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not the civil war they dreamt of

hostage-taking 101: time is not on your side! — especially when your confederates chase different goals, expect different ransoms, serve different masters and respond differently to stress. should the theatrics play out too long, hands at each others' throats may be your only reward ...

salon: appearing on MSNBC on friday, congressman peter king continued his epic verbal assault on ted cruz — and, to a lesser extent, rand paul — by describing the texas senator as a "RINO" (republican in name only) and a "fraud."

speaking with MSNBC's andrea mitchell, king called the ongoing government shutdown "the strategy of ted cruz" and wondered aloud "why more republicans around the country didn't join me in denouncing ted cruz" before the shutdown began. "we cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of ted cruz and rand paul," king continued, describing cruz and paul as "isolationists" and "RINOs" who "don't represent traditional republican principles."

"ted cruz, what he did here, was lead the party into a dead end with no strategy, somehow convincing a number of house republicans that we just sent this to through senate as far as defunding and closing down the government, he would manage to get harry reid and president obama to back down," said king. "he never had a plan. it was fraudulent from the start. and we have to cut this guy off now."

TPM: mccain's appearance on fox came shortly after sen. ted cruz (R-TX), the leader of the movement to defund the health care law, spoke at the values voter summit. maccallum asked mccain how he felt about cruz "representing" republicans at a meeting scheduled for friday at the white house.

"first of all, martha, please, he's not representing us there" ...

daily kos: [tex rep louis gohmert:] "when it comes to the shutdown that's going on, i heard just before i came some senator from arizona, uh, a guy that liked qaddafi before he wanted to bomb him, a guy that liked mubarak before he wanted him out, a guy that's been to syria and supported al qaeda and rebels, but he was saying today the shutdown has been a fool's errand. and i agree with him. the president and harry reid should not have shut this government down!"

TPM: tensions are flaring between house and senate republicans over how to defuse the crisis ahead of an oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline. house GOP members expressed concerns during a private saturday meeting that the senate GOP would undercut and jam them by striking a deal with president barack obama that conservatives dislike.

... "they're trying to cut the house out, and trying to jam us with the senate," a fired-up [WI rep. paul] ryan told reporters after the GOP meeting. "we're not going to roll over and take that."

breitbart: on his radio show on friday, fox news host sean hannity said house speaker john boehner (R-OH), along with the rest of the republican leadership in the house, had to be replaced.

"i do think leadership in the house needs to change," hannity said. "i don't think john boehner is equipped for the job. i don't think he has the stomach to negotiate. i don't think he has the ability to communicate the positive, solution-oriented vision for the country."

... he said the GOP has a "communications problem" that has been reflected in the party's bad poll numbers.

hannity also ripped republican leaders in washington for "alienating" the tea party. hannity named senators like john mccain (R-AZ) and bob corker (R-TN) for being the top offenders and said their "unwillingness to stand strong" and constant bashing of the tea party is "irritating every conservative i know."

AP: "we're not saying obama is right. we're saying what republicans are doing is wrong," said matt cox, a former executive director of ohio's cuyahoga county GOP.

TPM: erick erickson, prominent conservative blogger, said on his blog friday that he will be donating to the primary opponents of house speaker john boehner (R-OH) and senate minority leader mitch mcconnell (R-KY) because of the way both leaders are approaching negotiations on the continuing resolution and debt ceiling.

"republican leaders in washington, DC are signaling they will cave on the fight against obamacare," erickson wrote. "GOP leaders, by caving, are signaling they want us to primary them."

erickson blamed the GOP's sinking approval ratings on boehner and other republican leaders.

"[n]ow that john boehner and the orange man group of capitol hill are the faces of the GOP, obamacare's popularity is going back up and the GOP's popularity is going back down," erickson wrote.

redState: but john boehner, eric cantor, mitch mcconnell, and john cornyn will ensure that obamacare is fully funded and give the american public no delay like businesses have.

in doing so, they will sow the seeds of a real third party movement that will fully divide the republican party.

washington post: conservative groups that advocated for a standoff spoke openly about their motives. at a breakfast with reporters wednesday, michael needham, chief executive of the conservative group heritage action, freely admitted that he was "pretty optimistic" that we will soon see a crackup of the old republican order.

thinkProgress: as the government shutdown enters its eleventh day and the nation races towards a possible default, a growing number of republican lawmakers, leaders, and voters are publicly blaming congressional republicans for the budget impasse. ...

