The Burris predicament

I had no problem supporting Roland Burris being seated in the U.S. Senate a while back despite the fact that he was appointed by scandal-tarred Gov. Rod Blagojevich largely because I thought he was adequately qualified and because he appeared to be clean from all the pay-to-play allegations swirling around the governor then.
Now it appears that if Burris was clean it wasn’t for a lack of trying to get dirty. He has recently acknowledged that he tried to raise money for Blago while under consideration for the Senate appointment without any success. He surely hid this tidbit away from his fellow lawmakers knowing full well that it would have sunk his changes of getting the Senate nod. But now that the beans have been spilled there are lots of calls for his resignation. I cannot defend him at this point, although I still see him as a mostly sympathetic character. What concerns me are the calls to have him resign and then fill his seat with a special election - after state lawmakers pass a law allowing such an election to be held. I would only support such a plan if the governor can still appoint a temporary replacement. Otherwise, Illinois would be without full representation in the Senate for possibly months while the election campaign is underway.
No doubt, this prospect will delight Republicans. It is pretty clear right now that the only reason Norm Coleman is continuing his futile lawsuit in Minnesota is to keep Democrats from having another vote for as long as possible.
We just saw how crucial this is in light of the Republican strategy of filibustering everything that comes to a vote from here on out. Nevermind that Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the Senate, they will be stifled if Republicans can continue to tie up two or three Senate seats indefinitely. During the filibuster of Obama’s emergency stimulus package, we saw that there were just three Republican senators willing to crossover and support their country over their party.
Right now Democrats should have a 59-41 majority in the Senate, requiring just one Republican crossover vote to defeat a filibuster. But because Coleman has tied up Al Franken with his frivolous lawsuits, they only have 58 votes. If Ted Kennedy is sick and can’t make if for a vote, they are down to 57. Now if you take away Roland Burris for the duration of a special election campaign, they are down to 56 and suddenly three Republican crossover votes are no longer enough.
Democracy was never meant to be abused in this manner. At a minimum, we will need a temporary replacement if Burris is forced to resign and the Minnesota recount lawsuit should be wrapped up immediately or else allow Franken to be seated temporarily until it is done.
And finally, we desperately need to reform the filibuster that has been so misused and abused by the Republican minority.

Republican SEC negligence

The case of Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford looks like another example of the failure of Republican governance. This is the second massive case of financial fraud that the Republican-run Securities and Exchange Commission either missed or ignored.
Why was the SEC so feeble and toothless in its enforcement of security laws. It has been reported that there were numerous "red flags" about Stanford Financial Group, but each time the SEC responded with a small slap-on-the-wrist fine. Was it because of Stanford's political connections? The "pro-business" ideology of the Republican-controlled SEC? Or a combination of both?

Stanford is clearly a flight risk. There were already reports that he tried to get a one-way ticket to Antigua where his offshore business operations are based. So why, when they when the authorities finally tracked him down was he simply "served papers"?
As one blog commenter noted, they should have planted a marijuana cigarette on him so that he would at least be guaranteed to do some jail time. Because bilking countless people out of $8 billion apparently isn't a serious enough crime when you are wealthy and white.

On a related note, Phil Gramm's employer UBS has recently agreed to pay a substantial fine to the IRS for its complicity in shielding billions of dollars from U.S. clients from taxing authorities. UBS, the Swiss banking conglomerate, has also promised to hand over the names of several hundred of its U.S. customers who have used it to avoid paying taxes.
I anxiously await publication of that list. Two of my biggest pet peeves are wealthy tax cheats, and companies that set up in tax havens like Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.

The Party of Nope

This is the best John Branch cartoon I've seen in a looooong time.

They want to do WHAT with the bailout money???

General Motors and Chrysler now say they need another $14 billion in bailout money on top of $39 billion they already got from the Bush administration and in exchange they are promising to close five plants and layoff 47,000 workers.
Oh goody!
Excuse me, but as Robert Reich pointed out on NPR this morning, the whole point of the government-financed bailout and the stimulus package was to create and/or preserve jobs, not to bailout stockholders and corporate investors. I would hope that before the Obama administration hands over any more bailout money, that they go over some options to see what plan would be best for the workers involved. Otherwise, we will just end up spending billions more on top of this to pay for unemployment insurance, retraining and more stimulus for all the workers that the auto companies want to shed.

Back taxes

So now it turns out that Gov. Sarah Palin owes back taxes on per diem income she received over the past several years.
And so you know what that means..... Sarah Palin is a TAX CHEAT!!!!!!!
At least, she is based on recent Republican definitions of that term. So that should pretty much sink any future presidential prospects she thought she had.
That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing whether Palin ‘12 could do any better than Quayle ‘96. Ha!

Curse of Caroline

From Political Wire:

“Curse of Caroline” Haunts Paterson, Gillibrand
A new Quinnipiac poll finds both Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and the man who appointed her, Gov. David Paterson (D) trail Democratic primary challengers in 2010.
Atorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) crushes Paterson, 55% to 23%, in a possible gubernatorial primary.
Manwhile, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) beats Gillibrand in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 34% to 24%, with 39% still undecided.
Explains pollster Maurice Carroll: “The Caroline Kennedy mix-up still haunts Gov. David Paterson... Three quarters of New Yorkers heard about the nasty news leaks. They think Kennedy was treated unfairly, but most don’t blame Paterson for the leaks.”

Good! I hope that Andrew Cuomo wipes the floor with that idiot Paterson. And if McCarthy can defeat Gillibrand then all the better. I see Gillibrand as a potential Joe Lieberman clone.

E-N Funnies now Less-Funny

Today is a sad day for newspaper comics lovers who read the San Antonio Express-News.
Today, the E-N editors kowtowed to a group of hard-right whiners by canning "My Cage", one of the best new comic strips added to the section in recent years, and replacing it with the vile and grotesque "Mallard Fillmore."
Now there are three political strips crammed onto the comics page - two right-wing strips - Mallard and "Prickly City" sandwiching in the liberal "Doonesbury" strip.
It is a shame not just because they brought back the grotesque Mallard, but because they couldn't find any other comic in the section to replace. With so many old, tired, humor-free comics - the original authors long dead and now being churned out by syndicate hands - it is pathetic that they would choose to replace a fresh, new strip with living authors.
It is just one more reason for readers to abandon the print edition of the paper and seek out the comics they like online.
Of course, I'm not like the whiners who forced Mallard onto the funny pages. I don't cancel my newspaper subscription whenever things don't go my way. Instead, I will hold my nose and follow Mallard everyday and document the lies, the misconceptions, the grotesque and insulting caricatures and the offensive, humorless, mean-spirited venom that flows out of the pen of Bruce Tinsley everyday. I'm sure it will be loads of fun.

Worse than Hoover

I think this group of historians was awfully generous to George W. Bush by ranking him at No. 36 among all U.S. presidents. That is two slots behind Herbert Hoover, but still six slots from dead last which is where he probably should be.

1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FD Roosevelt
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Truman
6. Kennedy
7. Jefferson
8. Eisenhower
9. Wilson
10. Reagan
11. LB Johnson
12. Polk
13. Jackson
14. Monroe
15. Clinton
16. McKinley
17. John Adams
18. George HW Bush
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Madison
21. Cleveland
22. Ford
23. Grant
24. Taft
25. Carter
26. Coolidge
27. Nixon
28. Garfield
29. Taylor
30. Harrison
31. Van Buren
32. Arthur
33. Hayes
34. Hoover
35. Tyler
36. George W. Bush
37. Fillmore
38. Harding
39. WH Harrison
40. Pierce
41. A. Johnson
42. Buchanan

Bipartisanship rejected

I think we just witnessed a Republican Senator's self-immolation. That was the most pathetic spectacle I think I have ever seen. What could have possessed Judd Gregg to pull a stunt like this? At least he acknowledges that his political career is now over and won't be seeking re-election in 2010. That is the one good thing to come out of this mess. And I'll bet that Bonnie Newman is pretty ticked off right now.

