The Kill Switch

Who says it can't happen here?

Egypt Flips Internet Kill Switch. Will the U.S.? by Dan Costa, PC Magazine

The legislation was first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and the former has promised to bring it to the floor again in 2011. It isn't called anything as obvious as the Internet Kill Switch, of course. It is called the "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act." Who could be against that? Anyone who's watching the news on TV today, that's who.

The proposal calls for the Department of Homeland Security to establish and maintain a list of systems or assets that constitute critical cyber-infrastructure. The President would be able to be able to control those systems. He or she would have ability to turn them off. The kicker: none of this would be subject to judicial review. This is just a proposal, mind you, but it certainly warrants concern. Particularly given the heavy-handed example being provided by Egypt.

Reports of Egypt's grand disconnection came first from James Cowie of Renesys, a New Hampshire-based firm that tracks Internet Traffic. As he watched Egypt drop off the grid, Cowie wrote:

"Every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world."

Keeping citizens off the Internet is becoming standard operating procedure during civil unrest. The Iranian government slowed Internet access to a crawl during last year's civil unrest, but the country online. Myanmar has a little more success blocking its citizens. Egypt's move, however, is unprecedented in its scope.

Impotent Old Men

No, I'm not talking about the Vatican this time. I'm talking about the Three Stooges of Faux Toughness, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, all of whom are every day that the story of the New York car bomb develops resembling more and more the old Al Franken/Tom Davis SNL sketch in which two politicians run ads trying to outdo each other on how tough on crime they'll be. It ends with one ad which has the candidate saying, "We'll kill 'em BEFORE they can commit a crime."

You have to wonder about guys like these three -- two Sore Losermen and a closet case -- and oh, hell, let's throw Dick Cheney in there too while we're at it, who have this hard-on for torture and for eviscerating due process and the Constitution in the name of "toughness" and "strength." Their "strength" is that of the schoolyard bully who still has to wear a diaper in bed at night. Where "strength" became equated with running around like a chicken with its head cut off, screaming "OMYGODTHETERRORISTSARECOMING WE'REALLGONNADIEOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!", I have no idea. But somewhere along the line, Republican politicians decided that there way hay to be made among residents of towns in flyover states that have a near-zero risk of actually being the target of a terrorist attack by keeping them in a constant state of fear. Lieberman is a particularly heinous example of this, and he's not even a Republican (though he might as well be). It's appalling that a Jewish politician whose sole concern in regard to terrorism often seems to be the safety of Israel, a country founded to assuage Western guilt about looking the other way while Hitler massacred Jews, would advocate summary stripping of citizenship and presumable deportation if the government doesn't like the crowd with which you hang out. Given the flexible government definition of terrorism in this country, which does not seem to include nurderers of women's health practitioners and white guys who want to overthrow the government, I'm not sure we can trust politicians to decide who should retain citizenship and who shouldn't. We are all Emma Goldman now.

That these guys are continuing to beat the waterboarding-and-torture drum, while Faisal Shahzad is singing like a canary even AFTER having his Miranda rights read, just shows that for them, the whole Bushian torture-and-military-tribunal thing isn't about our safety, it's about a bunch of impotent old men being able to feel that they can still get it up.

Once again, Rachel Maddow debunked the efficacy of this model, which may make John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham feel like Biggus Dickus, but is actually a less effective way of dealing with suspected and actual terrorists than the law enforcement model they deride:

Hey Harry Reid...aren't you glad you let Lieberman keep his committee charmanships?

I wonder what Joe Lieberman has to do in order for Harry Reid to realize that Holy Joe is not with the Democrats. Lieberman supported the Republican candidate for president, he ran against his own party's nominee in 2006 to win re-election, and he's been a thorn in Reid's side ever since.

I don't know what Lieberman wants. He clearly isn't interested in switching parties, because he's just an egotistical little man, not a batshit crazy lunatic, so he's unlikely to be accepted in today's Republican party. And he's clearly no Democrat. Lieberman is increasingly the Senator for the State of Being a Dick For the Sake of Being a Dick. I'm sure this makes him feel very powerful, but Harry Reid's decision to continue to regard Joe Lieberman as an ally, to the point of turning the health care reform bill into nothing but a mandate to buy the kind of crappy, overpriced, no-coverage-when-it-counts insurance that's on the market now in a vain effort to placate Lieberman, is going to be very costly for Reid's party, and the nation, in 2012.

Because whatever the health reform bill is, Lieberman is against it:

In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.

Joe Lieberman has received almost half a million dollars from the insurance industry for his 2010 re-election campaign. THAT's his constituency, not the voters of Connecticut.

None of this would be necessary if Reid has the balls to go nuclear and kill the filibuster. There is absolutely nothing codified in the Constitution which states that the minority party has the right to kill any and all legislation with a filibuster. The filibuster is supposed to be a rarely-used tactic, not a staple of government. The argument against killing the filibuster is supposed to be to retain it in case you need it later on, but when the Democrats were the minority party, they curled up in a fetal position in the corner, letting themselves be rolled by George W. Bush for eight years. So if you aren't going to use it when you are in the minority, why allow the other party to use it? Enough with the sixty votes already.

And listen to John already.

After all, what's 43,000 dead Americans every year if Joe Lieberman doesn't feel important?

I'm really getting tired of having this country's well-being held hostage to men's psychological issues. If it isn't chastity and abortion bans advocated by men who can't keep it in their own pants, it's wars started by a president with daddy issues so serious he needs a steamer trunk to hold them all, or one who's so used to trying to tiptoe while straddling two divergent worlds and keep everyone happy that he seems temperamentally unable to achieve his own goals in today's fractious political environment.

And then there's the senior Senator from Connecticut, a pathetic, whiny little man who uses Jewish grievance to further his career; a man so insignificant that if he were not able to hold a Democratic president hostage, he seems to feel he might disappear altogether.

Jon Stewart isn't quite right when he quotes Joe Lieberman using the voice of the cartoon character Droopy Dog. Droopy uses the façade of a nebbish to mask a supremely confident cartoon hero. Joe Lieberman flits around to whomever is willing to stroke his ego and make him feel important:

After he announced his willingness to filibuster health care reform that includes a public option, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defended his position by arguing that if the public option paid lower reimbursement rates than private insurers, medical providers would shift costs to Americans with private coverage. He also called the proposed plan “a new entitlement program.” As ThinkProgress and others have pointed out, Lieberman either doesn’t understand the details of the public option proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) or he is misrepresenting them. But in a conference call with Connecticut reporters yesterday, Lieberman claimed that it is the more than 60 percent of state residents that back a government-run insurance option that are confused:

What about the more than 60 percent of state residents that back a government-run insurance option, according to a Quinnipiac University poll last month?

Some of those respondents are confused about what such a plan entails, Lieberman said. And he added, “you can’t make a decision like this based on polling,” he said. Ultimately, he he said he has to do “what I think is right and hope in the end the people of Connecticut will respect me for that.”

Describing how his openness to derailing reform affected his role in the health care debate, Lieberman told the reporters, “I feel relevant.”

Got that, Sen. Reid? Lieberman needs to feel "relevant." Are you also aware that such people are a black hole of need into which you can pour committee chairmanships until the cows come home? Such needy people can suck up all the energy you have and still beg for more. Joe Lieberman doesn't want to caucus with you. He wants to be courted. And if the Republicans are offering him candy and flowers, he'll lie down with them. This does NOT mean you should try to one-up the Republicans. Let them deal with this pain sponge and need machine (™ Marc Maron). It's time to jettison this asshole. Let the Republicans filibuster, and let Lieberman filibuster with them. Let them go on national TV and tell the nearly 50 million Americans who don't have health care coverage, and the hundreds of thousands more who are being denied care they're paying for, that THEY're getting health care and no one else matters. That will speak louder than any capitulation to these evil narcissists ever will.

Joe Lieberman Misused $387,000, and All We Got Was An Article About John Edwards!