"it's time for someone to act like a grown-up in this process," former new hampshire gov. john sununu (R) told the associated press. michigan gov. rick snyder (R) agreed, remarking on monday that "this is not how we should operate. it shouldn't be about people fighting and yelling.' "the bottom line is we need that money in our economy to save rural hospitals and jobs in the rural areas," arizona gov. jan brewer (R) told the arizona daily star on thursday, criticizing the GOP'e effort to defund the affordable care act.

the criticism comes as an associated press-GfK poll released wednesday showed that "three-quarters of republicans nationally said their party in congress deserves a moderate degree or most of the blame for the shutdown" ...

in yet another sign of trouble for the GOP, business interests are also showing signs of discontent, signaling a possible rift with republicans ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections.

iowa republicans "are recruiting a pro-business republican to challenge six-term conservative rep. steve king (R), a leader in the push to defund the health care law," the associated press reports and party establishment leaders in michigan are threatening to recruit and fund challengers to rep. justin amash (R) and other tea party aligned candidates.

TNR: "the business community has got to stand up and say we are not going to back the most self-described conservative candidate. we are going to back the candidates that are the most rational," says john feehery, a former aide to delay and hastert who is now president of quinn gillespie & associates, a washington lobbying firm.

what washington business lobbyists say on-the-record about the house republicans and about tea party activists pales before what they are willing to say if their names aren't used. one former republican staffer says of the anti-establishment groups, "they want to go in and fuck shit up. these non-corporate non-establishmentarian guys — that is exactly what they are doing. and the problem with that is obvious. what next? what happens after you fuck shit up?"

conservatives went looking for fresh plunder from the administration in a raid that was supposed to pit republican vs. democrat — not GOP vs. GOP and certainly not along every conceivable fissure:

house vs. senate.

extreme vs. moderate.

upstart vs. established.

ideology vs. money.

anarchy vs. order.

none of them came prepared for a suddenly resolute president or a unified party behind him. no one expected to run into a veritable stone wall — against which the GOP, to its own horror, seem incapable of thwarting the urge to batter itself delirious, in what historians might one day call the "republican war into irrelevance".

what a difference a week makes

freeperville, oct 4:

lol. the plan is obama caves.

what don’t you understand?

we are on the verge of an historic CONSERVATIVE victory.

what’s not to like?

(by st_thomas_aquinas)

oct 11:

[texas congressman louis] gomert [sic] on beck’s show today, just before noon EST, saying that boehner is now in a meeting with obama, and is “giving up on 98-99% of obamacare, so they [RINOs] can say that they got something from obama.”

so yeah, the cave is in progress.

i guess the NBC/WSJ rush is talking about spooked them.

as beck says, it's time to defund the GOP. tea party candidates only. no collaborators need apply.

(by st_thomas_aquinas)

RINOs = "republicans in name only"

acme wingnuts

romney unplugged

(original artwork by alex ross)

fox news:

bill o'reilly: i don't understand what the controversy is. i think mr. romney should campaign on this point. if i'm governor romney, i run with this all day long.

sean hannity: it is romney unplugged as the GOP presidential nominee delivers one of his sharpest critiques yet of president obama and the entitlement society that he enables.

stuart varney: i think this will be seen as a win for romney.

pollster nate silver @ fivethirtyeight:

after a secretly recorded videotape was released on sept. 17 showing mitt romney making unflattering comments about the "47 percent" of americans who he said had become dependent on government benefits, i suggested on twitter that the political impact of the comments could easily be overstated.

"ninety percent of 'game-changing' gaffes are less important in retrospect than they seem in the moment," i wrote.

