Karmic Connection

Two headlines on the same page of Talking Points Memo:

Huckabee Commuted Sentence Of Suspected Cop Killer

Huckabee Not Sure About A Presidential Run In 2012

Asked and answered.
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But It's Not A Litmus Test

Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader for the Republicans, says the GOP purity test is not a litmus test.

It's a very reasonable thing to say if you want the support of the Republican Party, demonstrate some allegiance to the primary positions taken by the party. That's not a litmus test. That's just saying if you want us to give you our money, our support, our troops in the field, our endorsements, then demonstrate that you're someone like us.

Thanks for clearing that up, Dick.
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The First Year

If you accept the conventional wisdom -- as measured by people like Maureen Dowd and Saturday Night Live -- Barack Obama hasn't done bupkus since he was sworn in as president. We're still in Iraq, we're about to escalate in Afghanistan, Gitmo is still in business, gays are still being kicked out of the military, unemployment is over 10%, the auto industry is running on fumes, healthcare reform hangs on the razor-thin balance of falling off the rails because of one vote in the Senate, and reality TV shows and their wannabe stars are still trying to get attention. We might as well have elected John McCain, right?

Jacob Weisberg at Slate begs to differ.

This conventional wisdom about Obama's first year isn't just premature—it's sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn't an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It's a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

[...]

We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a "public option," limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it's easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government's role since the New Deal. If Obama governs for four or eight years and accomplishes nothing else, he may be judged the most consequential domestic president since LBJ. He will also undermine the view that Ronald Reagan permanently reversed a 50-year tide of American liberalism.

Obama's claim to a fertile first year doesn't rest on health care alone. There's mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Should it have been more weighted to short-term spending, as opposed to long-term tax cuts? Would a second round be a good idea? Pundits and policymakers will argue these questions for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama's decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain's economic advisers, on this point: "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession," he said. "In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent."

You can't run a country solely on saying how terrible things might have been, especially when things aren't as well as you'd like them to be. It's like a doctor in the E.R. saying, after reviving a patient with a defibrillator, "Hey, at least they're not dead." Yes, it beats the alternative, but we still have problems.

It is in the best interest of the Republicans to say that President Obama has accomplished very little. After all, any concession to his stewardship would mean they have to acknowledge how rotten things were to begin with. So they are trotting out all the canards about spending us into abysmal debt and government take-over along with the usual finger-pointing about finger-pointing: you Democrats stop blaming everything on Bush! (As if they never did that with previous administrations, all which happen to be Democrats; it's as if Ronald Reagan's administration was in a parallel universe.) So it's no surprise that when Ross Douthat talks about the ineffective stimulus and flailing Democrats, let's remember a couple of things: for one thing, Democrats are not known for being lock-step and doctrinaire. That's the GOP shtick, or at least it used to be; given the tea-bagger lunacy and vacuum of leadership from the RNC, hearing a conservative complain about "flailing" is a study in irony, if not hypocrisy. (Besides, the last Democratic president flailed his way into a budget surplus.) So when you hear a conservative dismiss the success of President Obama -- or any Democrat -- they're mustering damage control: the last thing they want is someone else to succeed. On the up side, President Obama hasn't taken away all our guns, he hasn't reinstated the Fairness Doctrine, he hasn't turned the West Wing into a mosque, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not sitting on the Supreme Court, William Ayers is not running the Department of Peace, and Kum By Yah hasn't replaced the Star-Spangled Banner.

I think it's way too early to pronounce anything about the Obama administration's first year. The economy is still wheezing, but at least it's sitting up and taking nourishment. The healthcare bill could still crater; close to passing does not count. Afghanistan is giving me flashbacks to 1967, and not in a Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band kind of way. It is still possible that the Democrats could lose what's left of their nerve and thereby their majority next fall, which would be an unvarnished disaster for the president. Unlike the GOP, who have the ability to market chicken shit as chicken salad, a loss for the Democrats is truly a loss.
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More Cheney 2012

Newsweek's Jon Meacham posits that Dick Cheney should run in 2012.

Gallup is not asking about him in its prospective polling, and his daughter Liz's recent Fox News Sunday allusion to a presidential run provoked good-natured laughter, as though the suggestion were just a one-liner. Float the hypothetical in political conversation, and people roll their eyes dismissively.

But I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country. (The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.)

Why? Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people. The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions. One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction. A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama's unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.

[...]

A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way. As John McCain pointed out in the fall of 2008, he is not Bush. Nor is Cheney, but the former vice president would make the case for the harder-line elements of the Bush world view. Far from fading away, Cheney has been the voice of the opposition since the inauguration. Wouldn't it be more productive and even illuminating if he took his arguments out of the realm of punditry and into the arena of electoral politics? Are we more or less secure because of the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Does the former vice president still believe in a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Did the counterterror measures adopted in the aftermath of the attacks go too far? Let's have the fight and see what the country thinks.

I can buy some of his arguments; Dick Cheney would be the most unambiguous right-winger the GOP could trot out, but as for the rest of his reasons -- judging the Bush administration and letting Cheney have a clear deck for his potshots against Barack Obama -- those are nothing but masturbatory fantasies on crack for pundits like Mr. Meacham. (By the way, I know a lot of liberals, and none of them would touch a latte.) Elections are, as we are constantly reminded by candidates and history, about the future of the country, not about reminiscing about what a past administration did. Putting the former vice president on the spot about what he knew and when he knew it about WMD's, Saddam and al-Qaeda, torture and terrorists, warrantless wiretapping, and his role in the outing of Valerie Plame may be of interest to historians and pundits looking for a gig, but with all of the problems that we are facing -- many of which Mr. Cheney had a hand in -- the last thing we need to worry about is what he was thinking in 2002. It's not like he would tell us, anyway.

Why should he invest his energy, time, and what remains of his dignity in putting his name on a ballot? Given the fact that no cardiologist worth his EKG machine would give Mr. Cheney a clean bill of health and the fact that he would have to define a vision of America in the future instead of what he did during the Ford administration, the chance of Mr. Meacham's fantasy coming true are about as likely as a chicken needing Chap-Stick. It's a lot easier just to crank out a book -- or pay a ghostwriter -- do the book tours to all the malls of America, go on TV, and take all the shots he wants to without breaking a sweat. He hasn't been on the ballot by himself since he ran for Congress in the 1970's, and the view is pretty good from the cheap seats.

But since the Republicans are so devoid of leadership it's not outside the realm of possibility that the idea could gain some traction. The question then isn't will Dick Cheney run, but is the GOP that desperate?
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Short Takes

A man with a history of mental illness is being sought in the killing of four police officers in Tacoma, Washington.

In his speech Tuesday night, President Obama will lay out a plan to get us out of Afghanistan.

Iran plans to go ahead with nuclear plants.

Swiss voters have approved a ban on new minarets.