I know, I know...the John Edwards debacle was and is stunning, heart wrenching, and life changing, and now its back in the headlines in all its glory! Edwards announced today that there is a federal investigation going on into his campaign funds (.... to determine if certain funds disbursed to the company of the woman that he had an affair with were legally transferred, or if there was some nefarious plot to shut her up and keep her in grand style ...with their maybe love child...) over the sum of...um...$114,000, give or take.

Look maybe you can keep your baby's mama in a nice trailer park for that amount, but it seems to me that this might perhaps be production money, as she was the videographer on the campaign trail, and anyone who has had to shoot for hours and then spend hours editing down footage for public consumption will know that an amount like that is chump change. Did he pay her to go away? Did he buy her jewels and furs? Who knows and who cares?



His career is ruined for now, and it seems to me that it serves a whole portion of others in the political and business spectrum to have his voice shut down because of what his message was and is. So, yeah, hes an idiot narcissist who imploded, and he's lucky that, from the outside anyway, his family has survived....If you've read my previous posts on this subject, you'll know that it interests me little to hear speculation about the details of this stupidity, and if he misused 100 grand of campaign funds, I'm sure that there have been worse crimes committed...oh, like the Clinton's real estate bamboozle and Bill Clinton's flirtation with the young Monica Lewinsky. I'm sure that never, ever happens in the halls of power....right? What kind of time and money are we willing to waste because of the hint of a sex scandal?

Which brings me to Joe Lieberman, our favorite Jr. Senator here in Connecticut. Today in the local Stamford Advocate, we were treated to a large piece on the news of Edward's probe, and then a page or two back and in a small box, was the news that Joe himself is also under investigation for misuse of campaign funds. This is a story that is not being covered by much of the media, except for snippets in our local papers here in Connecticut, and only by the Connecticut blogs such as My Left Nutmeg, which has been great all through the nightmare that has been Connecticut politics for more years than even Bush was the national nightmare. The New Haven Register had this story about Lieberman, as if his misuse of funds was just a blip that a small fine would take care of; a civil penalty of $50,000.



The Register also had the same article on Edwards that was published in the Advocate, (but which the Advocate hasn't, as of this time, put on line; nor have they put up the Lieberman story.) The Edwards article talks about his buried career and how he is finished, the turmoil of his marriage and any other projections that the writer could come up with because, heaven knows there isn't much in the way of facts there; not the gay in the bathroom stall/affair with a male page sort of deliciousness brought to us by the now defunct republican majority; now THOSE were facts!

Still, the article makes the Edwards situation sound like he took pallets of cash to another country that we had invaded illegally and just lost it with no explanation....oh yeah, that's the former President of the United States, who we can hardly muster the balls to investigate on charges of real war crimes, much less the money misspent, lost, given out with no explanation, and pocketed in conflicts of interest such as Halliburton/Blackwater & it's subsidiaries/Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld/Tamiflu/Aspartame.

Look, I'm not an apologist for Edwards. I'm as disappointed as anyone who was a true believer in his message, and who was mortified to find that he didnt get out of the race, and continued to wield his delegates, knowing that this was likely to come out. But here's the deal, Edwards is not in office, nor has he been nominated to any cabinet post. He is old, tragic news, in a very interesting election cycle, who will likely have his second act as they all do in show business.

Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, is still actively jumping parties out there and holding his chairmanships on some pretty important committees, (Homeland Security and Government Affairs to name but two.) He is a sitting senator and as much as his crony's have forgiven him for his insane campaign to get back into that seat, the people of Connecticut largely have not.

Why this isn't a bigger story isn't much of a mystery to me, because I was there and saw the tactics of the Lieberman campaign first hand. I worked for Ned Lamont during every free moment I had and manned a contentious poll on election day. The Lieberman investigation was about a whopping $387,000 that was given out improperly, and much of it was to stage a ground war here, when he hadn't planned much campaign presence at all because he was so sure that he would win! When faced with a real lack of volunteers, the campaign hired ground teams to disrupt Lamont's events and basically make a nuisance of themselves. They plastered much of downtown Stamford with Joe signage, which was illegal, they ran through the streets of anyplace that Lamont was appearing and jostled in front of TV cameras with signs that they, themselves didn't understand, and they menaced even old folks and parents with babies in carriages with their aggressive actions.

At a Lamont speech in Greenwich I asked some of the kids, (they were all black for that event and it made the white Joe T-shirts pulled over baggy clothes stand out all the more, as if a crowd of black kids on Greenwich Avenue weren't enough in that stogy old-money town!) if they knew what Joe stood for, and they said no, that a guy in a van offered them $60 per day to wear the t-shirt and support Joe. Later when someone I know asked again, the amount had been raised to $100 per day. A kid said that he didn't know who Joe was or what he stood for but that it was just a job and he was following orders. At the time I was down in what is the inner city of Stamford quite a bit for some personal reasons, and on the cul de sac circle of the cluster housing that now replaces part of the old projects, a white Joe van would drive up and kids would go up to the van looking for work.

At the time the army recruiting offices were active in just such neighborhoods because these were the kids likely to go for the bonus money to go to Iraq for an indeterminate amount of time. Was it right for Joe, who supported the war and had no answers on how we were going to handle the military in Iraq or when they came home, to have children working for him against their own interest? Was it right to pay the on the ground volunteers in a political campaign who don't know what they are representing? I told a few of them that he was pro war and they shrugged, like teens do, and said that they didn't care because it was a job. I felt like that white van circling the entryway to the neighborhood that held all the poor in this city separate from the very rich and thr quickly dwindling middle-class, was preying on these kids, and that they should have been as against the law as any predator enticing kids with cash or candy.

Joe was a strong Bush supporter and allowed himself to be used as a representative for the democratic party implying that some of us were pro Bush and pro war. In reality, Joe was in a world of his own and the only pro war people around were those who were afraid of the terra, and who bought the victory line against the facts presented by experts. That was not what the people of Connecticut wanted, and as our representative we let Joe know that in the primary when we chose Ned Lamont to be our candidate. Joe wouldn't take that laying down and he jumped parties to run as an independent, thus getting elected on the Republican vote and the votes of those who had known him for years here and who either weren't paying attention or who thought that he would come to his senses.

Those kids didn't understand that on key issues Joe was not for them and that they were actually working against their own interests. But that was another Rovian tactic that seemed to work well when used in many different cases. Many of them were very young and in no position to represent one candidate over another, but cash talks, and when a small amount wasn't enough the ante was upped.

Well, we would soon come to find that the way the campaign was paying out for these services was incorrect and illegal. But for Joe, who is still seated on his committees and who was welcomed back with open arms and a standing-O by his coworkers in the senate, even after he lied to his supposed constituents, dumped his party, and let us know in no uncertain terms that he knew better than we did what was best for our state, this was a non-starter. The rules don't apply to guys like Joe; that's the old Bushism that was not only shot down, but smeared into a paste and is now being washed down the same sinkhole that it slithered out of so many years ago; before Reagan, before Nixon...back, back, back to the barons of power who set the stage for the wealthy to maintain their prominence by creating a permanent underclass to fight our wars and tend our lawns, middle-class be damned!

Joe Lieberman has been sheltered by the media of this state and the country for no reason at all. He has been allowed to conduct the business of paying his fine in relative privacy, and in light of other investigations that are getting bold print treatment, he has been favored as always, by a system that protects its own. The end is near for Herr Lieberman and his little Hadassah, so they can return to the country club in Westport where he has been seen airing his furry little body in the pool. He can write his book and take a nice cushy job like Hadassah has. He has certainly represented the interests of big business and war in his years in office enough to deserve something with a corner office and a seven figure salary.

