Interesting graphic. Please share this with your audience by clicking the image. Let’s stop corporate corruption and loopholes once and for all!
Powered by abcbizloans.com

Powered by Christian Rehab

It’s becoming an article of faith, no pun intended, that the GOP (as presently represented by the most loathsome faces of the party) finds itself hip deep in elephant poo. Even Republican-leaning pundits and “strategists” are lamenting on how far the party has fallen, in such a relatively short period of time. What they can’t seem to wrap their heads around is how to get their leadership heading back in the right direction.

Therein lays their biggest problem: when the best the Republican party leadership can do is to trot out John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush as the “new face” of the GOP, the poo pile seems bottomless.

Based on the numbers in a recent GOP internal poll obtained by the Associated Press, the situation might be even more grave than the most loyal of the Republican loyalists imagined:

Republicans are widely viewed by the public as less competent than Democrats to handle issue ranging from health care to education and energy, according to internal polling presented to top GOP officials in Congress…

The survey found the public holds greater confidence in Democrats than in Republicans in handling most of the issues that are involved in Obama’s legislative agenda…Democrats were favored by a margin of 61 percent to 29 percent on education; 59 percent to 30 percent on health care and 59 percent to 31 percent on energy…Democats were also viewed with more confidence in handling taxes, long a Republican strong suit. The only issue among nine in the survey where the two parties were rated as even was in the war on terror.

The survey found Obama’s job approval at 62 percent.

However, lest we get too cocky about the current state of the GOP, let’s remember that it wasn’t so long ago that conventional political wisdom held forth that the GOP was heading for a permanent political majority in America.

National politics is a particularly fickle animal, and it would only take a few negative events to turn opinion quickly. The Dems retook the majority not so much based on their own ideas and plans, but because those of the GOP had become so absolutely toxic.

The time nears for the Democratic Party leadership to put the boldest of plans in motion: an inclusive national healthcare plan that leaves no American without access to good medical care, labor laws that favor workers over corporations, and an end to regressive tax laws that cause the working class to shoulder a disproportionate share of the common tax burden.

Do those three things, and the Democratic Party will be closer to a true permanent majority than the GOP ever dreamed of having.

The die were cast in Pennsylvania when Obama was elected. The 20%ers who supported George Bush are the God, guns and bitterness crowd, and they are awfully bitter about everything Obama. Frankly, Arlen Specter isn’t bitter enough for their tastes. There has been tons of talk about Pat Toomey, extremist right winger that he is on both the Christian and taxation front, challenging Specter, and with so many moderate Republicans leaving the party in PA, Specter was going to have some big troubles in next year’s Republican primary. So what’s happening? Arlen Specter is becoming a Republican.

You can read Chris Cillizza on the subject at his column in the Washington Post, but I’ll quote from Mr. Specter himself, from his campaign web site:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank especially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

Well, that is stunning political news. The Democrats are now almost cloture-proof, and while Arlen says his will be a vote of conscience over party, to get the Democratic nod he is going to have to bend a bit to the will of the Democratic Party in the next year or so. I suppose this is not stunning in the sense that Arlen Specter truly does not look or act like Pennsylvania Republicans anymore. That breed of citizen is a dwindling population that has backed too many losing efforts over the last several years. Who can forget, after all, Rick Santorum’s historic loss a few years ago as an incumbent?

I understand Mr. Specter has promised to give back political contributions from supporters if they do not agree with his decision. Of the people I know who have given him money, I know of many who will be cheering this move. Yes, even some in my own household will be cheering.

So what caused this switch? I’d say the Republican Party becoming too extremist is what caused it. I would not be surprised if other Republican Congressmen and Senators follow Specter’s example, though there are so few moderates left in the Republican Party, that I wouldn’t predict many. Moderate Republican? That’s what is called an endangered species.

It seems our policemen are not safe anymore. The Northwest Florida Daily News says “None of it makes sense,” but it supposedly didn’t make sense in Pittsburgh either with Richard Poplawski. That killing of police officers also started with a domestic disturbance, with something seemingly mundane, a verbal spat with his mother. Richard Poplawsi was also former military, and failed military at that. Perhaps the important thing there was what Foxnews reported at the time, that Richard Poplawski was afraid of the Obama Administration. Oh, Richard Poplawski’s shoting spree did make sense, as I reported here. He was frightened by the Obama Administration because his loose screws got agitated by high-profile wingding talkers who have been trying to frighten everyone in America about the Obama Administration. And that’s how it is beginning to look like Joshua Cartwright’s shooting spree is making sense.