... since then, however, mr. obama has gained further ground in the polls. as of thursday, he led in the popular vote by 5.7 percentage points in the "now-cast," a gain of 1.6 percentage points since mr. romney's remarks became known to the public.

it's hard to tell whether this recent gain for mr. obama reflects the effect of the "47 percent" comments specifically. but the most typical pattern after a party convention is that a candidate who gains ground in the polls cedes at least some of it back.

instead, the more pertinent question seems not whether mr. obama is losing ground, but whether he is still gaining it.

... what we can say with more confidence is that mr. romney is now in a rather poor position in the polls.

... the overall story line, however, is fairly clear: mr. romney is at best holding ground in the polls, and quite possibly losing some, at a time when he needs to be gaining it instead. further, it's increasingly implausible for mr. romney to attribute the numbers to temporary effects from the democratic convention. mr. obama's probability of winning the electoral college advanced to 83.9 percent in the nov. 6 forecast, up from 81.9 percent on wednesday.

romney-ryan: a post-mortem

so how did romney-ryan flub their campaign? plainly stated, they attempted to play the electorate for total fools. the fools, however, were not amused.

romney-ryan (and their moneyed backers) wanted to see just how far they could get away with outright lying as a central strategy, one that was dependent on the media playing along in its contemporary role as neutered stenographers. the stenographers, however, were not amused. the plan fell apart with romney's attacks on obama's welfare waiver; the press, not really enjoying serving romney as thankless eunuchs, chose their remaining credibility over complete irrelevance.

romney-ryan wanted to see just how far they could get away with running a campaign on nothing but glib generalities and baffling banalities. trust my wonk, romney assured us; everything makes sense in the details, which we'll happily bore you with ... after the election. however, a certain now-famous and doubtlessly pivotal tape revealed:

romney: if we win on november 6th there will be — a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. and we'll see capital come back and we'll see — without — without actually doing anything, we'll [chuckling] actually get a boost in the economy.

heh heh heh... surprise! no grand vision up my sleeve, no master plan beyond untethered hope, something conservatives invoking obama's 2008 campaign currently sneer at. meanwhile, the 47% were not amused.

so the romney-ryan bamboozlefest 2012 crashed and burned more than a month before the election, before even a single debate. in truth it never really got off the ground. perhaps they were doomed from the start. the republican brand has suffered nothing less than a total loss of credibility. with credibility goes a certain deference normally given, certainly by the press, to those cloaked in the authority of their reputations. they might have held onto a remnant of it by admitting their mistakes and cooperating in fixing them.

so who knows if it could have worked? perhaps if the team weren't so clearly incompetent, unable to turn either a scripted event, like their london tour or an unforseen one, like the libyan riots, to their advantage. one thing is clear, though: the electorate isn't nearly as idiotic as romney-ryan themselves turned out to be.

"... i mean black people"

in a thursday special saturday night live took a chainsaw to romney's "quiet room" comments about the so-called "47%":

romney (jason sudeikis): "... so you have this 47% that don't pay taxes, and these people are never going to vote for me. and when i talk about these people who don't pay taxes, i don't mean senior citizens. alright? and i don't mean members of our armed services. and i don't mean southern whites. okay, what i mean is ... and real quick — no one is recording this, correct? no? okay, it's very important that no one records this. okay, good, 'cause i'm about to say who "these people" [finger quotes] are. now i would prefer not to have that on tape.

[turns to camera] ah, sorry sir, is that a camera on the table pointing right at me?

[brief camera pans right and left, as if signaling "no"] okay, great.

[turning back to guests] alright, now when i say "these people", i mean black people."

snl got it exactly right: this is the elusive "whitey tape". the real one. glad somebody finally aired it.

since the surfacing of romney's "47%" comments, a narrative has settled in that romney has carelessly damaged himself with huge swathes of his own voters. while there is definitely anecdotal evidence of some defections, and while i can certainly see this hurting him badly among any remaining undecideds, anyone who's been following conservatives, especially hardcore conservatives, knows that this tape only validates what wingnuts rich, middle and poor already believe. to them, romney's statements come simply as an extension of his already established coded attacks on welfare.

the american spectator: "when i hear romney's words at this event, my reaction is "say more of this stuff in public, mitt." it's a strong and correct message (other than the use of a number as high as 47 percent) and it will resonate with many americans, including quite a few who don't pay income tax."

