Not that the Executive acted alone. A Republican legislature passed the USAPATRIOT Act with full cooperation from its Democratic lackeys. Then it passed the Military Commissions Act. Then, as the Cheney Administration accelerated its campaign of political repression, a Democratic Congress voted to indemnify the corporate partners of the usurpers. In the meantime, habeas corpus was fatally wounded and personal privacy faded while government secrecy bloomed in darkness.
The current administration stands firmly in support of the new American political paradigm. Even its token gesture of closing the torture camp in Cuba shows signs of falling by the wayside. When this happens, President Obama will express his unhappiness, but he will do so with a smile on his face.
Most sadly, the whole anti-civil-liberties program has been accomplished with the active and overwhelming support of its victims. The American public, the modern counterparts of the Tories during the Revolution, loves the fact that people can be thrown in jail for life without charges -- provided of course that the prisoners' names have a Middle-Eastern sound to them. The people whose homes can now be broken into by government agents on a whim and without a writ are pleased to accept torture as an "effective" means of gathering information. They are happy to have their phones tapped, to have their protests restricted to the ironically-labed "free-speech zones," to have their "safety" enhanced through the process of exiling their fellow American citizens.
Fear of tiny groups of extremists is the factor that drives this seizure of power from the people and to the already-powerful. Fear is carefully nutured and tended by those who benefit from the power transfer, of course, but that is no excuse. The people need to put aside their fear and require their government to safeguard their ability to be politically free. But we are soft now, and unwilling to require our public "servants" to safeguard anything but our cozy, little, meaningless lives, our iPhones, and our 56-inch HDTVs.
If one needs a an amplifier to hear the sound of liberty's death-knell in the once-proud United States of America, one needs only listen to the stridency of self-proclaimed liberals and progressives right here on one of the most liberal and progressive blogs in the world. These defenders of freedom are in full voice pleading at the top of their lungs for their guardians to protect them by further eroding the right to free speech in America. "Make the right-winger talk shows stop being mean," they snivel. "Make the 'hate-speech' go away." Liberals. Ha! Progressives? Only in America.
The Bill of Rights is Dead. It died of neglect. Long live the Unitary Executive.
]]>The most obvious contender, of course, is the battle of the extreme right wing -- that is to say, the Republican Party -- versus the Democrats who attempt to hide the fact that their constituency is Big Money . From the right, we hear incessant mindless chanting about sacred Market while the right-of-center Dems discuss Social Justice while supporting legislation to cripple the Bill of Rights. If this "debate" weren't so infuriating, it would induce more somnolence than opium (while still being far less addictive.)
But as frustrating as the donnybrook between the Publicans and 'Crats is, it would serve neither accuracy nor fairness for us to give it our Most Likely to be Enervating Award. No, those laurels must go to the guaranteed-soporific carping between the Obama Lovers and the Obama Haters here on TPM. Congratulations to all participants for driving most intelligent debaters out of the Café and into pleasanter drugs.
This -- ha! -- discussion, lead mostly by people who wouldn't recognize a political fact if it were giving them a blowjob, seems to center on the question of whether the current President is an Evil Buffon or a Wise and Subtle Savior. Inasmuch as he is neither, allow me to enumerate what Pres. Obama is, is not, and may be.
Pres. Obama IS socially moderate, who seems willing to grant a minimally-acceptable level of rights, services, and status to the poor and oppressed. His stance on the rights of gays is a good example of his attitude.
Pres. Obama IS fiscally conservative. His immediate impulse is to throw money at giant corporations in trouble -- AIG, Bank Of America, General Motors -- and rich people -- for example, by retaining the Bush tax cuts. At the same time, his "middle-class tax cut" awarded something like $8 per week to the median American household.
Pres. Obama IS an extremely capable politician. Two years ago, it was unthinkable that he could be the nominee of his party, let alone President.
Pres. Obama IS NOT a liberal. The very idea is ludicrous and drives real liberals up a wall. Liberals don't vote to indemnify communications companies for spying on their customers. Liberals don't act to protect torturers from accountability in court. Liberals don't keep people in jail indefinitely without legal recourse.
Pres. Obama IS NOT a person who would recognize any action of his own as overtly evil. He thinks he is a pragmatist, and if some little people need to get shafted or killed to achieve something grand, well, them's the breaks. He will do many great things for many people, some of them actual people as opposed to corporate "persons." He will do little, perhaps less than nothing, to close the gap between rich and poor.
Pres. Obama MAY BE the best thing to happen to this country for the last three decades.
Pres. Obama MAY BE the worst thing to happen to this country, even worse than George W. Bush.
May I make a suggestion? If you choose to respond to this article, please don't bother telling me that I am an idiot, that I am a terrible writer, that I am the very cause of the same napping I am trying to prevent, or any of that kind of stuff. I know all that. OTOH, please do point out where my facts are wrong or where my characterizations or opinions lack coherence. If you can.