Honduras has elected Pepe Lobo, a former congressman -- and UM grad -- as their next president.

The Secret Service interviewed the party crashers this weekend.

Florida top lawmakers, including the governor, get medical insurance subsidies to the tune of $45 million.

Tiger Woods says the car accident he had last week was his fault, wants to keep it private, and refuses to talk to the police.
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Sunday Night at the Movies

I just finished my traditional Thanksgiving weekend marathon of the special edition of The Lord of the Rings, so naturally, I thought I'd lighten it up a little...


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Sunday Reading

After Cheney -- The role of the vice president changed -- for good or for ill, depending on your point of view -- with Dick Cheney. Now that Joe Biden is in the office, James Traub of the New York Times looks at the man and the job and the role he plays in the Obama administration.

As senators, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were far from close. Obama served on the Foreign Relations Committee, which Biden led; and Biden, who felt that he had earned his stars the old-fashioned way, bristled at Obama’s status as instant superstar. “They started out pretty far apart,” a Biden aide says. They went on to run against each other for the Democratic nomination for the presidency; before Biden dropped out of the race he criticized Obama as a foreign-policy neophyte who was copying his ideas. Brian Katulis, a national-security expert at the Center for American Progress, recalls encountering Biden wandering around the executive-suite floor in the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad late one night in February 2008, looking for someone to talk to. Biden invited Katulis and a visiting former congressman down to the hotel restaurant for a milkshake, and then delivered a 90-minute monologue, the essence of which was: “I know more about foreign policy than any of the other candidates in the race, and I’m going to devote the next six months to rewriting Democratic foreign policy.”

Biden said he believed — and still believes — that he would make a very good president. He was nervous about accepting Obama’s offer of the vice presidency, fearing that he would suffer a loss in status, and in voice, from his role as a Senate baron. According to John Podesta, a former official in the Clinton White House who ran Obama’s transition, Biden “had a fairly clear sense in his own mind, which probably existed even before he was selected by Obama but definitely in the weeks in advance of and right after the election, that he didn’t want to be the guy in charge of x portfolio.” Instead, Biden wanted the role every vice president wants, but which perhaps only his predecessor, Dick Cheney, had enjoyed: to be the last voice in the room.

The president and the vice president are very different men both temperamentally and generationally, and they move in different social circles. “Everyone wants this to be some kind of buddy movie — ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ ” as one senior White House official, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely, put it. “Presidents and vice presidents are never close friends. It’s a working relationship; it’s more like the C.E.O. and the chairman of the board.”

Continued below the fold.

"War" on Trial -- Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, he makes the case for trying terror suspects in civilian courts rather than military tribunals. For one thing, the Constitution requires it.

In the uproar caused by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.'s announcement that the alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks are to be tried in U.S. District Court in New York City, and the suspects in the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole will go on trial before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public discourse has lost sight of the fundamental principles that guide the government when it makes such decisions. Unfortunately, the government has lost sight of the principles as well.

When President George W. Bush spoke to Congress shortly after 9/11, he did not ask for a declaration of war. Instead, Republican leaders offered and Congress enacted an Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The authorization was open-ended as to its targets and its conclusion, and basically told the president and his successors that they could pursue whomever they wanted, wherever their pursuits took them, so long as they believed that the people they pursued had engaged in acts of terrorism against the United States. Thus was born the "war" on terror.

Tellingly, and perhaps because we did not know at the time precisely who had planned the 9/11 attacks, Congress did not declare war. But the use of the word "war" persisted nonetheless. Even after he learned what countries had sponsored terrorism against us and our allies with governmental assistance, Bush did not seek a declaration of war against them. Since 9/11, American agents have captured and seized nearly 800 people from all over the globe in connection with the attacks, and now five have been charged with planning them.

[...]

The framers of the Constitution feared letting the president alone decide with whom we are at war, and thus permitting him to trigger for his own purposes the military tools reserved for wartime. They also feared allowing the government to take life, liberty or property from any person without the intercession of a civilian jury to check the government's appetite and to compel transparency and fairness by forcing the government to prove its case to 12 ordinary citizens. Thus, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires due process, includes the essential component of a jury trial. And the 6th Amendment requires that when the government pursues any person in court, it must do so in the venue where the person is alleged to have caused harm.

Numerous Supreme Court cases have ruled that any person in conflict with the government can invoke due process -- be that person a citizen or an immigrant, someone born here, legally here, illegally here or whose suspect behavior did not even occur here.

Think about it: If the president could declare war on any person or entity or group simply by calling his pursuit of them a "war," there would be no limit to the government's ability to use the tools of war to achieve its ends. We have a "war" on drugs; can drug dealers be tried before military tribunals? We have a "war" on the Mafia; can mobsters be sent to Gitmo and tried there? The Obama administration has arguably declared "war" on Fox News. Are Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and I and my other colleagues in danger of losing our constitutional rights to a government hostile to our opinions?

I trust not. And my trust is based on the oath that everyone who works in the government takes to uphold the Constitution. But I am not naive. Only unflinching public fidelity to the Constitution will preserve the freedoms of us all.

Snowe Games -- Steve Coll at The New Yorker has a suggestion on how to get to 60 votes for the healthcare bill.

Phase One: Reflect deeply on what Maine needs. A particle accelerator? A jobs-creating air-defense headquarters for Northern Command, to guard against possible Icelandic air force depredations? New Coast Guard facilities, to protect our shores from unscrupulous Malaysian fishing trawlers? Simultaneously, inventory and review all of the Connecticut earmarks for Homeland Security spending put through by Senator Lieberman during the time the Democratic Party has indulged his tenure as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. Consider in particular how spending now located in Connecticut by Lieberman’s patronage might be relocated to Maine, and redoubled in scale—all for the good of the citizenry and the improved defense of the nation, of course.

Phase Two (overlapping): Negotiate simultaneously but separately with Lieberman and Snowe about how far they will go to accommodate the Obama Administration’s vision of the final health-reform bill, particularly on the public option. Skillfully but carefully introduce to Snowe a conditional vision of Maine’s rewards. Suggest more explicitly than ever that she leave the Republican Party, become an Independent, caucus with the Democrats, and reap during 2010, at least, something on the order of thirty per cent more political and patronage reward than has been available to Lieberman.

Phase Three: If Snowe agrees to an acceptable public-option provision, immediately stop negotiating with Lieberman and go to the Senate floor with a bill. Let him vote no. Afterward, return to him humbly, soliciting his wish list. Flatter and negotiate with him during the treacherous conference phase that follows. Take care to hold Snowe close; reach out to Collins.

When the final bill is passed, with some public option intact, graciously invite Lieberman to the White House signing ceremony. All the while, think about when and at what restaurant, over what vintage, Harry Reid wishes to deliver the news to Lieberman that, with the challenges ahead in 2010, the Senate’s Democratic caucus has decided to move on; Lieberman’s service as a committee chairman (for which his colleagues all remain grateful and admiring, etc.) will no longer be required.

