1) It seems that our corporate media is swooning all over the place for Dem U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas for her Agricultural Committee vote in favor of regulating derivatives (here – not sure how that falls under the “Ag” Committee, but there you are). Indeed, Michael Scherer of Time saw fit to chastise the AFL-CIO and Moveon.org for staging “a political charade” against Lincoln here, wondering if these groups “didn’t think their audience read the papers.”
(Funny, but I’ve never heard any of those teabaggin’ wingnuts charged with staging “a political charade,” though, at best, that’s what they’re doing.)
I will acknowledge that Lincoln looks good on this for the moment, but let’s recall that she also voted for health care reform before voting against it in reconciliation, as well as the fact that she steadfastly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act (yes, that’s still out there also). Basically, she was due to get a big issue right one of these days.
It also bears repeating that, as Think Progress notes here, “Derivatives is the tail on this dog,” (a derivatives industry) lawyer (explained). “It’s not what’s going to drive the (financial reform) bill through Congress. Nor is it the filibuster point. Other stuff makes a lot more noise.”
And as FDL tells us here (disagreeing a bit with the filibuster assessment)…
…nobody has asked Blanche Lincoln if she’ll support the underlying bill, and the kind of things necessary to really protect the taxpayer. Has she made a statement on whether she favors defined capital and leverage requirements for the large financial firms? Does she favor Sherrod Brown’s amendment to cap the size of the largest banks? Does she support the resolution authority in the bill?
Moreover, according to observers on Capitol Hill, this won’t even make the final bill, in all likelihood. It’s an effort to change the subject and maybe force a confrontation for political purposes, but that has little to do with policy. In fact, it’s entirely possible that this strong effort on derivatives represents a poison pill that would actually kill the bill entirely.
In which case, Lincoln will still be able to say “don’t blame me” (and by the way, to do something about Lincoln, click here – and I would say that this is good news).
2) The New York Times profiled what has been going on in Crawford, Texas recently with the departure of a certain 43rd President of the United States for his cushy new digs in Dallas, along with Laura of course (here)…
Most people in Crawford figure that having Mr. Bush as a neighbor has improved property values. Plus, a bank built a branch in town during his time in office.
But few people miss the peace activists who camped out and marched here when he was in office. And there are few permanent marks of his decision to buy a home here.
“Crawford has never really gained anything from him being president,” said Bill Bregan, 69, a retired woodworker. “The only thing we got out of it was that bank.”
And I happened to come across this item about the film of Crawford by David Modigliani from 2008, in which Modigliani attempted to let the people of the town tell their stories; the post is a Q&A with the filmmaker…
Your film does a nice job of presenting multiple viewpoints, but one gets the sense that the overwhelming majority of Crawford residents are strong supporters of Bush. Or at least they were. Has Bush's support fallen in Crawford the way that it has across the rest of the country? Or is it still a stronghold, more or less, of uniform allegiance?
Bush's ascendancy in 2000 was thrilling for the people of Crawford. The high school band played at the inauguration, every store on Main St. was bought in a day, and the Baptist pastor called it a miracle. He says early in the film that not all of [his] members voted for Bush, but probably out 99.9 percent. By now, most of the people in Crawford feel a bit used; they were put at the center of a story that's gone wrong, and they're ready to move on. Bush's popularity has plummeted there, just as it has across the country. It doesn't mean the Crawfordites won't vote for John McCain, but overall, they're finished with this particular Republican.
I got a particular kick out of what Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History in particular thought of Modigliani and his film…
One thing we don't see much of in the film is Bush's ranch. I can't imagine they're open to having filmmakers wander the property. Did you attempt to get permission to enter the premises? Did you have any interaction at all with Bush administration officials?
Through an aide to Condoleezza Rice, I actually got an early five-minute assembly of the project passed to Harriet Miers, and then on to the President. This was July of 2005, before the protests began. I got an email that said he'd watched it on the treadmill one morning and said he thought it was great. I followed up with the aide to Rice and had my crew on alert to go out to Crawford for a chance to visit the ranch. Two weeks later, I'd heard nothing. I emailed twice more. Crickets. Finally, an email came back; no text, no subject heading, just an embedded picture of me at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, standing in the crowd. And then I heard nothing more.
Typical spoiled little pissant…
3) Finally, I found this item from fired former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg; he’s responding to what Jon Stewart said in a recent video criticizing Fix Noise, particularly Goldberg and a certain Bill Orally.
Goldberg, remarkably, ceded some points to Stewart, though Goldberg also said the following…
"Jon, if you have an ounce of introspection, you may want to take this seriously," Goldberg said. "If you just want to be a funny man, who talks to an audience that will laugh at anything you say, that's okay with me, no problem. But if clearly you want to be a social commentator, more than just a comedian and if you want to be a good one, you better find some guts because even though you criticize liberals as well as conservatives, congratulations on that, when you had Frank Rich on your show, who generalizes all the time about conservatives and Republicans being bigots, you didn't ask him a single tough question. You gave him a lap dance. You practically had your tongue down his throat."
I thought it was hilarious of Goldberg to criticize Rich, whose columns are usually models of thorough research and analysis (hey, is it supposed to be Rich’s fault that reality, as they say, has a liberal bias?)
The reason I’m saying anything about this, though, is that Goldberg claims that the worst thing he said is that liberals basically think people who watch Fix Noise (and take it seriously) are dopes. Well, even though Goldberg is right in that statement, that’s not the worst thing he said.
No, that would have to be this (in a clip Stewart recently played in his criticism of Fox and Goldberg that originated last November about Sarah Palin)…
She has 5 kids. Liberals don't have 5 kids. One of them has Down Syndrome. Liberals certainly don't allow that to happen.
That’s the money quote, as they say, Bernie.
And I found it in this HuffPo article by a man named Harold Pollack, who tells us that he takes care of “a cognitively disabled man,” among other observations including this excerpt…
You (Goldberg) assert that we liberals disdain Palin because of her small-town roots or her unusual biography. Plenty of liberals come from similar circumstances. We are dismayed by her intolerance. We are dismayed that she aspires to high office without pursuing the expertise or the sustained record of achievement appropriate to these ambitions. We are dismayed because she peddles crude untruths about death panels. I am especially dismayed that she quit her day job as Alaska governor, when she could have used that platform to help many other Alaska families who face the same challenges her family does, yet lack her family's resources.
You owe many of us a simple and straightforward apology. More than that, I hope that you reconsider your willingness to peddle sweeping and malicious stereotypes about people with whom you disagree. The politics of abortion and cultural resentment poisons everything it touches. Can't we argue about Iraq, health care, tax policy, and the rest without poisoning this, too?
And as usual, Billo The Clown remains safely (and cowardly) silent (to date on this, anyway).
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