"i entirely agree, and this should be the campaign focus. if the truth doesn't get him elected, then the country is gone at this point in history anyway." (pieceofthepuzzle)

as i recently commented on daily kos:

... romney's saying that the OTHER half of the country are freeloaders (colored people).

HIS half of the country, his white base, regardless of class or income level, will always exempt themselves from that description. they rightfully deserve their govt largess (tax cuts, loans, subsidies), which don't count as loathsome handouts (welfare, food stamps, unemployment).

cnn's john king carried the conventional narrative by poignantly making the case for the 47% via his own experience:

"... so, a lot of these voters could be republicans. and ah, i understand your back-and-forth, but alice, i, i make a personal note here: a lot of americans, of all income stripes, have struggled for the last few years and the risk for gov. romney is that it is insulting to them. as a kid, my family was on food stamps for a couple of years when my dad got sick. ah, we didn't feel entitled, and we weren't victms, and my father was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. ah, but in the end my mother was grateful she was able to feed her kids."

meanwhile, hardcore conservatives not only exempt themselves from admissions or accusations of government assistance, they deny their government assistance is a form of government assistance! craig t. nelson on glenn beck's show:

"i've been on food stamps. anybody help me out? no."

just another episode in the GOP's long-running but more and more often flaccid southern strategy:

interviewer: but the fact is, isn't it, that reagan does get to the wallace voter and to the racist side of the wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

lee atwater: you start out in 1954 by saying, "nigger, nigger, nigger." by 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. backfires. so you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. you're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. and subconsciously maybe that is part of it. i'm not saying that. but i'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. you follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "we want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "nigger, nigger."

romney-man to the rescue

(story and art by ty templeton)

not reg'lar folks

comment of the day from "yellowdog" @ ed kilgore's blog "political animal":

the attacks on obama's religion, on his birth certificate, on his purported lack of patriotism, and on his associations with folks like ayers all draw water from the same poisoned well. calling obama an affirmative action president is just one more way of taking away his legitimacy as a candidate and as a leader.

if anything, obama and his team should be very familiar with these sorts of attacks by now. all of them are rehashed and reheated from 2008 — and they will need to dent obama's credibility with people now who were not bothered by them four years ago. in tandem with the false welfare attacks, they might sway some voters. romney likes the welfare lies because they are 'new information' about obama.

problem is, though, romney's basic approval ratings are not budging — and he is not an easy person to cast as a savior of ordinary working people, of any race. taking cruises on yachts registered in the caymans tends to undercut the regular-guy appeal ... ann romney is supposed to help — but it is not an easy or natural message for her either. these are not regular folk — and their attempts to play regular folk fall flat because they are not convincing at it.

the rich are different — isn't that what randians believe after all? the air of natural superiority bleeds through. in rand-world, the wealthy and industrious are superior because their place in the capitalist order has proven them superior. they built it ... they proved their worth, in dollars and cents. the market is a perfect moral arbiter. it's not lake wobegone — every child in rand-world is not above average. the successful are inherently better than the non-successful. if there are winners, there have to be losers. and, wow, what losers now populate our society. what better way to make the case for this moral vision of the world than to point to the distortions of the 'natural' order of things represented in affirmative action? obama stands for all the losers, those who corrupt the natural hierarchy of society. obama is out of his place. he has gotten uppity in the words of one congressman (my own, i regret to say). he has gotten above himself. he is mingling with his betters.

this is the GOP vision right now. we are not all created equal. the capitalist system will sort us out efficiently as to rights and to basic human worth. if you are worthy, you can vote and join the club. if you are not worthy, ashes will be heaped on your head. if you are poor, it is because you deserve to be poor. you did not build it. you did not try. ipso facto — you are a loser. further, you will always be a loser. (and you will try to steal elections, join unions for benefits you did not earn or deserve, and you will always ask government to subsidize your sorriness.)