I hope I have not induced insomnia among those who depend on TPM to nod off each night.
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Assuming the well-founded assumption that convicted felon Ted Stevens wins his bid to return to the Senate, the Dems should exercise the time-honored and constitutionally-mandated practice of honoring the choice made by the good people of Alaska.
]]> Before you know it, Stevens' office will be moved to Allentown, Levenworth, or some such office building, which will make it inconvenient for him to cast his votes in Washington, D.C. This will reduce the 'Pub's minority status both in the Senate as a whole and in any committees on which Stevens served.In addition, it would prevent the current governor of Alaska from becoming the junior senator from Alaska and reduce her profile in the American national spotlight.
Finally, it would give the Republicans a difficult decision to make: Do they raise a ruckus about the Dems allowing another corrupt Republican to remain in the World's Most Exclusive Debating Society? (If so, the Senate Dems should reluctantly acceed to the 'Pub's request and expel him without fear of the 'Pubs crying about "playing politics.") Or should the 'Pubs simply and silently accept their further dimunition and reduced ability to filibuster? (If so, see above.)
]]>We might argue a bit about the question of whether it is fair to question the fairness and propriety of this state of affairs, but its unfairness and impropriety seems so obvious to me that I will simply take it for granted that the system is a source of corruption. Let's simply discuss the potential of a cure for this disease.
Perhaps more than any time in American history, the general populace is aware of the unholy power of Corporate America and its ability to warp the political landscape. The awareness arises from the fact that corporate behavior, deservedly or not, is viewed as greedy and corrupt -- even by the Republican candidate for President -- and that such greed and corruption is currently having a direct impact on the lifestyle of many members of the middle class.
Further, it looks as though 2009 will find our nation under the sway of the most centrist -- certainly not progressive, but at least not extremist rightish as in recent decades -- collection of state and federal leaders that we have seen since the malignancy of Ronald Reagan infected much of the Free World in 1981.
So the iron is hot, and those politicos who recognize corporate personhood as a primary source of evil in America should strike by proposing and passing a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of their ugly position of ubermenschen with authority without responsibility, power without balance, wealth without limit.
The "artifical persons" will use their citizenship to fight furiously and expensively against what's best for the citizenry, but maybe, just maybe, the current economic debacle will enable enough "natural" citizens to recognize and insist on legislating their own self-interest for once.
]]>Read it or don't. Couldn't care less.
Comment or don't. Couldn't care less.
Like it or don't. Couldn't care less.
Adjust your behavior or don't. I really couldn't care less.
The reader blogs at TPM Cafe used to be about politics. I really looked forward to this election season for interesting debates on the urgent imperatives facing the United States. We used to do that sort of thing here in the Cafe. In the words of Inspector Clouseau "Not any mehr." The closest we get to interesting on the reader blogs these days is petty, inter-personal, internecine bickering. And for the most part, the bickering is not even about policy issues. Not even about character, really -- it's about pique. It's about malignant spite. It's about:
-- Whether Sen. Obama is a misogynist and dissed Sen. Clinton in the primaries, or
-- Whether Sen. Clinton is a racist and endorsed Sen. McCain, or
-- Whether Sen. McCain is running a dirty campaign, or
-- Whether Pres. Clinton is carrying a grudge and still wants more attention than he deserves.
-- Whether some politician's verbal misstatement -- like Sen. Obama's introduction of Sen. Biden as "the next president of the United States" -- can be sharpened into a poisoned blade.
When anyone blogs on one of these topics (for the twenty-fifth or -sixth time), the comment count soars over the century mark. When someone blogs about actual issues either in the reader blogs or on the front page, the comment count maybe struggles up to twenty.
This is just boring.
But this is the worst part: When anyone attempts to stimulate a debate about Sen. Obama's position on any issue* he or she is immediately attacked as a Hillary Die-Hard, a Republican Hack Troll, or a Wacky Left-Wing Dreamer. The argument is largely ignored. The topic becomes the poster's agenda, personality, style, and parentage.
To make it even worse, the tone of the insults are not just snarky and sarcastic, they're ugly and snide -- designed to hurt feelings rather than make points. Designed to attack the target's humanity. Then the attacker's buddies pile on with expansions, snickers, mutual congratulations, and more locker-room humor. Yeah, just like in Eighth Grade.
Just so you know: Interesting and clever people can play the game that way, and overall will do so better and with more effect than the assailants who initiate the food fight. But that game is only fun for a few minutes and often the antagonists lack the wit to understand the insults that come back at them, just as they lack the ability to see the spaghetti logic of their own arguments. So we choose not to play.
Even the Republican trolls have mostly fled, not because they have been out-argued but because they see that they have converted us to their methods.