So, after campaigning for the job and going through the whole vetting process, Gregg now decides to blindside President Obama by announcing his "change of heart" just as Obama is making a public appearance at an event in Peoria, Ill. to promote the stimulus package. How insulting.

Well, good riddance. I didn't see any upside to appointing Gregg in the first place since he refused to support the stimulus package and even demanded and got a Republican replacement for his Senate seat from a Democratic governor.
At leat now, we are pretty much guaranteed to get a Democrat in the Commerce slot for the first time in eight years.

Oh, and while this little charade has been hogging the limelight, Leon Panetta has just been approved to be CIA Director. Remember when that was supposed to be a big problem for the Obama administration? Also, Hilda Solis' nomination for Labor Secretary looks like it will go through very shortly as well.

Troublemaking columnist returns

Uh Oh! The Express-News is running another column by that troublemaking liberal blogger.
Didn't they learn their lesson the last time?

Inauguration gigapan

This is an amazing photo from Barack Obama's inauguration. It allows you to zoom in and see close up to an incredible degree. Check it out.

Cage Match

When the Wingnuts say “Jump!”, the Express-News editors say “How High?”

This weekend Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter announced in his column that the local paper is backpedaling on its decision to dump the Mallard Fillmore comic strip because a lot of wingnut dittoheads called the paper to whine and complain. So they are going to take the nauseating and noxious strip and jam into into the comics section, which is already crowded with right-wing fodder like Prickly City and B.C., all so that we can have “balance”. By balance, of course, they mean keeping a 3-to-1 ratio of wingnut fodder to anything deemed “liberal.” Kind of like the 3-to-1 ratio of conservative columnists to liberal columnists that they maintain on the Op-Ed page.
But the worst part of the decision, is that to make room for Mallard they are going to dump “My Cage”, one of the new, up-and-coming strips that they added over the past year.
It is bad enough that they ignored “Rudy Park” after its one-month stint as a “guest comic”. It’s bad enough that they relegated “Curtis” to a Sunday-only slot and dropped the week-day comics. It is bad enough that they don’t have a Sunday slot for “Pearls Before Swine”, but now they are goin to dump “My Cage” which I have come to enjoy a great deal recently. There are not a lot of “must read” comics in the E-N for me - the kind that I will take the time to seek out and read even when I am in a hurry - such as LuAnn, Zits. Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur. But My Cage had slowly worked its way up into that pantheon for me.

One of the authors of My Cage was as surprised as I was and left the following comment on Richter’s column:

Wow. I have to say...I’m stunned. I write ‘My Cage’ and we get a lot of really positive feedback from the good readers of this paper. Despite all the other papers we’re in, I’d say 25% of our feedback is from this paper and 99% of that is overwhelmingly positive.
Huh.
In fact, when we held a contest for readers to appear in the strip last year our three winners all ended up being form THIS paper. One reader even baked a cake in the form of our lead chracter. Actually, you can read all about it here:
http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/comics/2008/05/expressnews-readers-to-appear-1.html
I’d really hate to lose touch with all the readers we’ve gotten to talk to. The feed back and suppost has been greatly appreciated.
Hopefully if you won’t reconsider the decision, we can at least have a chance to say good bye. Too bad. I really liked this paper. Huh. Very shocking.
-Ed Power
Writer of ‘My Cage’
mycagecomic@yahoo.com

I have tried repeatedly to leave a comment myself without success. I don’t know if there is a technical glitch or if my comments are being singled out for deletion. But I would encourage anyone else who is interested to go and leave the good folks at the E-N a comment about this situation.

Republicans embrace their Hooverite roots

It is extremely frustrating to think that after winning a huge election victory in November, Barack Obama could be denied the economic stimulus package that he and all the top economists agree is desperately needed to pull the nation’s economy out of its nosedive.
Democrats have a 58-seat majority in the Senate (59 with Al Franken) and could easily pass the stimulus package on an up-or-down vote. But because Republicans have chosen to filibuster the bill, it teeters on the brink of defeat due to the wavering of a small handful of “centrist” Republicans and a couple of Democrats.
The remarkable thing is that the vast majority of Republicans are committed to blocking the stimulus package even as everyday brings more bad news about the deteriorating economic situation.
Obama may be president right now, but until this legislation is passed the country is STILL operating on Bush’s rules and Bushes economic prescriptions. If Republicans want to blame Obama for the economic problems, they need to get out of the way and let his plan go into effect. Then, if it doesn’t work, they will have a case to make next time elections roll around. All they have to do is stop filibustering and allow an up-or-down vote. But instead, they are clinging to the same economic policy prescriptions that have been in place for eight years and that are responsible for bringing us to this point in the first place.

Stupid Letters to the Editor

Sometimes I really hate the Letters section in the local paper. They allow people to publish things that are incredibly stupid, blatantly false and often malicious.
Today, for instance, we have this gem from frequent wingnut letter writer Bud Martinez:

"Let's face it, the economy thrives because of private entrepreneurs, not government intervention. The government can create favorable conditions like favorable taxes for business, but government doesn't "create" jobs."

Nevermind that we have been taking the "favorable tax breaks for business" option almost exclusively for the past eight years and look where it has gotten us. Let's just look at the last staement: The government doesn't create jobs. Got that?
OK, now go talk to any member of the U.S. Military, any company working off of government contracts, anyone working in the schools, the post offices, the court houses, the police stations the fire departments, the road crews, the hospitals caring for Medicare and Medicaid patients, all over this country and repeat that "government doesn't create jobs."

Why does the paper even publish letters like this? Maybe they need to print a warning at the top of the Letters section that says "Beware. Letters may contain statements that are stupid, idiotic, false and have no correlation to the truth and or reality."

Confirmation delays

Republicans have been throwing a huge hissy fit in Washington because Barack Obama actually appointed someone to be Secretary of Labor - Hilda Solis - who is (gasp!) PRO-LABOR! The nerve!!!
And now they have found some new ammunition to throw at her. It turns out that her husband had an outstanding tax lien of $6,000 on his business. A-ha! Failure to pay taxes derailed Tom Dashle’s nomination. So now they can do the same thing to Solis. Except, of course, that it is her husband’s business and not hers. But, whatever!
And next, Leon Panetta’s bid to be CIA Director will be held up after it is discovered that one of his second cousins twice-removed has an outstanding fine for an overdue library book.

AP challenging Fair Use standard

I agree with Kos that this case is ridiculous.

On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year’s presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.
The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.
“AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey’s attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.”
“We believe fair use protects Shepard’s right to do what he did here,” says Fairey’s attorney, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP.”

I don’t want to see the AP go under like Kos does, but I think they don’t have and grounds to make a claim in this case.

Republicans take cues from Taliban

Making the rounds this morning is this interesting quote
by U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas which compares the Republican Party to the Taliban.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes.
“And these Taliban -- I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

This is especially ironic as Steve Benen notes because comparisons between the GOP and the Taliban have been made pretty consistently recently by frustrated Democrats, but now coming from the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee it has gained new credibility.

Stimulus Response

Andres Bocanegra at The San Antonio Conservative has a post up listing so-called wasteful spending in the Stimulus Bill that has been identified by Republicans. He adds his comments to each one in italics and I thought I would then add my responses in bold.

