follies, the response to his not-a-State of the Union speech was, outside of the Rush Limbaugh Orcs, almost universally positive. Paul Krugman takes a look at the budget and likes what he sees, despite the near-hysterical-yet-ominious tone of the "First Look" newsbot on MSNBC this morning in announcing the story. There's a sense that if Barack Obama can manage to pull this off, people may talk about "Barack Obama" in a hundred years the way they now talk about Lincoln.

But while it's tempting to kick back and relax, it's important not to get too comfortable with the idea that we've got this thing wrapped up for a generation. Karl Rove also thought his side had won the hearts and minds of the American people, and that cockiness infected the entire Republican Party so that a few short years after it looked like the Democrats were on the ropes and the wingnut juggernaut was unstoppable, we see that the Republicans have had to resort to naming an idiot like Michael Steele as head of the RNC and trotting out Bobby Jindal to do his best Fred Rogers imitation in an attempt to prove that they aren't the party solely of rich white bigots.

The Democrats aren't in charge of all three branches of government because we've won the ideological argument, at least not yet. The forces against progressive values are still as strong as they ever were. The Washington punditocracy still seeks "bipartisanship", even as it becomes clear that the reason Barack Obama's pledge to "change the tone" hasn't worked out as planned is because of intransigent Republicans who see his potential failure as their own gain rather than a catastrophe for the country. The corporate ownership of the media still has a stranglehold on the public discourse, Rachel Maddow notwithstanding. The reason that a centrist/progressive agenda even has a chance is due to the utter failure of the previous administration and to the sheer force of Barack Obama's personality.

But Barack Obama has eight short years in office, and there are few signs that the Democratic Party is likely to embrace the kind of change that could continue to keep progressive inroads into society as a whole. Despite the interregnum of Howard Dean, Tim Kaine is Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked DNC chair, and this is still very much the party of hackocracy -- the party of Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein. These are the corporatist Democrats, and they still run the show. These are the Democrats who think that only the sure-win battles are worth fighting and that it's perfectly OK to represent the interests of corporations instead of people.

It's not too soon to start thinking about who the next Barack Obama is going to be and where we're going to find him or her. Because when you look at the people who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last summer, the event where you usually see the next generation of leaders, the event where in 2004 a young Senator from Illinois blew the roof off and became president four years later, we didn't exactly see a stellar farm team. Sure, Claire McCaskill was great, but she's not the New Young Leader that's going to pick up the torch after Barack Obama leaves it behind. Eight years (at least we hope it's eight years) can pass by in a flash, and then what? Do we go back to having to support hacks and sellouts and Republican enablers like Hoyer and Rockefeller and Feinstein and Evan Bayh and the rest of the Blue Dog caucus, or are we going to start mounting primary challenges to these people and build the next group of leaders? I don't expect anyone to have the political gifts of Barack Obama, but we need to start finding and supporting candidates who have the intestinal fortitude to go up against these hacks. Because if we don't, we'll look back on this time as the last gasp of humanity in this country before we returned to the politics of greed and fear and corruption.

A good place to start is Tom Geoghegan, who is running for Rahm Emanuel's House seat.

Joe Conason on Geoghegan:

Geoghegan is a labor lawyer and an author who has excelled in both endeavors. He is a streetwise thinker who has devoted himself for 30 years to the advancement of working people, a fearless advocate who has never hesitated to confront their enemies, from crooked Teamster officials to marauding corporate executives.

He has walked the progressive walk without becoming a cliché or a bore, as demonstrated repeatedly in his long series of engaging books, articles and columns, most notably "Which Side Are You On?" -- which may be the smartest (and most readable) book on the troubles of the American labor movement written by anybody during the past two decades. Witty, candid, unsentimental and yet stubbornly idealistic in a landscape of defeat and cynicism, Tom displayed in that memoir of life as a labor lawyer all the qualities that could make him an exceptional figure in Washington.

He possesses a certain kind of plain-spoken eloquence that will quickly make him an important spokesman on substantive issues. Nobody will do a better job of explaining why we need labor law reform or single-payer healthcare reform, because he has represented workers against union-busting companies and sued the big insurance companies too.

In personal terms, Tom could scarcely be more different from the man he has set out to succeed. He is polite, thoughtful, usually soft-spoken and almost painfully principled -- in short, not much like the stereotype of a Chicago pol, except that for a nice guy he is also exceptionally tough. He has grit that is rare among intellectuals and academics but not so rare in labor, where the going is hard for anybody who doesn't just go along.

Without breaking a confidence, I can offer an example from my own knowledge of Tom's work. Not so long ago, he took the case of a group of workers who, like so many others in the declining industrial companies of the Midwest, had been screwed out of their pensions and healthcare in a corporate takeover. What made the case different is that among the new owners, there happened to be a very prominent Democratic investor who is accustomed to having liberals smooch his ring (or some other place). Tom had very little to gain by taking on those obscure workers as his clients, not only because they probably couldn't pay him much, if anything, and weren't at all likely to win against a phalanx of expensive corporate attorneys, but also because he might well make a very powerful enemy for himself. He didn't care at all, any more than he worried when he fought the local Teamster chieftains who sent goons around to intimidate him from time to time (but never did). He didn't court publicity, didn't call any grandstanding press conference; he just fulfilled what he saw as his commitment to people who are forgotten or unrepresented or screwed over.

But there is another reason I am compelled to say a few words about Tom. It feels as though someone is looking over my shoulder. That would be Maria Leavey, my late friend who was also a close friend of Geoghegan's and spoke about him often to me. Like him, she was a believer against all odds, a fighter who dedicated herself to the long, hard, grinding and often unrewarding work of progressive politics. If she were still here, Maria would not have let a single day go by without hectoring me to write something about Tom, and she would have been right, as she almost always was. He will fight like crazy for the universal health insurance that just might have saved her life.

You can support Tom Geoghegan here.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. But some minds get to do this full-time and so have the ability and freedom to do things like this.

When your governor takes it, it's pork. When Bobby Jindal takes it, it's a necessary program

And when Bobby Jindal opens his mouth, hypocritical horseshit comes out:

The morning after listening to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal speech, where he railed against a stimulus package "larded with wasteful spending," to the president's state of the nation address, I walked into the office and sent out a Tweet:

"Did anyone else think Gov. Bobby Jindal sounded like a cross between Mr. Rogers and a used car salesman in his rebuttal to Obama's speech?"

The more I learn about this new Republican savior, the more he sounds like a used car salesman.

It was no surprise when Jindal went off on the supposed earmarks in the stimulus package. Many have written about the lies that Jindal repeated about supposed stimulus pork, which ran the gamut all the way from miserly mice to voracious volcanoes. But it turns out he was being disingenuous and hypocritical at the same time.

In fiscal year 2008, his last hurrah as a U.S. congressman representing Louisiana before taking over the governor's mansion, Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told me that Jindal has every right to change his mind about earmarks now, but "facts are facts."

"He definitely did well... in the House," said Ellis. "Clearly he was not concerned about the earmark process, or not concerned enough to say 'no' at that point."

Ellis also pointed out that Jindal's place on the list is more significant than some others.

"There's only one other lawmaker that's ahead of him that wasn't on the appropriations committee," Ellis said.

That didn't seem to be weighing on Jindal during his prime-time speech.

Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game among the so-called rising stars in the Republican Party. From Sarah Palin's family values/unwed pregnant teenager dichotomy and her own lies about the "bridge to nowhere" to Bobby Jindal's love of earmarks for his own state, these prospective 2012 candidates are only arguably good at talking the talk, but they sure as hell don't walk the walk.

And to think that during the Bush years, you could get a visit from the Secret Service for wearing the wrong T-shirt

Now you can advocate armed overthrow of the government, and the "patriotic" right wing not only doesn't squawk, but they embrace such ideas.

Olbermann mentioned this poll on the InsHannity forum tonight; well, here it is.

Why Are We Still Listening to This Asshat?

Karl Rove, go away. Just... just... get the fuck out of our lives.

I've long since resigned myself to the realization that the "liberal" media will never give Obama a break. It was obvious that they'd held him to a higher standard long before they held their collective breath waiting for him to make a George W. Bush-league misstep during his trip to Germany last year. Now, as then, we're still seeing more Republican talking assholes with ties than progressives. Hell, Think Progress reported yesterday that Fox's viewership actually spiked by 24% since the inauguration.

All the same, I haven't a problem with listening to the very occasional conservative who actually knows what the hell s/he's talking about. What I do have a problem with is networks putting Tom DeLay's, Joe the Plumber's or Sarah Palin's pusses on the air or the WSJ giving Karl Rove a reliable organ where he can short stroke to his heart's content.

Under Rove's stewardship, the GOP got trounced in the '06 midterms and, in his baleful wake, got stampeded even worse last year. The Democrats now control two of the three branches of government and just publicly admitting to being a Republican is tantamount to begging for a tarring and feathering.

So why do we have to endure the likes of Rove when the man is obviously a Koolaid swiller of the first magnitude? Because many of the idiots who have flocked to Fox since the inauguration also hang on Rove's every unctious word. His latest deathless Ode to Bush, "Obama's Straw Men", is just such a masterpiece of obfuscation. Because, according to Herr Rove, nobody is really disagreeing with Barack Obama about anything.

President Barack Obama reveres Abraham Lincoln. But among the glaring differences between the two men is that Lincoln offered careful, rigorous, sustained arguments to advance his aims and, when disagreeing with political opponents, rarely relied on the lazy rhetorical device of "straw men." Mr. Obama, on the other hand, routinely ascribes to others views they don't espouse and says opposition to his policies is grounded in views no one really advocates.

Oh, you mean like Bush's "Some would say..." "There are some who think..." speeches? Bush never did get around to introducing those straw men of his own to us.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama told Congress and the nation, "I reject the view that . . . says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity." Who exactly has that view? Certainly not congressional Republicans, who believe that through reasonable tax cuts, fiscal restraint, and prudent monetary policies government contributes to prosperity.

Who'd said that "government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity"? I'll give you a hint: His initials were Ronald Reagan and that ridiculous mantra has been repeated by every Beltway Republican ever since.

No tax cut, as Barney Frank recently reminded us, has ever rebuilt a road or a bridge and never better educated a child. Fiscal restraint? Perhaps, in gutting Bush's NCLB, the Real ID Act and a whole host of other hare-brained Republican schemes that look great on paper provided it's not paper money. Because Big Gubmint ain't the answer, doncha know? But their utterly ridiculous posture of "fiscal restraint" kinda gets blown out of the water when one realizes what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us each year. Onward, Christian soldiers:

Mr. Obama also said that America's economic difficulties resulted when "regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market." Who gutted which regulations?

Perhaps it was President Bill Clinton who, along with then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, removed restrictions on banks owning insurance companies in 1999.

Oh, here we go with the "Blame Slick Willie" refrain.

OK, Clinton did sign off on two especially egregious pieces of legislation, one of which was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. What this did, basically, was remove any restrictions that had previously been in place barring banks from owning insurance companies and allowing mergers so massive that it's a miracle the Federal Trade Commission didn't step in while howling about violation of antitrust laws.

And Rove would have you think that Republicans were howling about this federal deregulation and dug in their heels every step of the way, right?

Uh, not exactly. What Rove conveniently forgets is that Phil "Whiners" Gramm had his fingerprints all over that other aforementioned egregious piece of legislation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, aka the Financial Services Modernization Act. And in the decade since that law was passed, I'm sure that Republicans, led by Dear Leader Bush, have been fighting tooth and nail to get government more involved in reversing this deregulation orgy that's bringing our economy down around our ears, right? (This is the part where you start to hear crickets.)

As a post script, it's now known that President Clinton didn't even know what he was signing off on, since it wasn't properly vetted, and Republicans weren't exactly anxious to help him fill in the gaps.

Perhaps Mr. Obama was talking about George W. Bush. But Mr. Bush spent five years pushing to further regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was blocked by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. Arriving in the Senate in 2005, Mr. Obama backed up Mr. Dodd's threat to filibuster Mr. Bush's needed reforms.

While it's true that Bush called for more regulation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, no one at the time, certainly not the Democrats who opposed it and had it tabled, knew how bad the problem truly was on account of the burning fuse being buried so deeply in the books. At the risk of oversimplfying this, Democrats opposed tighter regulations at that time solely on the grounds that it could hurt lower income people get financing for housing.

Rove's insistence on labeling his old boss some champion of regulation is beneath laughter but if I try real had, I think I'll still be able to eke out a few "nyuk nyuk nyuks."

Even in an ostensibly nonpartisan speech marking Lincoln's 200th birthday, Mr. Obama used a straw-man argument, decrying "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government -- this constant rejection of any common endeavor -- cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges."

Whose philosophy is this?

Grover Norquist, who wants to shrink government so that you can drag it into a bathroom and drown it in a bathtub? And, once again, St. Ronnie of the Jelly Bean and every Beltway Republican ever since, yada yada.

Many Americans justifiably believe that government is too big and often acts in counterproductive ways. But that's a far cry from believing that in "every" case government is the problem or that government should be "dismantled" root and branch. Who -- other than an anarchist -- "constantly rejects any common endeavor" like building levees, roads or bridges?

This, coming from the former Katrina Czar. Oh, the irony is delicious.

How about the Republicans who fought the "spending bill" with hammers and tongs, claiming that educating children, aiding battered women and so forth was pork barrel spending? How about Republicans who kept insisting on bridges to nowhere and electrified fences along our southern border while resisting calls to repair the levees of New Orleans?

During his news conference on Feb. 9, Mr. Obama decried an unnamed faction in the congressional stimulus debate as "a set of folks who -- I don't doubt their sincerity -- who just believe that we should do nothing."

Who were these sincere do-nothings? Every House Republican voted for an alternative stimulus plan, evidence that they wanted to do something. Every Senate Republican -- with the exception of Judd Gregg, who'd just withdrawn his nomination to be Mr. Obama's Commerce secretary and therefore voted "present" -- voted for alternative stimulus proposals.

If Republicans had their way, the entire stimulus bill would've consisted of $900,000,000,000 of tax cuts and additional Pentagon spending. Which they got, with slight moderation. Other than that, Republicans were in favor of doing nothing, calling the Senate and House versions "spending bills", as if government spending money to stimulate an economy that flatlined under Bush's sleepy eye is some kind of a crime.

Then there's Mr. Obama's description of the Bush-era tax cuts. "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy," he explained in his Tuesday speech, after earlier saying, "tax cuts alone can't solve all of our economic problems -- especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few."

The Bush tax cuts were not targeted to "the wealthiest few."