just think, though, of what this moral view makes of the struggling middle class — what a bleak vision this is for them, for people who are trying harder than ever. is their failure because they are unworthy? is their worth at issue? rand would say yes. of course romney and co. want to blame the problems of the middle class on welfare and affirmative action. if the middle class got a whiff of what the rand-reading yacht-riding class really thinks of them — in randian clarity — it would be pitchforks for mitt. in randworld, you are measured by what you earn. your net worth is your moral worth. if you are not earning enough, it is because you are unworthy. you lack something. your economic problems are your own damn fault.

no wonder mitt wants to talk about welfare ...

have you seen me?

it's 2012 ... do you know where your CEOs are?

jonah and the beast

jonah escapes the belly of the beast, with a message for cap'n ahab ...

goodbye to all that:
reflections of a GOP operative who left the cult
by mike lofgren, retired GOP congressional staffer

barbara stanwyck:		we're both rotten!
fred macmurray:		yeah — only you're a little more rotten.
"double indemnity" (1944)

those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary america. both parties are rotten — how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? both parties are captives to corporate loot. the main reason the democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests — no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to big pharma.

but both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. the democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

to those millions of americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the republican party is so full of lunatics. to be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like robert k. dornan or william e. dannemeyer. but the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: steve king, michele bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), paul broun, patrick mchenry, virginia foxx, louie gohmert, allen west. the congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

it was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on capitol hill. a couple of months ago, i retired; but i could see as early as last november that the republican party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of world war II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

the debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 federal aviation administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel — how prudent is that? — in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. this fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the bob dole era in terms of its orientation. for instance, ezra klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while house republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. of course they might — the attitude of many freshman republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

it should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the republican party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century europe. this trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

in his "manual of parliamentary practice," thomas jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. these include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. the US senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

the only thing that can keep the senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. during periods of political consensus, for instance, the world war II and early post-war eras, the senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. now, one can no more picture the current senate producing the original medicare act than the old supreme soviet having legislated the bill of rights.

far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a republican filibuster. under the circumstances, it is no wonder that washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the reichstag of the weimar republic. as hannah arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

john p. judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

over the last four decades, the republican party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. it is the party of watergate and iran-contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. if there is an earlier american precedent for today's republican party, it is the antebellum southern democrats of john calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

a couple of years ago, a republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. should republicans succeed in obstructing the senate from doing its job, it would further lower congress's generic favorability rating among the american people. by sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

a deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. there are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. these voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." this ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s — a distrust that has been stoked by republican rhetoric at every turn ("government is the problem," declared ronald reagan in 1980).

the media are also complicit in this phenomenon. ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. paul krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "i joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'views differ on shape of planet.'"

inside-the-beltway wise guy chris cillizza merely proves krugman right in his washington post analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. he wrote that the institution of congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course, correct, but then he opined: "lawmakers — bless their hearts — seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on their tremendous magnanimity." note how the pundit's ironic deprecation falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the needless crisis and those who despaired of it. he seems oblivious that one side — or a sizable faction of one side — has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of congress to achieve its political objectives.

this constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. the united states has nearly the lowest voter participation among western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions — if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? and if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of rush limbaugh or fox news. there were only 44 million republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of president obama by 69 million voters.

this tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. for people who profess to revere the constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. this is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; i would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and constitutional. but most republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of fourth amendment protections by the patriot act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the united states has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. if anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. and when a program is too popular to attack directly, like medicare or social security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. that concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

undermining americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. but if this technique falls short of producing karl rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's new jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. ever since republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last november, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in wisconsin, republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting department of motor vehicles (DMV) offices in democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

this legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of american history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the middle east was a signature policy of the bush administration. but domestically, they don't want those people voting.

you can probably guess who those people are. above all, anyone not likely to vote republican. as sarah palin would imply, the people who are not real americans. racial minorities. immigrants. muslims. gays. intellectuals. basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. this must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of president obama. i have joked in the past that the main administration policy that republicans object to is obama's policy of being black.[2] among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the good, the true and the beautiful: subversives. commies. socialists. ragheads. secular humanists. blacks. fags. feminazis. the list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

it is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. i would bet that most do not. but they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. during the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal — "i take the president at his word" — while never unambiguously slapping down the myth. john huntsman was the first major GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny — albeit after release of the birth certificate.