Meanwhile, is it really worth the small civil fine to persue this matter with Edwards? It depends on how serious the powers that be, in whats left of the old guard of the federal government, want him silenced for the long term. However long, it wont be forever, because regardless of bad personal choices, which are just that, personal, the message of the two Americas still rings true, and as much as a watered down Obama will try to address the poverty issue, he is not a bulldog on this issue like Edwards is. So, we will see what happens, and just when you think that hes gone for good, like our friend Elliot Spitzer (who in polling today was overwhelmingly preferred over Patterson as Governor of NY...in fact they want him back!) the second act will arrive.

c/p RIP Coco

OK, we're not getting to "the magic 60". Can we PLEASE kick Lieberman out now?

As expected, Georgia voters have sent the loathsome Saxby Chambliss back to the Senate. This means that the Democrats will not get to a 60-seat majority, no matter what happens in Minnesota.

So can we please turn this dark cloud into a silver lining and kick Joe Lieberman out of the caucus now?

King Joe I

And here we all thought it was George W. Bush who wanted to be Dictator.

We were wrong.

It wasn't George Bush, it was Joe Lieberman. And now he's gotten everything he wanted. He gets to go out on the campaign trail and run against his party's candidate, gets to call his party's candidate a threat to national security, gets to speak at the opposing party's convention, and THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES.

I would really like to believe that Barack Obama knows what he's doing advocating for letting Lieberman have whatever he wants, in a "Keep your enemies closer" kind of way -- allowing Holy Joe to get off scot-free for something that if this were the Republican party, would probably result in him being eaten alive by wild dogs for the amusement of party elders. But I think this is nothing more than a textbook case of Harry Reid being told by Lieberman "You owe me", combined with Obama's unfortunate tendency towards conciliation at all costs, even if conciliation means you get your kneecaps broken.

Does anyone believe for one minute that Holy Joe won't go running to the Republicans with anything he hears about Democratic Senate strategy? Does anyone believe for one minute that Holy Joe won't be at the forefront of the Republican sleaze machine the minute they start trying to turn Tony Rezko into Jim McDougal? Does anyone believe for one minute that Lieberman is an honest broker?

When I want really good bile about Lieberman, and Melina is busy with the crap life brings her, I go to Howie Klein:

As you know, I rarely venture Inside the Beltway. I'm always worried that my wish for that area could be fulfilled while I'm there. But last year I was visiting a friend in Virginia and she invited a houseful of Inside the Beltwayites over. One, who works for a Senate leader assured 3 or 4 of us, privately and in confidence, that Lieberman would be dealt with appropriately after the election. I was wondering if he was just lying to us or was far more naive than I ever imagined. It certainly didn't prevent me from taking 7 one hundred dollar bets this week that Lieberman would get to retain his gavel at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. And I certainly hope that the staffer's boss was one of the 13 Democrats worthy of the "D" next to their names. I guess we'll never know; it was a secret vote. But I made $700-- well, $600 and a $100 meal on the fortuitous bets against what I was hoping for but knew was never to be.

Instead Chris Dodd and Ken Salazar offered an insulting-- not insulting to Lieberman, insulting to progressives-- proposal that Lieberman be relieved of the chairmanship of a global warming subcomittee on the Environment and Public Works Committee, a joke and a deliberate rebuke to the party's base. Not even the apology reactionary Lieberman apologist Evan Bayh "demanded." Good luck on Jim Martin, assholes!

I was wrong. They didn't spontaneously burst out into a chorus of "For He's The Jolly Good Fellow." But maybe they are going to go on Fox News and do it there later. At least they didn't elect him Majority Leader. Listening to NPR a few minutes ago I heard some really slimy scumbag-- I'll find out his name later-- defending Lieberman and attacking progressives claiming, in fact, that Bernie Sanders, who voted to take away Lieberman's gavel, isn't a Democrat; he's a socialist. Yeah? And Lieberman? He's not a Democrat either; he's a Republican viper in their midst. But let no one ever say they don't deserve him.

And no one can say that we don't know our so-called "Democratic" legislators far too well, either. Last night I read a suggestion that we all tape two tennis balls together and send them to Harry Reid. I think that's a dandy idea. Because you have to be a very special, world-class kind of wuss to make a sniveling little rat-faced git like Joe Lieberman the most powerful person in the Senate after he's smacked your party around for the last six months.

Oh, and by the way....while the Senate Democrats were doing their clubby thing in Washington, the dirty fucking hippies they spat upon on yesterday are doing things like starting the Yes We Cans virtual food drive to support the rapidly-depleting food banks around the country. Because out here in -- dare I even say it? -- the "real America", we know that there are more important things to worry about than Joe Lieberman's ego.

Saturday Rachel Maddow Blogging

Rachel gives the Democrats hell about their spinelessness in not disciplining Holy Joe Lieberman:

Rachel is absolutely right. Joe Lieberman has become so much of a Republican in heart and soul that he would take great joy in crossing over to vote with them to filibuster Democratic legislation that he, Joe Lieberman, doesn't want to see passed. To allow this vile man to keep his seniority and his committee chairmanship is to give him control over the entire Senate. Harry Reid might retain the title of Senate Majority Leader, but it is Joe Lieberman who would actually "run t'ings". You have to ask yourself why the Democrats are so willing to turn over control to a guy who said he feared for our future if our president-elect were elected. Is it just sheer cowardice, or in his love affair with the Republicans during their time in power in the executive branch, has Holy Joe, with the help of his friends in the White House, compiled a little dossier from that little switch room in San Francisco?

Harry, you're not pledging the Omegas. Enough with "Thank you sir may I have another"

Jeez, Harry, would you PLEASE grow a pair already?

Harry, the man spoke at the Republican National Convention and he said that this country would be in danger if Barack Obama were elected. What the hell does he have to do to make you realize what an unreliable turncoat bastard he is?

Tired?

"....put your hand on the arc of history and bend it once more for a brighter day....."
-President Elect Barack Obama, 11-4-2008.

Barack Obama didn't just suddenly become the President of the Untied States last week. During the the past couple of weeks he has exhibited an almost unnatural calm and an air of destiny..His grasp of the situation made it seem like this day was almost just a formality, and besides the fact that those of us who watch this stuff closely have been twisted in worry that the machinations of men or technology might prevent that which seemed a foregone conclusion, it felt done even before the states toppled.
The Obama family, along with the Bidens looked so crisp and shiny on the hi-def, and the hope in the moist eyes of the crowd ...the tears streaming down Jesse Jackson's face...the celebrating throngs jammed outside of the the white house fence; because its really ours, you know!
As an exclamation point on the historic change that has taken place, the new guys have opened up President-elect shop here. I find it heartening and touching because it is not only,as Jill says, a big hat tip to the Dean-genius grass-roots Internet explosion, but it asks us for our input and stories; it engages all Americans to reach towards their leaders and tell them something...anything....And, I don't care if its just bullshit that some secretary is skimming over in the basement by the standpipe...Its a moment in history that will exist on the Internets and in the ether for as long as this little ball falls around the sun.

Its been a long 8 years, and the trauma of it for some of us isn't gonna just rub off...celebrating the end of the Bush era and the dawn of hope, and realizing the importance of this thing; something so small and taken for granted; that in the face of fear and threats and the tight grip of a huge machine backed by big business robbing us blind, we have our vote, and with that we can do something. It is less about the top spot than it is about the landslide of defeats across the country!

Its that Chris Shays lost BIG, which is a big fuck you to Joementum Lieberman. Here in CT people were saying that Joe has been neutered....Just ask Harry Reid, and watch Joe hem and haw and squirm while he tries to explain again how it was such a hard decision for him to make to throw his party under the bus because he thinks he knows whats best for the country!..and after watching him for months, standing behind John McCain, my supposed democratic representative, ignoring every promise he ever made, in order to to step over the dead bodies of public servants who really wanted to improve the country in order to improve his own lot in life...too caught up in a doctrine that he really didn't seem to grasp...on that required him to be the Jew sacrifice in the end days scenario....Fuck Joe and fuck Chris Shays and their weak-assed supporters who knew they were bad for us but were afraid of the unknown, or who just wanted their fucking tax break to remain intact at the expense of our entire s0ciety circling the drain ! So long...don't let the door hit you on the way out. Maybe now we can get to work on real statewide health care and reforming our social services division...not to mention putting the money back into our schools!