OK, at this point, Rove is plainly going for cheap laughs. Because a little over two years ago, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said otherwise: "Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts... Though tax cuts for the rich were bigger than those for other groups, the wealthiest families paid a bigger share of total taxes. That is because their incomes have climbed far more rapidly, and the gap between rich and poor has widened in the last several years."

So there, blubber lips. Oh, you want some more of this?

Everyone who paid federal income taxes received a tax cut, with the largest percentage of reductions going to those at the bottom. Last year, a family of four making $40,000 saved an average of $2,053 because of the Bush tax cuts. The tax code became more progressive as the share paid by the top 10% increased to 46.4% from 46% -- and the nation experienced 52 straight months of job growth after the cuts took effect. And since when is giving back some of what people pay in taxes "transferring wealth?"

And middle income families (or those who don't make that whopping $40,000 referenced by Rove) saved, on average, $58,000, which is a little more substantial than $2,053, which would stave off foreclosure for low income families for maybe a month, two tops.

Leave it to a Republican to piss down your back and tell you it's a golden shower. Of course, conveniently forgotten by Turd Blossom is the screamingly obvious fact that lower taxes for the wealthy results in much lower revenue for the government which, to quote St. Ronnie again, is the problem and not the answer.

In his inaugural address -- which was generally graceful toward the opposition -- Mr. Obama proclaimed, "We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." Which Republican ran against him on fear, conflict and discord?

Lesse, the old guy who looked like Grandpa in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? What was his name? I've forgotten it already. How about Sarah "He Pals Around With Terrorists!" Palin?

It's hardly worth tearing this screed apart but since it's written by Rove, a guy who would've inspired Orwell to write the sequel to 1984, I'm always glad to savage him just to keep my hand in.

But don't go away angry, Karl. Just... just get the fuck out of our lives. Because, as we found out after the 2006 midterms, math's really not your long suit, after all. (Btw, if you want to give Rove your two cents worth, his email's Karl@Rove.com.)

And you thought there'd be no comedy in this country without George W. Bush

Funniest. Daily. Show. Ever.

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Bobby Jindal's Republican Response

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Norm Coleman: Just like his hero, George W. Bush

In 2000, Gail Sheehy wrote about George W. Bush in Vanity Fair:

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.… It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. "There was only one problem—my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you—he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.

It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level."

Now, Norm Coleman is taking the spoiled fratboy from Kennebunkport as a role model and deciding that since he didn't win re-election, we should have a "do-over" until he does:

The talk from the Coleman campaign about how the Minnesota election results are unreliable, and that a do-over election could be an option, has now gone beyond just Norm Coleman's lawyers -- it's now coming from the mouth of Norm himself.

Coleman did an interview with Sirius conservative talk-radio host Andrew Wilkow, and discussed the campaign's argument that the court's current strict standards for allowing in previously-rejected ballots must by extension render illegal a whole lot of ballots accepted and counted on Election Night, when local election officials used lax standards:

"What does the court do?" Norm asked rhetorically. "Yeah, you know some folks are now talking about simply saying run it again, just run it again."

"Have another statewide election?" Wilkow asked.

Coleman responded: "You know the St. Paul Pioneer Press is...one of the second largest papers in the state, last week [they] said we're never going to figure this out, just run it again. So you start hearing that. Ultimately the court has to make a determination, can they confirm, can they certify who got the most legally cast votes?"

Coleman also said that he truly believes that he is the one who got the most legally cast votes, but on the other hand, this whole situation shows serious concerns about the process.

"I got to believe next time this happens folks are going to say ... if you have something within a couple of say percentage - this is by the way was thousandths of a percent - but if you have something within a couple of hundred votes out of three million cast, probably the best thing to do next time is run it again in three weeks and put all this other stuff aside."

Why on earth would anyone even consider allowing these people near a position of power ever again?

Sick sick sick sick sick:

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton believes the security of the United States is at dire risk under the Obama administration. And before a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Thursday morning, he suggested, as something of a joke, that President Barack Obama might learn a needed lesson if Chicago were destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the nation's largest annual conference of conservative activists, Bolton, one of the hardest hardliners of the George W. Bush administration, spoke at length about Obama's naiveté and how various nations – Russia, North Korea, Iran – will be exploiting the new president. The most dramatic moment of his speech may have been when he cracked a joke about the nuking of Obama's hometown.

"The fact is on foreign policy I don't think President Obama thinks it's a priority," said Bolton. "He said during the campaign he thought Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny, tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they are ultimately able to deliver on target. Its, uh, its tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city" – here Bolton shrugged his shoulders impishly – "pick one at random – Chicago – is that a tiny threat?"

Bolton wasn't the only one who thought this was funny. The room erupted in laughter and applause.

(h/t)

Golden Sichuan Restaurant, Haymarket Chinatown

Professional trencherman. I think that's what I'd like to put on my next business card.It's the one word which is actually meaningful on the garbled Chinglish ode to Sichuan cuisine at the entrance to Golden Sichuan Restaurant. A trencherman, according to the dictionary, is a hearty eater, its origin explained by its medieval usage as some who "frequents another's table; a hanger-on or parasite".

Maybe it's because he's a misogynistic, soulless hatemonger who vacations as a sex tourist

And the award for Most Clueless Man in America goes to...

...RUSH LIMBAUGH!!

...who can't figure out why women don't like him:

Women don’t really like Rush Limbaugh. On Feb. 23, Public Policy Polling released findings showing that only 37 percent of women hold a favorable opinion of the hate radio host, compared to 56 percent of men.

As Jill Zimon notes, Limbaugh brought up this poll yesterday on his radio show, noting that it was one of the largest gender gaps Public Policy Polling has seen on any issue it has polled in the past year. His solution? To convene a summit of women to find out why they dislike him:

We’ll have a summit of all the women in this audience — or as many of them as we can get into breakout groups — and perhaps devote an hour in an upcoming program to calls only from women who genuinely want to talk to me. They can be liberal, conservative. They could be non-audience members, could be audience members. But I want some of these women to start telling me what it is I must do to close the gender gap — or, if not what it is I must do to close the gender gap, what it is I’ve done that has caused the gender gap; assuming the gender gap is true and that the poll is true. […]

I own the men, and what must I do now to own women? And who better to ask than women? Including some of those who may agree that that I’m unfavorable. So stand by for that.

Uh, Rush? Maybe part of it is that we don't particularly like the concept of "ownership" when applied to us.

More, including Rush's history of misogynistic remarks, here.

Someone else who gave back instead of keeping it all for himself

In Tuesday night's speech, Obama gave a shoutout to banker Leonard Abess, who took the proceeds from cashing out of the bank he ran and sent a bonus to everyone who worked, or had ever worked, for him. Here's another businessman whose heart is in the right place. I don't know if these stories about Jewish businessmen are coming out as a kind of counter to Bernie Madoff, but given people's tendency to take one story, or even two or three, and paint an entire group with that brush, it's certainly welcome.

The way Martin Samowitz sees it, he had 94 very good reasons to stay out of the shoe business and one good reason to get back in.

The 94 reasons are the number of years since he was born in Queens. The one reason to return is the chance to give some of his former employees their jobs back.

Samowitz founded the Marty's Shoes discount shoe chain, opening the first Marty's in Little Ferry in 1974. The chain, which was bought by a private equity firm in 2006, filed for bankruptcy in September. Samowitz is working with former Marty's chief executive officer John Adams to resurrect Marty's Shoes.