Let’s look at some of the story from the Northwest Florida Daily News story on Joshua Cartwright’s shooting spree that left two policemen dead:

An offense report filed against Cartwright the day he died outlines an angry husband who threatened his wife, kept guns and knives on hand, was “severely disturbed” that Barack Obama had been elected president, and believed the U.S. government was conspiring against him.

Arthur Delaney of Huffington Post has it this way:

According to the police report, Elizabeth Cartwright said her husband “believed that the US Government was conspiring against him. She said he had been severely disturbed that Barack Obama had been elected President.”

That’s five police officers dead because of two men with screws loose who believed Barack Obama was out to get them or their guns or both.

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, has been getting some flak from the right wingers for a report recently put out about how right wing organizations might be trying to recruit returning soldiers into militia movements bent on violence and terrorism. You know, I don’t care whether that report, begun under the Bush Administration, is right, wrong or indifferent. I do care that we get to the bottom of right wing nutjobs who have been subtly encouraged to start shooting policemen. This should never happen in our country, and we should not take it lying down.

Is it the easy access to guns we should focus on? Yes. Is it nutjobs we should focus on? Yes. Racism? Yes. But what about the nutjobs on our airwaves who encourage gun ownership with no responsibility? Yes, I’d like to see a focus there as well. Glenn Beck? Take a step forward and claim some responsibility for the hysteria you are encouraging.

Man, this should not go on any longer. Janet Napolitano should not have apologized. Instead I want to see a report come out next about how to deny nutjobs the rights to own guns. Heck, violent nutjobs like Cartwright shouldn’t be allowed to marry, nor join the military, nor vote. Gee, two of three of those rights aren’t even granted in full to gay citizens. When’s the last time we had a gay man or woman gun down a few policemen?

There’s the bottom line. Right wing Christian whack jobs aren’t going to get nearly as upset about this nutjob Cartwright, who shot up a big chunk of the Okaloosa police force, as they are getting upset at gay men and women whose only desire is to get married. They’re all concerned in Iowa over the solomn commitments of gay citizens to love one another. Those folks needs their heads and morals straightened out. And, yes, there are priorities in morality. Murder is far more evil than love. Gee, doesn’t everyone know that?

John McCain decided to whine yesterday. Loud whine, partisan whine. The whine came just a day after the release of the Senate Armed Services Report on torture that he signed, a report that devastatingly details the abuses during the Bush Administration. that report has helped fuel the calls for investigations and possible prosecutions concerning the illegal use of torture presumably ordered by Bush Administration officials. So John McCain is partly responsibile for feeding the public’s interest in justice, but he’s whining about what would happen if such an investigation gets underway. He warns about a “witch hunt,” as reported by Politico:

The former GOP presidential nominee and POW supported Obama’s decision to end the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques but insisted that those who gave legal advice should not be prosecuted because they were “sworn to do their duty to the best of their ability.”

“Look, I didn’t agree, as you said, with the techniques – and I’d be glad to continue that debate with people. But to criminalize their legal counsel, unless you can prove that they intentionally violated existing laws or ethics, then this is going to turn into a witch hunt,” he said.

McCain compared the potential prosecutions with the actions of “banana republics” that “prosecute people for actions they didn’t agree with under previous administrations.”

“To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents – precedents that may be set by this, and certainly nonproductive in trying to pursue the challenges we face,” he said.

First of all, John McCain, these lawyers on the Bush Administration team may indeed have been doing the best in their ability, but it is clear now that their abilities were just fine as far as legal skills are concerned, and about nil as far as understanding and valuing the constitution. But this is a side issue. What we are talking about when we want justice concerning the illegal actions of the Bush Administration doesn’t have to do so much with the tainted lawyers, but about the people who ordered the policies that caused torture int he first place. That ain’t a witch hunt, John, and it ain’t just about disagreements in policy. This is about illegal acts that your report claims has massively damaged US reputation around the world and consequently our abilities to combat terrorism. It’s about crime, John.

