Trumka: "Most Crucial Election in 75 Years"

Truthout

Many unionists are frustrated as usual by the lack of a viable progressive alternative to the Democratic Party. But they'd best beware, as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, of the serious consequences of being less than enthusiastic supporters of Democratic candidates in November's elections.

"The Republican Party of NO doesn't want our vote," says Trumka. "All they want is for us to stay home. They want us to feel hopeless and disgusted so they can come back by default." (my em)

When patience and enthusiasm don't work, fearmongering might. Right out of the Repug liebook, only I'm not lying. Be afraid. Vote.

1938 in 2010

Paul Krugman with a history lesson:

I had hoped that we would do better this time. But it turns out that politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes. And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

Third plunge of the dagger

Read this piece at Words of Power.

Dissed and Marginalized by POTUS' Inept Inner Circle, Progressives Must Rally (Again) to Save POTUS & the Democrats? Yes.

A coupla terrific paintings and a few words about how the current Dark Ages started in California and are fixin' to maybe get darker from there in a coupla months.

Starting to get the fuller picture of what has happened here?

As California goes, so goes the nation. Remember, the Reagan Counter-Revolution came to power here first.

So will the battle for Senator and Governor here signal the end of all hope, or the beginning of the reversal of the illness that has seized the US body politic?

And yet, it can even be worse. Just allow John Boehner to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and send Carly Fiorina to Beltwayistan and Meg Whitman to Sacramento, and you will see how much worse it can get, and how fast. Right now, it is very bad, but we have some leverage and a place to stand. If we lose the House or are further weakened in the Senate, or if POTUS fails to be elected to a second term, and the 5-4 corporatist edge on SCOTUS is institutionalized for another generation, well ...

And those of you who think it might be better to stay home, and let it all turn back to the Greedy Oiligarch Plutocracy (GOP), in order to hasten some more radical change, you are as deluded as the tea-baggers who are following Beck and Palin over the cliff into a hell-realm.

Just as an aside, and I throw those in anywhere, Mrs. G says GOP stands for Greedy Obstructionist 'Phobes.

Which side are you on? Yes, it is another moment to choose sides.

Vote in November, and influence everyone you can to vote in November. We must buy ourselves more time.

I know that we're not particularly fond of the Democrats right now, but the alternative is far worse. Cheney was right when he said the American people get their chance to be heard every four years, or in this case, every two years. As distasteful and arrogant as that is, it's absolutely correct. If you still your voice by throwing away your vote, either by voting for unelectable third-party candidates or staying home in disgust, you are helping the Forces of Darkness who seem poised to turn out in record numbers.

I'm not voting for Rahm or Axelrod or any of the other Dems I'd like to punch in the nose, or Obama this time, and I actually like our Dem candidates out here in California, but if I had to hold my nose to vote for them, I'd still do it in a heartbeat.

If you remember the apt right now old joke about the people in Hell up to their necks in shit, if the Repugs get back in control, coffee break's over. Back on your knees.

So ...

I'm off to work. I hope I remember how to fix cars. Righty-tighty ...

Why do they hate our troops?

Another crazy Jesus freak preacher and his sheeple think it's big fun to stage a "Burn A Koran Day". Don't forget, these are the same people who were rah-rah, gung-ho, kill the ragheads and "support the troops" during the run up to war. Now, they don't seem to care about those same troops they been supporting.

The top US commander in Afghanistan has warned that troops' lives will be in danger if an American church sticks to its plan to burn copies of the Koran.

Gen David Petraeus said the action could cause problems "not just in Kabul, but everywhere in the world".

Pastor Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Centre, has said he will make a bonfire this week on the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks.

...

I don't see anything in the way of "outreach" or "dovishness" from these people. If it weren't for the suits and ties, you wouldn't be able to tell the American Taliban from the Afghan type.

Fuck Rahm ...

And if you wonder why the White House runs the way it does (and Barry will probably be just another one-term President), you just have to look to the Chief-of-Staff. Rahm Emmanuel is nothing but a double-dealing slime mold and it's come back to bite them, and the Dems, in the ass.