Samowitz's first shoe chain, Perry's, died after an ill-advised merger with a conglomerate that went bankrupt. By 1997, Marty's had grown to 70 stores, with sales of more than $70 million, and had made Samowitz a millionaire many times over. Samowitz, then 82, had no children and no heirs and "gifted" the chain by canceling a $5 million debt the company owed him. He then invited 11 managers to become stockholders in the company, and turned the day-to-day operations over to Adams.

In 2006, the stockholders and Samowitz decided to sell the majority stake to private-equity firm J.P. Capital. Part of the payout was withheld in the form of three-year notes, but before those notes could be paid off, Marty's — loaded with debt and facing a slowing economy — went under, liquidating the 47 remaining stores.

[snip]

Q. Why are you going back in business?

We don't have to – I have enough aggravation in Florida with golf and running around. But it's an absolute crime, what happened to the people that were with Marty's Shoes for 20, 25 and 30 years. Now John [Adams] personally tried to hold up the other company, but he was not the boss, he was not the owner, he was not giving directions. He put his own money in, which is lost. He put his own money in because he was trying to save the company for the employees. That was the principal reason.

John came out of the sale with enough money that he could retire, except he was a little too young to retire.

The new company – I was very impressed with them. They were Ivy League graduates. But they were from California. I should have known. When I said to them, "You're moving to New York or New Jersey, right?" he said, "No." I said, "Why not? Who's going to run the company?" He said, "You don't understand, Marty. We do it from the computer." I said to myself, Well, maybe I'm old-fashioned. I'm used to going into a store and patting a stock boy on the back and saying, "Hello. How are you? Good to see you again." But they thought that was totally unnecessary.

Oh, and by the way? Samowitz is 94. What's going to happen to this country when retailers like him; the guys who cut their teeth on retail in the days of personal service, die off and we're left with nothing but the equity companies?

I was a Marty's customer, and losing the chain was a "Where the hell am I going to buy shoes?" moment. I'm not one of these Evita-types who has to have 20 pair of fabulous spike-heeled Jimmy Choos. I'm the kind who will buy a dozen pair of the same kind of loafers simply because they fit and they're comfortable. For me, the return of Marty's is cause for celebration for that reason. But for the people who worked there who will undoubtedly be first in line for the new jobs, it could very well be a new lease on life.

Nope, there's no more racism in this country

First it's the New York Post, deciding that even parodying an incident in which a woman's face was chewed off is a great way to make fun of the new President. Now it's the Mayor of Los Alamitos, California, sending out e-mails guessing what he thinks might replace the White House Easter Egg Hunt this year:

The mayor of Los Alamitos is coming under fire for an e-mail he sent out that depicts the White House lawn planted with watermelons, under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Local businesswoman and city volunteer Keyanus Price, who is black, said Tuesday she received the e-mail from Mayor Dean Grose's personal account on Sunday and wants a public apology.

"I have had plenty of my share of chicken and watermelon and all those kinds of jokes," Price told The Associated Press. "I honestly don't even understand where he was coming from, sending this to me. As a black person receiving something like this from the city-freakin'-mayor—come on."

The Orange County Register first reported the e-mail on its Web site Tuesday night.

Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.

Jesus H. Toe-Tapping Christ on a rollercoaster. He expects us to believe this? Yeesh.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: Special Post-Speech Edition

There's a post about "OK, Obama's great...but let's look down the road a piece, shall we?" kicking around in my head, but it has to wait till I don't have to leave the house by 6:15 AM for a 7 AM meeting. But some of our fellow bloggren have come up with enlightening and sometimes entertaining responses to Barack Obama's speech last night. So let's give 'em some linkitude:

Sherry at A Feather Adrift seems to have had the same thought I did: that if this guy is really this good and he can do even half of this, he could be literally the Best. President. Ever. She has some nice snark about Mr. Jindal's Neighborhood, too.

Animal Rollins D. Menace notes some plagiarism of Sarah Silverman in Bobby Jindal's rebuttal.'

What Sammy Said, or Great Minds Think Alike.

SteveAudio weighs in in the Epic Louisiana Fail of 2009 and how it rendered Rachel Maddow speechless. (This is almost too easy. And it oughta be illegal to provide this much snarkitude.)

Blue Girl has a future writing captions for Countdown. This one is great.

Why We Lurve Paul Krugman.

D-day debunks B-Jay's ridiculing of volcano monitoring. (I think Olbermann read D-day while prepping for tonight's show.)

Mithras can't decide which of the Republican identity politics wingnut lunatics would be more fun in 2012.

You'd better make sure to wrap your cranium with duct tape before reading what Terrance found. We're talking cranium-combusiting Stoopiditudeness.

John Amato makes the case that Bobby Jindal's speech was ugliness and race-baiting disguised as comic ineptitude.

Driftglass and the title "Shorter Bobby Jindal". Perfect together. (And nobody does it better....except maybe Ornery Bastard.)

Eveleigh Farmers' Market

Don't forget the Eveleigh Farmers' Market officially starts this Saturday. One presumes there'll be no suckling pigs on offer like last year's Christmas Market but an undercover weekly farmers market in the inner city is just what Sydneysiders want and need.View Larger MapEveleigh Farmers' MarketEvery Saturday 8am-1pm243 Wilson Street, Darlingtonnear the corner of Codrington Streetabout a ten

It would be a relief even if all he could do is speak coherently

I'm surprised at how relieved I was last night to watch a President speak before Congress and not have Dick Cheney alternately glaring and falling asleep behind him. Other bloggers have posted the entire transcript of the speech, and the New York Times has the video. And if you're like me, he had you at recognizing his wife along with Congress.

It's surprised me in recent weeks how people whose religion is NOT the doctrinaire right want this president to succeed, how much they realize that if Barack Obama fails, we fail, and if he succeeds, we succeed. Of course the Limbaugh minions, including people like John Boehner and Richard Shelby and yes, Bobby Jindal, the male Sarah Palin whom the Republicans see as their Great Hope for 2012 under the racial corollary to their Field a Candidate With Tits And The Women Will Vote For Her doctrine, are going to continue to froth at the mouth, but out here on Planet Consensus Reality, people are frightened and they want this to work.

For better or worse, Americans have a tendency to think of the Presidency as the National Daddy. Part of the outrage at Bill Clinton's behavior was that Daddy just doesn't do that sort of thing (and when he does, the child doesn't know about it). When Daddy cheats on Mommy and Mommy gets made, the family might split up, and this is frightening to a child. For the last eight years, the American people looked to President Daddy to keep them safe, but President Daddy turned out to be Peter Griffin instead of Robert Young. In fact, the Republican icon against which conservatives judge all other presidents, Ronald Reagan, was hardly the Wise Daddy they still believe he was, but more like Homer Simpson -- a hapless, delusional man whose heart may have been in what he believed to be the right place, but who left his "family" -- the American people -- to clean up the mess he made, albeit nearly three decades down the road. This president, Barack Obama, may be the first one in my lifetime to treat the American people like adults; to give them credit for understanding what's going on around them and to enlist their help in resolving the national difficulty in which we now find ourselves.

