Friday PM Stuff

K.O. speaks out about the utter idiocy of Proposition 8 in California (and this tells us about tomorrow's day of protest)...



...and this may be the best anti-Joe Lieberman commentary I've heard yet from Rachel Maddow (h/t The Daily Kos, and also to Atrios for this)...



Update 11/16/08: This is a great post in a related vein, and though this is somewhat off-topic, it definitely pertains to the 2000 election.

...Dem U.S. House Rep Elijah Cummings is my hero for today after laying this on "bailout czar" Neil Kashkari over the latest antics from those pirates at AIG (h/t Think Progress)...



...Electric Six ("Formula 409"; I think they missed a spot).

Friday AM Stuff

And by the way, you can learn more here also (h/t The Daily Kos - still don't know about posting today)...



...and to learn more about how to help Jim Martin for the special election in Georgia against the odious Saxby Chambliss, click here...



...more Bush scandals: the State Department is going to fine Blackwater for the 900 illegal guns in Iraq (and they still kept getting contracts after the story broke, of course), it looks like we'll never know who let the word out at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement about Obama's aunt supposedly here illegally timed for just before the election, and it looks like Dubya could revive a Truman-era precedent to combat subpoenas after he leaves office that is based on a shaky legal foundation at best)...



...and as a tribute to Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, here's "Red House" from Woodstock in 1969.

Poverty Versus Denial

Former Bushco speechwriter Michael Gerson opined as follows in the WaPo yesterday…

Political indifference to durable poverty in our midst has long been a scandal; from Obama it would be a tragedy.

From here…

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor statistics, the national poverty rate increased from a record low of 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.5 percent in 2007 -- an increase of approximately 5.8 million Americans living below the poverty line. “In George W. Bush’s presidency, there’s been an almost total absence of benefits of growth trickling down to the middle class, much less to those at the bottom,” says Jared Bernstein, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, whose extensive writing on the working poor includes the book "The State of Working America." The nation's unemployment rate has risen from 4 percent in 2000 to 6.1 percent at present. Bush's economic policy has been marked by tax cuts largely beneficial to the wealthy, while federal funding for many programs helping low-income people has not kept pace with inflation.

Obama isn’t even sworn in yet and already the pundit class is holding him accountable on issues he hasn’t even been able to address.

Try laying this “political indifference” rap on President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History first, OK?

The Catholic Church’s ACORN Inquisition

(By the way, I also posted over here today.)

This CNN story tells us…

The Roman Catholic Church is cutting off funds to the community organizing group ACORN, citing complaints over its voter registration drives in the November 4 election as part of the reason.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development froze its contributions to the group in June amid allegations that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million.

This week, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore, Maryland, the campaign's chairman said it was cutting all ties with the group.

"We simply had too many questions and concerns to permit further CCHD funding of ACORN groups," Roger Morin, the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, Louisiana, told his colleagues in a letter to the conference.

I guess it was too much trouble for auxiliary bishop Morin to do a little investigating into this and found out what I discovered here, notably…

The head of a foundation that has funneled millions to liberal causes anonymously repaid $1 million embezzled from one of the organizations the foundation financially supports.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Drummond Pike secretly agreed to replace the money embezzled from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Pike is chief executive of the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation.

According to the Times, Pike was aiding Wade Rathke, the Acorn founder and a Tides Foundation board member, when he decided to buy the promissory note requiring the Rathke family to repay money taken by Rathke's brother, Dale.

Acorn discovered the embezzlement in 2000, but did not alert law enforcement officials. Acorn's management committee instead negotiated an agreement to have the Rathke family pay back the stolen funds.

So Pike covered for the Rathkes while Dale made restitution. So the money has been repaid.

So this happened eight years ago and it’s a DONE DEAL NOW, OK? And since Morin didn't even bother to specify his supposed voting registration issues, I'm not going to do his research for him on that score.

Should law enforcement have been notified and charges filed? Probably, but I and other family members have some experience with non-profit organizations, and I can tell you that all kinds of things are apt to be “swept under the rug” as circumstances warrant because divulging them would potentially cripple fundraising and thus threaten the very existence of these operations (kind of funny in a way that the Catholic Church, one of the oldest nonprofits in the world, doesn’t seem to understand that; assuming priests could perform community organizing tasks, I’m sure ACORN would never turn one away because of the abuse scandal).