Michael Moore, via Digby, on Rahm's disregard for the base:

Dear Rahm Emanuel:

Happy Fuckin' Labor Day! I read this week that — according to a new book by Steven Rattner, your administration's former "Car Czar" — during White House meetings about how to save the tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost if GM and Chrysler collapsed, your response was, "Fuck the UAW!"

...

Nonetheless labor unions did create a middle class for the majority (even companies that didn't have unions were forced to pay at or near union wages in order to attract a workforce) and that middle class built a great country and a good life. You see, Rahm, when people earn a fucking good wage, they spend it on stuff, which then creates more good paying jobs, and then the middle class grows fucking big. Did you know that back when I was a kid if you had a parent making a union wage, only one parent had to work?! And they were home by 3 or 4pm, 5:30 at the latest! We had dinner together! Dad had four weeks paid vacation. We all had free health and dental care. And anyone with decent grades went to college and it didn't fucking bankrupt them. (And if you ever used the F-word, the nuns would straighten you out in ways that even you couldn't bear to hear about).

Then a Republican fired all the air traffic controllers, a Democrat gave us NAFTA and millions of jobs were moved overseas (hey, didn't you work in that White House, too? "Fuck the UAW, baby!"). Unions got scared and beaten down, a frat boy became president and, like a drunk out of control, spent all our fucking money and our children's money, too. Fuck.

...

One day, before I die, I'd like to see a Dem in the White House who is a true Lefty (Obama & Co. would be considered raving conservatives in Europe). Ain't had one of them since LBJ. Alan Grayson, maybe?

Too little, too late ...

So, we're pretty much assured of a Dem disaster this fall. They pretty much have themselves to blame, from Barry on down. He should have been giving speeches like this from the get-go.

The Barack Obama who showed up in Milwaukee today is the one I remember from 2008 who seemed to disappear over the past year or so. If he keeps this tone between now and November, I'll bet on the press narrative changing from "Dems are hosed" to something far more positive. With a mix of humor, sarcasm and a generous dose of fire, Obama put Republicans on notice: Their days of obstruction are numbered.

...

What the Dems don't seem to get is that the campaign season doesn't start 2 months from Election Day. The Rethugs are always campaigning, in one form or another, constantly throwing shit against the wall to see what will stick and the Dems need answer, and ridicule it. They can't wait until a few weeks before the election to mount a counterattack.

Unfortunately, after this election, the obstruction, with a Rethug majority, will become weapons-grade.

Moonbeam! Finally!

LATimes

Jerry Brown launches his first ad in California gubernatorial campaign

His rival, Republican Meg Whitman, has been pummeling the candidate with a barrage of advertising over the summer that questioned his record. Brown could not afford to advertise over the summer, but labor unions did on his behalf, questioning Whitman’s qualifications. But this marks the first ad making a pro-active case for why voters ought to support Brown.

The ad, which will begin airing on television later this week, says that during his prior two terms as governor, Brown eliminated waste and luxuries, balanced budgets, cut taxes and created 1.9 million jobs. “California was working,” says the announcer.

Brown them introduces himself and names three priorities that keep in mind voters’ frustration with government –- frugality, local control and only raising taxes if voters agree.

My only question for our current Attorney General and next Governor is "What was it like boinkin' Linda Ronstadt?". Enquiring minds wanta know...



JerryBrown2010

Headline of the Day

California pot legalization ‘could end Mexican drug war’

Swell. I hope it takes a big chunk outta our drug war in the process.

The Poodle Speaks

I watched Christiane "Still A Babe!" Amanpour interview Tony Bliar on This Week yesterday. Once a poodle, always a poodle, this time yipping mightily with a book to sell. Look in 'fiction' next to Bush's book.

MoDo

He says he does not regret serving as the voice for W.’s gut when the inexperienced American princeling galloped into war with Iraq. As for “the nightmare that unfolded” — giving the lie to all their faux rationales and glib promises — Tony wants everyone to know he has feelings.