Doonesbury -- Speaking of bookstores....
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Short Takes

The train wreck in Russia that killed a number of people is blamed on a bomb.

Iran's parliament is digging in for less cooperation on nuclear issues.

One of the first goals of the Marines in Afghanistan will be a Taliban bastion.

A report from the Senate says Osama bin Laden was "within our grasp."

Switzerland votes on banning more minarets.

Honduras goes ahead with the presidential election.

Tiger Woods is keeping quiet about his car wreck.

They're not cheap: the party crashers will talk... for a price.
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Orchid Blogging

My vanda orchid is putting out its winter blooms.


More below the fold.




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Rove: Deficits Matter... Now

Karl Rove has suddenly seen the light about deficit spending... or at least he does now that he's got his gig at the Wall Street Journal and can tut-tut about how bad it is that the government is in debt and is likely to incur some more.

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

Oddly enough, deficits didn't really matter to Mr. Rove and his bosses during the Bush administration. It didn't matter that we went into two wars and added prescription benefits to Medicare without paying for any of them. As Steve Benen points out, we are now adding to the deficit because of the damage left behind.

The stimulus was necessary because Rove's old boss left the president an economy on the verge of wholesale collapse. S-CHIP expansion was necessary because Rove's old boss rejected a bipartisan measure to help low-income children go to the doctor. Rescuing the auto industry was necessary because it was a continuation of Rove's old boss' policy and the nation couldn't afford to cut off American manufacturing at the knees at the height of the recession. Cap and trade, Rove neglected to mention, wouldn't add to the deficit, and is necessary because Rove's old boss ignored the climate crisis for eight years. The health care reform bill would cut the deficit significantly, and is necessary because Rove's old boss fiddled while the dysfunctional health care system got worse.

The vast majority of the deficit can be laid directly at the feet of the Bush administration. That's not political rhetoric or finger pointing; that's a fact.

What it comes down to is that, to Karl Rove, deficits under Republican presidents are necessary to do the really important things, like give tax breaks to the people who least need them and start wars against countries who didn't attack us, but deficits under Democratic presidents are evil, profligate, and will burden future generations. Got it.

They didn't call Karl Rove "Turd Blossom" for nothing.
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Short Takes

Money talks to the the Taliban.

At least 35 people have been killed in a train derailment in Russia.

The IAEA has rebuked Iran for their stand against nuclear inspection, and Russia and China are on board with that.

Tiger Woods is apparently okay after a scary car accident near his home in Orlando.

Thanksgiving was really turkey day -- as in Turkey Point -- for a boatload of Cubans.

Photo Op -- the party-crashers could get some legal bills.
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Draft Deferment

Via Shakesville, some folks are trying to get former Vice President Dick Cheney to run for president in 2012.

The organization - "Draft Dick Cheney 2012" - launched on Friday, and unveiled their new Web site. Their aim: To convince the former vice president to seek the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House.

"The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party's standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP," said Christopher Barron, one of the organizers of the Draft Cheney movement. "There is only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong – and that person is Dick Cheney."

As Space Cowboy noted in the comments at Shakesville, "You do realize that if Cheney turns this down, he'll continue to be a draft dodger."

I think this, along with all the chatter about Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Lou Dobbs running for president, really does prove that when a group of people is without a leader, they will listen to anyone with a microphone.
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I Write Letters

After I posted about the irony of Blade columnist Jack Kelley calling the Obama administration "the most political administration in modern times," I boiled it down to a letter to the editor of The Blade. They ran it this morning.
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Black Friday

After a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner last night, replete with some of the best turkey I've ever had and tasty side dishes (and, of course, the requisite political argument between a couple of brothers-in-law for the entertainment portion of the evening), it's hard to imagine that I'm going to get up and go shopping the next day. So I'm not going to. I'm going to maintain my tradition of avoiding the shopping malls for holiday and Christmas shopping and instead do what I've done for the last ten years or so, and that's do a lot of it over the internet or wait until the last minute and pick up some trinkets at Circle-K. Everyone can use a super-sized pack of AA batteries, right?

My favorite kind of shopping, though, is done in a bookstore. I can spend hours in one, especially one of those old-fashioned independent shops like Books and Books in Coral Gables that isn't in the mall next to the Candle Factory, but a quiet place with row upon row of tables and shelves crammed with every sort of book covering every sort of topic from great literature to the last political tell-all to a field guide to the wild flowers of the Uintah Mountains. Some stores even provide comfortable chairs where you can sit and read the first chapter or two ... or more ... before making your purchase, and I remember places like The Tattered Cover in Denver where it was more like being in someone's home. I marvel at the stunning variety of topics, the glorious colors of the large picture books, the hundreds of titles of new and old books, the names of authors I remember from years ago and those I've never heard of. As an aspiring author it gives me great hope to see that even in our age of virtual books on Kindle, there is still a vast number of books that are printed on paper. (It also tells me that if I should ever get something of mine published, who would ever find it in the vast ocean of print? Sometimes I wonder why a publisher will print crap like The Da Vinci Code while my Great American Novel can't get beyond the hard drive. Sigh.)

For the sake of the economy and our eventual recovery from the Great Recession, I hope that the retailers and the shopping malls do a lot of business this year, and I hope that everyone finds the perfect gift(s) for the people they're buying them for...and themselves. As for me, I'll be at the bookstore. Alert Capital One.
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Short Takes

China says it will try to cut back on carbon emissions.

"Dead End" -- The IAEA probe into Iran's nuclear plans has hit an impasse.

According to a report, the Irish Catholic Church hid reports of abuse for years.

There was a magnitude 5.5 earthquake in Venezuela.

Queen Elizabeth II is in Trinidad for talks on climate change. (Plus, it's a nice time to visit the tropics.)

Someone at the Secret Service has a lot of explaining to do.

This time it will be Cash for Kelvinators.

Want to buy some fish?
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Friday Blogaround

If you're not running out to go shopping, check out the writing of the LC for the week.

- A Blog Around The Clock: it's not too late to submit to OpenLab 2009.
- archy: how to avoid 2012.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: Charlie Crist's choices.
- Bloggg: crashing the party.
- Dohiyi Mir: bolt the door, Mercy.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: crude humor.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: that purity test.
- Left Is Right: Palin's America.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web: A Thanksgiving tradition... and a Thanksgiving blogaround to beat them all!
- Rook's Rant: a swing of the pendulum.
- rubber hose: reality (tv) is the real threat.
- Scrutiny Hooligans: the fear of voters.
- Steve Bates: Newt and the First Amendment.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: did the Mormons cave in to the Radical Homosexual Agenda?
- WTF Is It Now?? - thanks, guize.

A little mayo and cold sliced turkey on whole wheat make a great sandwich.
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Friday Catblogging Classic

Post-Thanksgiving torpor.