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient. why restart a program we know is inefficient?
We know no such thing. We only know that the Republican administration, which was ideologically opposed to the program, pulled the plug. Democrats, who are now in charge at the Department of Energy, want to restore funding. But does it belong in the stimulus bill?
Well, $2 billion in government spending will create a log of jobs and business opportunities around the coal plant in Illinois.
One of the main reasons that we in San Antonio are not suffering as much as the rest of the country is the $2 billion in government spending associated with the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) out at Fort Sam Houston. That money, spread out over several years, is creating thousands of jobs and is providing a nice cushion for San Antonio during the economic downturn.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film. so the support from Hollywood helped out for them … I suppose
Tax breaks provide the least “bang for the buck” compared to direct government spending, and yet the stimulus bill is filled with tax cuts because they are also the quickest way to get money back into the economy. Lots and lots of tax breaks in the stimulus bill, many at the insistence of Republicans who are now opposed to the package at all cost. The Republicans have singled out “Hollywood” here because it is a favorite boogeyman of the far right. But the movie industry is a huge economic generator. Aside from the jobs it creates directly through the production and distribution of movies, think about the other industries that depend on Hollywood. If they stopped making movies and TV shows who would want to go out and buy all those flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems?

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
Money well spent in my opinion. The initial coupon program proved to be very popular and ran out already. That means the money is being turned over very quickly and making its way back into the ecomomy which is exactly what the stimulus is trying to do.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship). this might be ok but this is just for the design … whats wrong with the icebreakers we have at this point?
Some company is going to get the contract to design that ship. Another will get the contract to build it. That means jobs, jobs and more jobs.

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. yeah this is a NO …
Constructing buildings is very clearly stimulus. It is infrastructure. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. seriously hit up a WalMart for furniture … but again NO
Wal-Mart does not make furniture. They are a re-seller. Why go through them just so they can take a cut? Some company out there that makes the furniture will get the contract and that means more jobs, etc.

•$600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. how does this create jobs or help US automakers
How does it NOT help the auto industry? The government is going to BUY vehicles from the auto companies. This is the most clear example of stimulus for a distressed company that I’ve seen. Whoever put this list together doesn’t have a clue.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s. this doesnt stimulate the economy
I agree that this one is questionable. They would have to hire people to go out and provide the screening services and so that is clearly a boon for some medical supply and service companies. But it probably doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system. again how does this stimulate the economy?

By employing people who would build and maintain the waste disposal and sewer systems (i.e. infrastructure).

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities. see above comment
The Smithsonian museum has been badly neglected during the Republican reign in Washington. There are cracked ceilings, water leaks and major structural problems that have forced the closure of some sections of the museum and has even resulted in damage to some of our nation’s most prized treasures. It is a disgrace. I don’t care if you want to call it stimulus or not. I say it is infrastructure that needs to be better cared for.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion. create more efficient census techniques
Fine. What are your ideas? The Census is a huge job that gets bigger and more complex every 10 years as the population continues to grow and diversify. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill, but it is money the government will need to spend anyway.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.” no stimulation here …
When you convince people to stop smoking it saves millions down the road in health care costs. It is a worthy program assuming that it is effective, but probably shouldn’t be in the stimulus bill.

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
That means jobs for the companies that make and sell computers, jobs for the companies that install and maintain computers and jobs for the companies that build out the spaces where the computer centers will go. Plus it is a boon to education and can help people retrain to get better jobs and so on and so on...

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. no … this belongs in an budget appropriations bill not a stimulus package
I agree. Don’t know how that got in there. But in a $900 billion stimulus bill, we are essentially arguing about change found under the sofa cushions.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction. no stimulation here
See comment on smoking cessasion above.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Any questions?

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.
The key words here are “job programs.” Got that?

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property. how does this create jobs … oh yeah it doesn’t
By employing the people who do construction renovation work

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland. I guess these are considered construction jobs?
Yes.

The list goes on and it gets a bit repetitive, but I think you get the idea. But as Steve Benen has noted, all the items that Republicans objected to come to just 2 percent of the overall stimulus bill.
So why are we holding up a bill that we are 98 percent in agreement on to squabble over 2 percent?

Welcome to the Neighborhood

A couple of new, local, political/opinion blogs have come online recently.
First, the Express-News Op-Ed page has a new blog called The Arena where the editorial board members such as Jonathan Gurwitz will post brief commentaries.
You have to register on the site in order to leave comments, which is a pain. And it also looks like they have it set so that comments have to be “approved” before they will appear, which is an even bigger pain. But hopefully they will get all the kinks worked out soon and it will become a fun site for debating the issues of the day.

Second, we have a new conservative blogger on the local scene looking to fill the void left by our AWOL friend Bill Crawford.
Andres Bocanegra is a political science student at the University of Texas at San Antonio who is deeply involved in the College Republicans and his blog is appropriately titled The San Antonio Conservative.

So a warm welcome to our new neighbors. I look forward to open, honest and invigorating debates.

E-N Op-Ed RIP (not quite)

I was about ready to write the obituary for the Express-News Opinion page. On Monday, they slashed the section down to one-page and then on Tuesday it was cut down again.
But then I finally found Bob Richter’s column explaining the change where he notes the cutback is only for two-days a week rather than six, as I had assumed. So we will still have some room in the Op-Ed section to run some columns and commentaries. I assume that means Jonathan Gurwitz will still have his Wednesday slot.
But Doonesbury has been shipped off to the comics pages next to Prickly City and - the best news of all - Mallard Fillmore has been canned. HAHAHA!!! WooHoo!!! YippEEEEEEE!!!
Ahem. Excuse the spontaneous celebration, but no comic was ever more deserving of getting pink-slipped than the obnoxious, horribly-drawn, frequently ass-backwards wrong, humorless garbage churned out everyday by Bruce Tinsley. Good riddance!
So anyway, I hope that one day they will add those pages back to the Opinion section, because I think it is a mistake to cut back on that section. And I hope they don’t chop any more pages out before Obama’s stimulus plan finally gets past all the Republican sniping, whining, pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth.

Power of the Pen

In a remarkable nod to the news media, Tom Daschletold NBC News today that he decided to drop his bid for HHS Secretary after reading this mornings editorial in the New York Times.
It was a good editorial, I have to admit. I hate to see Daschle go and I wish this could all have been washed away, but the reality in today’s political culture is that it would never have gone away and would have hung around like a cloud over the Obama administration from here on out.

Academy to movie fans: Drop Dead

In the “I told them so” category comes this story in the NYTimes the other day about Academy Awards officials fretting that nobody will watch their big show later this month.

The nominations of a still relatively little-seen crop of best-picture contenders — “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” which together have accumulated less than half the box office of “The Dark Knight,” which was snubbed — are making it harder for producers of the Oscar ceremony to deliver on an earlier promise: to create a big night for the movies, even if some of the movies are not so big. Operatives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are quietly scrambling to assemble an event that would make some extraordinary bows in the direction of the crowd while trying to do right by the honorees.

Oh, that’s nice. They will make some “bows to the crowd” after thumbing their noses at them for the fourth year in a row.
This isn’t a new phenomena, as I noted earlier, and it has already been having an impact on the Oscar ratings.

After the American audience for last year’s Oscar show hit an all-time low of about 32 million viewers, ABC cut its rate for a 30-second ad on this year’s broadcast to $1.4 million from $1.7 million, according to Advertising Age.