So do the families of the hundreds of thousands whom you enabled to become dead and injured, arsehole.

There is no apology, but Blair sounds like a man with a guilty conscience.

He concedes that the invasion of Iraq was more about symbols than immediate security, about sending “a message of total clarity to the world,” after 9/11, that defying the will of the international community would no longer be tolerated.

Unless, like us, you're big enough to get away with it. How's that workin' out?

Blair did not want to be W.’s peripheral poodle. He wanted to “stand tall internationally” with Britain’s main ally and not “wet our knickers,” to use a Blair phrase, when the going got tough (or delusional).

You don't always get what you want. Blair and Bush were both Cheney's little fixed poodles. Either one of them could have stopped it before it happened.

It is criminally naïve, given the billions spent on intelligence, that Blair and W. muffed the postwar planning because they never perceived what Blair now acknowledges as “the true threat”: outside interference by Al Qaeda and Iran. So the reasoning of the man known in England as Phony Tony or Bliar amounts to this: They had to invade Iraq because Saddam could hypothetically hook up with Al Qaeda. But they didn’t properly prepare for the insurgency because they knew that Saddam had no link to Al Qaeda.

He knew Dick Cheney had a grandiose plan to remake the world and no patience for “namby-pamby peacenikery.”

“He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran,” as well as “Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,” Blair writes of Cheney, adding: “He was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. We’re coming after you, so change or be changed.”

The religious Blair fancied himself a conviction politician who had intervened for good in Kosovo and Sierra Leone and would do so again in Iraq. So he did not, as he said others did, “reach for the garlic and crucifixes” when Dick hatched his sulfurous schemes.

Fuck the garlic and crucifixes. Someone shoulda reached for a big pointy wooden stake and driven it through where The Dick's heart would be in a human being and at least pinned him to the ground so he couldn't move.

If he had challenged W. and Cheney instead of enabling them, Blair might have stopped the farcical rush to war. Instead, he became the midwife for a weaker Iraq that is no longer a counterweight to Iran — which actually is a nuclear threat — and that seems doomed to be run one day by another brutal strongman.

Yep, did the wrong thing, then did the thing wrong, and all for naught. Countless lives and money and Iran wins and we lose when we didn't have to even go and shouldn't have gone in the first place. And the best part? We will be paying for the failed* neocon wet dream for generations.

You fucked up right along with Bush and Congress, Blair, and all the spin and smoke and mirrors in the world won't change that.

*Actually, the neocons may have succeeded all too well. They always really wanted to make war on Iran. When Iran claims Iraq as its spoils, that might make it easier for them to beat the war drum to retaliate against Iran for undoing all 'our brave troops' and contractors did in Iraq.

Our only defense is to not let the Repugs hijack the country again.

You want to go to war with Iran? Don't vote.

Update:

From MoDo to MoJo. Heh.

In his new book, the former British prime minister asks for a fair hearing on the Iraq war. But he ignores a key meeting where George Bush suggested they con their way to an invasion.

Gotta leave out the inconvenient parts of history that would make him look like the poodle and war criminal he is. It's his own memoir after all.

Out with the old, in with the new

AP/MSNBC

BAGHDAD — Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq's ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

Well, the "end of the combat mission" didn't last very long, did it? Maybe it was the end of the old combat mission and this heralds the start of the new combat mission. Yeesh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. Combat Troops Leave Iraq While Government Stuck In Factional Gridlock
Iraqi government not doing too well either.

Blackwater Created 30 Shell Companies to Get Big Government Contracts
Millions paid out to Bluewater, Blankwater, Belchwater, Bleepwater and 26 other phony fronts.

Glenn Beck Launches Own News Site
Faces stiff competition from RavingParanoidNews.com, NutcaseNewsNetwork.com and The Wackington Post.

Federal Appeals Court Rules “Ladies Night” Promotions Constitutional
“Free Jell-O Shots for Babes” also passes legal muster.

Labor Day Music Blogging ...