This is where the sacrifice begins, and though President Elect Obama only hinted at it in his victory speech, I hope that he really lays it out well, so that those who expect the country to bounce right back will begin to understand how deep the hole is that we are digging out of. This is gonna cost money and its gonna take time. Its gonna require concentration and an attention span, or at least trust in our leaders to be moving us back towards being a society that serves all of its people. In a global era, Americans have to realize some stark truths; we are not on this planet alone and we don't each automatically get a flat screen TV just for being born. Credit cards are not just free money, and no one owes you anything beyond the best society that we can build as a society together, realizing that we are only as strong as the children that we educate and give a hand up towards knowledge and success.

It was a historic night, and the pessimist in me is a little voiced devil on one shoulder whispering that they're all liars while the hopeful kid is pushing forward thinking maybe, maybe, maybe...
In Jesse Jackson's face you could see the years of the years of marches, the blood of his friend Martin laying on that balcony that day, the failures and struggles and inhuman treatment that has left its enduring mark on us all, but yet still allows our society to produce this shining and beautiful moment.
Obama accepts his place as if its was always destined to be that way, and perhaps it was.

I like him. What I don't much like these days is the American people, half of whom seem content to be greedy pigs regardless of what is going on around them. There is a shamelessness in this country that has grown out of this idea that all we are good for is to be consumers and that we deserve stuff...lots of it. I think that encouraging Americans to be come producers again might just get our asses in gear. Maybe high tariffs on imported goods, like the crap at Walmart, might just snap us back into a world where everything isn't so disposable.

We are blessed with this land that used to be a land of abundance, and we have squandered our principal away at the roulette wheels of unfettered capitalism. It is not our right to be the most powerful or the richest and safest nation in the world. we have to work for it and use our great fortune in so many things to enrich society as a whole rather than just a select few who seem to have forgotten the trickle down part of this setup.

In the beginning of this bizarre nightmare, a few bright lights shone out of the Internets and the radio box (forget the TV, besides West Wing as a total fantasy of what could never be) and as another great punctuation mark on the Bush years and all that has torn us apart, Jill had this from Crooks and Liars: Irrelevant!Well worth a look if you want to keep in mind the faces of those who dragged us down and who continue to pander to the lowest urges in the human animal.

And for those of us who have felt compelled to document this or purge our tortured souls or try to make some change by yelling like Who's on an elephant's trunk somewhere, visit the Weblogs nomination page and be either nominate a favorite blog, or look through the nominations (in the comments under each category,) and click the little plus sign or number after the blog that you want to be counted for! I'm gonna mention that Brilliant at Breakfast is nominated for Best Blog, best political coverage, best mid-sized, and Jill as best individual blogger. Also look for my all time favorite, Driftglass, under the same categories, and my little RIPCoco as one of the undiscovered gem, all the way at the bottom. Show some love, and nominate anyone who you think deserves mention! If you have a blog, snag a badge and post it, and send your readers over.
Never before have I been more grateful for these voices that have actually, literally saved me during this time...as well as for the outlet for myself. I'm not sure if I'm even going to still have the political voice in me as things settle; I'm thinking about it. Right now, I'm just exhausted and hopeful....at least there are going to be some grownups in the house this time around; how far the American people and the bureaucracy allow that to go will have to be determined.





c/p RIPCoco

Connecticut's Questions and the Hidden Agenda Driving Them. No to Question #1. Jim Himes for Congress! Midnight in the land of the Flip Floppers!

I know I shouldn't rely too much on my own personal experience, because I live in this southern CT to NYC liberal bubble, and I know that the democratic party in this area doesn't really bother much with the workaday signage and campaigning; we live blue here. The big push in these parts is to have calling parties to call voters in swing states to talk with them, and its not beyond the candidates to stop in to attend high roller fund raising events in tony houses in Greenwich or Rowayton.

I'm usually happy to do the calling thing, and even happier to speak with the bunch of neighbors here who have McCain Palin signs out, because I can say that I'm their neighbor....whatever, I suppose we're all neighbors in some higher sense...but CT. swings blue, so even if we have red voters, its not a strong focus. People don't want to be called, and its so seldom that someone has a question that one can answer.

In any case, I'm troubled, as usual, that the local party hardly bothers to put out signs or rally us generally more than to ask for money and a little bit of volunteerism. Its always the same crowd running things and it smacks of the local PTA where a few alpha moms run the show. I'm still pissed that so many "dems" supported Lieberman after he jumped from the party, and that Lamont's organization was sent to a back room as if we was the independent candidate!

The McCain signs are an annoyance and an emotional drag, as things like this always are when the aggressively stupid or the just plain greedy, insist on their point of view with the bold surety that Fox News is the only network that tells the truth unvarnished. Humvee drivers who seemingly want to project an image that they perceive as being very American, but which comes off as just plain idiotic; the silly young men who drive by my bumperstickered car giving me the finger, as if their vote means anything in this county or state...the young man who last night sat around a firepit at a Halloween party up here, and said with all authority that he is just worried that Obama doesn't have the "experience," which I read as "he's black," readying himself for the vote that is not gonna serve him in his construction job and middle class life where he is unable to buy a house in the town he grew up in or even afford healthcare. These things trouble me, but its not about wining CT for the democrats; Its about the American psyche and how twisted America has become about our collective place in things.


The problem that I see right now is that Chris Shays signs that are everywhere. I believe that alot of people are voting for Shays because hes a hometown boy and pretends to be a liberal. That's, um, liberal republican, and hes really only as liberal as his BFF Joe Lieberman is a democrat! These guys are strong supporters of the Bush agenda, even now, and they really don't represent CT., so much as they represent the last bastion of cronyism that is dying a terrible wheezing death around this state.

I worked hard on the Lamont campaign to get rid of Joe Lieberman, and during that time I had the opportunity to speak with Shays at a town meeting and then on a conference call. My issue was not only with Lieberman changing parties after he lost the primary; he started his own party with the dismissive attitude that he was doing this because we didn't know what was best for our state. The whole thing boiled down to the war in Iraq; Joementum had gone to Iraq with Shays some 14 times,becoming one of the biggest defenders of Bush and his war, and he and Shays were the token liberals in the push to victory. Its well known that Joe Lieberman will do anything for the adulation of having the senate floor erupt in cheers as he returns from his fact finding missions ready to advise and instruct or from his close bid with losing his seat, only to be voted in by Ct's republicans who shunned their own candidate because Lieberman was representing them just fine!


The soft spoken Shays has some sharp claws, and skirts the issues that are important to his constituents, while hiding behind the "liberal" label. Its long past the time when Shays should have retired his seat and moved on. Diane Farrell almost unseated him two years ago, and he retained the seat by a slim margin mainly with a last minute flip flop on the Iraq war. Shays claimed that a trip just weeks before the election changed his mind; this after so many, many trips and the fantasy ideals that were put forth even as the entire country crumbled and people died needlessly.

Last week, the Stamford Advocate had a front page story in which Chris Shays threw McCain under the bus in the service of his own re-election. This is the Chris Shays that I know. He flip flops at the drop of a poll number and heaven forbid that reality ever take hold; until recently he was parroting the republican talking points about the economy. Worst though is that he boasts that CT is the first state to provide health insurance for all of its children. Well, its a horrible system with little coverage, and its not working! Having talked to him about this personally, I can say that what he does is to just deny that its true or possible that providers won't take the state insurance. Shay's modus operandi is that when he is confronted with a problem he acts like it is merely a personal problem of the questioner and he refers them to a staff member who will discuss it in private.