So have fun throwing shit, boys and girls. Try not to get too much in your mouth.
* And if you have examined your conscience, you know that many of Sen Obama's positions are well right of center and that his overall attitude about the Constitution is at questionable at best.
]]>The American electorate is in complete political denial and the majority of politicians at the Federal level must pander to that denial in order to be elected or re-elected.
The lifestyle to which the American government and most Americans are accustomed cannot much longer be sustained. Almost everyone knows this but few are willing to face it. Those few politicians who have faced it and mentioned it above a whisper in the cloakroom are labeled as "gloom and doomers," "hate America firsters", or simply nuts. The upshot of this fact did not have to be a crisis, but the fact that we have ignored and continue to ignore the problem means that a crisis is coming that will make the Great Depression feel like sex with Gisele Bundchen.
Astonishingly coming from a self-described conservative, Col. Bacevich has called Ronald Reagan "the prophet of profligacy." He is inarguably correct. Now make no mistake about it, Pres. Reagan was indeed the midwife at the birth of the crisis. His first-term policies and his success in the 1984 election were based on a pollyannic theory whose basic tenet held that money, oil, and the earth's ability to withstand environmental rape were all inexhaustable.
Further, as Col. Bacevich points out, Jimmy Carter -- the Grendel of the right wing -- warned us that the cataclysm was lurking more than a year earler when we still had the chance to do something about the now-insurmountable problems facing our country and our planet. Americans decided they liked fantasy better, coming as it was from an incipient Alzheimers victim. The electorate swallowed "Morning In America" with a spoon, asked for seconds, and had more as a bedtime snack.
So if Pres. Reagan was the midwife, we the American public are the mothers of the upcoming economic and environmental holocausts. (Feel free to add two syllables to the predicate nominative in the previous sentence.) Like the first two monkeys in the famous trio, we hear no klaxons and see no fire so why in the world would we want to speak of a smoldering conflagration? Running against Gov. Dukakis is 1992, Bush 41 declared that "the American lifestyle is non-negotiable." He didn't say that because he thought it would lose votes for him.
So it looks very, very much as though we will continue to write checks until the Chinese close the account. We will continue to burn up the oil that would have been our grandkids' plastics until the last drop explodes on the last sparkplug. We will continue to cut trees, foul our lakes, and heat up the atmosphere until folks start remembering Beijing 2008 as an example of sylvan purity. And we will continue to elect people who tell us that there is no chasm ahead until we drive right off the edge at 120 mph in our Hummer.
Think I'm overly pessimistic? Look at the men we have nominated as our major-parties candidates. One says hit the accelerator, the other bases his hope on more unbalanced budgets.
Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Who wants pie?
Or maybe Sen. Obama is not the real anti-Christ but the Devil wants us to think that he (Sen. Obama) is, so he (the Devil) is making known fools and charlatans (the LB authors) say he (Sen. Obama) is not because then smart people will think that if fools (LaHaye and Jenkins) say he (Sen. Obama) is not then he (Sen. Obama) must actually be (the anti-Christ). Then the real anti-Christ (???) could take over unopposed.
OTOH, maybe the devil wants us think that Sen. Obama is the real anti-Christ even though he (Sen. Obama) really is the real anti-Christ. That would really fool a lot of LB readers (saps) and believers(suckers)! Somehow.
But wait! What if god wants us to think that Sen. Obama is the anti-Christ? I don't know why he (god) would do that, but then I don't know whether he (god again) wants the end-times (the Apocalypse, Armageddon, etc.) to come faster or slower. But whatever he (god, not Sen. Obama) wants, you better bet it'll happen that way because, well, because he (god) is god.
And if god wants us to think that Sen. Obama is not the anti-Christ, then we (us -- you and I and others, collectively) probably won't (think that Sen. Obama is the anti-Christ) and if he (Sen. Obama) is (the anti-Christ) then LaHaye and Jenkins (authors of the Left Behind series of novels (a delightful and entertaining cornupcopia of graphic violence, gore, and deparavity based on an older work of fiction -- the Bible (fundamental source of dogma for Christians (believers in Jesus Christ as The Redeemer, Emmanuel, The Ever-Lasting Lord, etc.))) were right (in the books) but wrong (in saying that he (Sen. Obama, not god) isn't the anti-Christ).
I hope this helps.
It's tempting to dwell on the meanness and hatefulness of the request that FOF laid before its god. But let's turn our attention away from the suffering and property damage that such a storm would bring down on the people of Denver -- Democrat and Republican, conservative, moderate, and liberal, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist alike. Let's turn to a more philosophical implication of this prayer and all prayers. I'm just dying to discuss this question:
Do believers believe that their prayers actually make a difference?
If the answer to my question is "yes," does this mean that their quintessentially perfect god has changed his mind as the result of their imprecations? And if the answer to that question is "yes," then was his original intention imperfect?
