News Blackout

A few dozen people put on costumes and show up at politicians' Town Hall meetings and the media decide it's a mass movement.

Over 60,000 people demonstrate against Wall Street in New York City, and it's completely ignored.



Maybe it's because our demonstrations have a sense of fun and goofiness and we don't talk about guns and killing people who don't agree.

Quote of the Day

“The 20-year-old kid who voted for Barack Obama and then saw this White House cut backroom deals with special interests instead of truly fighting for big change like the public option doesn't need a public shaming...He needs to see Democrats acknowledge that the Rahm Emanuel strategy of pre-emptively caving before a fight is a failure -- and that if he trusts Democrats with his vote again, he will be electing a fighting Democratic Party.” – Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

(via)

Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Athenae, subbing for the vacationing-from-blogging TBogg, on what is wrong with people who are rooting for the Gulf of Mexico disaster to prove to be unsolvable because it would mean an end to post-JFK optimism.

Money quote:

What kind of insulated, sheltered, non-reality reality do you have to be swimming around in that you can sit there and say that the killing of an ENTIRE OCEAN and the destruction of an ENTIRE THIRD OF THE DAMN COUNTRY’S ECONOMY would be okay because hey, then everybody will realize that Nixon was right and fuck Cambodia anyway and hippies smell?

Progressives can be douchebags too

Exhibit A: Chris Ryan and John Aravosis of Americablog, about the Kevin Smith/Southwest fracas:

This isn't discrimination at all. The only person being discriminated here would have been the passenger sitting next to Smith who paid full fair but had less space. It's true that most airlines have reduced the available space for passengers and at the same time, the size of Americans has increased.

If he already knew he needed to buy a second seat, his tantrum makes no sense. His twitpic attempt at humor noticeably avoids showing how he fit into his seat. For his neighbor on the flight, I doubt they would receive a discount due to the over sized passenger spilling into their already cramped space. Average sized people or small people don't receive any special benefits for taking up less space, do they? Even after Southwest apologized, Smith still blasted them. They'd be better off without this guy as a customer.

So what do you guys think?

NOTE FROM JOHN: I fly a good deal, and have sat next to someone obese before. I had to pull my left arm over to the right, with my elbow half way to my navel, the entire flight, so as not to be playing snugly with the guy to my left. It was very disconcerting, and physically uncomfortable, having someone else basically sharing your seat. I appreciate that we should not judge people by their weight. But I'm also not so sure that treating obesity as if it's a minority status is correct either. If your metabolism is screwed up, fine. If you eat too much crap, then I have less sympathy for you.

I wonder how John is going to tell the difference between those of us who are descended from shtetl peasants and whose bodies have always believed the famine is right around the corner so we'd better store every morsel we eat as fat, and the ones who eat too much crap. Does he have X-ray vision so he can see into our stomachs and see the egg white and steamed veggie omelet I have for breakfast most mornings and also see the Denny's Grand Slam breakfast in the belly of someone else? That's quite a gift. If he can do that, perhaps he should give up this blogging thing and start working as an airport security scanner.

Now, I like Americablog. I read it daily and it's a good source of news I may not see elsewhere. But at times like this, I get this close to scrubbing it from my blogroll and never linking again. The last time this happened was the last of Chris Ryan's now tiresome screeds essentially opining that all baby boomers should be lined up and shot. It's just another example of how you don't have to be a wingnut to be a dickhead.

Similar sentiments from so-called progressives from the comments over at Salon:

Hey Kev, you're a lardass and it's not the world's fault. Hire a semi to haul your fatness around. And spare the rest of us having to sit next to you and next to you and next to you.

They should travel by ox cart or something. I mean really. Do they need to inflict their smelly fatness on everyone else?

I've been next to fat slobs on airplanes and it's not fair. They are in your space and totally oblivious to it. If you are in halfway decent shape, then you couldn't possibly need "all that" space, now could you?

If I were dictator I would demand they be harvested for their fat, Tyler Durden like. All that fat is energy and can be turned into clean diesel.

Kevin Smith and Kate Harding cheek by jowl in coach on a trans-Pacific nonstop. I would love to see these walking externalities get a load of their own medicine.

Sorry, I don't want someone's fat touching me. It's just nasty, and in many cases there are some hygiene issues too.

I don't want someone else rubbing up against me, and if people can't fit in a seat without rubbing (or blobbing onto) the person next to them, then they need 2 seats. Airlines should make it easier for the Obese to purchase 2 seats, but it has to be done.

10 bucks says that last guy spreads his legs out when he's on a plane or bus.