McCain buggy whips out phrases like “witch hunt” and “banana Republic” in order to inflame things politically, but his own people are doing even uglier things. If John McCain values his party, of which he was the leader mere months ago, then he needs to take the lead in calming the rhetoric about “socialism,” and other crackpot crap. If McCain wants bipartisanship that lets us look forward without healing the wounds made to our national soul by the Bush torture policies, then he ought to check a little about whether bipartisanship is possible on his side of the aisle. The “Just Say No” faction of the GOP, which appears to be all of them, isn’t going to reconcile whatsoever even if Obama is successful in making the inquiries into Bush Administration torture programs go forward calmly and deliberately.

Of course, John McCain knows there are more reports going to come out, including a release of pictures of the degrading treatment of prisoners conducted under the Bush Administration. Heck, today’s report about over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths isn’t going to help McCain, and he knows that the calls for a reconciliation commission, the calls for accountability, are going to ring louder before they quiet down. And John McCain knows that Americans are happy with Barack Obama as President, are for the first time in a long time Americans are believing that this country is going the right direction.

John McCain needs to get his own political house in order before he goes slinging words like “banana Republic” and “witch hunt” around. Let’s dismiss that “banana Republic” is a new talking point foisted on him by the RNC and look at realities here. John, we have illegalities that have almost certainly gone down in the Bush Administration. Those illegalities revolve around the use of torture, among other issues. The crimes that have taken place have severely harmed our national moral image, the one thing America could always be proud of. John, YOU were proud to serve because America was a moral beacon to the world, but while you were serving, John, another Republican President broke laws. With Watergate we took the miscreants to task and it did not harm our country. I would argue it made us better. I need, and we all need, for America to be better. Don’t stand in our way, John McCain, as we seek to heal. Don’t you dare.

The explosive results of a Senate investigation on the genesis and conduct of Bush administration torture policies were released yesterday. The report sheds a lot of light into the official decision making process to engage in interrogation techniques that very clearly cross the line to torture. In fact, the report (and analysis of the report here, here, here, and here) lays out what appears to be a compelling case for immediately convening a war crimes tribunal. Yet President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, responding to questions this past Sunday regarding the release last week of CIA torture memos, very forcefully reiterated that the administration will not pursue prosecution of former Bush administration officials and advisers who designed and/or approved the torture programs and techniques.

Most of the punditry this morning is orbiting around the torture aspects of the congressional report. But there is a subtext to the report outside of the decision to torture that demands further exploration: the Bush administration’s single-minded focus, post-9/11, to take down Saddam Hussein. While the decision to torture is certainly prosecutable, in terms of real impact, using torture to falsely make a tenuous al-Qaida connection to Saddam (and therefore justify the invasion of Iraq) is at least as egregious in scope. While hundreds, or possibly even a few thousands, of alleged “bad guys” may have been tortured by the CIA and other agencies in order to extract intel, and yes, a few might have even died in the process, untold hundreds of thousands have died or been permanently maimed during the prosecution of a war based on a mountain of lies.

In his 2004 book, Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke gave us the first glimpse into the beginnings of building this public narrative of lies and justifications for Iraq, in this exchange with George W. Bush on September 12, 2001:

“…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…”

“Absolutely [Mr. President], we will look…again.” I was trying to be more respectful, more responsive. “But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda, and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.”

“Look into Iraq, Saddam,” the President said testily, and left us…

In August, 2006, an inquiry by the Inspector General of the Army interviewed Major Paul Burney, MD, a psychiatrist who was assigned to oversee the detainee interrogation program at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Dr. Burney testified (page 41 of the report):

(U) At the time, there was a view by some at GTMO that interrogation operations had not yielded the anticipated intelligence,²⁹⁰ MAJ. Burney testified to the Army IG regarding interrogations:

[T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.²⁹¹

(Perhaps it would be useful to investigate who the “frustrated people” were – I suspect that the names Cheney and Rumsfeld might pop up in such an investigation.)

Though it takes awhile for the report to establish a timeline for approval and implementation of torture techniques, it’s clear that the ball was rolling in late 2001, when involvement by the Department of Defense’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) was requested by the DoD’s Office of General Counsel. JRPA manages training for U.S. military personnel on resisting torture techniques. And the agency was now being requested to develop an interrogation process for detainees captured by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Why?

