Doomsy's Do-Gooders And Dregs (2007 - Pt. 8)

Time to finish this up, at long last (prior related posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)...

R.I.P.

Art Buchwald, Molly Ivins, Arthur Schlesinger, Tom Eagleton, Kurt Vonnegut, David Halberstam, Mstislav Rostropovich, Steve Gilliard, J.B. Handelsman, Khalid W. Hassan, Doug Marlette, Lady Bird Johnson, Ingmar Bergman, Tom Snyder, Norman Mailer, Hy Lit, Milo Radulovich, Luciano Pavarotti, Oscar Peterson, Dan Fogelberg and Stu Nahan

Here are some tribute videos, first of Oscar Peterson ("You Look Good To Me"; deleted this earlier by accident)...



Update 1/14/08: Well said.

...Brian Williams of NBC News remembers Tom Snyder from earlier this year...



...Rostropovich plays Allemande from J.S. Bach's Cello Suite No.1...



...and Molly Ivins is remembered in this tribute on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" from last February 1st, a 1986 report on "art" in the state of Texas - sorry that the picture quality isn't better, but it's good enough.



I thought these were four of the best political videos of the year; first, Dem U.S. House Rep Anthony Weiner of New York "throws down the gauntlet" at the "Republic" Party...



...next, Chris Dodd mixes it up with that idiot O'Reilly (as Atrios says, "more like this")...



...I absolutely loved this; Keith Olbermann reads a "Tom Tomorrow" comic making fun of O'Reilly (I guess these last two tell you what I think of O'Reilly, huh?)...



...and while this isn't the video of Ted Kennedy speaking out in favor of SCHIP that I was looking for, it is close enough and shows him stating the case eloquently, blowing up the freeper boogeyman of "socialized medicine" in the process.




And now, without further ado, here is my choice for "Dregs Of The Year"...

It would be this guy, Mitch McConnell (a.k.a., "Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao").

I could have chosen from anyone in a huge field here - "Deadeye Dick" Cheney, Gen. David Petraeus (maybe a low blow to go after someone in our military, but his relentlessly rosy scenarios on Iraq have contributed hugely to this nightmarish year, the worst in terms of troop casualties), Rudy Giuliani, Brian Tierney of the Inquirer (for giving a paycheck to Smerky, Ferris and Little Ricky, if for no other reason), Clarence Thomas for spending a good part of this year sulking over his Yale Law degree in an effort to promote his book (an unapologetic paean to his fellow freepers, of course), Dubya, or Elaine Chao herself.

But I think McConnell deserves this above all others because he more than anyone else, in his role as Senate Minority Leader, has stalled all efforts by Congress to rein in President George W. Milhous Bush and his ruinous escapade in Iraq. And as Cliff Schecter and Zachary Roth noted so presciently here in October 2006...

With a confrontational Republican leader, a narrow Senate majority, and an unpopular, lame duck president, the next two years don’t figure to see much landmark legislation passed. Instead, if the past is any guide, Majority Leader McConnell will focus only on measures that support Republican power or drive a wedge between Democrats, and will do everything possible to keep campaign dollars flowing to the GOP. But if and when that happens, don’t blame McConnell. He’ll only be doing what he was elected to do.

I should note that Schecter and Roth assumed for the purpose of argument that the Repugs would keep control of the Senate - and again, I think that would have happened had Dubya fired Rummy before the election, but luckily he didn't - but otherwise, this scenario is the same.

And as the article also notes...

...McConnell’s full-throated defense of the right of politicians to take unlimited amounts of money from corporations helped make him a popular man among Senate Republicans, and put him in a position to make his move into the top ranks of leadership.

To learn more about McConnell and his corporatist subservience, I would suggest you discover what the good people at Ditch Mitch KY have unearthed about this cretin.

Oh, and did I mention the filibusters? Well then, just as a reminder, here's Mitch and his friends in action.

And did I mention that the phrase "60 votes needed for passage" in the Senate has become accepted language by our corporate media, with we filthy, unkempt, profanity-spewing bloggers being the ones to point out that this doesn't make mathematical sense in a governing body of 100 members?

We can thank Mitch for that too. In fact, we can "thank" Mitch for following the marching orders of the outlaw Bushco regime to the letter to the point where the Dems will have a hard time running next year trying to defeat the narrative that they accomplished nothing when the voters gave them control of Congress last year (that is categorically not true - they caved on the war too easily, and Reid was an utter disgrace on FISA, but other than that, a lot of good has come out of this Congress). McConnell has derailed efforts to make our government more accountable, allowing Jim DeMint of his party to block a deal that would have brought the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act to the floor, as well as refusing to tell Harry Reid who introduced a hold on the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (here).

And yes, while it's true that McConnell could have done a better job but Dubya would have vetoed Congressional legislation anyway, McConnell could have helped to override those vetoes (this is all speculation, I realize, since McConnell has never had any inkling or intention to deviate from the foul Bushco orthodoxy one bit).

So for all of these reasons and probably many more that I cannot get into at the moment, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is my choice for Dregs Of The Year.

And now, my choice for Do-Gooder of the year would be this man, Liviu Librescu. He was an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, and he was at the school on April 16th, the day the coward Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded many others before he took his own life.

As this Washington Post profile tells us...

...the 76-year-old man (Librescu) barricaded the door to his classroom long enough for (his students) to jump to safety from the upper-story windows of Norris Hall.

...

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu told the AP in a telephone interview from his home outside Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Librescu was killed by the gunman, who eventually forced his way into the classroom, according to his son. And his death occurred on the date of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel and one day after it was observed in this country.

For all the great work of MoveOn.org, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Patrick Murphy, Paul Krugman, Russ Feingold and many others over the past year, I can't think anyone who can top what Librescu did (and my prayers and condolences go out to his family and friends).

That's all I've got - if you made it through all eight of these posts, you have my undying gratitude. And even if you didn't, best wishes for a happy and healthy 2008 anyway.

Update 1/1/08: I meant to add these quotes from Glenn Greenwald yesterday, so...