i do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. while it surely exists, it is also a fact that republicans think that no democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. republicans also regarded bill clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do i remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that republicans traded among themselves). had it been hillary clinton, rather than barack obama, who had been elected in 2008, i am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about vince foster's alleged murder.

the reader may think that i am attributing svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. it is more complicated than that. historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of america since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class — without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

what do the democrats offer these people? essentially nothing. democratic leadership council-style "centrist" democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, world trade organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for china. at the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the democratic party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

while democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, republicans went to work. to be sure, the business wing of the republican party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. but the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). instead of predatory bankers, it's evil muslims. or evil gays. or evil abortionists.

how do they manage to do this? because democrats ceded the field. above all, they do not understand language. their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the patient protection and affordable care act. the what? — can anyone even remember it? no wonder the pejorative "obamacare" won out. contrast that with the republicans' patriot act. you're a patriot, aren't you? does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a stimulus bill is supposed to be? why didn't the white house call it the jobs bill and keep pounding on that theme?

you know that social security and medicare are in jeopardy when even democrats refer to them as entitlements. "entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial english: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? that would never occur to the democrats. republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." heaven forbid that the walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. all of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of wal-mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.

it was not always thus. it would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. an unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the rockefellers or the mellons. but that is not the case in the present economic crisis. after a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by wall street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? at "washington spending" — which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

thus far, i have concentrated on republican tactics, rather than republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (karl rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

as for what they really believe, the republican party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets i have laid out below. the rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. the GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. the party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of america's plutocracy. their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. whatever else president obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out republican hypocrisy. the GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the walton family or the koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction — and even less spending reduction! — than obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass.

republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. john boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an olive garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether warren buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. so, where are the jobs?

another smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for mom's and pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business' ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time bernie sanders or some democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. but the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses). and as data from the center for economic and policy research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment, a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries.

likewise, republicans have assiduously spread the myth that americans are conspicuously overtaxed. but compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. in particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory bolshevism. but again, the effective rate is much lower. did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? no, it paid zero.

when pressed, republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the america's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "half of americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. but what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. there are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes — among the most regressive forms of taxation. but according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.

all of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. more important politically, republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which i will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.

and when misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's agenda, concealment is needed. one fairly innocuous provision in the dodd-frank financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. note that it would not limit the compensation, only require full disclosure. republicans are hell-bent on repealing this provision. of course; it would not serve wall street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. as spencer bachus, the republican chairman of the house financial services committee, says, "in washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

2. they worship at the altar of mars. while the me-too democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as john mccain or lindsey graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. mccain wanted to mix it up with russia — a nuclear-armed state — during the latter's conflict with georgia in 2008 (remember? — "we are all georgians now," a slogan that did not, fortunately, catch on), while graham has been persistently agitating for attacks on iran and intervention in syria. and these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the sunday talk shows. about a month before republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. to borrow chris hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives.

a cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than the fact that pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around capitol hill. that is true, but there is more to it than that. it is not necessarily even the fact that members of congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs. the wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases nationally means that some areas, like washington, DC, and san diego, are heavily dependent on department of defense (DOD) spending. but there are many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the pentagon than it receives back in local contracts.

and the economic justification for pentagon spending is even more fallacious when one considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few jobs. the days of rosie the riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now require very little touch labor. instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of political campaigns. a million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.

take away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. this undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

the results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the democrats' cowardly refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally. it has made the united states less prosperous, less secure and less free. unfortunately, the militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely to abate when the treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the dutch republic and the british empire.