Ever since the days when my parents explained to me that no, that guy with all the fancy clothes isn't actually god but he talks to god, I've wondered about prayer. I kind of get the concept that being quiet and letting god talk to you is soothing and perhaps educational (although hearing voices that no one else can hear is not universally accepted as a primary indication of compos mentis in any other context), but asking god to make something happen that he hadn't originally planned is just beyond-the-pale weird to me. Does he need to be asked because the idea hadn't occurred to him? Was his decision about which football team would win still up in the air, and your prayer might be the one that makes the difference? Was he thinking that maybe he'd let all those little Adannas and Jelanis starve to death today, but then you talked him into bringing them enough gruel to make it till a week from Friday? How does this thing of "praying for X" actually help/cause "X" to come about? I'm logically and philosophically baffled.
And here's another question or two -- these specifically for Mr. Shepard, although I would also accept an answer from Dr. Dobson: Should we assume that if there is significant rainfall during Sen. Obama's acceptance speech, it is a sign that your god disapproves of him? Then would it not follow then that if the night of 28-Aug blooms mild and clear in Denver, your god is urging you to vote Democratic this November? Will you obey him or will you continue to practice the hypocritical political game that you call Christianity?
]]>The same troll has raised more outrage by posing another burning question of our time: Whether a non-candidate's alleged girlfriend's baby was fathered by the named father or by the non-candidate.
Your ability to expect privacy while making a phone call is gone and you're heppy about it. Habeas corpus -- the Great Writ that prevents the government from throwing you into an oubliette -- is damaged beyond redemption. The entire American economy is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the the Peoples' Republic of China and your great-grandchildren will pay for that $600 check you got a few weeks ago.
But the question that obsesses you is whether that image was intended to represent the Washington Monument, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Berlin Victory Column, or Sen. Obama's dick.
Eat your bread and watch your circuses, and watch my left hand very closely while I pick your pocket with my right.
We liberals are all the way through the looking glass and the Dums are laughing at us.
Of these 289 electoral votes, forty-six are in Colorado, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Michigan. Take away these electoral votes and the Senator falls below the magical 270-vote threshold to 243.
Let's make a few of assumptions:
-- Those 243 votes are solid.
-- Sen. McCain will hold all his barely-held states (not a bad assumption: they are North and South Dakota, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio) in addition to his strong and weak states. (The Republicans will undoubtedly manage to steal Ohio and Florida again if they have to.)
-- Virginia (currently tied) goes Republican as well, as it has done in every single presidential election since Christ was a corporal.
-- Indiana (currently barely Obama) continues the practice of giving its support to the Republican -- a habit that dates back to the Pleistocene.
What's left? Thirty-five electoral votes
-- Colorado 9
-- Nevada 5
-- New Hampshire 4
-- Michigan 17
If Sen. Obama fails to carry Colorado or Michigan, Sen. McCain wins. If he carries them both but drops both Nevada and New Hampshire, Sen. McCain wins.
This looks scary, even before we start worrying about Pennsylvania. Colorado has gone for a Democrat exactly once since 1968. Nevada twice. New Hampshire three times. Michigan is only 50/50 in the last 40 years.
This tactic has proved counter-productive.
Check the numbers at electoral-vote.com in the five most important battleground states. Comparing polls taken shortly before 20-Jun**, when he announced his support for the FISA "compromise," he has lost ground in four of the five, and gained neglibibly in the fifth.
According to Quinnipiac, his lead in Florida has dropped from four points (16-Jun) to two (29-Jul).
In Michigan his three-point lead on 9-Jun (Rasmussen) is now (22-Jul) a four-point lead (Quinnipiac), a gain of just 1 point.
In Ohio, Sen. Obama enjoyed a 6 point lead on 16-Jun. This lead dwindled to just two points by 29-Jul. (Both Quinnipiac.)
In Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac shows Sen. Obama's lead dropping from twelve points to seven in the 16-Jun to 29-Jul period.
And in Virginia, we have Rasmussen showing that his one-point lead evaporated between 12-Jun and 16-Jul.
One might make a good point by noting the slim nature of most of these margins, but these are the five most important states, and if Sen. Obama's intention was to increase his popularity in swing states, this is not a trend that indicates any success whatsoever. In fact, we now have five data points suggesting that he has failed.
* As I see it, Sen. Obama began emphasizing his "moderate" nature via these issues:
-- Support for FISA.
-- Support for the death penalty even for certain non-homicides.
-- Weakening public perception of his stance on choice WRT late-term abortion.
-- Agreement with the Supreme Court's ruling on the Second Amendment.
These are not the only positions which which left-wingers might have problems. His statements regarding Pakistan and Jerusalem might also raise some hackles, but these were made before the period under examinaton here.
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