Here are a couple of reasons: 1) Detainees weren’t giving up any actionable information on al Qaida. 2) Detainees weren’t giving up (or making up) information that would further establish the connection between al Qaida leadership and the government of Saddam Hussein.

It did not matter that personnel assigned to JRPA characterized torture techniques as essentially useless in extracting actionable information. Very early on, JRPA was clear that using torture never resulted in extracting useful information beyond what the torturee thought interrogators wanted to hear, whether or not there was any truth to the information.

The bottom line: the whole game was initially constructed to make the linkage between bin Laden and Saddam, because U.S. intelligence could not, in the aftermath of 9/11/01, make the connection. The development of Bush administration policies on torture had very little to do with actually preventing another attack on U.S. soil.

It was always about Saddam, from the very beginning. Maybe that’s where prosecutions should lead.

We saw the memo outlining authorized methods of enhanced interrogation under the Bush Administration. When I say they used insects on Abu Zubaydah, I wondered as an aside why they didn’t use snakes. Hey, if Indiana Jones hates snakes, even Chuck Norris would hate snakes, right? Well, now we know. They were too busy waterboarding Abu Zubaydah to deal with snakes. They waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times in one month, which doesn’t come near the 183 times they waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in one month. Emptywheel at Firedoglake has the links to the CIA memos where this is detailed.

Man, that’s a lot of waterboarding. I’d hate to have to pay that water bill. And I’d hate to have to be the one to figure out the gibberish that crap produced. As to defending the practice, only a Rush Limbaugh could even try, and as head of the Republican Party he surely will.

Trailing Democrat Scott Murphy in the vote count in the special Congressional election in District 20 in New York, Republican Jim Tedisco has asked the court to declare him the winner. Yes, it boggles the mind, but he’s a Republican, so he feels entitled. Heck, Tedisco felt entitled to challenge the election results before election day was even over, so this reach for an entutlement should surprise us no at all. From the Register-Star in New York:

20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.

According to The Associated Press, Murphy leads Tedisco by 178 votes district wide – 79,452 to 79,274. The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

Tedisco is also asking the court to authorize recanvasing of all machine ballots to acquire the “proper” tallies. He would like them to reassess the validity of absentee votes already counted, and keep ballots challenged by Tedisco unopened. County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin said this new development could result in the election taking quite a bit more time to be decided. She would not venture a guess on how long it will be before the 20th District has a representative in congress.

Beyond that we desperately need a name for the Republican Entitlement Syndrome that seemingly dictates that Americans are not allowed to have deomcratically elected representatives until the Republicans get all their legal whining out of the way, it is time to recognize this as the biggest feature of the Republican strategy going forward. No plans for the nation’s future, no cures for economic problems, and no coherent leadership. They are offering us sex-crazed teabagging parties, a dose of “Just Say No” to everything not proposed by Republicans, and withholding democratic representation through childlike legal fits.

Let’s get a name for this trend. I’ll start off. How about “Just Say No to Democracy?” It fits with their other stances, no?

They are also writing about this development at DKos.

I’m going to predict that this Republican sexcapade (Hot Lesbian Action in Virginia GOP circles!) masquerading as a Teabagging patriotic thing is going to turn out to be a bunch of nothing today. but there’s a little room for drama here. No, Marilyn Chambers will not be appearing at the Alamo with Glenn Beck. Beck, though, might just blow another gasket, and he seems to have an inexhausible supply of them, so I’m not sure Glenn Beck will go insane, or at least to the point getting hospitalization. Yesterday Beck was on a tear advocating secession, though he refrained from the real tears this time.

There’s my son Jack to the left, rubbing his hands with glee. He doesn’t get any popcorn, since he has no teeth, after all, but he will join me watching the right-wingnuttery this afternoon.

This is all about Faux populists led by FauxNews backed up by funding from Gingrich and Dick Army of course. It is an astroturfed grassroots movement, and that’s been shown many times. But who are these people attracted to the teabagging? It appears they are the same people clinging to the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t really born in the Us, that he’s a secret Muslim, etc. Check it out – teabaggers in Cleveland, 100% of those asked, held strange conspiracy theories as truth. There is a racist coloring to this astroturfing, and as such there’s no surprise that they are attracting members of Stormfront in droves, so that they might recruit to swell their rank ranks. All this teabagging is causing a whole bunch of trouble in Congress, where leaking envelopes of the stuff are attracting security concerns, but the Republicans don’t care. This sex-crazed teabag stunt is the only idea they’ve got.