The salon to which I go to get my hair cut and colored is in a New Jersey town that seems to be constantly struggling. Surrounded by more affluent towns on three sides, its own downtown seems to be a constant parade of failing businesses. The guys who own the shop own the building, so they aren't going anywhere. Their shop is the kind of place that hasn't been updated since 1972 and the average age of its clientele is somewhere north of seventy. There are no Jersey girls with Soprano Woman hair, no sullen artistes, just good color and good cuts that leave thin hair like mine looking good. But this shop struggles, and one of the owners, like many working Americans, has been known to spout off about those down the economic ladder as being the source of all our problems. But no more. Last Saturday, he was talking about the plan to assist homeowners, and he was all for it "as long as it helps people instead of banks."

There's something going on out here. The Washington punditocracy doesn't see it. Congressional Republicans don't see it. The right-wing talk radio lunatics don't see it. Those whose religion is supply-side economics don't see it. But it's out here and it's real. Barack Obama sees it. I don't think he's even built it, but he sees it. It may not be permanent, but for now it's real. Americans have woken up, and to at least some degree, they've grown up. They're no longer looking for President Daddy to tell them everything's going to be OK and to let him handle it. They're willing to get out there and help him wash the car.

In his response to Obama's speech, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the son of Hindu Democrats who converted to Catholicism in High School and why may very well have issues with his parents that put those of George W. Bush to shame, tried to make the case that government isn't equipped to solve this country's problems by using the response to Hurricane Katrina as an example. But as John Aravosis graphically and succinctly points out, it's REPUBLICAN government, the very kind which Jindal wants to restore, which is incapable of helping ordinary Americans.

I'm still skeptical as to whether this mess can be fixed. In my lower moments, I believe that this country's economy is a classic case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg; that the insatiable greed of the Bush Junta and its cronies, and guys like John Thain and Vikram Pandit and Bernie Madoff was allowed to go unchecked for eight years, and now they've stolen everything and they're not going to give any of it back. At those times, I look at my retirement plan statements that used to show us well on our way to being able to take care of ourselves in retirement and now I find myself hoping that by the time I'm old they'll allow us to just check out painlessly because it's better than being homeless and living on the street in my seventies and eighties -- because there's no way these losses can be recouped in the decade and a half before I hit my late sixties. And I don't see any way out of this.

But if you still have hope and confidence that we are not irrevocably in decline, this speech, and the response to it, should bolster that confidence.

A quick trip to the US of A

Pop Tarts $8.95Growing up on a diet of Judy Blume, Trixie Belden, Paul Zindel and Robert Cormier novels, it was always the paragraphs about American food that intrigued the most.What were these magical treats called Tootsie Rolls, Twinkies and Kool-Aid? In an era pre-Internet--yes really!--these unknown mysteries could only be pictured in my imagination. For years I pictured a bowl filled with

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: Media and Entertainment Edition

Howie Klein puts the Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon in context of the global economic collapse.

Daevid McKenzie has a tale of dealing with NovaM, while Mark Karlin still believes in the Drobnys.


John Amato notes that even Norah O'Donnell, who was a good, dutiful water-carrier for Bush talking points, has had quite enough of Republican nonsense, thank you very much.

Roger Simon may appear on Hardball all the time, but when push comes to shove, as Josh Marshall points out, Politico will fall in with the wingnuts every time.


ThinkProgress: CNBC's Rick Santelli has truly eclipsed Jim Cramer in the frothing wacko pantheon.

And finally, in honor of Mardi Gras, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday say "Goodbye to Storyville", from the 1947 film New Orleans:

Harry's Bar de Ville at Bay Tinh, Marrickville

Bo luc lacTender beef cubes sauteed in special sauceserved with pepper and lemon juice"Toto, I don't think we're in Marrickville anymore..."Except we are in Marrickville, and we're in a bar. A bar. With cherry red textured floral wallpaper, and wall-to-wall timber and fancy light fittings. Are you sure I'm not in Newtown?I say this because the change in Marrickville's landscape over the past

It's about damn time

I just wish that Kate Winslet, with an extraordinary body of work behind her already at the age of 33, didn't have to, as she quipped in that infamous episode of Extras, make a movie about the Holocaust -- a clip that will now live in infamy. It's true that to some degree, Winslet has played a variation of the same character in every film in which she's starred. She's always the free spirit battling the Forces of Authority and Expectation. But aren't most good roles for women some variation of this character? And if you have a choice between playing Woman Triumphant or, say, Sophie in Sophie's Choice or Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball, who are YOU going to want to play? The fact of the matter is that women who buck societal expectations are far more interesting as cinematic fodder.

When Winslet's body of work is discussed, it's always in the context of That Boat Movie and the films she's done since. But to get a sense of just how talented this woman is, you have to look back at the work she did before anyone knew who she was.

Here's Winslet at the age of seventeen in Heavenly Creatures, directed by a guy named Peter Jackson:

In Sense and Sensibility at eighteen:

And in Jude at nineteen:

And all this BEFORE the boat movie.

Say what you will, the woman has talent. She has talent, she's built her career the way SHE wanted it, not the way others might have; dieting down to a size zero and exercising her way into a column of sinew and gristle. She swears, she smokes, and doesn't mince words. And women everywhere adore her. But in the industry and the press, there's been this undercurrent of Katehate for the last decade, with endless articles about her weight, her personal life, and this year, her unabashed longing for the golden statue. Does the entertainment press really believe that any of these people believe that "it's an honor just to be nominated"? Do they really expect us to believe that disappointed losers don't spend a little time in the ladies' room fixing their mascara after a few unbidden tears crept out?

Perhaps it's that women aren't supposed to openly want anything. The obsession with Winslet's weight (and is there anyone left on earth who still thinks she's fat?), the fact that her characters are all women who WANT -- they want love, they want sex, they want to LIVE -- all contribute to the impression that this is a woman with APPETITES. And perhaps that's terrifying to an industry in which anything over a size zero is considered to be an elephant. And she WANTED to win an Academy Award, which seems to be some kind of heinous covetousness instead of refreshingly honest.

This is a woman who, like the characters she plays, lives her life on her own terms. Perhaps the entertainment press found her unseemingly covetous in recent weeks. But for those of us who admire the gift of being able to draw us into the inner life of a character on screen, last night was a recognition that is long overdue.

(UPDATE: God knows there's plenty about which I disagree with Melissa on a regular basis. But about this post? Word. But I think I like this photo better.)

Nice. Real nice. Meet your soulless Republicans

Yesterday we got to see Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama buy into the e-mail smears about Barack Obama's citizenship. Now we hear about Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning's death wish for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg:

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer."

"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

Aside from the fact that it's at the very least in poor taste to make pronouncements of prognosis for those stricken with cancer, Bunning has his facts wrong. Yes, pancreatic cancer is a devastating diagnosis, and its prognosis is poor. But you just don't say "Oh, you'll be dead inside of a year." Because the fact is that no one knows. Right now the most famous pancreatic cancer sufferer is actor Patrick Swayze, and not only is he still working just shy of a year in diagnosis, he's signed a book deal doing well enough for the press to be having the vapors because he's still smoking.