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - Feel Like A Number

Fuck off ...

Why do these fucking southern Jesus freaks have to bring their traveling circuses to NYC?

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Florida televangelist Bill Keller began the first service of his new 9/11 Christian church at ground zero on Sunday.

...

"If they want to go there [the 'Ground Zero' Mosque] and preach the lies of Islam, I can come and preach the truth of the bible," Keller said.

Keller spoke before roughly three dozen supporters, with support of varying degrees.

...

Like the Muslims at the Mosque, this guy has every right to preach and build his own church. Unlike the Muslims at the Mosque, this clown is nothing more than a demagogue.

It gives me faith in my fellow NYers that there are a million people who live within walking distance from this guy's 'church' and only 36 of them showed up.

Fuck off and go home, asshole.

Quote of the Day

Ol' Fez:

...

Ooh, Lindsey Graham too! So not just Herpes, but a nasty case of Chlamydia as well.

Shopping ...

My British buddy Dave calls me a "sloppy dick" because I get all romantic with the Mrs.; I get that way about the dog(s) too. We went shopping today and bought new harnesses, bowls, and a 2-by leash. Did I mention I got two doggie coats from Queen Mary 2 (Like this one.)?

Sloppy dick indeed!

Another Choo-Choo pic. Heh ...

Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (National Archives Edition):

Other than just on general principles?

The Rude Pundit

You see that? That's the first page of George Washington's Inaugural Address. It's got eight pages. Fox "news" host and Jim-Jones-without-the-guts Glenn Beck did not hold a single page of it. He didn't even hold the clear box that it's preserved in. Why? Because it's George Washington's Inaugural Address, fucker, and no one gets to touch it because it will fucking fall apart and then America will be destroyed by angry Revolutionary War zombies. Such is its power. The only upside is that they would eat Beck first and we'd at least get to see that on YouTube.

In his new self-serving piece of worm shit website, The Blaze, a Beck ball-washer named Scott Baker writes, in a pretty much incomprehensible article, that he was there with Beck: "Did I 'hold' it? That depends on what the definition of 'hold' is. Perhaps I 'hold' it closer in my heart for having gazed upon it? Perhaps I 'hold' it in greater esteem for having pondered the care and craftsmanship of the author." Umm, Scotty, if you say, "I held my balls," that means you were cupping your sack. If you say, "I held my balls in my heart," that means you spend too much time jerking off. But, oh-ho, oh-ho, how libtarded we are, caring that "words" actually "mean" "things."

However, Beck didn't just mention the holding in passing. The Rude Pundit watched the entire day of Beckturbation. Beck made a big deal about it. He put out his hands, as if they were sanctified by their contact with the holy papers of our past. He used the image to separate himself from the unworthy masses (who couldn't call a member of Congress for a private trip to the Archives). He was transforming himself into an apostle of a white American Christianity. The proximity to the relics made him holy. Is that too far? Is that hyperbole? Then you weren't paying attention.

Beck's followers won't care, you know. They'll just dismiss it as shitting on their parade. Why should a man like Beck be held to the truth? The truth is just so many chains to the earth. The faith shall set you free. And sometimes faith requires a leap over the dissonance of facts.

Sometimes, shit. Always, to the pseudochristers.

Freedom’s Just Another Word*

*From Me and Bobby McGee. The rest of that sentence is the operative part.

Daddy Frank on Obama's tepid speech on Bush's War:

What was so grievously missing from Obama’s address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose “end” he was marking. [...]
...

Yet most everyone, regardless of age or calling or politics, is at war — not with terrorists, but with depression, with their consciences and with one another.

I hope anyone who supported that criminal war and now realizes how wrong it was never again has a good night's sleep.

Americans are less forgiving. In recent polls, 60 percent of those surveyed thought the war in Iraq was a mistake, 70 percent thought it wasn’t worth American lives, and only a quarter believed it made us safer from terrorism. This sour judgment is entirely reality-based. The war failed in all its stated missions except the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

For this sad record, more than 4,400 Americans and some 100,000 Iraqis (a conservative estimate) paid with their lives. Some 32,000 Americans were wounded, and at least two million Iraqis, representing much of the nation’s most valuable human capital, went into exile. The war’s official cost to U.S. taxpayers is now at $750 billion.