Ideas? The Republicans are void of ideas. Some Republicans might be struggling to find some ideas with which to center their party, ideas other than sex-crazed orgies, but there’s no success on that score in sight. I’m guessing there will be more fracturing of the GOP before there is any unity, and that unity might end up with a lot smaller base than the Republicans enjoy now. The infighting that has occured so far between some Republicans and their leader will pale in comparison with what’s to come. As Juan Cole aptly notes, the Republicans are freaking out in response to virtually ever move from the Obama White House, not that I’m crying tears over that. Heck, that’s why I’ve got the popcorn, after all.

The real problem for Republicans and this stupid faux anti-tex movement is that Americans don’t agree with them, in huge numbers. That’s according to a recent poll where huge numbers of Americans say they don’t mind an increase int he size of government with the aim of getting us out of this recession. From USA Today:

A USA TODAY analysis of the survey finds demographic divisions when it comes to what the federal government should do.

– The largest group, 37% of respondents, is comfortable with big government and solidly behind Obama. Nine of 10 approve of the job the president is doing and 85% endorse the government’s expanded role to deal with the financial crisis. Nearly all of them see big business as a more foreboding threat to the country than Big Government.

This group is mostly Democratic and includes the most liberals. It has more women than men and is slightly younger and better educated than the sample as a whole.

“I don’t worry about Big Government,” says Lillie Thomas, 74, a retired hotel housekeeping supervisor in Las Vegas. “We should try to help people get back to work and get better health care.”

– At the other end of the spectrum is a smaller group that is solidly against the expansion of government and Obama’s approach. Even the plan to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, supported by at least three of four people in every other group, is backed by just 8%.

Members of this group, which includes 21% of respondents, tend to be white and male with education and income levels above the average. They are overwhelmingly Republican and mostly conservative.

Letting the market work – even if that means allowing automakers such as GM and Chrysler to fail – would be better than giving the government a say in the companies’ leadership and direction, says John Cronkwright, 40, a civil engineer from Liverpool, N.Y. “If we start telling these companies, –You’ve got to make this product and that product,’ that’s not really the American way of free enterprise,” he says. “That’s more toward socialism.”

– In the middle is a group that supports Obama’s plan but without much enthusiasm. Most say the government needs to take action to fix the country’s economic problems; they also want government’s reach cut back when the crisis is over.

These reluctant supporters, 15% of respondents, make up the most bipartisan group. A majority are Democrats but nearly four in 10 are Republicans. They are evenly divided between men and women, and the group reflects the national average in income and education.

Pedro Navarro, 21, lives in Muskegon, which has the highest unemployment rate of anywhere in hard-hit Michigan. He is working in a factory that makes truck parts but has seen friends and family members lose their jobs. As for the rescue plan for Detroit, “I believe it’s warranted to keep the auto industry up on its feet. Otherwise, the industry will pretty much go under.”

Even so, he worries about the government wasting money, and he says it “should step back a little bit” when businesses regain their footing.

– The final group is conflicted and uncertain. They both approve of the job Obama is doing and oppose most of the initiatives he has proposed. This group, 27% of respondents, has the lowest average income and education levels of the four groups as well as the largest proportion of women.

“I’m not sitting where I can see all the ins-and-outs,” says Edna Baatile, 60, of Tulsa, a former human resources manager for American Airlines. “I guess I just have to keep praying every day for the president and his advisers that they make the right decisions, because nobody knows.”

Yeah, that group where the teabaggers fall is about 21% in this poll. They don’t even want to help homeowners rooked out of their homes and life’s savings. Realpolitic would say that’s a bad way to attract voters. But FauxNews is egging these folks on today to be heard! They’ll be carrying their misspelled signs and hollaring about some inane conspiracy theories and generally showing the true face of the Republican Party nowadays, the Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber and George Bush face of it. Failure. Man, this is going to be a good thing for Democratic chances in 2010!

Let me be clear on one thing. I do not predict violence from these people today. Insanity, yes, especially from Glenn Beck. But I do not predict violence, as much as Beck might hope for it for reasons of boosting his ratings.