3. give me that old time religion. pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the republican rank and file. pat robertson's strong showing in the 1988 iowa caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. the results are all around us: if the american people poll more like iranians or nigerians than europeans or canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the republican party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" — or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

the constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to "share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory speech; or, some televangelist like rick warren dragoons the candidates (as he did with obama and mccain in 2008) to debate the finer points of christology, with warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. but how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs — economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism — come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized eisenhower republicanism?

it is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in america) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the republican party. for politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes — at least in the minds of followers — all three of the GOP's main tenets.

televangelists have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. if you are wealthy, it is a sign of god's favor. if not, too bad! but don't forget to tithe in any case. this rationale may explain why some economically downscale whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.

the GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. the old testament abounds in tales of slaughter — god ordering the killing of the midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the divinely-inspired genocide of the canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants with the jawbone of an ass — and since american religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the old testament to the new (particularly that portion of the new testament known as the sermon on the mount), it is but a short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. this sort of thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as jerry falwell once writing that god is pro-war.

it is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought saddam was the antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in the realm of domestic political controversy. it is hardly surprising that the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was michele bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. what does it matter, anyway, if the country defaults? — we shall presently abide in the bosom of the lord.

some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. i am not so sure. there is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. the plutocrats would drag us back to the gilded age, the theocrats to the salem witch trials. in any case, those consummate plutocrats, the koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into michele bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

thus, the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a republican could have written the following:

should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. there is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. among them are h.l. hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. their number is negligible and they are stupid.

(that was president eisenhower, writing to his brother edgar in 1954.)

it is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional republicanism of an eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a michele bachmann that impelled my departure from capitol hill. it is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of david brock. and i will leave a more detailed dissection of failed republican economic policies to my fellow apostate bruce bartlett.

i left because i was appalled at the headlong rush of republicans, like gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. and, in truth, i left as an act of rational self-interest. having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

if you think paul ryan and his ayn rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your social security and medicare, i am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] they will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard choices" — and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

during the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its conclusion. the economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of chicken roiled the markets even further. foreigners could hardly believe it: americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status of the dollar. accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. russia and china have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve currency — a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that can be imagined.

if republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and america's status as the world's leading power.

---

[1] i am not exaggerating for effect. a law passed in 2010 by the arizona legislature mandating arrest and incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the american legislative exchange council, a conservative business front group that drafts "model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. the draft legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.

[2] i am not a supporter of obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies. but when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80 years, i wanted him to succeed, so that the country i served did not fail. but already in 2009, mitch mcconnell, the senate republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was — jobs for americans? rescuing the financial system? solving the housing collapse? — no, none of those things. his top priority was to ensure that obama should be a one-term president. evidently senator mcconnell hates obama more than he loves his country. note that the mainstream media have lately been hailing mcconnell as "the adult in the room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the tea party freshmen

[3] this is not a venue for immigrant bashing. it remains a fact that outsourcing jobs overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert downward pressure on US wages. the consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. it does no good to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of globalization; germany has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial base.

[4] the cowardice is not merely political. during the past ten years, i have observed that democrats are actually growing afraid of republicans. in a quirky and flawed, but insightful, little book, "democracy and populism: fear and hatred," john lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.

[5] the GOP cult of ayn rand is both revealing and mystifying. on the one hand, rand's tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so prevalent among the hard right. on the other, rand exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing but contempt for christianity. apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist "values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over rand at the same time they thump their bibles never have to explain this stark contradiction. and i imagine a democratic officeholder would have a harder time explaining why he named his offspring "marx" than a GOP incumbent would in rationalizing naming his kid "rand."

a debt ceiling carol

now that all the shouting's over — for a few hours at least — i believe it's time in the program for our musical number ...

time for a new ticker?

fool me once for thinking that my first ticker would be enough.

meet mariner energy inc.:

new orleans, LA. — a mile-long oil sheen spread thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the gulf of mexico off lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill. coast guard petty officer bill coklough said the sheen, about 100 feet wide, was spotted near the platform owned by houston-based mariner energy inc. ... the coast guard says no one was killed in the explosion and fire, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the site around 9 a.m. CDT. ... the platform is in about 340 feet of water and about 100 miles south of vermilion bay on the central louisiana coast. it's location is considered shallow water, much less than the approximately 5,000 feet where BP's well spewed oil and gas for three months after an april rig explosion. ... the platform is about 200 miles west of BP's blown-out well. on friday, BP was expected to begin the process of removing the cap and failed blowout preventer, another step toward completion of a relief well that would put a finals eal [sic] on the well. the BP-leased rig deepwater horizon exploded april 20, killing 11 people and setting off a three-month leak that totaled 206 million gallons of oil.

this ap writer seems to think that bp's well was shut down back on july 16, as noted on my ticker. while we wait for bp to finish installing that "final seal", i'll keep my ticker running, thank you ...

thanks, bp: oils well that ends well ... ?

until the stoppage has been independently confirmed, i'll keep my revised meter running.