But this is an undeniable problem across the board in CT, so even if his staff were to take me into an office and out of the town hall, so that he could move on to other issues, they couldn't solve the problem that I have to drive 2 hours to get to a specialist for my son....or that it took us an entire year to get a surgery approved, only to have it canceled on the night before because it was suddenly denied again; oh they had approved the surgeon but not the hospital!! By the time this orthopedic surgery was performed on my son, he was the oldest, biggest kid that this surgeon had ever done this procedure on! Now we will probably lose our coverage anyway because our provider, a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is opting out of the state's program, and our Dr. barely takes what we have...no one will take the alternatives. I'm looking into private insurance and its going to probably be a grand a month for a family plan if I can even find one that will take us! The issue is that the paperwork involved for a tiny reimbursement is not worth it to many doctors who have full time staff trying to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that is this program (and unregulated health insurance in general!) I've heard lately that some doctors don't want the responsibility of prescribing drugs to children for a gross payment of maybe $19 per visit, which is much less when overhead and man hours processing the claims is taken out! The hospitals with the clinics for the poor, who have the "A" type of insurance, have a deal with the state and they also have institutional insurance and rotating doctors in clinics, so the responsibility is much less.

So, its not about my personal medical issues, as much as its about the boasting that goes on with Shays and Lieberman around this being such a great program. It's the kind of thing that might make them eligible for a task force on national health coverage in a bipartisan position...and I don't think that this plan should be used as anyone's blueprint for how health care should be taken care of in this country. What is really reprehensible is to do this experiment on children...the very poor kids who go to the hospitals tend to get OK care because they have the clinic doctors available. But we cant all go to the hospital clinic, can we? And we make too much money to be in the "A" program, so we pay a premium, which disallows us from a level of service that poorer people have...and no pediatricians or specialists are taking this insurance around lower Fairfield county anyway....so...I would very much NOT like to have the liar Chris Shays walking around Washington DC, misrepresenting what he's done here. It sucks, and along with just about everything else in this region, the move is to push the poor out and make room for more high rises (Trump has a tower going up in downtown Stamford) and mansions. And of course, foreclosures are at an unprecedented high....while Shays claimed that the economy was stable, until he just changed his mind a little while ago.

Jim Himes, who is running against Shays, is an experienced businessman who has worked successfully in business, but his most important work has been in the not for profit housing and financial support sector:

After over a decade at Goldman Sachs, Jim devoted himself full-time to pursuing business-oriented solutions to the problems of urban poverty. Jim found an ideal role with Enterprise Community Partners, where he has run their Northeast operations since 2004. Under Jim's leadership, Enterprise worked with private, public, and community organizations to address complex issues of urban poverty. At Enterprise, Jim developed an innovative program to provide tax preparation assistance and financial services to low-income families at very low cost. Jim led the way in financing the construction of thousands of affordable housing units in the greater New York and Northeast regions, often using new green technologies to achieve energy efficiency and reduce utility costs.

Himes is not a career politician and he is not steeped in the rampant cronyism that has overrun this state. He has spent years developing ways to help lower income people handle their finances and to find affordable housing. He may enter on a junior level, and I'm hearing grumbles from people who feel that he will not be able to get a foothold or be heard on anything important... But, my feeling is that we are going to see an unprecedented turnover of power and faces in this election, and granted that Shays will have to go at some point...besides that he doesn't represent what the voters of his state want, and he lies and flips whenever its convenient...and we always have Chris Dodd, who is the strongest representative that we could hope for!

Shays was so wrong about the war, and even when specialists were telling him and Joe that what they were seeing was not as it seemed, they both insisted that because Baghdad looked better to them in their military security caravan, that it must be so. Shays has been wrong on the economy, on insurance for our children, on federal eavesdropping and privacy issues, and on medicare...he has sided with Bush in just about everything and changes his mind back and forth...I don't want it anymore. Its time for him to go!

Connecticut needs a congressman like Himes on board, and the American house needs this kind of new upcoming public servant working hard to get us back on track and to help America work again. This country is just not feasible for so many people anymore, and the Bush administration has managed, unbelievably, to fulfill its objective, which was to funnel all of the money upwards to a rare few, while the middle class crumbles, and the legions of the voiceless poor grows. Leaders who have been complicit with that movement should have no place in our government going forward. Shays is a lifetime politician who began his career as a young man in my district in North Stamford. Back in the days when the residents of this part of CT were more interested in how a representative might do in bringing funds to our state and our city, the largely democratic population here felt that Shays was liberal enough to represent us. But, more recently, Shays has been singing the Bush line, and that is not working for any of us on any level. And thus the flip flop of this past week...its vintage Shays and I hope that the voters don't fall for it.

There are Shays signs all over the place in Stamford, and its more likely due to the organized republican party getting the signs out, rather than being representative of who is going to vote for the entire republican ticket. There are way more Shays signs than McCain Palin signs, leading me to think that his independent campaign is more organized, and as has happened in the past, democrats will leave the line for the congressional seat vote. I don't encourage that, because it causes confusion, and even with the new ballots, alot of people may lose their votes by making silly mistakes while trying to serve someone that they are familiar with. That is no reason to make decisions about our children's future; no reason at all.

For CT voters who will be faced with 2 questions about the state's constitution,(those of you from towns with other questions about budget concerns and marching bands are on your own!) I have this to say: They vaguely word the first question to be about having the ability to edit the sate constitution in the upcoming term. The answer would be no, because hidden in that simple question is the stated objective to make gay marriage unconstitutional in CT. It is not the time to mess with any constitution for anything.

The time now is to change our leadership and stop worrying so much about what your neighbors are doing in their bedrooms in private. If people want to enter the unholy alliance of marriage, then that's their problem. I don't recommend it personally, but hey, it makes some people feel more secure; so go for it! Just sign a pre-nup so we don't have more backup in the court systems in this state. My question of the secretary of state is why is this aim on stated in the ballot question?

The second question is about young voters who will be 18 on election day and should they be allowed to vote in primaries when they are 17. I don't understand this or what it represents in a real way. It is supposed to encourage young voters to get involved earlier, but I'd be more in favor of lowering the entire voting age so that voting could be something that becomes part of high school curriculum and then we can bring back civics class and poli-sci and all that! The red flag there is that it also involves opening up the state constitution for editing, and its worded strangely, as these things always are! So, I say no right now, unless I get a compelling reason not to. My son just shrugged...it makes no real sense as a half measure regarding the primaries...like, why then don't we allow driver's licenses to people who will be of age when they can afford their car? I don't know if that is the equivalent, but I'm in favor of an across the board lowering of the voting age rather than this confusing half measure as part of editing our constitution...its all about gay marriage....keep that in mind. So, to question 1, vote NO!







c/p RIP Coco

Debunking Joe Lieberman

Howie Klein has a far stronger stomach than I do. Not only did he actually sit through the Lieberman Litany o'Lies last night, but painstakingly debunks the speech, point by point. Go reward his intrepid soul by giving DWT some hits.

Is Sarah Palin a head-fake?

I'm beginning to think so. I don't know if the delegates who hew to the religious right were planning any shenanigans at the Republican National Convention. But with the strong evidence that Palin is only being vetted by Camp Grandpa Simpson NOW, it seems to me that it's either the Palin nod was about McCain escaping his handlers and making a characteristic gamble that he cynically believed would rope in the Hillarions (and draw attention away from Barack Obama's Thursday night speech), or else she's designed to get him through the convention and seal the nomination before he can dump her (read: "She will resign 'for family reasons') and run with his TRUE soulmate, Joe Lieberman.

The only other explanation would be mind-boggling stupidity on the part of the Republicans, and let's face it: they just aren't that dumb.

Barack Obama is right that family should be off-limits. But so much of Sarah Palin's mythos is about her perfect family that's a shining beacon of conservative family values that it's she who has put its members out for public consumption. John Edwards was fair game because he presented himself as a devoted, loyal, and faithful husband, loving and respectful towards a wife who is older than he and doesn't look anywhere near as youthful. And he turned out to be something entirely different. Sarah Palin is about abstinence über alles, and instead she's the living embodiment of how abstinence education doesn't work.