It's interesting, though, to see that the kind of sheer hatred you see spewed in so-called progressive corners every time someone fat wants to be treated like a human being. You see the kind of language that if a wingnut used it against someone who's black, or disabled, or -- dare I say it -- RETARDED -- we would be screaming bloody murder. But it's perfectly OK for these same progressives to tar everyone who is their idea of overweight with the same kind of stereotypical broad brush that they'd be appalled to hear their friends use when talking about anyone else.

Wingnuts may have a higher douchebag quotient than we do, but we have our share too.

Forget about yet another empty speech, listen to a real American patriot who left us today

I guess Howard Zinn couldn't bear to hang around long enough to listen to Barack Obama spout a bunch of crap which he has no intention of fighting for either.

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010:

We should take his advice.

(JP is liveblogging the SOTU. I had to get to work this morning for a 7 AM teleconference and had to go to a schmooze-with-the-managers event tonight. I'm going to bed.)

Sunday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

It's about time someone said it. Today's honoree, Angry Mouse, over at, of all places, the Great Orange Satan, who notes the utter haplessness of so-called "feminist" organizations that want our money and accomplish nothing except solicit more money.

Money quote:

They’ve failed to organize the millions of supporters they have into a coherent and powerful movement. 'Cause when your movement looks like an amateur mess compared with the "keep your government hands off my Medicare" teabaggers, you're doing something wrong.

They’ve failed to frame the debate and influence how we talk about issues that affect women’s lives. While they're still arguing about "choice" -- a word that persuades no one and narrowly focuses the conversation on abortion instead of the full spectrum of reproductive health -- opponents are thinking up clever new phrases to use incessantly and force into the public consciousness until they become law. "Partial birth abortion." "Rights of the preborn." "Culture of life."

They’ve failed to make women’s rights a legislative priority for the very representatives they help send to Congress. And if their supposed allies don't worry about losing support of the feminist organizations, certainly their opponents don't lose a lot of sleep over invoking the almighty wrath of the feminists. What's the worst they can do? Organize another march? Hey, that might actually be great news for Republicans!

They’ve failed to adapt their movement and their message to a new era and a new generation of would-be feminists. Where are the bumper sticker slogans, the tactics, the refreshed, revised 21st century approach to a problem as old as time? Are they using the internet for anything more than urgent emails and processing donations? Where are the clever YouTube videos by a new generation of feminists talking about how this or that bill affects them? Where is the television presence? Where are the bloggers? (Oh, there are plenty of feminist bloggers out there, but they’re not being supported or promoted or elevated by the feminist organizations, who still think the internet is primarily for sending email. For example, guess who the "featured blogger" on Emily's List is? Why, it's Ellen Malcolm, the president.)

They’ve failed –- time and again, in any number of ways, under Republican and Democratic administrations. And if they don't figure that out, and figure out how to change it, they will become irrelevant. We already know how to raise money with the internet, and we don't need Ellen Malcolm, or her successor, or any of her FeminismTM counterparts to do it.

I'd take it a step further and throw in organizations like Moveon.org while I'm at it -- another group that barrages us with e-mails asking for money or signatures on worthless petitions that no one looks at. Moveon.org used to be sort of effective, but lately it's the same tactic -- send scary e-mails, ask for money, and accomplish nothing. Democrats in government want nothing to do with them. Petitions are useless.

I don't have any answers as to how to get our legislators to listen to us instead of to corporations. But these groups have been astoundingly ineffective. I don't know what the alternative is, but I for one have stopped throwing money down this empty hole. Instead, I donate to specific candidates, like Al Franken and Alan Grayson, who uphold the values that matter to me.

This guy is going to scare the Democratic establishment to death

My Deany-sense is going off big-time. Alan Grayson is a star -- a real progressive star. He doesn't give a shit about whether the Republicans' feelings are hurt or whether the insurance industry will start donating. $31 million of your own money will do that. Of course the usual reactionary wingnut churls will call him a hypocrite and ask why he doesn't use his own money to buy health insurance for others. After all, their hero, Eric Cantor, told a woman to have her cancer-stricken friend beg for charity. It's how Republicans think: I Got Mine and Fuck You. Alan Grayson should pay for health care. He should pay more than we do, because he has more than we do. It's called taxes. They're supposed to work FOR people, instead of for waging pointless wars in countries that did nothing to us.