"Too...much...turkey."
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Thanksgiving

Music by Charles Gross, performed by George Winston, from the film Country.


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Happy Thanksgiving

There are many ways of saying thanks; a smile, a kind word, helping an elderly lady tote her groceries out to the car, and so on. And there's also the thanks in an inward way - of appreciating what you have and have achieved in spite of the hurdles. My friend Brian reminded me that it's been six years since he bought his house in a historic neighborhood in Albuquerque, and I remembered that back on Thanksgiving 2004 he had shared with me the journey that got him there.

A year ago today at two in the afternoon, I met Laura, the realtor, at the title company, and we closed on the house. Laura had forgotten the key, so after the closing she drove back to her office to pick it up, and I headed down to the house. I remember standing on the porch waiting for her thinking "I can't believe it's mine." When she showed up she opened the door, said "Here you go!" and handed me the key. "Go in, walk around, get used to the idea," she said, and after adding if I had any questions or needed anything, etc, she drove off. I remember wandering through there in the late afternoon light, opening closet doors and cabinets, getting out the tape measure and trying to figure what would go where and how it would look. And I remember thinking "I can't believe I pulled this off." Three years earlier I was unemployed and down to my last couple of hundred dollars. When I did get a job it was for a whopping ten bucks an hour, and I spent the next year playing catch up on the bills, floating checks and robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As I stood there in the living room, looking out across the porch to the street, I realized once again the power of determination. Twenty plus years before when I decided to become a paramedic, everyone said "You'll never do it." Everyone except my mom, and I think she was just programmed to be encouraging...I don't think she really believed it either. For two years I worked like a dog, 56-hour weeks at the ambulance company, 16 hours a week in the classroom, and 24 in clinical settings, and I did it. I aced the final and the state exam, and I got the job I wanted with what was then Broward EMS. Twelve years later, stuck in the depths of depression, I decided I was sick of living that way and was going to change it...and I did. I found the right guy, followed his advice, stuck with it, and came out of the experience a completely different person, and better for it. And then in the last few years I went from unemployed, broke, and discouraged to having a decent job and owning a house - admittedly a small house - but a place I can call my own, and do with as I please. Everyone said "On your salary? Get real!" but I looked around, read up on what was out there, researched the market, went into it with realistic expectations, and found the best deal for me.

So the question now is...where do I focus that energy next? And what will come of it when I do? I'm not sure, but I do know I'm going to enjoy discovering the answers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

-- Brian

This is a holiday that is different. It's not a commemoration of an event, like the Fourth of July, nor does it honor a specific group, like Memorial Day, nor does it honor a person. We've come up with the Pilgrims and the big dinner, I think, in order to attach a foundation to it (and sell a lot of food...again with the food), but in reality it's a time of reflection to look back over the year and realize that for all the worries and struggles we have, that it's important, like Brian says, to look at how blessed - in all senses of the word - we are and pause long enough to appreciate it.

If I started making a list of the things I am grateful for, it would get long and probably a touch maudlin. So let me just say thanks out loud here...and I hope you, Dear Reader, share my thoughts and best wishes.
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Short Takes

How many troops will NATO send to Afghanistan?

President Obama will stop off in Copenhagen to talk about controlling emissions.

The Philippines massacre suspect has surrendered.

There was good economic news yesterday: jobless claims were down in October, and consumer spending was up.

Out on bail -- Roman Polanski gets house arrest in his chalet.

Who asked you? -- The Secret Service is investigating how a reality-show couple managed to crash the state dinner at the White House.
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Quote of the Day

Dana Perino, press secretary in the George W. Bush administration:

We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term.

No, seriously. She said that. I'm not making it up. There's video and everything.


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Father and Son

Here's a story that will warm the cockles of your heart, especially if you're a kid growing up with a father you admire.

"We love you, this won't change a thing."

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Question of the Day

Well, since yesterday was about your favorite Thanksgiving dish, you knew this was coming.

What Thanksgiving dish to you dislike the most?

Mine is below the fold.

Sweet potatoes or yams. Blech. Although I do like sweet potato pie since it tastes -- to me -- like pumpkin pie. I found that out when I ate a couple of servings of what I thought was pumpkin pie only be told it was my nemesis. But in any other form I will not go near them. The same is true of acorn squash, even with the pool of butter and brown sugar in the hollowed-out middle as my mom makes them. Feh.
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That's Show Business

People who are suddenly trapped in the glare of the media spotlight find out very quickly that, as Aaron Sorkin noted, the time it takes to go from a media darling to a Letterman punchline can be clocked with an egg timer. Case in point: Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska. She's been very good at blaming the press for her public image since the day she was pushed on the stage in 2008, and she has done very well in exploiting it for pity and profit.

If there is a vast media conspiracy to bring Sarah Palin down, it's not because her ideas are too "dangerous" or "revolutionary" for the mainstream media to handle or even acknowledge. It's because she made the decision to mix politics with celebrity and that's a tough act to pull off. As I used to tell my acting students, you can be an actor or you can be a celebrity; you can't be both.

Sarah Palin has chosen the celebrity path. She may have gotten into politics for all of the right reasons -- to improve the lives of her fellow citizens and make Alaska a better place -- but the limelight killed that off, and she willingly traded off her political capital for the money she could make selling books, touring the country in a big bus, and getting her picture on the cover of Newsweek. People flock to see her and buy her book whether or not they agree with her views on the issues; most of them probably don't know what they are or are unable to articulate them. In doing so, she's sacrificed any coherent political foundation for the thin veneer of fame. There's nothing wrong with that; a lot of people get off on that kind of thing. But she shouldn't try to convince us that she did it unwillingly, and she can't blame other people for giving her the attention she craved. (Nor can she complain when she says something beneath contempt and gets raked over the coals for it.) It's like hearing a celebrity whining about not having any time to be "themselves." It's too late: that's who you are.

To quote Leo Solomon, "There's never an egg timer around when you need one."
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Mirror, Mirror

Rush Limbaugh, the Man in the Glass Booth, shares his deep insight:

If you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you're in a fight with the devil.

It turns out that all that glass is nothing but mirrors.

HT to Digby.
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Census Worker Killed Himself

Kentucky State Police have determined that Bill Sparkman, the census worker found hanged in the woods in rural eastern Kentucky in September, committed suicide.

Despite the fact that Mr. Sparkman was found hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, rope around his neck and the word "FED" written on his chest, analysis of the evidence determined Mr. Sparkman's death was self-inflicted. A thorough examination of evidence from the scene, to include DNA testing, as well as examination of his vehicle and his residence resulted in the determination that Mr. Sparkman, alone, handled the key pieces of evidence with no indications of any other persons involved.