But this is how the Republicans operate, isn't it? Everything is about their power -- getting it, keeping it, regaining it. It's party über alles for these guys, and it doesn't matter whom they have to stomp into the ground or how far into the gutter they have to go. Whether it's elevating the lies of racist kooks into mainstream discourse or invoking the long-dead Cold War or saying that if you aren't marching in lockstep with the Republicans you're a terrorist, I think over the last eight years and even into today, we've seen what these people are made of. And it isn't compassion, it isn't humanity. This party, and the people who are attracted to it, are about the worst of human nature -- about meanness, petty grudges, lust for power, greed, and for all their talk about morality, the leaders of this party are about utter lack of accountability. It is the Republican Party that is all about id -- the unfettered id of the infant, screaming for its wants and not at all understanding the word "no" or even the word "later." Republicanism is like being a two-year-old in a supermarket, wanting not just one colorful box of cereal, but all of them -- and wanting it now, and making everyone's lives miserable until they get it.

I hope this country can handle having adults in charge and isn't it in a hurry to give it back to the two-year-old throwing the tantrum in Aisle Seven.

UPDATE: Bunning has issued one of those patented Republican non-apology apologies:

“I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsburg,” Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement released by his office. “That certainly was not my intent. It is great to see her back at the Supreme Court today and I hope she recovers quickly. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.”

How about "I apologize for being a nasty insensitive asshole"? Why make it conditional on Ginsburg being offended?

Frank Rich Scratches the Surface of America's Denial Crisis

Whats it gonna take to open the eyes of Americans in denial?

Frank Rich scratches that surface, in his Sunday Op-ed, What We Don't Know Will Hurt Us, and all that's clear is that its all unclear.

No one knows, of course, but a bigger question may be whether we really want to know. One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly “changed everything,” slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable. Obama’s toughest political problem may not be coping with the increasingly marginalized G.O.P. but with an America-in-denial that must hear warning signs repeatedly, for months and sometimes years, before believing the wolf is actually at the door.

Its starting to sound to me like Americans are slowly backing towards the real rude awakening, and no matter how many years of warnings there have been, the evidence laid out on the table in the hard light of day, and our crushing need, need, need to hold on to the dreams and possibilities; the American Dream, with all of its boring stability, yet promise of how things could change with one lottery ticket or game show win, the reality of the situation is so bad that even considering the alternative of a normal life of making ends meet causes many to cling hopelessly to the chance rather than live in the reality. Its not the safety from the terra that we really want, its our 15 minutes of fame! That's because we're special! I don't know if we know what we want, really. With all that information out there, it seems that we have become more provincial in our tastes than ever. Maybe the menu is too big.

Rich talks about our "cultural pattern of denial," as if it just came about on its own and wasn't born of a system that purely and clearly doesn't work. Yeah, I'm talking about capitalism; the unregulated brand. American Dream Capitalism can only flourish, and then temporarily, in a world where credit companies go hand in hand with advertisers, hand in hand with retailers, paying less and less to workers, who then need more credit to fulfill what the advertisers tell them to want. The media claims that they are just giving the American people what they want, but I don't think that its possible to know what you want with no clear idea of whats out there, relatively, in a world full of differences and possibilities. Its all a big manipulation for which each generation will blame the one before it, but clearly, we have a skewed world view anyway, so infighting isn't going to help. The truth may be that the sham of the American Dream is that its not really enough because we are so spoiled that even if we don't personally need that fame, we need to watch others gaining and losing it on our large screen TV.

The fear that we are traipsing down the path to socialism is very real to many for whom capitalism has done little. Why is that?
We are, in fact, a semi-socialist country with what little that really works here being part of that redistribution thing that is so hated. Most people knee jerk about keeping the money they earn and yet pay private insurance companies a premium level premium only to have to do battle when push comes to shove, and live at the mercy of which doctor takes which.

I'm not against everyone making a fair or comfortable living, but its clear to me that if regulation stopped the money up top from all traveling upwards, like we used to have a rule of thumb to put a certain amount of profits back into the business, and then pay back into the workers, community, society, and the infrastructure, maybe we all would be a little safer and happier.


The problem is really more of a sociological phenomenon in which rather than being angry at the rich, we direct our anger towards the poor for taking up our resources with their neediness. The truth of this is far from whats disseminated and somehow billions more in corporate welfare is OK, but feeding children is not. Its taken so many, many years of this manipulation for the tables to finally turn. It's taken home movies of gold fixtures and multi million dollar birthday parties, empty accounts where hedge funds were supposed to be, and no bid contracts, carried out by crony companies with ties to the government, (to put it mildly;)...companies that carried out their duties so negligently as to feed tainted water bottles to our soldiers fighting their war of profit, build buildings in which pipes burst and shit dripped from ceilings, and that managed to lose truckloads of cash...truckloads...all of this with evidence in front of the American face. Evidence like videos, documents, drawings, and testimony, and all anyone had to do was to dangle the carrot or the threat of losing the carrot that you don't really own, and we went right back in line.

My big disappointment in the past 8 years has been less the crooks that would steal their own country blind and walk away able to sleep at night, because there are some bad people and absolute power corrupts, etc... but that half the American people went along with it because of some shiny, shiny, and a vial of white powder, to lazy to do the research or even open their eyes.

Its probably not that all of those people are bad, but more a sort of cognitive dissonance, where what is accepted societal behavior becomes corrupted by what is the line from the propaganda team, and the actions following go so against what one stands for that the opposition of the two creates a mental vacuum. It becomes a matter of accepting the unacceptable behavior or admission that one has played a part in something that is criminal or wrong. The wrong becomes the new truth and the person clings to it as if it was the gospel truth because the alternative of having been so wrong and acted on it is too much.

Americans are not raised to look at their reality under the light, lest we become dissatisfied with our position in the order of things, so we cling tighter to the truth that we have come to believe, based in fear or denial, and the slightest possibility of joining the monied classes and the belief that they should be able to keep what they have earned. Every successful American CEO has stood on the shoulders of this entire society to get where he or she is, and a society that allows success even one tiny bit as big as many of them have achieved, deserves a kickback into society's pot; not a tax loophole and an offshore account to try to keep the money that they have earned. The regular American, as well as the poor American is expected to kick back in, but its accepted that the loopholes for the rich exist because they somehow deserve them. This is the group that has benefited the most from the Bush years and their tax cuts. Now some of those guys actually sunk their businesses, took bailout money from taxpayers, and managed to give themselves their huge bonuses at the end of last year. What are we supposed to do with that? Let them get away and we've reinforced the helplessness of law abiding citizens everywhere. Rock the boat too much and the corporate influenced government ceases to move forward.

So, yes Obama is up against it, and he may be the one we need right now in that, as much as he skirts around the truth in the interest of not overwhelming the undereducated masses and offending the cronys, he will state the truth, and he will do what has to be done. I believe that because I have to. I believe that because there is nothing else, except that the specter of families with babies on the street and on the soup line may not hit home until that family is your neighbor...or you...and until the post apocalyptic country starts to look too much like a Mad Max scene that even the Reaganomics of the 80's couldn't fully carry out in NYC. That NYC was where I stepped over the AIDS ravaged homeless and the broken glass of car windows every day for years, shouting at a deaf government, and it was heartbreaking. This is much worse, but we no longer have a government with its fingers in its ears and humming.

How bad does it have to get before we take action? It has to come right to the front door and maybe inside the house! Its gotta take a camera into the Willowbrook asylum and drop a microphone down the well so that we can hear the stuck baby wailing. Its beyond 9-11, obviously and way past Katrina....Being out of work may the the thing that creates time for Americans to reassess whats been happening and to get back to basics.