So how are the Academy bigwigs planning to draw in viewers after snubbing the top 20 box office winners?
By hyping up the one and only caveat they made to popular taste - the supporting actor nod for that dead guy in the Batman film.
I hope that makes all you lowly, movie-watching rabble happy because it’s the only scrap you are likely to get off of the Academy’s elitist, super-exclusive table this year.
Check it out:

The message, on posters and Web sites and in televised ads, aims to tell people that this year’s show has something even for viewers who may not care much for the nominees.
Anyway, Ms. Weiss said in a recent telephone interview, the more pop-minded fans should find a glimmer of comfort in the supporting actor nominations that went to Heath Ledger, as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” and Robert Downey Jr., for his blackface turn in “Tropic Thunder.”
“The Oscars,” she said, “is a show for them too.”

It’s a show for THEM too, she says. Can’t you just FEEL the love?

Supremely out of balance

The New York Times had a good article yesterday illustrating just how far to the right the Supreme Court is skewed today. A recent study shows that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are currently on the Court - No. 1 Clarence Thomas, No. 3 Antonin Scalia, No. 4. John Roberts Jr. and No. 5 Samuel Alito. Anthony Kennedy comes in at No. 10.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the top liberals on the Supreme Court since 1937, we currently have just one in the Top 10 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg at No. 9.
And when you consider that the people most likely to step down from the Supreme Court in the next few years - John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ginsberg - are all from the liberal wing, that means Obama won’t have much of a chance to correct that conservative imbalance unless he appoints someone who is very, very liberal.
And so that is just what Obama needs to do when the time comes. Appoint a liberal lion in the mold of Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan. Someone who will be as far to the left as Clarence Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito are to the right.
Don’t worry whether the person is “too liberal”. They need to be “too liberal” just to begin to bring back some semblance of balance to the Court.

Odds and Ends

I only watched the last five minutes of the Super Bowl, but that was apparently all I needed to watch. The lead changed twice in the final minutes and had a very exciting finish. I didn’t really care who won, but watching it at the very end I was suddenly torn as both teams struggled for the advantage. From a political perspective, I suppose I’m glad that the Steelers won since they are from a Blue state and Obama was rooting for them, while the Cardinals are not only from a Red state, but John McCain’s home state to boot.

I recorded the halftime show so that I could go back and watch it later and I thought Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were terrific. It was great to see that he was clearly NOT lip-synching and even changed the lyrics to some songs to suit the occasion.

I was disappointed this morning to see that Rudy Park is no longer on the comics page of the Express-News. And I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow, but it looks like their whole, lame “guest comic” thing will turn out to be for not as Rudy Park was replaced on the page by Doonesbury, which had been bumped from the suddenly shortened Op-Ed section.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see if this one-page editorial thing was just for today or if it is a permanent cost-cutting measure. Is it just for Mondays? Or will it be like this all week except for Sundays? That is a real shame. My two favorite sections of the paper are the comics and the Op-ed sections and those are the sections that always get hit hardest during downturns in the economy because they generally don’t allow room for advertising, which is the newspapers’ life blood.

The one bright spot is that while Doonesbury wound up on the comics page, the loathsome Mallard Fillmore was apparently dropped altogether. Ha!!!

I hope that Tom Daschle can weather this confirmation process and still become Secretary of Health and Human Services, but damn! He should have known better on that tax thing.

I was excited when I heard that Obama was tapping Republican Judd Gregg for Secretary of Commerce, but now that it appears the New Hampshire Democratic governor is just going to appoint another Republican as his replacement in the Senate I’m thinking “Why even bother?” What is wrong with these governors and their awful Senate picks anyway? Sheesh!

The Return of Nigel Tufnel

Well, not really. But Jonathan Gurwitz brings the fictional headbanger back from obscurity in his latest column.
His contention is that Obama’s stimulus plan is like trying to turn the volume up to 11 the way the fictional Nigel did on his amplifiers in the mockumentary “Spinal Tap”. The only problem with this analogy is that we are not talking about spending stimulus dollars that don’t exist. The money will be there, borrowed no doubt, but there none-the-less.
Perhaps if the Federal Reserve was threatening to lower the interest rates to -1, then the Spinal Tap analogy would be applicable. But as it is, I think the more apt analogy would be that of firefighters spraying water on a raging fire. The stimulus package is the equivalent of spraying a whole bunch more water in order to get the fire under control.
Republicans are essentially arguing that it is more important right now to conserve our water than it is to put out the fire.

But the reference to Nigel Tufnel naturally brings back memories of that disagreeable chap who used that pseudonym on Bill Crawford’s now defunct blog. “Nigel” seemed to be most intent on disparaging me personally and arguing in particular about the covert status of Valerie Plame and the question as to whether or not Karl Rove broke the law.
Since “Nigel” would never comment on my blog and because Bill ultimately deleted his entire blog before vanishing into the ether, there is now no record of our lengthy and protracted debate on this subject. However, I did make reference to it in several posts on my blog here, here and here.

25 Most Influential Liberals

JimmyK links to a Forbes list of 25 Most Influential Liberals in the media. Here it is in reverse order:

Michael Pollan
Kurt Andersen
Kevin Drum
Ezra Klein
James Fallows
Gerald Seib
Andrew Sullivan
Glenn Greenwald
Hendrick Hertzberg
Matthew Yglesias
Maureen Dowd
Christopher Hitchens
Bill Moyers
Chris Matthews
Fareed Zakaria
Markos Moulitas Zuniga
David Shipley
Josh Marshall
Rachael Maddow
Oprah Winfrey
Jon Stewart
Thomas Friedman
Fred Hiatt
Arianna Huffington
Paul Krugman

It’s a pretty good list with just a few questionable inclusions and some glaring omissions.
First for the omissions.
Where the heck is Keith Olbermann? They have Chris Matthews, which is questionable, and Rachael Maddow, which is well deserved, but not Olbermann?
And what about Duncan Black - Mr. Atrios himself, probably the leading liberal blogger of all time.
And another up-and-coming liberal blogger I would probably include is Steve Benen, who took over Kevin Drum’s slot at Political Animal. He has been doing a bang-up job and is a must-read for me everyday.
They also left off several prominent liberal columnists including Frank Rich at the NY Times and E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post. Also, Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune.

Now, for the questionable inclusions.
What were they thinking putting Christopher Hitchens on this list?? He went over to the dark side back during the Clinton era and has been a reliable wingnut voice throughout the entire Iraq War quagmire. His grudging endorsement of Obama notwithstanding, there is no way he should be included in a Top 25 list of LIBERALS. Sheesh!
And speaking of Iraq War cheerleaders, how about Fred Hiatt, the neo-con editorial page editor at the Washington Post. Hiatt is one of the chief reasons the WaPo editorial pages are often more in line with the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page than they are with the New York Times. A leading liberal voice?? Hogwash!
There are a few others I could nitpick including Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman and Chris Matthews. Also, there is the fact that I had never before heard of Michael Pollan and Kurt Andersen, which is not to disparage their liberal credentials but just to suggest that they might fall short of being in the Top 25.

Who else got left off who should be on the list?

Wackiest governor is NOT in Chicago

It’s not often that I tout Maureen Dowd columns, but her latest Which Governor Is Wackier? says just about everything that I’ve been thinking recently in regards to the fiasco of recent Senate appointments.
Rod Blagojevich may be a complete looney tune, but when it came to picking someone to fill Illinois’ Senate vacancy he did a far better job than New York Gov. David Paterson.
What an awful, wretched performance by Paterson.