Grayson is dangerous to the established order. He's dangerous because he's not a pretty, slick lawyer with a big toothy smile like John Edwards. He's dangerous because he's a smart Jewish guy from the Bronx; a zhlubby, stocky guy with bad taste in suits and an unrepaired gap in his teeth who looks like a Mob enforcer and sounds like the class wag. He appropriates Republican terms like "nattering nabobs of negativism" and turns them back on the obstructionists like a flaming turd. He's a master of the sound bite, but he's rough around the edges. The helmet-heads of the mainstream media; the Tweetys and the Stephanopouli, the Noonans and the Buchanans, the Scarboroughs and the Frums, will all have the vapors at his unpolished exterior, his sometimes duh-sounding voice that belies a mind like a steel trap, and his unabashed liberalism. And Grayson won't care. He doesn't have to. Grayson can go back to the Aliance for Aging Research (which he founded). He can go back to the practice of government contracts law and represent whistleblowers. But for our sake, we hope he doesn't have to. Because forget about the Republicans for a minute. We need Grayson to try to keep his own party honest -- a party populated by corporatist whores like Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh -- and Rahm Emanuel. We need Grayson to stay there and MAKE them honest brokers. And I hope he learned from Howard Dean's experience in dealing with the hackocracy that when you are the embodiment of the party's conscience, you have to watch your back every stinkin' minute.

(Update for "Grayheads": Video from Grayson's Town Hall meeting, 10/12/09.)

"Political realities": Translation: Don't piss off the Blue Dogs because they're so mean we can't control them

In case you had any doubts that Washington DC was one giant hackocracy full of venal, greedy bastards from both parties who just want to shovel as much corporate cash into their pockets, and listen not one whit to the American people, here's your proof:

All was well within the Democratic Party, which had finally received that elusive 60th caucus member. The Republican filibuster would be no longer be a threat.

Or maybe not.

Franken is expected to come to Washington after the July 4th recess. But not everyone is convinced that his presence will make a huge political difference. The reality, which few in the Democratic Party are willing to talk about openly, is that there are really only 58 caucusing members. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, has been out for nearly all of the current Congress on medical leave. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, while released from the hospital on Tuesday morning, continues to face health issues of his own. Meanwhile, moderate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, D-La, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., have made it almost a point of pride in not allowing their votes to be taken for granted. And on specific issues, the party has proven strikingly allergic to philosophical unison.

"It is good news for the Democrats and it is bad news for the Republicans. That is a simple fact," said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist who has worked on Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe's campaigns. "Having said that, you don't want to get too far ahead of yourself here. It is not like the caucus is unanimous on every issue."

Talking on condition of anonymity, some Democratic strategists were even blunter. "Sixty is an imaginary number," said one operative. "You are always going to lose the Ben Nelsons and all the centrists. This is why 2010 proves to be so important because it can set a buffer for that 60 threshold."

The threshhold for a filibuster-proof majority is now exactly one more than the number of Democrats you have.

Useless sacks of shit.

Isn't it funny how Republicans never thought like this? They had 51 seats, they were king of the fucking world. But Harry Reid is folded in a fetal position in the corner, lest Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and the other corporatist suckup say mean things.

Can we please vote these weasels out of office and get some Democrats with some stones in there? It's things that make me miss Paul Wellstone more every fucking day. And even though Al Franken has finally taken back that seat from the people who murdered Sen. Wellstone, I'm not convinced he's going to be significantly more progressive than the blue dogs.

I am hoping he'll surprise me.

Whither the progressive infrastructure?

For all the talk on the right of the invisible hand of George Soros running everything on the left, there's been precious little built by way of an infrastructure by which progressive policies and values can be developed and promoted.

Aside from corporate media, the right has think tanks galore, from the American Enterprise Institute to, yes, the Project for the New American Century. Every election cycle, there's a new right-wing group forming to advance Republican candidatres. This year it isn't even May yet and already Floyd Brown, who every four years seems to be able to amass an independent political committee to smear Democratic candidates to the advantage of Republicans, is at his old tricks. Where is the Floyd Brown of the left?

After the Randi Rhodes debacle at Air America, Mike Malloy went on a tear on his NovaM show about the history of the network, specifically a party he attended that was designed to woo rich liberals into investing in the network. When the time came to put their money where their mouths were, the wealthy liberals kept their wallets closed, leaving the project open to Evan Cohen and his Gang of Thieves, and later on to the Stephen Green, who bought the network so his bratty brother Mark, the George W. Bush of the left, would have a nice new toy to play with. And the network has never recovered. Now, Sheldon and Anita Drobny, who were forced out by the Republican moles who ended up running the thing, have NovaM, but growth is slow at best and the ability to bring in new talent is virtually nil for the moment after blowing the budget on Randi -- a move that was probably as necessary as the Mets trading the future for Johan Santana, but that in the same way puts the kibosh on other short-term growth.