Witness statements, which are deemed credible, indicate Mr. Sparkman discussed ending his own life and these discussions matched details discovered during the course of the investigation. It was learned that Mr. Sparkman had discussed recent federal investigations and the perceived negative attitudes toward federal entities by some residents of Clay County. It was also discovered during the investigation that Mr. Sparkman had recently secured two life insurance policies for which payment for suicide was precluded.

After his body was discovered, there was a lot of preventive posting on the right, waiting for left-wing blogging hysteria over the assumption that Mr. Sparkman had been murdered because he worked for the Census Bureau. However, the vast majority of liberal bloggers -- including myself -- waited to see what the truth was before pronouncing judgment. At the time it looked like murder, but now we know the truth.

My thoughts are with his family, and I hope they find peace.
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Presumptuous Dick

I never served a day in the military. When I was eligible for the draft in 1970, I was (and still am) a conscientious objector. So it would be presumptuous of me to say that I know what it's like to be a soldier on the front line in a war -- Afghanistan, for example -- and what those soldiers are going through or what they think about the course the war is going to take. You'd think the same would go for Dick Cheney, who also never wore the uniform. But you would be wrong.

I worry that there’s a lack of understanding there of what this means from the perspective of the troops. You know, if you’re out there on the line day in and day out and putting your life at risk on a volunteer basis for the nation, and you see the Commander in Chief unable, to or appearing to be unable, to make a decision about the way forward here — you know that raises serious doubts. Nobody wants to think of volunteering to be participate in that kind of operation.

Far be it from me to criticize Mr. Cheney for getting his five draft deferments for whatever reason he got them. But in opting out of serving -- and having the wherewithal to do so when a lot of men did not -- he surrendered any right to speak from the perspective of a soldier. So the only reason I can think of that he's doing it now is to exploit the emotions of those people who are going through something he knows nothing about. That is deeply cynical, even for Mr. Cheney, especially since he was an integral part of the decision-making that sent those soldiers into battle in the first place.

By the way, if it was a Democratic former vice president who made such a statement under similar circumstances, he would have been tarred and feathered as unpatriotic and failing to support the troops in a time of war by the neocon/chickenhawk brigades on the right.
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Short Takes

President Obama will lay out his plans for Afghanistan next Tuesday. Look for an increase in troop and an explanation of his exit strategy.

A lot of people were killed in an election massacre in the Philippines.

Almost a quarter of the mortgages in the country are under water; meaning the debt is more than the asset is worth.

Saab Story -- General Motors will decide what to do about the Swedish car division next week now that the deal has fallen through.

The White House holds the first state dinner of the Obama administration. (And the righties get it wrong about the guest list.)

"Audit Exception" -- Two words no City of Miami official wants to hear.

Get 'em while they're hot -- Scott Rothstein's settlements went to a hedge fund.
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Question of the Day

With the Thanksgiving dinner heading straight for us, it's time to ask -- again:

What is the one Thanksgiving dish you like the most?

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Then What?

Matthew Dowd, who was a campaign strategist for George W. Bush, says that Sarah Palin could win in 2012, and even as Mr. Dowd says that he would not support her candidacy, he offers her some tips on how to win: learn about the issues, appeal to the hopes of voters instead of their fears, look forward instead of citing Ronald Reagan (who isn't really a Republican any more, anyway), stop being so humorless, and stop blaming everyone else for your own flaws. With the advice he's giving her, Teddy the Wonder Lizard could be elected president.

The problem, though, isn't that she could be elected. The problem is what happens after, and what worries me beyond the possibility of Sarah Palin -- or Teddy -- in the Oval Office is that all Mr. Dowd cares about is winning an election. As we have found out much to our chagrin over the years is that winning an election is easy compared to actually being president. You can argue that Barack Obama was as equally inexperienced when he was sworn in as president, but at the very least he put some thought into what he would do once he got there. All indications are that Sarah Palin would wing it, and we've already seen what can happen when we have a president who relies on their gastrointestinal system for guidance. We'd be better off with a Ouija board. And the lizard.

Mr. Dowd may be just indulging in his craft of coming up with a winning strategy. But he's also a citizen, and it would mean a whole lot more if he took his duty as a voter and someone with a stake in the future of his country beyond game theory to say that no matter how much tweaking and advice a candidate gets, there are just some people who have no business running for president.
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Charlie Crist's Choices

Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL) told the St. Petersburg Times that between himself and Marco Rubio, he's the real Republican in the primary race for the open Senate seat in Florida.

"There are a lot of Republicans that don't have the inclination to go to executive committee meetings,'' he said. "There is wide swath of [R]epublican voters out there that don't necessarily listen to cable tv all the time."

[...]

"It's hard to be more conservative than I am on issues -- though there are different ways stylistically to communicate that -- I'm pro-life, I'm pro-gun, I'm pro-family, and I''m anti tax." ... "I don't know what else you're supposed to be, except maybe angry too."

I assume the last point was a shot at the tea-baggers and the birthers; Mr. Crist pointed to a poll in Daily Kos that Mr. Rubio's biggest supporters are those who think President Obama isn't really a U.S. citizen.

There are a couple of problems here for Mr. Crist. As the paper pointed out, when Mr. Crist was in the Florida legislature, he used to call himself "pro-choice," he voted against restrictions on abortion, and he signed a hike on the cigarette tax. He ran as a moderate consensus-builder in his gubernatorial campaign, he embraced -- literally and figuratively -- the Obama stimulus plan, and he launched his Senate campaign with the idea that he could basically win it in a walk with support of moderate and independent voters. Now that he has to actually win the primary, he's got to prove that he's just as hard-core as Mr. Rubio, who, no matter what you think of his positions on the issues, has one thing going for him: he doesn't have to fake it. (When Mr. Crist says, "It's hard to be more conservative than I am," what he really meant is that it's hard to be conservative, period. And when you're a Republican relying on a poll from Daily Kos, you're really reaching for it.)

I get the feeling that Mr. Crist is sensing he's in for a tough road ahead in convincing the True Believers in the Florida GOP base that he's really one of them. He may have forgotten about his voting record in the state legislature, but rest assured the Rubio campaign has not, and there is still a deep-seated mistrust of him, based on his mercurial record and suspicion about his private life. To a lot of people in Florida he comes across as another Mitt Romney; opportunistic and acting as if he is entitled to the job. So what does he do? Well, the Kos poll says that Mr. Crist would have his best shot of winning the Senate seat if he ran as a Democrat.

Whether we'd want him as a Democrat is another story, and one that would depend heavily on how he managed his party switch. But it's clear that he's no longer welcome in his own party. And he has a choice to make -- remain as a hated interloper in his existing party, or try to find a more hospitable home elsewhere.

It won't be the first time that Mr. Crist is faced with making a decision about who he really is.

HT to TPM.
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What About Reconciliation?

One of the ways that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could pass the healthcare bill without worrying about a filibuster is through the process of reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes. But as Jay Newton-Small at Time's Swampland notes, it's a stop-gap measure that would probably do more harm than good.