BP says it has temporarily stopped oil flowing into the gulf of mexico from its leaking well. it is the first time the flow has stopped since an explosion on the deepwater horizon rig on 20 april. the well has been sealed with a cap as part of a test of its integrity that could last up to 48 hours. US president barack obama said the development was a "positive sign" but noted that BP was still in the testing phase. BP executive kent wells said the oil had been stopped at 1425 local time (1925 GMT) and he was "excited" by the progress.

thanks, bp

readers may have noticed the new bp oil spill meter perched in the right column of this blog. it will remain a fixture here until such time that the leak has been independently confirmed as sealed.

my home-made widget isn't as snazzy as pbs', but it can be resized. the spill rate is based on pbs' worst case scenario of 4,200,000 gallons per day (which amounts to 48.61 gallons per second ¹), which daily comes closer to reality as we peel away layer after layer of bp's lies and lowballing.

my widget also takes account of local time zones. according to wikipedia, the well exploded on april 20 at 9:45pm central daylight time. so anyone in chicago watching the meter will see the "day" counter advance nightly at 9:45pm. anyone watching in los angeles will see their counter advance at 7:45pm, while counters in new york will advance at 10:45pm, and so forth around the globe.

copy the code below and paste it into your own web pages to get a meter for your blog. to resize it, simply substitute your own numbers at each instance of the parameters for "height" and "width":

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---

1. oddly, the math programmers at pbs seem to think 4.2m gal/day amounts to just 37 gal/sec. update: d'oh! my bad — pbs' counter is also attempting to account for the "recaptured" oil, a number even harder to substantiate than the spillage. update 2: now revised to include bp's reported stoppage.

surfin' mobile bay

fun, fun, fun off the coast of alabama:

(hat tip to pharyngula)

the art of the backdown

oil producer british petroleum (BP) ceo tony hayward, forecasting the damage, or lack thereof, to the gulf of mexico from the ongoing and as-yet-uncontrolled flood of crude oil from the well damaged by the destruction of his deepsea drilling rig deepwater horizon:

i think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. it is impossible to say — we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. we're going to do that with some of the science institutions in the u.s., but everything we can see, at the moment, suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest. (may 18)

ten days later ...

it is clear that we're dealing with a very significant environmental crisis and catastrophe. ... a cup of oil on the shore is failure. ... in that regard, we have failed to defend the shoreline to the degree and extent that we believed we could. (may 28)

(tip of the hat to think progress.)

---

update: too true, john cole. too true ...

when the oil company that caused the mess is using this terminology, you have to wonder how horrible it is ...

a washington dictionary

sen•ate |'senit|

noun

a private club for old, out-of-touch, rich white men, convened for the sole purpose of spending everyone else's money:

"i've never used an ATM, so i don't know what the fees are," [nebraska senator ben nelson (D-NE)] said, adding that he gets his cash from bank tellers, just not automatic ones. "it's true, i don't know how to use one." "but i could learn how to do it just like i've ... i swipe to get my own gas, buy groceries. i know about the holograms." by "holograms," nelson clarified that he meant the bar codes on products read by automatic scanners in the checkout lanes at stores such as lowe's and menard's. "i go and get my own seating assignment on an airplane," nelson said. "i mean, i'm not without some skills. I just haven't had the need to use an ATM."

ORIGIN middle english : from old french senat, from latin senatus, from senex 'old man'.

signs of the recovery

a ray of light shines in the gopher state:

(hat tip to john cole)

quote of the night

matt yglesias, on north korea's execution of a "top financial official":

it seems like it should be possible to find a middle ground between this sort of thing and the U.S.-style “everyone cashes in, nobody important is ever at fault for anything” approach.