So now we have an N.R.A. handmaiden in Bobby Kennedy’s old seat? Kirsten Gillibrand, a k a Tracy Flick, accepting the honor with her Republican pal Al D’Amato beside her on stage?....
Paterson could have acted a month ago, or even a week ago. There was no reason not to, certainly not his claim that he had to wait for Hillary, ad nauseam, to exit to State. Colorado’s governor named Michael Bennet senator two and a half weeks before Ken Salazar resigned his seat for the Interior Department.
Then the Democrats would have had another Kennedy in the Senate representing New York — Bobby’s niece and a smart, policy-oriented, civic-minded woman to whom the president feels deeply indebted in an era when every state has its hand out.
Instead they have Gillibrand, who voted against the Wall Street — as in New York — bailout bill. And who introduced a bill to balance the federal budget annually, which suggests she would oppose the $825 billion in deficit spending that President Obama proposes to rescue the country, not least New York.
Paterson’s five weeks of dithering let the jealous vindictiveness of the Clintons and friends — still fuming over Caroline’s endorsement of Obama and Teddy’s blocking Hillary from a leading health care role in the Senate — poison the air. With his usual sense of entitlement and aggrievement, Bill Clinton of Arkansas did not want Caroline Kennedy of New York to have the seat that Hillary Clinton of Illinois held.
Paterson wasn’t thinking of New York, only of how an upstate ally who was a woman would bolster his own chances for re-election. We can only hope that an avenging Andrew Cuomo takes him out in a primary.

Paterson comes out of this looking much more the fool than Blago. And New York will pay the price with much, much less power and influence in the Senate than they did have or than what they could have had.

Academy ignores popular films

Something is up with the Academy Awards. For most of this decade they have been giving short-shrift to popular (i.e. big box office grossing) films.
It didn’t use to be that way. Allow me to demonstrate.
This year’s list of Best Picture nominees marks the fifth year in a row where a Top 10 box office grossing film did not make the cut for the Academy’s top honor. That is an unprecedented streak dating back to at leat 1980 and probably further.
This year, the most popular best picture nominee at the Box Office so far is Benjamin Button which has just cracked the $100 million mark and ranks No. 22 for the year.
In 2007, the biggest box office draw was Juno at No. 15. In 2006, the top grossing nominee was The Departed, also at No. 15. In 2005, Brokeback Mountain had the highest box office gross at No. 22. And in 2004, The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby were No. 22 and No. 24, respectively.
The last time the general public and the Academy agreed on a film was 2003 when Lord of the Rings: Return of the King took the Best Picture Oscar and was the No. 1 draw at the box office. The next most popular best picture nominee that year was Seabiscuit at No. 17.
In 2002, LOTR: The Two Towers was No. 2 at the box office and Chicago was No. 10. In 2001, LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring was No. 2 and A Beautiful Mind was No. 11.
So, not counting the LOTR trilogy, there has only been one best picture nominee in the last eight years to crack the Top 10 at the Box Office.
But so what? It’s not like they used to always nominate Top 10 films for the Oscar, did they? Ummm. Well, yes, they did.
In 2000, Gladiator was No. 4 at the box office, while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was No. 12 and Erin Brockovich was No. 13.
In 1999, The Sixth Sense was No. 2, while The Green Mile was No. 12 and American Beauty was No. 13.
In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was No. 1 at the box office. Shakespeare in Love was No. 18.
In 1997, Titanic was No. 1; As Good As It Gets was No. 6 and Goodwill Hunting was No. 7.
In 1996, Jerry Maguire was No. 4.
In 1995, Apollo 13 was No. 3 and Braveheart was No. 18.
In 1994, Forrest Gump was No. 1 and Pulp Fiction was No. 10.
In 1993, The Fugitive was No. 3 and Schindler’s List was No. 9.
In 1992, A Few Good Men was No. 5 and Unforgiven was No. 11.
In 1991, Beauty and the Beast was No. 3 and Silence of the Lambs was No. 4.
In 1990, Ghost was No. 2 and Dances With Wolves was No. 3.

Need I go on? OK, I think I will...

In 1989, Driving Miss Daisy was No. 8 and Dead Poet’s Society was No. 10.
In 1988, Rain Man was No. 1 and Working Girl was No. 11.
In 1987, Fatal Attraction was No. 2 and Moonstruck was No. 5.
In 1986, Platoon was No. 3.
In 1985, The Color Purple was No. 4 and Witness was No. 8.
In 1984, Amadeus was No. 12. You have to go all the way back to 1984 to find the last time a Top 10 Box Office draw was not nominated for Best Picture.
In 1983, Terms of Endearment was No. 2 and The Big Chill was No. 13.
In 1982, E.T. was No. 1, Tootsie was No. 2, The Verdict was No. 11 and Gandhi was No. 12.
In 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark was No. 1, On Golden Pond was No. 2, Chariots of Fire was No. 7 and Reds was No. 13.
In 1980, Coal Miner’s Daughter was No. 7 and Ordinary People was No. 11.

OK, I’ll stop there.
So what the heck is going on? How come the Academy and the general public have grown so far apart in their tastes? More independent cinema? Too many movies to choose from? It is fine if they want to promote indy films, but can’t they reserve at least ONE slot every year for a movie that the general public likes? Is that really asking too much?

Best Pictures seen and unseen

Thinking about the Oscar nominations last night, I decided to list out all the Best Picture nominees that I have ever seen. It's a long list, but still woefully short for someone who considers himself to be a movie buff. For instance, I've seen none of the movies from 1920s and only a handful from the 1930s. And, of course, I haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominees for the past two years and only one each from 2005 and 2006.
So following the first list, I put together another list of the Best Picture nominees that I would like to see. I don't know enough about a lot of the early films to know whether I would like them or not. One thing is for sure, though, I need to spend more time watching TCM.
(an * means I saw all the nominees that year)

1934
The Thin Man
1935
Captain Blood
1936
The Story of Louis Pasteur
1938
The Adventures of Robin Hood
1939
Gone With the Wind
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Stagecoach
The Wizard of Oz
1940
The Grapes of Wrath
The Philadelphia Story
1941
Citizen Kane
The Maltese Falcon
1942
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Pride of the Yankees
1943
Casablanca
The Ox-Bow Incident
1944
Going My Way
Double Indemnity
1945
The Bells of St. Mary’s
1946
It’s a Wonderful Life
1947
The Bishop’s Wife
Miracle on 34th Street
1948
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1951
An American in Paris
1952
High Noon
The Quiet Man
1953
From Here to Eternity
Roman Holiday
Shane
1954
On the Waterfront
1955
Mister Roberts
1956
Friendly Persuasion
Giant
The King and I
The Ten Commandments
1957
The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958
Gigi
1959
Ben Hur
1960
The Apartment
The Alamo
1961
West Side Story
The Guns of Navarone
1962
Lawrence of Arabia
The Longest Day
The Music Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
1964
My Fair Lady
Dr. Strangelove
Mary Poppins
1965
The Sound of Music
1966
The Sand Pebbles
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1967
Bonnie and Clyde
The Graduate
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
1968
Funny Girl
1969
Midnight Cowboy
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1970
Patton
MASH
1971
The French Connection
A Clockwork Orange
1972
The Godfather
Cabaret
Deliverance
1973
The Sting
American Graffiti
Cries and Whispers
1974
The Godfather Part II
Chinatown
The Towering Inferno
1975
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
1976
Rocky
All the President’s Men
Taxi Driver
1977
Annie Hall
Star Wars
1978
The Deer Hunter
Heaven Can Wait
1979
Apocalypse Now
Breaking Away
1981
Chariots of Fire
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982
Gandhi
E.T.
Tootsie
The Verdict
1983
The Right Stuff
1984
Amadeus
1985
Witness
1986
Platoon
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
A Room With a View
1987
The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction
Moonstruck
1988*
Rain Man
The Accidental Tourist
Dangerous Liaisons
Mississippi Burning
Working Girl
1989*
Driving Miss Daisy
Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poet’s Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot
1990*
Dances With Wolves
Awakenings
Ghost
The Godfather Part III
Goodfellas
1991
The Silence of the Lambs
Beauty and the Beast
Bugsy
JFK
1992*
Unforgiven
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howard’s End
Scent of a Woman
1993
Schindler’s List
The Fugitive
The Piano
The Remains of the Day
1994*
Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption
1995
Braveheart
Apollo 13
Babe
Sense and Sensibility
1996
The English Patient
Fargo
Jerry Maguire
Shine
1997*
Titanic
As Good as it Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential
1998
Shakespeare in Love
Saving Private Ryan
The Thin Red Line
1999
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense
2000
Gladiator
Chocolat
Erin Brockovich
2001
A Beautiful Mind
Gosford Park
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Moulin Rouge!
2002
Chicago
Gangs of New York
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist
2003
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander
Seabiscuit
2004
Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Ray
2005
Good Night and Good Luck
2006
The Queen