First, Republicans would invoke the Byrd rule – which would require a 60-vote majority to overcome – every five minutes, forcing Dems to pare down the bill and pass something much, much less ambitious. It took weeks to get a cloture vote to start the debate -- imagine how long it'd take to get the 2,074-page bill through God knows how many Byrd rule objections -- even if everyone proves to be germane. And second, the budget expires in five years – meaning Congress would have to go through this whole process all over again to either extend or make permanent the changes.

Reconciliation would also be an admission of defeat by the Democrats and President Obama on healthcare; they would have to settle for merely the illusion of passing something called "healthcare reform" just to say they did it and have very little to show for it.

If the Democrats and the president truly believe that they have something worth fighting for, then they need to go forward with the best they can come up with and not try to get it through with some parliamentary maneuver.
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The Republicans' Little Tent

The Republicans want to make sure that only the True Believers get their backing, so they're considering instituting a little test dreamed up by Jim Bopp, the same genius who wanted to pass a resolution mandating that the RNC label the Democrats as the "Democrat Socialist Party," to see if their candidates pass muster. Here's the list of qualifications as reported by Steve Benen:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill

(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) Workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check

(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat

(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Mr. Bopp is calling it the "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates," the idea being that Ronald Reagan once said that if you agree with 80% of the Republican platform, you were still a Republican.

One small problem: Ronald Reagan would have flunked the test since he supported immigration reform, sold military hardware to Iran, raised taxes, ran up a huge deficit, and supported the Brady gun control bill. George W. Bush would have been drummed out of the party, too, based on his economic record, his expansion of "government-run" healthcare with the passing of Medicare Part D and the prescription benefit, his enabling of North Korea, and his comparatively humane stand on immigration. Even Barry Goldwater in his later years would have been an apostate for his support of a woman's right to choose and gay rights.

If this is their idea of how to reach out to attract more people to the party, they have a funny way of going about it.
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Short Takes

Iran is making it harder to be a dissident.

Violence continues in Afghanistan as President Obama nears an announcement on the war strategy there.

The election in Iraq in January will probably not happen at that time.

Eight people in Minnesota have been charged with recruiting terrorists for Somalia.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) faces 37 ethics charges.

Home sales picked up in October.

The FBI reported that hate crimes against gays and people of faith rose in 2008.

There's a "strong association" between Chinese drywall and corrosion, according to the U.S. government.

The Florida Senate race: Charlie Crist hits back at Marco Rubio.
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Question of the Day

So the holidays are beginning, creeping in like the cold under the door from the back door where the weather-seal leaks... or if you're watching the Hallmark Channel, they've been pummeling you like a kick-boxer on crack. We're starting -- at least here in the United States -- with Thanksgiving on Thursday. So...

What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

This year I don't have company, but I will be the guest of some close friends who are, without question, the best cooks that I know in Miami. (And they have a HUGE TV for the Lions game.) I'm looking forward to it very much.
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The Right to Arm Trees

Former Vice President Al Gore visits SNL.


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Krugman: Don't Stop Now

Paul Krugman warns that now is not the time for timidity in rescuing the economy.

Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

Now, it’s politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it’s his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done.

Instead, however, Mr. Obama is lending his voice to those who say that we can’t create more jobs. And a report on Politico.com suggests that deficit reduction, not job creation, will be the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address. What happened?

It took me a while to puzzle this out. But the concerns Mr. Obama expressed become comprehensible if you suppose that he’s getting his views, directly or indirectly, from Wall Street.

And Wall Street, as Dr. Krugman notes, has a lousy record when it comes to making economic predictions. They are a reactive entity to the point of skittish -- Iran goes on war games and oil prices go up two dollars a barrel -- and they also have an agenda apart from Washington: if the government tries to create jobs, they're the losers because they can't profit, at least directly, from that kind of investment.

And history also has a lesson for us. In 1937 when the New Deal had been in place for less than four years, President Roosevelt listened to the Republicans and tried to pull back government spending. Stocks tumbled again, the economy had a relapse, and the vultures on the right who had goaded FDR into cutting back said, "Ha! The New Deal is a failure!" This time all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching is coming from folks who didn't say a word when President Bush took us from a surplus to the Great Recession.

Maybe it's time they found out what it was like to be unemployed.
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Celebrity Cruises

Remember the GOP mantra during the 2008 campaign about Barack Obama being nothing but a "celebrity"? They laid into his tour of Iraq and Europe and mocked his speech in Berlin as nothing more than a rock-star appearance. We have serious problems, we were told, and they can't be solve by a guy who outdoes the Jonas Brothers for fan adulation. Of course, it didn't help that John McCain had all the star appeal of a re-run of The Lawrence Welk Show.

My, how times have changed.
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Short Takes

Iran stages war games to keep nuclear inspectors out.

Remember the Mainers -- Democrats try to rope in Collins and Snowe on the healthcare bill.

Pay up -- The debt the U.S. owes is coming due.

Foreclosures happen to renters, too. (No kidding.)

Legalizing marijuana is gaining popularity, dude.

There's going to be a presidential election in Honduras next week.

Going green in Key West.
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Sunday Night TV

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1964)


This was one of Disney's many iterations of its Sunday night staple that ran from 1954 to 1990. I remember watching this ... in black and white.
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Irony of the Day

Jack Kelley, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade in Toledo, and the poor man's William Kristol, is railing against President Obama's "vendetta" against the Bush administration.

Former Justice Department official Shannen Coffin thinks the real reason for a civilian trial is that President Obama hopes KSM and his lawyers will attack the Bush administration.

“The decision to try KSM in civilian court accomplishes indirectly what Obama does not wish to do directly — it puts the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics on trial for all the world to see,” Mr. Coffin said. This would be red meat for the liberal base. But it’s unlikely to be popular with centrists who are already unhappy with Mr. Obama’s economic policies.

This has been the most political administration in modern times. Ten months after his inauguration, Mr. Obama still behaves more like a candidate than a president. But in pursuing his vendetta against his predecessor at the expense of American security, he may be campaigning to be a one-term president. [Emphasis added.]

I'd like to take up a collection and send Mr. Kelley a get-well card and hope that now that he's recovered from his eight-year coma, someone will bring him up to date on just which has been "the most political administration in modern times." That's an insult to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, and the rest of the people in the Bush administration who worked so tirelessly to try to secure a permanent Republican majority. How Mr. Kelley could ignore their work just to take a cheap shot at President Obama is unconscionable.