When we're up against corporate-owned media, including the giant maw of News Corp., which is now getting ready to buy up yet another newspaper in New York (prompting the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday to overturn a Bush Administration regulatory decision that loosened media ownership restrictions in the 20 largest media markets), which makes damn sure that their talking heads toe the party line (see also: Stephanopoulos, George), for which no smear against a Democrat is too bogus to present as "alternative facts", and no truth about a Republican is too iron-clad to ignore, this kind of infrastructure becomes more important.

But it just doesn't seem to happen. Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest wrote this week about the closing of the Rockridge Institute:

This is how the conservatives have been so successful. They work year-round to convince people to identify as conservatives. (You've probably complained or heard people complain that that have managed to turn "liberal" into a bad word in people's minds.) When election time comes around it's as though all that their candidates have to do is point at the opponent and shout "liberal" to win. They ride a wave of nationally-advanced propaganda convincing people to support "tort reform" or "tax relief." This has been going on for years, so at election time everything is laid out for them on a silver platter, with the public prepared and primed.

Progressive candidates, on the other hand, are generally on their own, starting from scratch for each election. Their general campaign begins in the late summer or fall, they have to decide what "issues" to run on, they have to develop a message from scratch, by themselves, and then they have to reach their voters from scratch. And they have to do all of this on their own in just a few months. No wonder conservatives, even with their awful "you're on your own" philosophy, have managed to do so well and gain so much traction.

This is why building up a national progressive advocacy infrastructure would leverage all of those campaign donations and help us build a sustainable progressive majority. A few dollars to progressive advocacy organizations on any given TODAY builds long-term support for every progressive candidate on any given TOMORROW. It provides leverage -- lowering the need for massive election-cycle funding.

The demise of Rockridge Institute demonstrates that the Democratic Party donor base hasn't yet gotten that message. Instead, masses of money have to be raised for candidates at the very last minute -- for example a million dollars in one minute, the day before the big Pennsylvania primary. And almost all of that money will just literally go up in the air to pay for TV ads that leave nothing behind to show for the money. They don't build the brand, they don't tell people about the benefits of progressive ideas, they don't help other candidates... But almost nothing for the Rockridges and Speak Out California's and Commonweal Institutes.

When you think about the money that, say, Hillary Clinton has shoveled into the pockets of Mark Penn and the rest of her consultants, and when you look at Bob Shrum still being trotted out to opine after eight presidential losses and his pockets bulging with the booty of campaigns past, it's unfathomable that the Democratic Party still doesn't get the importance of this kind of infrastructure. And when you see the same old "Big State Only" tactics still infecting the party's strategy, you have to wonder why they even insult our intelligence by putting on this show that we actually have a choice.

Meanwhile, THIS is how we take the party back from the likes of Pelosi and Reid

John Edwards may not have been able to break through the cacophony surrounding the "glamor candidates", but another Edwards, this one firmly supported by the netroots, won big yesterday. Challenger Donna Edwards defeated longtime incumbent and corporatist shill Al Wynn in Maryland's 4th District:

Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) is losing overwhelmingly to non-profit executive Donna Edwards in tonight’s primary, and will be the first incumbent headed to defeat this election cycle.

With 51 percent of precincts reporting, Edwards leads Wynn by a 22-point margin – 59 to 37 percent. Wynn conceded to Edwards late this evening.

The defeat of the eight-term congressman can be attributed squarely to ideology.

Edwards’ progressive profile – she has been an activist for various liberal causes – played very well among the affluent, well-educated white Democrats in Montgomery County. She is overwhelmingly carrying the county – by an even larger margin than her 25-point victory over Wynn in Montgomery County in 2006.

But even more impressively, she is defeating Wynn in his home base of Prince George’s County by a 12-point margin, suggesting that Edwards’ criticism of his ties to corporate interests and his initial support for the Iraq war resonated throughout the district.

According to dday over at Digby's place, Wynn had the full arsenal of Pelosi/Reid/Hoyer hackery behind him, and this time it wasn't enough -- not when every progressive group and the entire blogosphere was 100% behind his opponent. Let this be a shot across the bow to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer and all those who have mindlessly fallen in line behind the worst leadership the Democratic Party has ever seen and the entrenched hacks in Congress: We are not going away. This is just the beginning. And if we have to find challengers for every one of your seats, we will do it. And we will throw your sorry corporatist asses out of there and send you back home to count your ill-gotten gains and think about how you sold out the American people to a would-be dictator and your corporate masters.

If you want to know what the future looks like, here it is.