I don't want to see Bristol Palin dragged through the mud. She didn't ask for this, and frankly, she has enough problems, what with being the child of a sanctimonious hypocrite and with a baby on the way and an upcoming marriage before she's even had a chance to be young. But she is now "a story", and once the convention is over, she provides the perfect cover for Palin to decide to bow out to protect her daughter from the blue meanies in the media. Then enter Joe Lieberman after it's too late for the Republicans to do anything about it. They'll laud Palin's family values, and she'll go home to Alaska to wait for the public's short memory to expire, when she can resurface again -- perhaps running for the #1 spot.

At that point Lieberman will be such a relief that no one will utter a peep. And then McCain can claim "the first bipartisan ticket." The upside to this for Democrats is that perhaps Harry Reid will finally wake up.

BREAKING: Palin's Daughter Preggers...Again? Palin's Lies, McCains Gambling Problem, and The Big Brother Backdoor Strategy....

Breaking News: Sarah Palin just confirmed that her 17 year old daughter, Brillo, is 5 months pregnant and is gonna marry the father, Levi, and keep the baby. Supposedly McCain knew about this pregnancy before choosing Palin as his running mate.
These people are so full o' lies that its mind boggling in its enormity. Read on for more on ungodly partnership of the dysfunctional Alaskan with the PTSD Gambler.
(h/t to my Mom and her diligent monitoring of the Bill O'Reillys of the world...know thy enemy!)

I'm looking at MSNBC's coverage of Gustav barrelling ashore in Louisiana and throwing Michelle Kosinski off camera, intercut with pictures of ....er...walls, which are the levees not quite up to snuff, we're told, because the project is supposed to take until 2012. At this moment the wind driven water is reportedly pouring over the tops of west side industrial canal walls of New Orleans like a waterfall...they might actually be breached by the force or punctured by loose ships floating around (and how did that happen with so much advanced warning?) In the 9th ward the walls are holding so far because the wind is not blowing directly there yet. It all depends on the speed and direction of how this thing turns around. Tornados have already been reported here and there but they don't seem to be touching down.

Bad and evil girl that I am, (and feeling like most people in the path of the storm are out or trying to be secure...they at least have the information...I have been wandering the city streets with a smile, thinking that never could payback be so targeted as to force the republican party to conduct business in the shadow of this. They are unable to postpone the business of the convention by law, so as the "stars" of the party fall away leaving the silly democrat troll Joementum Lieberman, mother Palin, and McInsane hisself trying to figure out how to not appear in split screen against the embarrassment reminder of what his party finds important. If we had to have big storms...and we do, with the environment as it is, and as part of the normal course of things...the timing of this thing is perfect!

On to the unbelievable joke that is Sarah Palin....and wasn't that her riding the air on her bike in the storm surge? (I've got to work on learning to photoshop!!)
John Cole nails this situation at Balloon Juice with the unbelievable news that McCain's people are finally now heading up to Wasilla to look into Palin...now....Here is what hes got:
According to the Washington Monthly, democrats doing opposition research found out that no one had checked the archives of the local papers up there (they are not online in full and archives have to be searched in person if one wants to do a complete search.) The former Republican House Speaker for Alaska expressed surprise that Palin was chosen because no one had come to Alaska to do any research on her. Only just now have the McCain people reserved rooms in the local hotel...just now?.....
Is this part of McCain's tendency to gamble (one man's maverick is another man's idiot when it involves expensive fighter planes or, heaven forbid, national security,) or part of a bigger plan (more on that to come?) More to come on the high stakes gambling addiciton of McCain....but keep it in mind if youknow anything about PTSD, addiction, and the 12 steps...we are dealing with a pretty old guy who has been through major trauma in his life and remains in denial about much of it. At some point soon we have to look at this seriously and not through the lens of David Gregory's failed climb to the top of broadcasting.

I could have guessed that Palin has flip flopped on the bridge to nowhere, that she is not real sharp on historical facts about America, was likely a member of the Alaska secessionist movement before jumping into mainstream politics, and is unclear about what the VP job entails. She only just got her passport in the past year, so those...ahem, Faux News...who feel like she has international experience because she lives close to Russia...well....

The issues about her kids and the maternity/paternity of little Trix or Snap, Crackle, Pop, is less important than the lies involved in how the issue was/is being handled. The holier-than-thou conservative right can come up with some of the best lies when its their foot in the bathroom stall of the solicitous cop next to them, or their kid having the baby out of wedlock.

Regardless of who actually gave birth to Twig, I say from personal experience and all the medical advice I've ever gotten, not to mention airline safety rules, that one does not get on a plane when one's water has broken and one is in labor. After the first child, the labor process tends to vary in that it can be very, very fast or can be troublesome...and from what Ive heard and experienced in my lifetime of being a mom and from other mothers, subsequent babies are usually born quicker than initial ones; sometimes surprisingly quicker. So, why would anyone in their right mind (especially one who purports to care for the health of the unborn,) get on a plane in that condition? This wasn't a short flight either; we're talking Texas to Seattle to Alaska to a small town hospital. She went specifically to a small town hospital knowing that the kid was going to have Downs Syndrome and probably would have special needs.

This was a very high risk pregnancy and actually, regardless of how she got back to the small hospital, she shouldn't have even gone anywhere at that risk level.No one in their right mind, and who has access to the best health care in the country, would do that! Setting aside gossip on the intertubes, I've got to say that I question the woman's judgment in all matters if she took such a chance with not only her own health but with the health of the baby and with a number of planeloads of people. Is it right to take a chance of making a plane, or connecting flight, make an emergency landing? Is it right to expose her unborn special needs kid to the bacteria involved in all of that travel? Finally, is it ,medically possible to break your water and yet show no signs of pregnancy or labor over the hours spent travelling? Possibly....but unlikely. The whole explanation shows poor judgement in the best case scenario and a real tendency to lie (with the possibility of insurance fraud and endangering airline safety) in the worst.

Then there is Troopergate...but I'm in a hurry this morning. 87% of Alaskans believe she lied about it and I agree. Here is what Josh Marshall has on it. Its minor in the scheme of things, but these things add up, and what really is troubling is the McCain campaign's lack of due diligence.
Maybe he is a gambler...er...maverick...but, who is handling him? If there is institutionalized denial apparent before we've even gotten to the issues at hand then what can we expect when the next disaster arrives? More of the same, as they say.

A rumor is being floated around that if Palin were to have to step down then the obvious choice would have to be Lieberman. Check Christy Hardin-Smith at FDL's exasperation and questioning about all of the same stuff here, and then peruse the comments there or at Kos or anywhere else, (soon to be on the M$M...not!...until, that is, it happens in their faces or Rachel Maddow forces it out,) that the real plan is to have Palin step aside and put Joementum in the slot when its too late to do much about it.

Its the Big Brother Backdoor Strategy that those of us who try to relax and forget with reality shows know all too well. See, the head-of-household (or nominee in this case) nominates 2 houseguests for eviction. One is often a pawn, because when the veto is played that nominee can be removed from contention for eviction and the real target can be slotted in with no chance of being saved by the veto. If this is a backdoor admission of Lieberman onto the ticket, then I'm impressed...though its been sorta clumsy by Big Brother standards. But hell, it indicates that someone, anyone, in the McCain camp turns on the TV at all; forget news or the internets...just plain old pop culture TV will do at this point.

I don't see how this whole thing isn't a joke...but....I couldn't believe most of what Bush was doing while he was doing it either. Depending on the American people to actually think about this and weigh possible outcomes of their voting actions is a non-starter. There must be some way to produce this into a reality show that will grip the masses in prime time and spell it out s-l-o-w-l-y and carefully. The security of the nation may depend on it.

So what do we have to do to get Harry Reid to quit Joe Lieberman?

Mild-mannered Harry may have had quite enough of John McCain, but he's still an old softie for Holy Joe:

The Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, was chatting with the folks over at the Las Vegas Review-Journal the other day. Reid's not up for reelection until 2010, but it never hurts to schmooze with journalists as if they matter.