But seriously, while it is important to grant the defendants a fair trial, it is also important to recognize that it's going to be that much harder because the Bush administration did everything they possibly could to make it impossible for that to happen. They expected two outcomes: either KSM and his cohorts would be tried in a military tribunal using evidence that could never stand up in a civilian court, or they were going to let them rot away in jail for the rest of their lives without ever bringing them to trial. They never expected the rule of law to be applied, and now the biggest fear they and the rest of the monarchists have is that the Bush administration will be the ones held accountable for throwing the case against the terrorists into the crapper.
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November 22, 1963

Friday, November 22, 1963. I was in the sixth grade in Toledo, Ohio. I had to skip Phys Ed because I was just getting over bronchitis, so I was in a study hall when a classmate came up from the locker room in the school basement to say, "Kennedy's dead." We had a boy in our class named Kennedy, and I wondered what had happened - an errant fatal blow with a dodgeball? A few minutes later, though, it was made clear to us at a hastily-summoned assembly, and we were soon put on the busses and sent home. Girls were crying.

There was a newspaper strike at The Blade, so the only papers we could get were either from Detroit or Cleveland. (The union at The Blade, realizing they were missing the story of the century, agreed to immediately resume publication and settle their differences in other ways.) Television, though, was the medium of choice, and I remember the black-and-white images of the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews, the casket being lowered, President Johnson speaking on the tarmac, and the events of the weekend - Oswald, Ruby, the long slow funeral parade, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" - merging into one long black-and-white flicker, finally closing on Monday night with the eternal flame guttering in the cold breeze.

I suspect that John F. Kennedy would be bitterly disappointed that the only thing remembered about his life was how he left it and how it colored everything he did leading up to it. The Bay of Pigs, the steel crisis, the Cuban missle crisis, the Test Ban Treaty, even the space program are dramatized by his death. They became the stuff of legend, not governing, and history should not be preserved as fable.

I never thought I'd be old enough to look back forty-six years to that time. And according to NPR, sixty percent of Americans alive today were not yet born on that day. Today the question is not do you remember JFK, but what did his brief time leave behind. Speculation is rife as to what he did or did not accomplish - would we have gone in deeper in Vietnam? Would he have pushed civil rights? Would the Cold War have lasted? We'll never know, and frankly, pursuing such questions is a waste of time. Had JFK never been assassinated, chances are he would have been re-elected in 1964, crushing Barry Goldwater, but leading an administration that was more style than substance, battling with his own party as much as with the Republicans, much like Clinton did in the 1990's. According to medical records, he would have been lucky to live into his sixties, dying from natural causes in the 1980's, and he would have been remembered fondly for his charm and wit - and his beautiful wife - more than what he accomplished in eight years of an average presidency.

But it was those six seconds in Dealy Plaza that defined him. Each generation has one of those moments. For my parents it was Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the flash from Warm Springs in April 1945. Today it is Challenger in 1986, and of course September 11, 2001. And in all cases, it is what the moment means to us. It is the play, not the players. We see things as they were, contrast to how they are, and measure the differences, and by that, we measure ourselves.

Previously published, with minor edits, on November 22, 2003.
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Sunday Reading

Glenn Beck goes for the William Jennings Bryan model, complete with Chautauqua-style revivals and book sales.

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

Mr. Beck provided few details about his plans for the tour, making it unclear if he truly intends to prod his audience of millions into political action or merely burnish his media brand ahead of a book release.

Mr. Beck did say the conventions would resemble educational seminars, and he emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them.

Frank Rich notes that Sarah Palin seems to be following the same route.

Culture is politics. Palin is at the red-hot center of age-old American resentments that have boiled up both from the ascent of our first black president and from the intractability of the Great Recession for those Americans who haven’t benefited from bailouts. As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so she does from the disdain of Republican leaders who, with a condescension rivaling the sexism they decry in liberals, belittle her as a lightweight or instruct her to eat think-tank spinach.

The only person who can derail Palin is Palin herself. Should she not self-destruct, she will doom G.O.P. hopes of a 2012 comeback. But the rest of the country cannot rest easy. The rage out there is larger than Palin and defies partisan labeling. Her ever-present booster [Matthew] Continetti, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggested that she recast the century-old populist outrage of William Jennings Bryan by adopting the message “You shall not crucify mankind upon the cross of Goldman Sachs.” If Obama can’t tamp down that rage across the political map, Palin will at the very least pave the way for a demagogue with less baggage to pick up her torch.

Both Mr. Beck and Ms. Palin are carefully crafting these campaigns in carefully chosen fields where they know they will be welcomed, and they are avoiding larger cities -- and media venues. They are tapping into a movement that is a mile wide and an inch deep, and they know that anger is easy to provoke -- find someone to blame for all the problems. This kind of campaign works to a degree. To paraphrase Aaron Sorkin, whatever your particular problem is, neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin is the least bit interested in solving it. They are interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. It sells books, it sells newspapers, and people talk about them. But if history is any guide, people don't vote for them. William Jennings Bryan was the nominee for president three times... and lost each time.

Continued below the fold.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., has some thoughts on the trial of Kahlid Sheik Mohammed and what it says about us.

Americans have always been ambivalent about the ability of our justice system to give bad people what they've got coming. That's why the action movie almost always ends with the bad guy shot, impaled or fed into a wood chipper: seeing him led away in handcuffs simply doesn't impart the same visceral sense of just desserts.

But you have to wonder: Are our emotional needs the most important consideration here?

It's worth remembering that even the architects of the greatest barbarism in history had their day in court. After burning away 11 million lives, the leaders of the Nazi regime found themselves facing not summary execution, but a trial before a military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

As prosecutor Robert Jackson put it: ''That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.''

And when the trials were over and the verdicts delivered -- death or imprisonment for most, three were acquitted -- the New York Times editorialized as follows: ''These sentences can neither atone for all the evil these men have brought into the world nor undo any part of it. But they help to assuage the conscience of mankind and to restore to honor the concept of the dignity of man which cannot be violated with impunity.''

Compare that with the Bush administration's original, Supreme Court-rebuked vision of justice -- minimal rights for the accused, torture allowed, the government's thumb on justice's scale -- and maybe you'll agree: We need this trial more than Mohammed does. For all its risks -- and they are real -- it offers a prize worth risking for: the promise of feeling like Americans again.

That feeling is arguably the most significant casualty of Sept. 11. On that day, we elevated a mob of stateless criminals, a mafia in cleric's clothing, to the exalted level of rogue nation. But they were never that, never a threat to our national existence, lacked the forces to take even one square inch of American soil. What they could threaten -- and take -- was our sense of ourselves as a brave, reasonable and civilized people, inhabiting a nation of laws. They beckoned us into the mud with them, and we leapt.

It's not the first time. Periodically, we have shed the burden of bravery, reason, civilization, laws. Always, it happens in moments of national stress, moments of overwhelming confusion, anger or fear, moments that make us prey to demons of expedience and moral compromise. Moments when we wonder if we can still afford to act like America.

But we face a band of bloodthirsty hoodlums whose dearest wish is to make us just like them. So maybe the better question is this:

Can we afford not to?

Doonesbury -- a torturous schedule.
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Short Takes

Onward to the debate: The healthcare bill got the 60 votes it needs to begin talking about it.