And now for the list of best picture nominees I would like to see:

Grand Hotel
42nd Street
It Happened One Night
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
You Can’t Take it with You
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Wuthering Heights
The Great Dictator
How Green Was My Valley
Sergeant York
Suspicion
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Gaslight
Anchors Aweigh
The Best Years of Our Lives
Twelve O’Clock High
All About Eve
King Solomon’s Mines
Sunset Boulevard
Quo Vadis
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Greatest Show on Earth
Ivanhoe
The Robe
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Three Coins in a Fountain
Around the World in Eighty Days
12 Angry Men
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Defiant Ones
Anatomy of a Murder
Elmer Gantry
The Hustler
Judgment at Nuremberg
Tom Jones
How the West was Won
Zorba the Greek
Doctor Zhivago
A Man for All Seasons
Doctor Doolittle
The Lion in Winter
Hello, Dolly!
Airport
Five Easy Pieces
Fiddler on the Roof
The Exorcist
The Conversation
Lenny
Barry Lyndon
Nashville
Network
The Goodbye Girl
Midnight Express
All That Jazz
Norma Rae
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Raging Bull
Reds
Missing
In the Name of the Father
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Mystic River
Capote
Munich
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
No Country For Old Men
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

Oscar nominations 2009

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood this morning, but theOscar nominations that just came out
really suck this year.
Here are the Best Picture nominees:
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

I want to see “Frost/Nixon,” but as for the rest I am really indifferent. I was hoping that “Gran Torino” would get a Best Picture nomination, but no such luck.
I’m sure the ones that made it are all good films, but I just can’t get excited about them. I’m having a hard time seeing the appeal of a movie about a guy who is born old and gets younger as he ages. It sounds depressing. And I’m sure “Milk” is a well-done bio-pick, but I am more interested in seeing Oliver Stone’s “W” instead.
Why can’t they make room for at least one of the hugely popular and extremely well done films this year such as “Dark Knight” or “Iron Man” or “WALL-E.” They used to do that. Remember when “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was nominated for Best Picture? Or “Star Wars”? They didn’t win, but at least they got some well deserved recognition. But these days the Academy is extremely snooty and refuses to acknowledge any film that brings in more than $100 million at the box office. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot.
I’m glad that they gave a posthumous nomination to Heath Ledger for “Dark Knight,” but they will probably end up giving the Oscar to Robert Downey Jr. for his goofy role in “Tropic Thunder”. Downey is a great actor and is overdue for an Oscar, but he should have been nominated this year for “Iron Man”.
And I’m disappointed that Clint Eastwood didn’t get recognized for his acting in “Gran Torino”. Instead, they gave that slot of Richard Jenkins in the Not-Appearing-At-Your-Theater Indy-flick “The Visitor”.

Shared sacrifice? Not us!

It would go a long way to help lift the economy if some of these companies out there would just suck it up and keep more of their workers employed.
But corporate America doesn’t give a flying flip about shared sacrifice. All that stuff that President Obama was talking about in his Inauguarl Address? That’s for suckers. If their bottom line starts to dip even slightly, these companies are ready to start passing out pink slips. Let the government take care of the workers, they say, we have to watch out for our stockholders!
And so the vicious circle continues. The economy goes down. Businesses respond by cutting spending and laying off employees. And the economy goes down further.
This is why pure, unfettered capitalism is just as big of a failure as communism or socialism. None of these systems work by themselves. Capitalism is by far the best economic plan, but it needs a heavy dose of socialism and government intervention to keep from going off course and taking the country over a cliff. Unfortunately for us, Bush didn’t get around to handing the keys to the Obama administration until we had already driven off that cliff and crashed in the valley below. So it will be a long haul to pick up the pieces and get ourselves back on the road again.
In the meantime, companies that think they can weather the storm by passing out pink slips and putting their hands out for big, fat government bailout checks are going to have another thing coming.

New York’s Senate screw-up

I am deeply disappointed that Caroline Kennedy has been forced to withdraw from consideration for the New York Senate seat. I think this will prove to have been a boneheaded move on the part of Gov. David Paterson. I don’t understand why he has waited this long to make an appointment, but it was clear that he was just letting Kennedy hang out there and twist in the wind. She was being battered everyday by bad press and bad opinion polls and if Paterson had just made his pick weeks ago it would have gone much more smoothly.
Now, as a result of his dilly-dallying, it does not matter who Paterson picks - New York will lose power in the Senate. Hillary Clinton was a high-profile Senator who commanded respect and wielded power despite having little seniority. Caroline Kennedy would have gone a long way to fill those shoes with her history and celebrity. She would have wielded at least as much power as Clinton from day one. Now, New York will end up with a Senator who will have greatly diminished power reflecting their lack of seniority. Even if it turns out to be Andrew Cuomo, he won’t garner half the attention that a Senator Kennedy would have mustered.
That’s too bad.
Perhaps Caroline will now wait for the Senate seat to open up in Massachussetts when her Uncle Ted decides to step down.

Farewell tribute

Tom Tomorrow gives us an appropriate farewell tribute for the Bushies.

Obama's Inaugural Address

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Made For You and Me

This ain’t Dick Cheney’s America anymore. So good to see Pete Seeger still in good health and singing as an invited guest at a presidential inaugural with Bruce Springsteen. During the past eight years, the only place you were likely to see Pete Seeger would have been at a protest rally.

He’s STILL here!?!?

Can you believe that George W. Bush is STILL President!!!
Fortunately, the nightmare is finally going to end tomorrow. But don’t expect Bush to vacate the White House before exercising his final presidential perogative - Pardons. Who is going to get them? Scooter Libby? Sen. Ted Stevens? Alberto Gonzales? Michael Milken?
Frankly, I’m rooting for a pardon for Roger Clemens. I think Bush’s final act should be baseball related. If he is lucky, people will eventually forget that he was ever president and just remember him as a former owner of the Texas Rangers. Those were the good old days!