The same people who very gravely told me in the past 2 presidential elections "I'm not sure if your guy can keep us safe," have to realize that this is not something that any individual can figure out, but rather a broad policy of base belief that got us into or is gonna get us out of the current can o' worms; that base belief should probably start with at least following the constitution and laws, and then turn to how our neighbors are treated. If we give up our base beliefs out of fear, then we have nothing.

Rather, what I was seeing in those frightened voters was the wielding of the power of the vote in the direction of the possibility of winning the lotto and joining the Halliburton class, or remembering some Pearl Harbor memory of America as the Hero, in the right, which was just laughable in its gravity and sincerity, considering what was going on in the world and how we were acting. The same people who wouldn't know a Thief from a Socialist if they hit them in the bank account, thought that they were influencing the halls of power with their belief in a Bush or a McCain or a Palin as a way to stay safe and right; because if the simplistic neocon view of things could keep us safe, then any working stiff espousing at the local bar could make it big, and there is a certain leveling in that bluster, as much as its totally nonsensical.

Americans may need to be slowly led into the harsh reality of what lies ahead. But hopefully it will be done before its too late in a world of tipping points. We may see Obama nationalize the banks and we may see a "socialist" turn to how things are done in this country. The alternative has been tried and it doesn't work, so get ready for something new and maybe even a little familiar.
If its not dawning on the other half by now, then it may never. That doest stop the necessity of moving forward before things get worse.

If in light of the bailouts already put out there, the executives at the huge corporations and banks cant see the path ahead, then they have to go; and not with their golden parachutes either! If the credit companies are only using the bailouts and reorganization to put the screws to their customers rather than stop offering up new credit at every turn and make a sane way to get out of debt, then they will go too, and along the way they will see many more Americans in straight default, rather than honestly trying to pay their debt down.

The real point of this illustrated lesson for the American people and the world is that the dream that you were promised is earned, not promised, and you were bamboozled into a position where you can't earn, beg, borrow, or steal it anymore...its dead! and no matter what anyone says, you cant get anything for free. If the credit industry had to fold and stop offering credit to individuals, how would we live? well, we'd learn. If that effected the world economy horribly and the CEO couldn't get the corporate jet he wanted this year along with his 20 million dollar bonus, well, we would go on and dig out. What we are seeing may be the collapse of unregulated capitalism, and surely, if America doesn't hold those responsible accountable right up to the top, then we are doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over. Laws are no good if they are only for the rabble, especially if everyone right up to the president and his VP get away with murder.

Industry in this country may be based at this point on the vinyl to CD, CD to MP3 player model, just as the digitization of the television signal, (our airwaves,) serves to force new equipment onto Americans credit cards at a time when people just don't have the money to pay that debt back. But at some point, the camel's back breaks; especially when the paying jobs to make that new equipment are long gone to other countries that have entered their own cycle of Americanized mistakes.

So I look forward to hearing a little hard truth. As I said, frank Rich barely scratched the surface of the problem here. Its a problem of growing up and getting with a reality based model, and having the government carry that out in regulating how much these companies can lie to us and entice us to get in too deep, while they stab us in the back, and blame us for being negligent for not reading the print so fine as to serve the smaller denizens of the doll house world. I'd like to see simple terms in normal layman's print, and I'd like to see the country get back on a track that is livable and from which we can recover to a sensible level of realistic living where everyone has a chance and the worker is once again valued as much as the CEO.
c/p RIP Coco

This is what happens when lies get "out there" and become part of mainstream discourse

We're all familiar with the various smear e-mails about Barack Obama that circulated prior to the election. We're even now familiar with the kind of hysterical ranting to which Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been resorting in an effort to keep their frothing minions whipped into a frenzy. The problem with this is that once an idea gets "out there", even if it's utterly false, it becomes part of the mainstream discourse and becomes simply "an alternate view." It doesn't matter if it's an outright lie or fabrication, it's "an alternate view." This kind of factual relativism is a cancer on the body politic. We all have friends who have whispered to us "I heard that he's not really a citizen" or "He's a Muslim." They've gotten the e-mails and chosen to believe them.

The other day we were treated to the lunatic ravings of Alan Keyes, picking up the kind of crap we saw in these e-mails, claiming that Barack Obama was born in Nairobi to a mother who was "too young to transmit American citizenship" -- a statement that is not only utter horseshit, but also laughably implies that American citizenship is some kind of virus, like AIDS, that is "transmitted" from mother to child:

It's one thing when a known nutjob like Keyes spouts crap like this, but once it is "out there", it becomes "truthiness" -- believed by those who want to believe it whether or not it is true.

And so we have the "Obama is a Kenyan" meme coming up again, repeated now not just by Alan Keyes, but by a United States Senator, Richard Shelby:

nother local resident asked Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

The birth certificate has been produced and verified, but that is not enough for these people. Because they learned under George W. Bush that facts don't matter, truth is what's in your gut. That's why Bush is able to believe that his presidency was a success and that whatever problems there are now are not because of his policies, but because of mistakes of his predecessors. They learned that if you call someone a terrorist, that means he is a terrorist, regardless of whether there is any evidence.

The Republican Party now gets its marching orders from right-wing talk radio, and the insatiable maw of the talk radio audience must be constantly filled with swill, lest the genre perish. And when a Senator gives voice to that swill, it gives it a legitimacy that swill does not deserve.

I'm with Aravosis on this one. I won't be convinced that Richard Shelby isn't a pedophile until I see something proving that he isn't.

(h/t)

1000 posts prize giveaway: The lucky winners!

Everybody likes freebies, and it was clear that readers agreed with a flood of entries for the prize giveaways celebrating 1,000 posts on Grab Your Fork. A whopping 852 entries were received in total.I wish that everyone could win, but alas, there will only be eight lucky people shrieking over their emails this morning. Congratulations to all the winners - you should have already received your

Hal Turner is The Joker

Or a joker, at any rate.

I'd heard rumors circulating around the intertubes that Hal Turner was planning on sabotaging the Obama inauguration last month with poison balloons. At first, I didn't believe them until I did a little skullduggery tonight and found this:

Then how about this: Balloons filled with Helium to float, then a special little "something" is poured inside. The balloons are tied shut with firecracker fuse. The fuse is lit and the balloons released.

As they float over the inauguration crowd, the burning fuse reaches the balloon and it pops, dropping its "payload" on the crowd below.

Too far fetched? It got tested and it worked! The video of the test appears below.

Watch the video and imagine what payload, other than the index cards taped to the outside of the test balloons, might be substituted? HMMMMM. Might it be something messy? Something smelly? Something contagious? Something deadly? Ahhhh, such possibilities.

Maybe he meant Obama's other inauguration in 2012.

But what this reminded me of tickled the back of my head until this very minute. It took a while but it finally hit me:

Maybe Obama stole his balloons.

Lowenbrau Keller, The Rocks, Sydney

Schweinshaxn $31Oven-roasted pork knuckle with sauerkraut, Löwenbräu bier sauce and mashed potatoYou've just had chocolate for breakfast. What would you have for lunch?Pork knuckle.Of course.Because I'm with chocolatesuze and if there's one thing I've learnt from my eating adventures with her, it's that she's always ready to move onto her next feast.There's a kind of wild woman crazy-eyed look

So does Gary Condit get an apology?

I saw this little tidbit at Salon this morning:

Media reports in Washington and California say that an arrest may be close in the slaying of the former federal intern whose disappearance ended Gary Condit's congressional career.