The death toll in the Chinese coal mine explosion is at 87.

A ferry boat sank in Indonesia with 242 aboard.

The U.S. and Mexico cooperate on dealing with the drug trade.

Hacked e-mails and climate change.

Shipping out: South Florida National Guard gets ready to go to war.

Remember Roland Burris?
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Wings Over Miami

The Florida car show season kicks off today with the second annual Wings Over Miami show at the Wings Over Miami Air Museum at Tamiami Airport today, so if you're out and about and want to see some cool antique cars and airplanes, head on out. The show is from 9:30 - 3:30, and the weather forecast looks good. I'll be there.
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Nanny Statement

Some conservative Christian denominations have issued a proclamation: we're sniveling busybodies and we're ready to prove it.

Conservative Christian leaders unveiled a declaration Friday calling on Christians not to comply with rules and laws forcing them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideals that go against their religious doctrines.

The declaration urges Christians to practice civil disobedience to defend their convictions, even though some signers of the document backed away from the strong language.

[...]

"We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them," the declaration says. It lists the "fundamental truths" as the "sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty."

Just to be clear, none of the laws they're prepared to break require anyone to get an abortion or marry someone of the same sex.

If they want to prevent women from getting abortions, it makes a lot more sense to do everything they can to support the teaching of comprehensive sex education and pregnancy prevention before the conception; wagging your finger and handing out nostrums like "Just Say No" doesn't work. They'd accomplish a lot more if they would spend their money and considerable lung power working to end rape and domestic abuse. Meanwhile, there are plenty of laws in this country that assault the sensibilities of good people; for example, the Florida ban against adoption of children by gays or lesbians for no other reason than they're gay or lesbian. I wonder where these so-called defenders of the faith stand on such unfair treatment, not to mention helping the children languishing in a woefully-inadequately funded state system? And if they are so adamant about not one tax dollar going to pay for an abortion, where is their outrage at their tax dollars going to pay for the war in Iraq?

Oh, and of course you know who they blame for all of this.

Although the declaration's positions are hardly new for religious conservatives, it says social ills have been exacerbated by the election of President Obama, an abortion rights advocate, as well as a general erosion of what it calls "marriage culture" with the rise of divorce, greater acceptance of infidelity and the uncoupling of marriage from childbearing.

News flash: Roe v. Wade was decided when Mr. Obama was eleven years old, and his marriage -- to a woman -- is intact. The recent examples of the erosion of the "marriage culture" have all been thanks to the fine folks like Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani? (PS: Trivia question: who was the first -- and so far only -- president who was divorced?) Do you really want to bring up the question of out-of-wedlock babies with Sarah Palin? Why is it that these people are so worried about someone else's private life?

It also should be noted that these folks don't speak for every Christian or every denomination. For each of these orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical church, there's a denomination that is willing to reach out and support a woman's right to choose, bless same-sex marriage, and actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to making an effort to, in the words of Jesus Christ, "love thy neighbor as thyself."
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Short Takes

An explosion in a mine in China has killed a number of people.

It's working -- a consensus of economists say the stimulus is showing signs of success.

Eye on the middle -- the conservative Democrats hold the future of the healthcare bill.

If you can't be good, be loud: the only thing the GOP has to offer in the healthcare debate is a lot of noise.

We'll take them: Thomson, Illinois, seems to like the idea of being the new Gitmo.

The more we learn about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the more we wonder why the military didn't do something.

A former State Department official and his wife confess to thirty years of spying for Cuba.

Four of the Liberty City Six "terror" cell get sentenced.
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The Terrible Shock of Reality

Steve Benen examines the foolish inconsistency of the right-wing outrage over the plans to put terrorists on trial in civilian courts.

In 2002, the Bush Justice Department put Zacarias Moussaoui, an al Qaeda terrorist often referred to as the "20th 9/11 hijacker," on trial in a federal court near D.C. No one, at the time, said then-President Bush was putting American lives at risk or undermining U.S. national security interests with the trial. Despite the conservative apoplexy of the last week, the Moussaoui trial was simply considered appropriate and routine.

[...]

Likewise, let's not forget that Rudy Giuliani, one of the leading Republican attack dogs on President Obama, said he considered the Moussaoui trial a testament to the strength of our legal system and the American dedication to the "rule of law." Giuliani called the verdict "a symbol of American justice," and said the trial itself might improve America's standing internationally. After Moussaoui was convicted by a civilian jury, the former mayor boasted, "America won tonight."

This gets to the larger point that Jon Stewart made when he interviewed Lou Dobbs: if, as the right-wing talkers are proclaiming, Americans think the country is "out of control" and they're worried about what's going to happen next, why is it that all of this angst and concern is suddenly being expressed when we have a Democrat in the White House? Didn't these issues exist before January 20, 2009?

Of course they did. But the reason the wingers didn't shriek and carry on was because it was their guy who was in charge and to raise any concerns about how he was handling the job or question his motives was disloyal. And no matter how rotten the economy was, no matter how bureaucratic and expensive monopolized healthcare was, no matter badly the education system was crumbling before their eyes, no matter how incompetent the government was at providing disaster relief, and no matter how many people were dying in a war that had been instigated against a nation that never raised a hand to us, they were comfortable in the knowledge that the president was one of them. Even if he was comfortably numb, he was a known quantity, and everything was going to be all right -- it's Morning in America -- so no matter how terrible reality was, it was better than the great unknown: that Other Guy who might not even have been born here will take away your guns, turn your kids gay in the military, and tear down the Jefferson Memorial to replace it with a mosque. Or something; that's what they keep telling them on the radio, anyway.

What's piteously ironic is that if we had had that kind of mindset in 1776, we'd still be a British colony. The teabaggers who think they're emulating the Spirit of '76 by demonstrating against the tyranny of our government are actually trying to maintain the status quo that we had when things were rotten. Picture Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck railing against the rabble-rousing John Adams, the agnostic Thomas Jefferson, and that secular humanist Benjamin Franklin who wanted to rebel against the system and replace it with a dangerously experimental form of democracy; talk about a radical socialist plot. No matter how insidiously oppressive the British colonial government was, it was still safe and secure as opposed to the scary adventure of going -- literally and figuratively -- into the wilderness of the New World or, at the very least, trying to make things better for everyone, not just the rich white guys who didn't want to pay their taxes.

The worst thing that Barack Obama did was tell us that not only were things not all rosy, it was going to take some hard work and sacrifice to make things better. After eight years of an artificial high, reality is a terrible shock.
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Jon Stewart and Lou Dobbs

Jon Stewart once again proves that he is the best interviewer on television as he talks to Lou Dobbs.

Part 1:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part 2:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part 3:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

When we've gotten to the point that the sharpest and most incisive questions come from an interview on a comedy channel, it begs the question as to why David Gregory and George Stephanopolous are on TV at all.
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Stop That Noise!