That's the official cost. The people in the know who claimed the real cost will be $3 trillion are now saying they low-balled it. I have no cites for this. When it all gets added up in a coupla generations, they probably did.

Bacevich also wrote that “common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment.” Americans’ common future demands it too. The war’s corrosive effect on the home front is no less egregious than its undermining of our image and national security interests abroad. As the Pentagon rebrands Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid,” Bacevich aptly writes — the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it.

Don't worry, we will. One of the things this country is not at all good at is taking long hard looks at ourselves. When stuff starts showing through the new coat of whitewash, we just slap on another coat. When that one inevitably fails, we just don't look at it.

And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial. Of all the pro forma passages in Obama’s speech, perhaps the most jarring was his entreaty that Iraq’s leaders “move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative and accountable.” He might as well have been talking about the poisonous political deadlock in Washington. At that moment, there was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.

Swell. Thanks again, Georgie.

Much more. Pops lets it fly.

Hey ...

They're building a new Ferrari/Maserati dealership on Long Island:

...

Right. This recession has hit everyone hard and you can't raise taxes during a recession. Of course, some people aren't actually in a recession:

...

Heaven forbid the rich might have to pay another percent or two.

Saturday Homemade Political Humor & Totally Unrelated Video Blogging

This is a good funny story that makes an excellent point. I put it to this video because dogs and snow and snow machines came up in the Brain yesterday and today and I have a warped sense of connection. Enjoy.

Utah Phillips tells a story about Will Rogers and Standard Oil from his wonderful storytelling CD "The Moscow Hold".

Headline of the Day

Jan Brewer Blames ‘Brain Freeze’ On Her Own Beheading

Heh. Reminds me of 'Nixon Under Glass' on Futurama.

Hatred and Stupidity, Lumps and Bumps and Bruises

I just love this by William Rivers Pitt!

So, yeah, not much to hang your hat on there. In the absence of anything substantive to give the American people, the right has gone home to their mothership: sowing discord, fear and hatred to distract people from the fact that, while Republicans are good at campaigning, they are walking cancer cells to the body politic if and when they actually win.

There's a joint in West Haven, Connecticut, called the Fire and Ice Hookah Lounge. By all reports (Click it! - G), it's a nifty little place; the theme is Middle Eastern, the hookah smoke is tasty, and the belly dancers are something to see indeed. Last Thursday, a fellow named Kevin Morris, also of West Haven, came ditty-bopping into Fire and Ice and staked his claim to first-ballot entry into the Dumbass Hall of Fame.

Mr. Morris, it seems, decided that any place with hookahs and belly dancers must be a festering nest of Muslims, and decided to give the patrons what-for. According to news reports, he barged through the door and started screaming racist and anti-Muslim epithets at everyone there. The crowd didn't really react until Morris tried to throttle the bartender...at which point, the patrons rose up righteous and basically beat the ever-loving Jesus out of him. Morris' mug shot looks like his face went through a wheat thresher, and as of now, he remains in police custody.

Hatred and stupidity, folks. When they ride in the same applecart, things can get truly dangerous. But sometimes, and only rarely, things can also get truly funny.

Thank you, Mr. Morris.

Indeed! That story was good for the soul and it should only happen more often. My sides, they hurt...

Now it's official ...

As you know, we had to say goodbye to our beautiful Shayna not long before we left for Europe.

Just before we got on the ship, I sent my pal Kathy from the Australian Cattle Dog Club of America an email letting her know about Shayna and asking if she knew any reputable breeders who were expecting a litter around the end of the year or spring next year (a little background, Kathy is the premier breeder of champion Cattle Dogs in the U.S. [Katwala Australian Cattle Dogs] and has her finger on the pulse). She wrote back immediately that one of hers just had a litter in July. The opportunity to get one of her pups was a pleasantly surprising twist of fate.