I’ll tell you what I think is going on here, and it partly explains why the Church didn’t provide funds to assist with the election over the summer.

The problem is that aiding ACORN means aiding minorities who are likely to vote Democratic, which means that they're apt to vote pro choice, and this snit with ACORN over money that probably was never even missed to begin with gives the Church the chance to walk away from the group for good and thus hide the real reason for such a callous decision.

Keep the poor disenfranchised unless they vote “pro-life,” right?

More Thursday Dana Perino Propaganda

She’s getting a little more clever anymore as opposed to merely telling outright lies, I have to admit (from here)…

Q Earlier in the administration, the President opposed stricter CAFE standards on lighter fuel -- lighter vehicles --

MS. PERINO: Oh, really? When?

Q It was I believe about four or five years ago.

MS. PERINO: I believe not, because I was here, I worked as the communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality, and he has long championed -- and he was the first to increase CAFE standards for SUVs and light trucks for the first time in a decade.

Q Well, wasn't the basis on less, smaller fuel-efficient cars weren't as safe as SUVs and --

MS. PERINO: There was a National Academy of Sciences report that said that, yes. And when you are working on CAFE standards, one of the things that you take into account is the safety of the vehicles. And I don't think anybody in this room would suggest that we shouldn't do that.

Perino is actually right about Dubya favoring raising vehicle mileage standards for SUVs and light trucks, as Media Matters notes here (though environmentalists claim that the new standards are too modest), but His Fraudulency fought raising mileage standards for passenger cars for years – that is, until the Republican 109th Congress came up with “a proposal…to grant the executive branch authority to set fuel-efficiency standards for cars -- a power that (until then resided) with Congress” in April 2006.

For the life of me, I cannot imagine why Bushco would care about having that authority, unless Dubya wanted to use it as a cudgel against the automakers and the UAW by raising standards so high that they wouldn’t be able to compete and lose market share, political clout, etc. (the UAW is a decidedly Democratic-favoring constituency, though the “Big Three” execs aren’t so easily categorized, I know).

And by the way (as noted here), the National Academy of Sciences study that Perino cites from 2001 called for raising the mileage standards at a higher rate than proposed by Bushco and also for closing the “light truck loophole” that allows SUVs to adhere to the same mileage standard as trucks, even though SUVs are used like passenger cars (the loophole in the law was created at a time when SUVs were only about 20 percent of the vehicles on the road, though that number was closer to 50 percent at the time of the study and is probably comparable to that now, in spite of our economy).

Also…

Q Dana, can I follow? At the risk of -- you said we'll see what Congress puts forward on an unemployment extension if they come back. It seems to me in the past, you opposed that, saying that it encourages people to stay out of work longer.

MS. PERINO: What we have said is that -- well, if you just look at the statistics, the historical data, that as soon as that last week comes about, that's -- it's like a hockey stick and people's employment goes up. But it doesn't mean that we're not mindful of the fact that -- how distressed some people are because we realize how high unemployment is, how tough the economy is, and how it's taken a while to get people back to work. And so, we'll just see if Congress comes back with anything.

I don’t know where the hell Perino is getting that “hockey stick” reference from, but I would say that this states pretty clearly what she and Bushco in general think of the unemployed.

And finally, another Think Progress link tells us of more recent evasions by Perino on the matter of stem-cell research (thus allowing these folks to “beat us to the punch”; not attacking the Indian researchers, but bemoaning Bushco stupidity yet again).

Wednesday Stuff

More Bush scandals with K.O. (looks like Laura is on the fast track to getting her memoir published, whereas Dubya - well, I said something about that here recently; also, I can't think of a word for the irony that some of the hard cases at GITMO could actually walk because they were tortured, which happens to be INCREDIBLY ILLEGAL in other countries besides ours, and the Treasury Dept. is "under siege" from a variety of corporate miscreants who WANT THAT BAILOUT MONEY!)...



Tom Gabel ("Anna Is A Stool Pigeon"; a few "F" blasts, but good stuff, and watch the message at the end).

And Bill Kristol Gets A “Wedgie” – True!

(This story kind of takes a bit of the sting out of this post – a bit, anyway.)