Where Bush went wrong, Part I

As I was saying earlier, I never wished ill for President Bush.
He should never have been president in the first place. He lost the 2000 election by more than half a million votes, but still took the oath of office thanks to some miscast votes in Florida (Elderly Jews for Buchanan!), the antiquated and anti-democratic Electoral College system, and a special assist from five partisan Repubicans on the Supreme Court.
At the time, I actually felt a little sorry for Bush having to take office with the stigma of being the popular-vote loser. I assumed that as a result he would try and govern in a mostly bi-partisan manner befitting the almost dead-even split among the American electorate.
But instead Bush chose to take the path of extreme partisanship and steered his presidency with an ideological compass.
As governor of Texas, Bush had been adequately successful. It’s not hard to do, since most of the power lies with the Lt. Gov. anyway and the governor is mostly a figurehead. Bush was in his element as governor and he struck up a good working relationship with conservative Democrats like House Speaker Pete Laney and Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock.
If he had continued down that path upon moving to Washington, Bush’s legacy might be quite different today. But once he got to the White House, Bush decided he didn’t need bipartisanship. Afterall, Democrats were in the minority in the House and Senate and Republicans were the trancendent power in Washington (even if they had lost the popular vote) and they weren’t about to moderate their goals after having waited this long to finally be in control of the whole shooting match.
So Bush left Bob Bullock in Texas and instead took Karl Rove to Washington. And from that point on, Rove’s harsh, bareknuckle partisanship set the tone for the Bush White House.
Had Bush been more willing to compromise and put aside ideological differences, he might have avoided or at least tempered some of the bigger mistakes during his administration. But by stubbornly sticking to his guns on everything from tax cuts to neo-con foreign policy fantasies, he ended up running the ship of state aground and we are still trying to assess and fix the damage today.
If, for example, after his first round of tax cuts wound up wiping out most of the Clinton-era surpluses without any tangible boost to the economy, Bush had reconsidered his position and perhaps tried a somewhat different course, then perhaps his economic legacy would not be on par with that of Herbert Hoover.
Or, if he had been a little less ideologically driven on health care and education, he might have kept Sen. Jim Jeffords in the Republican fold and avoided losing the Senate to the Democrats midway through his first term.
I don’t know that I believe 9/11 could have been avoided even if Bush had been meeting regularly with Richard Clarke and his anti-terrorist security team and even if he had taken that FBI memo seriously, so I’m apt to give him a pass as far as that goes. And his initial decision to go after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is one that I and most other Americans supported.
Where things started to go seriously wrong was the buildup to the Iraq invasion based on bogus, manufactured evidence and guided by a neo-con fantasy that had been waiting for just this kind of opportunity to assert itself on the world stage.
Once again, Bush closed himself off to foreign policy realists like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft and instead took all of his council from radical rightwing neocons like Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. It was a pattern that would continue to repeat itself throughout Bush’s presidency.

Two positive achievements

Jonathan Gurwitz today does his best to try an prop up the George W. Bush “legacy” and gives us two, yes TWO, credible examples of positive things that Bush achieved during his eight years in office.

PEPFAR: Tthe President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest commitment by any nation to fight a single disease in history. Begun by Bush in 2003, it represents a five-year, $15 billion commitment to stop the global spread of AIDS, especially in 15 focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

The Naivasha Agreement: Bush's personal commitment to negotiate a peace agreement that helped bring an end to the second Sudanese civil war, one of the bloodiest conflicts of modern history that caused the deaths of as many as 2 million civilians over two decades.

Two positive achievements in eight years. To that I suppose I could respond with the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But then I would surely be accused of being “afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome” and thus “simply incapable of acknowledging that a president who (I) believed was so God-awful wrong could possibly do anything right.”

But I never wished ill for President Bush. It is true that I am a partisan Democrat and that I did not vote for him. But I am also a Texan and I had the distinct privilege of getting to interview the man on half a dozen occasions when he was governor. For the last couple of interviews he even remembered my name. I thought that was pretty neat! So while I did not support him politically, I certainly did not want to see him end up as the most despised president of last century.
As governor, Bush had done an adequate job and had run his administration in a mostly bi-partisan nature under the tutelage of Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. But when he went to D.C., he did not take Bob Bullock with him. He took Karl Rove. And that is where Bush’s downfall ultimately began.
More on that in a bit.

Hall of Fame 2009

The Hall of Fame balloting went by so fast I nearly missed it.
Rickey Henderson, the All-Time stolen bases leader, made it in on the first try as expected.
But the big news is that former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice made it in on his 15th and final try before being relegated to the old-timers ballot.
I’m thrilled for Rice and I’m sorry for Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven and Tim Raines, all of whom missed the mark yet again.
One sports writer thinks Dawson and Blyleven have a good shot of making it in over the next three years as there are not a lot of sure-thing players coming up for induction during that period. Blyleven, in particular, is the odd man out of the Hall right now being the 5th all-time strike out leader, whereas all the other All-Time strike out leaders from No. 1 to No. 16 are already enshrined. Blyleven just had the misfortune of playing most of his career for a bunch of losing teams which kept him just short of the magic 300 win mark.
Oh, but I can’t fail to mention that the Baseball Hall of Fame will continue to be a joke as long as All Time Hits Leader Pete Rose is left out for “crimes” he committed that had no impact on his playing career.

Let Obama have his Blackberry!

The NYT reports the other day that the Secret Service and White House lawyers are trying to strip President-elect Obama of his Blackberry before the inauguration citing a litany of security and legal reasons.
This is wrong.
I’m not impressed with any of the reasons given for taking Obama’s Blackberry away. The idea that hackers could get into his Blackberry and access top secret information is silly. He is not going to be issuing executive orders or reviewing top secret documents with his Blackberry. The notion that a terrorist could somehow track Obama’s location through his Blackberry is also paranoid and impractical. What you are going to end up with is a situation where Obama is constantly surrounded by top aides and advisors where he is the only one in the room who does not have a Blackberry.
And legal fears that Obama’s every text message could wind up being subpoenaed by litigious critics is just something that needs to be dealt with legislatively if it has not been already.
The President needs his personal space to think and breathe and reflect and to essentially be who he is. We don’t want to take the person we just elected and then substantially change him by cutting him off from his support network. We’ve already seen that it is not good to have a president who is locked in a bubble all the time.

Still waiting

I find it rather odd that the new Congress has been sworn in and yet we still have to wait another full week before the new president takes the oath of office.
I assume that the new bills that Congress is passing right now will wait until Obama is president before going to the Oval Office for a signature. But just the idea that Bush could still veto legislation passed by the new Congress strikes me as really bizarre.

Another one bites the dust

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio will leave the Senate when his term expires in 2010 joining fellow Republican lawmakers Mel Martinez of Florida, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kit Bond of Missouri in another mass exodus. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is almost certain to make that five or more when she is expected to announce her departure to run for governor of Texas.
So unless Obama royally screws things up over the next two years, this all bodes very well for Democratic prospects of achieving a full-blown filibuster-proof majority in two years.
I think especially if Republicans come across as obstructing Obama’s efforts to bolster the economy, they are going to have no better luck in 2010 than they did in 2006 or 2008. The tarnish on the Republican brand from Bush/Cheney may take a generation or more to finally wear off. If they are lucky.

Making nice

Good to see the Democratic leadership making nice with Roland Burris. Hopefully, he will be seated in the Senate as soon as tomorrow and all of this nastiness will be behind us.
Blagojevich may have a few screws loose, but he is still a very smart and wily politicians and he clearly outmanuevered his critics by using his still legitimate authority to appoint someone who is wholly untainted by the pay-for-play scandal to the Senate seat. As I said earlier, all the Democratic leaders had left that they could do was bluster. Now that it is over with, it’s time to move on and focus on more important things like starting to clean up the enormous mess that Bush and the Republicans have left for the incoming Obama administration.

I’m also happy to see Sen. Feinstein has backed off of her criticism of Leon Panetta and is now supporting him for CIA chief. I think it was an inspired choice by Obama and will go a long way toward resurrecting the intelligence agency’s tarnished image.