I asked if she had a blue girl and she replied that the puppies were all red (more background, Cattle Dogs generally come in two colors, blue and red). Okay, can't fool with Mother Nature, so I wrote back asking if she had two sisters in the litter (when Shayna was alive, we always said it would have been nice for Shayna to have someone to play with so getting two together was in the back of our minds).

Kathy then replied that she had an adolescent blue girl from a February 2009 litter whose purchase deal fell through. She was a half-sister to this current crop of puppies (same dad) and was great with the little ones. I couldn't say no.

So ... On Saturday, September 18th, we'll drive to Erie, Pennsylvania to meet Kathy and her husband to pick up Choo-Choo:

Katwala's Pardon Me Boys - "Choo-Choo"(r) with anonymous puppy.

And one of the female pups on this page.

I just received an email from Kathy yesterday confirming the date and we're ecstatic. The house has been too quiet. We are also a little nervous. One Cattle Dog pup can be a Tasmanian Devil, two will most likely make our lives ... interesting to say the least. Heh ...

And just a note: I never thought I'd have a dog with the name of "Choo-Choo". I won't change it, but I will "New York-ize" it to "Da Chooch". The name we chose for the pup is "Ziva".

And another note: We did cosider a rescue or two, but after 12 years with Shayna and all her health problems (Cattle Dogs are prone to hip, eye, and other congenital problems and rescues generally aren't tested for them), we wanted sound dogs. The only way to assure that was to buy from a reputable breeder. While I wouldn't trade the time and expense for anything, the sleepless nights, administering medications several times a day, and the emotional drain were wearying. It'll be tiring enough chasing after two young ones without the added dimension.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Classic Emmylou.

From 1980 German TV

Emmylou Harris ~ To Daddy

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Home ...

Just finishing up the unpacking, then calling the pizza guy to deliver. I'll be back later ...

Update:

Pics you'll never see in a cruise line commercial. Heh ...

On Moosebreath

We gotta go out and do our shopping for the weekend before the locusts descend on our grocery store, so I'll leave you with a recommendation to read the big story about Moosebreath in Vanity Fair.

The woman is a vengeful, petty, self-centered, hot tempered unhappy shrew, but whether she's blowing hot or cold, one thing is for certain - she blows. This quote sums it up pretty good:

[...] “You’re just putting on a show. You’re so fake,” one of the children said when Palin made a point of praying in front of other people. “This is not who you are. Why are you pretending to be something you’re not?”

Money and power, child, money and power. She's gotta get it before her fake little world collapses around her and her gullible public. Soon, let us pray.

Update:

We got to the market at 11:30. Waaaay too late. They're already here.

I scored a free snowmobile yesterday that had been abandoned at a house a coupla doors down that's in foreclosure. The Realtor-In-Charge was happy that I would get it outta there. All I know so far is that it's a Yamaha Phazer, probably of 1984-'89 vintage, worth maybe $300, started easy and ran well enough to get it the few hundred feet to home. Must investigate my new toy further, so see yas later.

Headline of the Day

Major human trafficker is huge GOP donor who fought illegal immigration

Why doesn't this surprise me...?

In Case You Missed It

Raw Story

Countdown: Olbermann, Scahill thank Bush for the ‘success’ of the Iraq war

Yes, thanks a great steaming pile, Georgie. You want 'credit' for the worst foreign policy blunder in American history and its attendant war crimes? It's all yours. Asshole.

'They' say that it really isn't healthy to keep things bottled up inside. On Wed. evening's MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the liberal host and his guest, The Nation's Jeremy Scahill went the healthy route and let it rip.

"These people have a Ph.D in lying and a master's degree in manipulating intelligence," Scahill says of the neocons, "And it is, it's really sobering to see this kind of brash historical revisionism happening in real time. The idea that these people want to post some kind of false flag of victory on the corpses of all who have died in Iraq because of their decisions. These people destabilized Iraq, they destabilized the Middle East, with their neo-con vision of redrawing maps, and they didn't even succeed in their own stated mission. This is a special kind of pathological sickness that these individuals are plagued with."