WRC in Washington and KGO, KFSN and KCRA in California say D.C. police are seeking an arrest warrant in Chandra Levy's death. The warrant would be for an inmate convicted of attacking two female joggers in the same Washington park where Levy's remains were found in 2002.

The 24-year-old Levy disappeared in May 2001.

The married Condit told police that he and Levy were having an affair. Police did not consider him a suspect, but the negative publicity was cited as the main cause of the California Democrat's re-election defeat in 2002.

In the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Gary Condit was a bigger topic in the news than was the still simmering controversy over the Supreme Court decision that gave George W. Bush the presidency, the Navy submarine with Bush campaign donors at the helm that sunk a Japanese fishing boat, or the U.S. spy plane that crashed in China. After all, what were two foreign policy disasters that in retrospect foreshadowed the ineptitude and venality of the entire Bush presidency when compared to a good old fashioned Congressional sex scandal? The old saying is that a Washington sex scandal always involves a dead girl or a live boy, and here we had the dead girl and a somewhat skeevy California (!!) Democratic Congressman with big capped teeth. Condit would seem to be an unlikely candidate for the kind of media buzzsaw in which he ended up mired, since he was actually a conservative Democrat, not the kind of "San Francisco Liberal" that we're accustomed to hearing about from the frothing gasbags of the right. But this was 2001, the Clinton scandals were recent history, and I think the media really missed having some good old-fashioned middle-aged-guy/young-chickie stuff to write about. Enter the corpse of Chandra Levy.

As it turned out, Condit did have an affair with young Ms. Levy, which makes him a lousy husband with a shitty moral code, but hardly the kind of criminal he was painted to be in the media, and when he ran for re-election, he lost and his political career was over.

Interestingly, there was another dead intern story cooking around the same time, one which received no mainstream press attention whatsoever:

Lori Klausutis had a seemingly happy life. A devoted husband who listed on his online homepage "being married to Lori" as one of the honors he enjoyed, a new home in Niceville and a Catholic congregation where she was a cantor and in whose choir she sang, were some of the elements of the Good Life she enjoyed. Her husband, Dr. Timothy Klausutis, did research and development for the munitions group at nearby Eglin Air Force Base, where he presumably made a good livelihood. Although Lori hailed from the Atlanta, Georgia area where she had attended school, there were numerous family members in the area. According to her obituary in the Fort Walton Daily News, Lori had served as President and, later, Treasurer, for the Emerald Coast Young Republicans and as a aide to Congressman Scarborough, she was active during the Florida recounts. A former neighbor, Barbara Cromer, said "Every morning, I would see her run while I walked. We'd wave to each other as we passed. I loved Lori so much. She was wonderful. She was a kind, generous person, so sweet.

Then, on Friday, July 20th, the body of Lori Klausutis, 28, was found slumped next to a desk on the floor of Florida Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough's Fort Walton Beach office where Lori had served as a constituent services coordinator since May, 1999. Her body was found around 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning by a couple arriving for an appointment. She had been dead for some time. A second employee, who would have normally arrived for work at around the same time, was away on vacation. Police cordoned off the area for investigation, later announcing that there was no reason to suspect foul play, nor were there signs of suicide.

Scarborough's office released a statement several hours after the discovery:

"My staff and family are greatly saddened by the loss of Lori Klausutis. I know Lori will be missed by the thousands of citizens who regularly contact my office to seek assistance with a variety of problems. May God grant Lori's family the grace, comfort and hope that will get them through this difficult time."

The Congressman returned to Florida that same day, and his office was quick to point out that it was not unusual for him to fly home for the weekend.

There was a great deal of ambiguity over whether Lori had suffered past medical problems. Scarborough's press secretary, Miguel Serrano, made mention of health problems in Lori's past, but could not be more specific. In response, Fort Walton Beach Police Chief Steve Hogue is quoted as saying "That's part of our investigation, checking into her medical history." Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Berkland said "She had a past medical history that was significant, but it remains to be seen whether that played a role in her death". Soon after a member of the immediate family rejected out of hand that Lori had any significant medical problems. She was, in fact, quite an athlete, having recently run an 8K with a very respectable time and she belonged to the Northwest Florida Track Club.

The results of the mandated autopsy, however, were deemed "inconclusive" by Dr. Berkland, who ordered more specific toxicology tests. These results were expected by the middle of the following week, around the first or second day of August. Dr. Berkland commented at the time "This turns over several puzzle pieces in the case of her death and reveals more of the picture".

Welcome to the Wheel of Fortune.

Michael Berkland, it turns out, has a very interesting background himself. Recently relocated to Florida, it is a matter of public record that Dr. Berkland's medical license in the state of Missouri was revoked in 1998 as a result of Berkland reporting false information regarding brain tissue samples in a 1996 autopsy report. Berkland does not deny the charges.

It's also a matter of public record that he was suspended from his position as Medical Examiner in the State of Florida in July, 1999.

Quincy, he's not.

Repeated requests to Dr. Stephen Nelson, Chairman of the Medical Examiners Commission, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, have failed to verify that Dr. Berkland's suspension was lifted and that his licensure and disciplinary record are clear at the present time. Dr. Nelson was appointed Chairman of the Commission by Governor Jeb Bush.

As for Lori Klausutis, rumors began to swirl as time passed with no resolution to the case, rumors that included whispers of suicide, some emanating from inside the Beltway. Family members, angered at what they considered unfair and exploitive coverage wrote the editor of the Northwest Florida Daily News, Ralph Routon, saying "For those who knew Lori, the thought of suicide, as your published reports suggested, is absolutely unthinkable. Suicide was contrary to her faith and being. She did not suffer from seizures, nor did she have a history of medical problems." Meanwhile, the final report has been issued that Lori died as a result of a blow to the head because an undiagnosed heart condition caused her to collapse and fall, hitting her head on the desk.

The initial reports from the Medical Examiner's office denied any trauma to the body that would indicate cause of death. But Berkland acknowledged on Monday, August 6th, that Lori had sustained a "scratch and a bruise" on her head and that his original denials were to prevent undue speculation about the cause of death. "The last thing we wanted was 40 questions about a head injury", he said.

And so, what we have here is the death of a healthy young woman who died of a blow to the head and a lie from the Medical Director's office about this blow which was quite obvious to the naked eye. They then had to go search for some reason why she might have "fallen" and hit her head. And they have found an "undiagnosed cardiac arrhythmia". But a number of questions remain to be answered, and we have requested opinions from Dr. Nelson, the Chairman of the Medical Examiners Commission.

It's worth reading the full account of the Klausutis mystery, especially in light of the vastly different way a Democratic Congressman was treated. It should also be noted that Joe Scarborough had abruptly decided to leave Congress barely two months earlier, and it should equally be noted that in 2003, Scarborough, now the morning host and Chief Obama-Basher at MSNBC, joked about Klausutis' death on Don Imus' radio program:

Conservative MSNBC news host Joe Scarborough was a guest on MSNBC's Imus show last Thursday, May 29. In complementing Scarborough on his sense of humor, Imus said, 'Don't be afraid to be funny, because you are funny. I asked you why you aren't in Congress. You said that you had sex with the intern and then you had to kill her.' To which Scarborough laughed, 'Yeah, ha, ha ha, well, what are you gonna do?

More about the Klausutis case here.

So once there is an arrest in the Levy case, does Gary Condit get an apology from the media? Somehow I doubt it.