Naturally, Reid was asked about the ongoing presidential race that will send only the third sitting senator in American history to the White House. Reid's son was a big booster of Sen. Hillary Clinton. So he hoped to get something out of that. Oops, hitched to the wrong star.

And now all the polls seem to be tightening between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. Reid can be a little testy. He's the one who once told a group of visiting high school students that President Bush was "a loser."

Now if McCain pulls off yet another comeback and wins the White House, it looks like he'll have a similar relationship as Bush with Reid.

In his newspaper chat Reid didn't call McCain a loser, but he made clear that he doesn't have much use for the senator from next-door Arizona.

Reid was describing a recent conversation he had with Sen. Joe Lieberman, the former Connecticut Democrat who got dumped by his party in 2006 and got elected as an independent but caucuses with Democrats to protect their slim majority while hanging around a lot with Republicans like McCain anyway.

Lieberman, who was also the Democrats' VP nominee in 2000 with what's-his-name who invented the Internet and global warming, is even going to have a prominent speaking role at the GOP convention in St. Paul in 11 days. As a courtesy, Lieberman called the Democratic caucus boss in advance to alert him about the speech.

Reid explained: "He has a close personal relationship with John McCain. I don't fully understand why he does."

Reid added: "I told him last night, 'You know, Joe, I can't stand John McCain.' He said, 'I know you feel that way.' "

In the Las Vegas News-Journal story by Molly Ball, Reid said McCain was wrong on the issues and has the wrong temperament for a president.

All of which goes against what the Congressional Record recorded Reid saying about McCain on Sept. 20 last year: "I respect the senior Senator from Arizona because he doesn't hide what he stands for. I admire him. He stands for what he thinks is the right thing to do.”

Then asked about his benevolent treatment of Lieberman despite the former Democrat's traitorous political activities, Reid said: "All my close votes, he's always with me...Why would I want to throw away a good vote?"

Uh....because he's going to speak at the REPUBLICAN National Convention, Harry?

I've really had quite enough of Harry the Wuss, thank you very much. I'm thinking that Senate Majority Leader might be a good consolation prize for the junior Senator from New York next January.

Big Oil Returns to Iraq...Mission Accomplished!

Just as DINO Joe Lieberman (D-CT,) is clearly not gonna support his party's candidate for President; neither will he be supporting democratic congressional candidate, Jim Himes, to replace Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT.)

Best buddies, Shays and Lieberman, have visited Iraq together some 20 times, and held tight to their shared rosy, pro-war stance until just before the '06 elections, when they both began to waffle and turn, only to change back once they assured themselves that their positions were safe...if only temporarily. They are sharing chairmanship of McCain's presidential campaign's CT "leadership team," and from the way that the two of them have been acting, they expect positions in the McCain cabinet. Its too bad that CT voters were so short sighted, misled, and plain old terrified of the unknown, to vote these guys out. Its too bad also that the two of these crony's can hold hands while saluting their leader, in the name of bipartisanship, which is really just shared neocon vision by any other name. They are sure of the fact that we will be "victorious" in Iraq (which means...what?) and don't care how long it takes or how many die. Lip service paid to bringing troops home is just that; lip service. But what is going on is more insidious than just one turncoat and his brown-nose buddy; its about the movement to actually take over the country while we all slumber in our denial. Scared of the "terra," and worried of "losing" or this idea of "cut and run," I doubt that most people could explain what any of that means in real terms or what we are doing there int eh first place. They can, however, explain how hard day to day life has become in this country and most of what people talk about having changed can be attributed directly to this administration and this war.

The Stamford Advocate, my local paper, today had a great letter about Christopher Shays and his praise of the new big oil deals, by one Scott Kimmitch. What struck me was not the facts about Shays and how dirty he is, because its clear or not to the individuals in this state who likely like Shays because of his manner or his smooth lies, but his clear definition of fascism, which is something that every person in this country needs to understand:

Handing out no-bid contracts to big oil companies headquartered in the two countries whose leaders conspired to mislead their peoples into a criminal war sends the wrong message to the world, particularly if you understand the word "fascist." Fascism is the seamless merger of corporations with national leadership, producing a belligerent nationalism accompanied by suppression of citizens' rights.

Fascism happens when the corporations call the shots and the government connives to let them do it. Why not let oil companies around the world submit bids to Maliki's government and let it work the way private enterprise is supposed to work? Why let our government put pressure on Iraq in the name of corporate favorites?

I actually read this at the local firehouse while a bunch of the guys were taking a CPR refresher exam, and I managed to find a highlighter and highlight it, leaving it on the desk so that they would find and read it. Alot of them are not going to vote because they feel so burned by the system, and lied to by their party. I can only quote facts, because the emotional part is tied up in some of their own service in Viet Nam, and having to face what that war was for...and really, the facts are what you need if you're anyone who cares about the lives of soldiers and the future of the young people of this country.

So this is what its come to. Even if much of this were only partly true, it would be worth taking a good hard look at. You can say that we don't have a Hitler leading that march, and maybe Bush is in his lame term, but that doesn't mean that a Hitler doesn't appear out of this...a deranged and mentally damaged man who's got a clearer and better plan for the victory of the country...someone like McCain, if he weren't so bat-shit crazy...or, maybe somebody pulling a McCain's puppet strings as if he were say, a George W. with a Cheney behind him...
I-m not saying that McCain has a chance, because I don't think that he does, but if it all works out, we will have spent 8 years as close as any of us should ever be to fascist rule. This is what I call a close call...and if the republicans were somehow able to pull a reasonable candidate out of their asses we would be in shit trouble, because Americans are uneducated and complacent.



To reiterate: American big oil corporations being able to take back Iraq (...help them with their oil problem, perhaps?) is not what we went there for. We were gonna help them run the oil for the people and then the rebuilding and the war would pay for itself...remember? For the American Government to allow our big oil corporations in there no-bid, without a parliamentary decision on how they want to structure this deal is to go back to the days before Saddam Hussein kicked out the western players and nationalized the country's oil. For the US to put in place the exact same players from the deal before the nationalization has a damning sort of scent to it...like, we went in there to spread democracy? Capitalism? And now they want us to believe that the Iraqis "need" western modernization and expertise in order to make money on their oil? (Like they need sustained electricity still, and buildings without failing plumbing systems, because our private corporations are so, so, great at building infrastructure!) They couldn't ask anyone else who is maybe less conflicted in their interest? Forget those other countries who were shut out of the bidding...This is OUR corporate oil...maybe we'll get a little trickle down from it...in theory, we could; but in truth we won't...And don't expect the Iraqi people to benefit from this either.

So, this is the face of fascism, and it really makes me sick. I'm sure that the Rovian machine can drum up enough outrage and anger to make half of all Americans believe that our corporations deserve this because we've done so much "work" over there, but lets not forget that we broke it...we bought it...and its ours to fix, not gut of its natural resources. And with such an unstable leadership there, I can imagine that the contracts will be long...
So, did we go there for oil? Yeah...we did.
And Chris Shays, my Congressman, is PROUD of the American oil companies that will put themselves in danger's way (but, oh, is it lucrative!...yes it is...)
It will take another strongman dictator to nationalize the oil again...till then, I wonder how much of that profit is gonna go to rebuilding the country? How much of it is gonna go to huge bonuses for CEO's and other players? And will the price of oil drop substantially again? Why should it?
Mission accomplished!

c/p RIPCoco

Let's see what happens when I give the kids hamantaschen on Halloween this year

In the world of willfully ignorant Republican Christians like John McCain, I guess Chanukkah is Jewish Christmas, Passover is Jewish Easter, and Purim is Jewish Halloween:

When McCain made a foreign policy gaffe in Jordan on Tuesday, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman who quietly pointed out the mistake, giving McCain an opportunity to correct himself in front of the international press corps. In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

McCain made the incorrect statement during a press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak after touring the Israeli city of Sderot to view buildings damaged by Hamas rocket fire. McCain was discussing the numerous rock attacks on the city. "Nine hundred rocket attacks in less than three months, an average of one every one to two hours. Obviously this puts an enormous and hard to understand strain on the people here, especially the children. As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety. That's not a way for people to live obviously."

Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."

It doesn't matter if Lieberman is trying to be a good little Sancho Panza here for McCain's Don Quixote, not when McCain seems to NEED Lieberman to do his thinking for him. There's something so utterly clueless, so completely George W. Bush about this level of just plain stupidity, that makes the prospect of a McCain presidency even more depressing than it was before, and makes this image worth posting yet again:

And yes, Harry Reid looks like a major league schmuck right about now.

Tuesday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Sheesh. Is this going to now be a DAILY feature?

Today's honoree: Ornery Bastard, for My Contempt For Joe Lieberman Is Infinite And Eternal.

Petraeus' Fluff Ball, Krugman's Hardball, Congressional Softballs, and Rudy Guilliani Has No Balls!!

Today Paul Krugman joined the well deserved pile-on urging Congressional Democrats to take a stand and act like they have some balls when General Petraeus testifies about the white house penned report on Iraq this week. It is unreal that we are at a point where we are looking at our representatives as cowards who are afraid, not as much of what we might think of them, but of the political bubble-world of Washington DC that seems to be so hermetically sealed that any statement of dissent is treated like a huge achievement. I think that these politicians might do themselves a service by taking a look around outside of the beltway, because Americans are disgruntled, to say the least. According to Krugman, we should plan on the report to be a bunch of bullshit, twisted facts, and numbers:

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops.

This report is just a piece of fluff which cherry picks information down to the smallest detail, but clearly overlooks the secondary (or, hell, primary at this point,) effect of this occupation on what is left of Iraqi society; in that we might perhaps expect an increase in crime, not just because there is an increase in crime but because we are there and have disrupted everything...of course we have to count those deaths!

Its clear at this point that Bush likes to have something going on that lets him feel like he is "kicking ass," but alot of us have known for a long time that he is a sociopath riding a hobby horse, and even the doubters are beginning to realize the truth, so why are these white house Rovian operatives allowed to shape the debate? How dare any of them call Democrats who question this clearly erroneous report unpatriotic? And where do our representatives get off backing down after promising to go and deliver a strong and brave message for us. The founders would spit on the way that their hopeful plans have been twisted by this crowd. What kind of cowards do we have running this country?I hope to hear something from someone, maybe even a question that makes sense, but I'm not hopeful.

Krugman notes that Petraeus "...has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters." And if its true, as Krugman believes, that the democrats will be accused of being unpatriotic no matter what they say or what happens, then I would hope to hear some all out probing of this report and perhaps even some dissent and protest. One thing we can be sure of is that this report is not likely to hint at the very real need for, and the strong possibility of, a draft.

So why bother with this piece of theater? Because Americans like to see committees and circumstance, and guys in suits acting like they are actually solving problems. Americans also like symbols...like, um...Osama Bin Laden, as the universal bad guy killer. Its a shame that Fred Thompson chose now to belittle the importance of the Bin Laden symbolism to American culture, considering that the government already has the pre-release of Bin Laden's yearly 9-11 commemoration tape, and the outrage is already palpable, even all these years later.

Thompson would do well to pull himself up by his bootstraps, get out of his limo, and try to take the pulse of the American people a little more carefully. What the hell is this guy doing talking about where he thinks Bin Laden is? We haven't caught him because we are in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, and the last thing we need is the suggestion that we should invade another country for the hell of it, when its clear that the guy moves around pretty easily in the Middle East and its gonna take good intelligence work to find him.







In other disgusting news, apparently Joementum Lieberman is co-chairing a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Monday. Again we are in a position where this pseudo liberal "I" who is supposedly caucusing with the Democrats, (but always threatening to flip to the other side,) is going to be the one representing the left side for balance...I have alot of trouble getting my mind around this! This guy gets to keep all of his committee posts and chair all sorts of meetings...representing US!...and who will ask the important questions about our security? No one...forget it.
Its gonna be a clown parade, with Skeletor Chertoff leading other top officials in making assessments about our security and how safe we are..,or not.... The clear fact that we are not safer now than we were before 9-11 points to more of the same; especially knowing how the reports are presented and how afraid our representatives seem to be to make waves.

Its been another day in the car listening to news, podcasts of Ring of Fire, and an old Majority Report rant by Janeane Garafolo about cognitive dissonance, (which has long been one of my favorite subjects.) She was talking about the woman who had the face transplant and the story of how she lost her face: passing out from drugs and alcohol and waking, but not realizing that the dog had removed her face for some reason...that is until trying to light a cigarette and, oops, what the fuck?? Janeane likened the strange shocky feeling of having just had your face eaten off by your dog to what has been going on in this country. Its strange how well some of those Air America shows from over a year ago still hold up...and sad that they still apply, even though the truth is out. Everyone knows that this is all wrong, but they just look uncomfortably at each other and hide their cowardice in some sort of idea of respect for the office and protocol. Fuck that! The feeling of embracing the lie because one can't come to terms with the fact that one was wrong in the first place, or over-identification with the lie, is the only way that some people can live with themselves. Its a form of mental illness that drives itself, in that the stress caused by conflicting belief and evidence needs to resolve so the truth is actively shifted in order to relieve the stress....and then there you are; your dog just took a bite out of your face...but it all makes sense because....because...because...it does!

Here I am in my house of cement pouring, alarm going off, firemen swarming, and contractors moving piles of my laundry round the basement, strangely quiet...for a minute...seeing what it might be like to feel like everything was OK out there...but then, on the news comes Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, who is, against all odds, holding his own in the weak Republican field...the debate, ugh...the news ugh....How did this happen? How did he manage to plow under his extreme weakness as a human being and a leader? His popularity is not dropping the way it should, which worries me, and makes me think that the American people are, as usual, not paying attention.

That Rudy has the nerve to say that he is not a perfect person but was a strong leader in NYC is just laughable. The idea that he could even fill the position of dogcatcher is incredible; but then...look what we have now!
The reign of Rudy in NYC was a strange time of knee jerk over-reaction to Dinkins and his PC liberalism. The swing was not so much to the right, because Rudy is pretty left on social issues, but more towards the Reich.

Among other insanity the homeless folks that were all over the place were hassled all the time and told to move on, with no place to go, and it was said that a large number of them had moved underground into old subway stations or were given one way tickets to places like Bridgeport, CT. I kept wondering where those people went...it was like they were just loaded on trucks one day and removed. The idea of just jostling sleeping people over and over is sort of inhumane, and the lack of real programs to help people made the whole exercise rather abusive.

Rudy set about defining the rules of what he felt was right, as if he was the arbiter of all things social, artistic and monetary. His people were less than sophisticated, and the whole thing echoed a strange mafia novella with goombas and good-fellas. Yeah, Rudy played tough, and he reversed some of Dinkin's soft policing measures, but his real focus was not on infrastructure and safety, but on surface and shine. This was not good management and it alienated many, many people...real New Yorkers for one, were disgusted, and many people who work to make the city work were disgruntled. He didn't solve problems so much as to sweep them away and make things look pretty. But, as we know about those shiny apple Republicans these days, the core is rotten, and sooner or later the worm is gonna crawl out. I'm just waiting for Rudy to blow. He not only lacks the personality for the office but he is rotten to the core.

Rudy left us in a very vulnerable position while he shined up his command center that was in the middle of his universe...with a big target on it. For anyone who doubts that Rudy absolutely sucked as a leader, and for anyone who thinks that it might make sense to have a strong guy like him at the helm, take a visit to The Real Rudy and lift the rock on old Rudy. I don't say this lightly: for anyone who might ever consider giving this guy a job with big responsibility, do some research. Your life may depend on it!


Cross Posted from RIPCoco