Thanks to PoliticsNewsNews.

The Cry for Democratic Moral Leadership and Effective Communication

If you don't read anything else today, read these:

George Lakoff at Truthout:

If you have not read Drew Westin's outstanding piece "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November" on The Huffington Post, AlterNet, and other venues, read it immediately. Westin states as eloquently and forcefully as anyone what he, I, and other progressives have been saying from the beginning of the Obama administration. I agree fully with everything he says. But ...

Westin's piece is incomplete in crucial ways. His piece can be read as saying that this election is about kitchen table economics (right) and only kitchen table economics (wrong).

This election is about more than just jobs and mortgages and adequate health care. All politics is moral. All political leaders say to do what they propose because it is right. No political leaders say to do what they say because it is wrong. Morality is behind everything in politics - and progressives and conservatives have different moral systems.

In the conservative moral system, the highest value is preserving and extending the moral system itself. That is why they keep saying no to Obama's proposals, even voting against their own ideas when Obama accepts them. To give Obama any victory at all would be a blow to their moral system. Their moral system requires non-cooperation. That is a major thing the Obama administration has not understood.

I won't go too deep into Repug "morals" except to say they're mean-spirited racist throwback bastards who lie and fearmonger. The end justifies the means, no matter what. All they want at the top is power and obeisance from the bottom. 'Top' and 'bottom' are carefully chosen words.

From the link:

Following the conventional wisdom, Democrats return to their all-too-familiar defensive crouch, and conclude that when in trouble, tack right. [...]
...

The White House starts adopting failed conservative policies and talking points that leave the public utterly confused about where the president, and by extension, his party, stands on the central issues of the day. [...]
...

The underlying psychological assumption of these moves is that if you mix policies from the right and left in equal parts, you win the center. In fact, no one has ever won the center that way. It appears weak, opportunistic, and incoherent to the average swing voter, which is particularly problematic at a time when people in the center desperately want to know that their leaders have a vision and a coherent plan for what to do (which is why both FDR and Ronald Reagan were so effective in moving voters in the center). It doesn't win any votes on the right. But it does have one predictable effect: It sucks the motivation out of your base, who feel demoralized and betrayed (if they're part of the "professional left") or less likely to vote (if they're average voters who don't follow politics carefully but just don't feel very enthusiastic anymore, even if they don't really know why).

Much, much more in both pieces.

VI

Six years at this pop stand. Holy crap.

Glenn Beck's liberation theology obsession

Tim Rutten in the LATimes. Sub-head:

The Fox News personality is strangely bent on linking the president -- and race -- to liberation theology, evidence to the contrary be damned.

Op-ed follows, and its last line:

Perhaps Beck should go back to peddling misinformation about the Founding Fathers, who have been dead too long to complain.

They're spinning in their graves too fast to comment as well. Heh.

Sharron Angle’s Plan For Education: Eliminate All Of It

Think Progress

Speaking at a forum for the right-wing Steamboat Institute last week, Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle effectively declared that public schools should cease to exist. [...]

Oh, indeed! Church- and home-schooled kids without even the minimal secular education they now receive will be much more ignorant and thus better indoctrinated right-wing apparatchiks.

Kudos, Harry! Planting her was your best idea ever!

Funny story: I watch Reno TV for a half hour on weeknights because I like to watch Jeopardy! There are NO commercials these days besides Reid and Angle. I take that back - there's usually one for a muffler shop or a personal injury shyster, but the campaign ads predominate.

Here's the funny part: one ad goes through all of Angle's negatives - well, as many as they can squeeze into one ad - and the voice-over ends with "Sharron Angle - wrong for Nevada" and out and immediately, not a split second later, into the next ad beginning "I'm Sharron Angle and I approve this message".

Heh. They knocked off running those two ads in that order after a coupla times, but just for a minute there it sounded like Angle was admitting she's a Reid plant.