Too bad that Norm Coleman couldn’t be a good sport and bow gracefully out of the Minnesota Senate race. Now we have to wait til his frivolous lawsuits are dealt with before seating Al Franken. The end result will be that Franken will lose seniority because he was forced to wait several days to be sworn in compared to the other incoming senators for 2009. A nice, final “SCREW YOU” from Coleman to the people of Minnesota.

Bush Legacy Project

If President Bush is looking for his legacy, NBC News has put together some helpful stats comparing how things were when Bush took office in 2001 with how they are today.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001)
Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008)

As of November!!! Just wait until they figure in the numbers for December and January!!!!

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
Then: 10,587 (close of Friday, Jan. 19, 2001)
Now: 9,015 (close of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009)

Now there’s a legacy for you. Eight years of gains in the stock market completely wiped out. Heck of a job, Mr. President!

BUSH FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 50% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 31% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

31 percent favorable?? That seems a little high.

CHENEY FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 49% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

Hard to believe his favorables were ever that high.

CONGRESS APPROVAL RATING
Then: 48% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

These numbers should start to go up now that the Republicans are out of power.

SATISFIED WITH THE NATION'S DIRECTION
Then: 45% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 26% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (1985=100)
Then: 115.7 (Conference Board, January 2001)
Now: 38.0, which is an all-time low (Conference Board, December 2008)

FAMILIES LIVING IN POVERTY
Then: 6.4 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 7.6 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent numbers available)

And these numbers are before the big financial meltdown.

AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE
Then: 39.8 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 45.7 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent available)

Same here.

U.S. BUDGET
Then: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office)
Now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office)

And finally, Bush’s most long-lasting legacy. Debt up to our eyeballs for as long as we can see...

X-Files: I Want To Believe

I wanted to believe that the new X-Files film would be a good movie. I was disappointed.
I don’t regret having watched it. It wasn’t THAT bad. It’s just that it was more like watching an extra-long TV episode, and one that I wouldn’t have turned into a feature-length film anyway.
I kept hoping that Fox Mulder would do something heroic during the film, but he was played more like a bumbler who somehow managed to solve big cases Clouseau-style in spite of himself. In the very end of the film he nearly gets himself killed, only to be saved in the most cliched manner.
Oh, well.
X-Files had a good run on television. And then I watched Millenium until they abruptly canceled it after just a couple of seasons. And then I started to watch Harsh Realm, but they canceled that one before it could even get off the ground. After that, X-Files creator Chris Carter said “Screw it.” and left television altogether. Sigh.

Political observations for 1-5-09

A lot happened over the weekend.
First, I’m very disappointed that Bill Richardson had to withdraw from being considered for Commerce Secretary. The news that there is an investigation about pay-to-play allegations concerning a state contract seems oddly timed.
It would certainly be unethical if a company had been awarded a big contract BECAUSE they gave money to the governor’s political action committee. But, at the same time, can we really expect that people who donate to PACs are automatically suspect and should be excluded from getting state contracts?
I just hope that once the state investigation is finished that Obama will find some room in his administration for Richardson.

Second, I was disturbed by the report that Harry Reid had allegedly lobbied Gov. Blagojevich over the Senate appointment prior to his arrest. The AP reported that Reid had called Blago to express his disapproval of appointing Chicago Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Danny Davis, and state Senate President Emil Jones Jr. All three are African-Americans.
Reid is now denying the report and saying he did not tell Blago who NOT to appoint. Nevertheless, it now looks even worse to have Reid threatening to physically block Roland Burris from the Senate chamber this week. Since I don’t think he has any legal ground to stand on anyway, I hope that Reid will back off of the Burris confrontation and cut a deal this week.

Third, Congratualtions to Senator-elect Al Franken from Minnesota. Franken is going to be tentatively certified later today as the winner of the Senate race after the recount gave him a slim-250 vote margin over Republican Norm Coleman. Now I just hope that the courts will throw out all of Coleman’s frivolous challenges just as fast as he can file them. Oh, and John Cornyn can stick his threatened filibuster up his you know what.

Fourth, I hope that Gov. Paterson in New York hurries up and appoints Caroline Kennedy as the Senator to replace Hillary Clinton. It’s a smart move politically for New York to have a celebrity Senator because their power and influence is greatly enhanced beyond their low ranking in the seniority system. Sen. Kennedy will have no problem gaining media attention, despite being the low-woman on the totem pole. And besides, rejecting her and picking someone else at this point would result in a huge uproar that we really don’t need right now. I don’t care about the whole legacy issue and how unfair it is that she is getting the appointment based on her family name. That is the way politics has always been in this country. And besides, political legacies can cut both ways too. Just ask Jeb Bush.

And Fifth, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter was unfairly criticized in my opinion for appointing a non-celebrity, non-legacy individual to replace Ken Salazar in the Senate. I don’t know much about Michael Bennet other than that he was superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, but I wish the first consideration when evaluating a nominee wasn’t whether or not he can raise lots of campaign money. Nor do I think that Ritter should have been confined to picking another Hispanic to replace Salazar.

Did you hear the one about FDR and the Great Depression?

Did you hear the latest nonsense from dimbulbs on the right? Yes, I know, it is hard to keep track. But specifically I mean the bit about how FDR’s New Deal programs and government spending actually prolonged The Great Depression?
It sounds contrary to everything that we learned in history. Well, that’s because it is. It’s complete bullshit.
David Sirota does us all the favor of quashing it in this piece for Salon.
Of course, that won’t matter for most rightwingers. Things like the truth, logic and rational argument are all easily discarded whenever it conflicts with their ideology. The “FDR prolonged the Depression” nonsense fits in well with their preconceived notions, so they naturally embrace it irregardless of how completely stupid it is.

Here is a good example of how this kind of silliness gets perpetuated in rightwing circles.
JimmyK takes an article by historian Alan Brinkley and carefully extracts a section that is critical of the New Deal to support the meme about prolonging the Great Depression. But left out is the all the stuff at the beginning of the article praising 90 percent of the New Deal programs....

Does the New Deal provide a useful model for fixing our own troubled economy? In many respects, yes. The frenzy of activity and innovation that marked Franklin Roosevelt's initial months in office--a welcome contrast to the seeming paralysis of the discredited Hoover regime--helped first and foremost to lessen the panic that had gripped the nation. And, during the prewar years of his presidency, Roosevelt's actions produced an unprecedented array of tangible achievements as well. He moved quickly and effectively to address a wave of bank failures that threatened to shut down the financial system. He created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which helped make the beleaguered stock market more transparent and thus more trustworthy. He responded to out-of-control unemployment by launching the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which created jobs for millions of the unemployed. He passed the Social Security Act, which over time provided support to the jobless, the indigent, and the elderly--and the Wagner Act, which eventually raised wages by giving unions the right to bargain collectively with employers. He signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek.

And even in his criticism, Brinkley notes that one of the biggest mistakes of the period - the Federal Reserve Boards insistence on keeping interest rates high - was not a product of New Deal policy.

And now we have the rest of the story...

Theme from ‘Shaft’ reinterpreted

This just proves that music is the universal language. The late-great Isaac Hayes’ masterpiece “Theme from ‘Shaft’” as reinterpreted by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.



Awesome.

Please don’t embarrass us

I sure hope the Senate Democrats rethink their plan to physically block Roland Burris from entering the Senate chamber next week. I don’t care how righteous they think they are, it will turn into a huge and embarrassing fiasco if the all-white Senate were to bar the door on the only black man.
Go ahead and launch the silly investigation and such - it will all be decided in the courts anyway, but spare us all the theatrics of having Burris escorted from the chamber by the Sergeant at Arms.