Things the President Left Out of His Big Speech

In italics, from Michael Collins at The Agonist:

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home. But before I do that, we need a moment of truth. The Iraq war was based on a deliberate lie involving the White House distorting the National intelligence estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The report got it wrong on WMD. There were none. But it concluded that the only way the nonexistent WMD would be used against the United States was in retaliation for a US attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam Hussein. By deleting this information, the Bush-Cheney White House justified a preemptive invasion without any basis, a crime under international law that our nation helped establish after World War II.

We’re treating the signature wounds of today’s wars -- post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury -- while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. These veterans and all those lost and injured would be here today, never have needed treatment were it not for the illegal invasion. As a result, I'm appointing one of the nation's greatest prosecutors, Vincent Bugliosi, to prosecute those responsible for the injuries and deaths of all U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq.

More.

I think we learned something very valuable from Bush's Criminal War: If you're going to lie the nation into an an unnecessary war of criminal aggression, it's important to fearmonger the citizenry into a stinky lather, yes, but it's much more important to scare the crap outta the politicians whom they vote for, very few of whom will do the right thing when their seat on the gravy train might be put at risk.

One question for President Obama about something else that was noticeably not in his speech: Besides staggering debt, the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, and the unbridled scorn of the rest of the world, what did we GAIN from the Iraq clusterfuck?

[Crickets]

Update:

A word about the final outcome of the monumental neocon blunder of Iraq as I see it.

The 50,000 American troops still in theater are there ostensibly to 'advise and assist' and will no doubt do that to the best of their considerable ability, but they remain there as a tripwire to try to keep Iran from waltzing into Iraq right now as the victor claiming its spoils, much the same function as our troops in South Korea have had for 57 years.

Once they are gone at the end of next year, the best we can hope for is that Iran will wait a decent interval so that the fall of Iraq will not be blamed directly on us, though it will be and rightly so. The mostly Sunni Arab world will not be happy when the Persian Shiites are strengthened by 20-something-million more Shiites. Your guess is as good as mine about what may happen next. It will not be pleasant.

Note to the American embassy in Baghdad: build more helipads in anticipation of the final comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. See Fall of Saigon.

‘Why Has He Fallen Short?’

Daddy Frank in The New York Review of Books with a review of Jonathan Alter's The Promise and some comments on Obama's Presidency, leans toward the economic side. Worth a read. A coupla ¶:

His achievements so far have been accomplished in spite of obstacles that would fell most mortals—the almost uncountable messes he inherited from Bush-Cheney, a cratered economy, a sclerotic Congress in thrall to lobbyists and special-interest money, and a rabid opposition underwritten by a media empire that owns both America’s most-watched cable news channel and its most highly circulated newspaper. Indeed it could be argued that the matrix of crises facing Obama would have outmatched any Bush successor, no matter how talented. (They certainly would have drowned John McCain, whose utter cluelessness about the economic crisis alarmed even his Republican allies in 2008.) But Obama knew what he was getting into when he ran for president, and the question that matters now is how he can do the job better.

Can Obama self-correct? He remains the same driven, smart, psychologically balanced leader we saw in the campaign, and to these familiar attributes, Alter adds another quality that is less frequently displayed in public—an utter lack of sentimentality. He’s “the most unsentimental man I’ve ever met,” says one aide, summing up for many of his peers. That trait may be the most useful of all if Obama undertakes the ruthless course corrections that are essential to the realization of his promise.

I think Obama's biggest mistakes so far are a) trying to achieve bipartisanship with pols who want him to fail at all costs so they can regain power, and b) putting people in charge of the economy who helped cause the problem in the first place.

Lack of sentimentality? Who the fuck cares? Ruthless? He'd better.

And she said "yes" ... again!

For our 20th Wedding Anniversary, we retook our wedding vows aboard Queen Mary 2. We're 2 days out from New York and it looks we'll meet up with hurricane Earl just as we reach the Ambrose Lightship. We had great fun for the past three weeks, but it will be good to get home.