The “E&P Pub” of Editor and Publisher Online tells us here that parody copies of the New York Times were distributed all over the place today, including in “The Big Apple” (in the spirit of this, of course).

However, in a nod to reality, the work of Ben Stein was reproduced word for word (more here).

Update 1 11/13/08: And speaking of hoaxes...

Update 2 11/13/08: What Atrios sez here...

Tell The Big Three To “Give Us The Keys”

OK, I should let you know at the outset that I am about to flip-flop on my earlier position against a taxpayer-funded bailout of the auto industry, partly because of my shortsightedness and also because I sense an opportunity here for the “pay no price, bear no burden” corporate class to jump in and use the auto industry woes as an excuse to slash hard-earned benefits enjoyed by members of the United Auto Workers employed at Ford, GM and Chrysler, so I must take up an opposite position with some “rethink” on this issue.

(And for those such as Cal Thomas here who predictably blames those benefits as the source of the trouble for the carmakers, I would only point to this Wikipedia article on the UAW, which tells us – among other things – that UAW membership has fallen below 500,000 for the first time since 1941, an indicator of the ground lost not just by the UAW but the union movement overall, particularly over the last eight execrable years.)

I should also note another reason why I may be receptive to a bailout, and it is because of this post by Jonathan Tasini (who, along with Bob Cesca, is one of the few HuffPo writers I seek out from that site), in which he advocates a hell of a lot of good ideas, though he notes first that…

The most dangerous and ludicrous proposals I've seen (for an automaker bailout) call for the union contracts to be torn up. Today, for example, the extremely wealthy columnist Thomas Friedman has the audacity (if I may use that term in a negative connotation) to parrot a line from The Wall Street Journal:

…

Let's be clear: tearing up union contracts equals deep wages and benefit cuts.

This is dangerous and ludicrous not just because I'm a UAW member. Dangerous and ludicrous because, by trying to blame some of the victims, we will end up hurting the economy.

Let's get some facts straight. People who want to blame the UAW for the problems of the auto industry are off-base. Would I have liked the union to be more aggressive about pushing the auto companies a decade ago to move towards more fuel efficient cars? Sure. But, respectfully, the union does not control those kinds of decisions--it doesn't control the board and, as recent history has shown, has struggled mightily to just preserve its wage base (and has had to agree to some painful wage and benefit concessions).

Now, some will say: well, why should UAW members get such "rich" contracts? Let's first get real. UAW members are not living large, though compared to Wal-Mart workers they are better off.

And it’s not UAW pensions that are a problem. Its CEO pensions, for example, that are weighing down the auto companies, particularly GM.

I would ask that you remember that while you wonder when the day will come that Thomas, Friedman and others of their ilk decide to hold corporate malefactors such as those pirates at AIG accountable, as opposed to blaming the UAW, whose membership have given vast amounts of their talent and hard work over the span of their lives to build vehicles that, as it now appears, no longer seem to meet the demand of the marketplace.

Tasini lists six conditions that would accompany a taxpayer-financed bailout of the auto industry, and I applaud his recommendations (and by the way, I realize Friedman is in the process of reinventing himself as an expert on energy matters, which he may be, but it still sickens me to hear him criticize Bushco’s wrongheadedness in this arena without admitting his own culpability for cheerleading the Iraq war, seeing as how any turmoil in that region of the world is bound to affect the price of crude and a change in our driving habits).

Update: Uh...no (and that's my final word on that).

Tuesday Stuff

(By the way, a bit of "housekeeping"; posting questionable for tomorrow, maybe a better chance on Thursday, and I'll be out of commission on Friday.)

Some Veterans Day images courtesy of YouTuber jtlong1969 - our thanks on this day and every day (no clue about the song)...



...I haven't had much to say about the doings with the Dems and "Holy Joe" Lieberman, partly because, with his whiny, self-righteous cowardice, I have to admit that the guy turns my stomach...



..."Worst Persons," with Bill Orally wondering if Heidi Klum in her underwear is indecent (yep, more hard-hitting "journalism" from Falafel Boy), John Hinderaker of Power Line suggesting that Barack Obama take elocution lessons from Dubya (uh - I have to admit that Hinderaker may have utterly obliterated the stupid meter with that one), and Paul Broun of Georgia (of course) suggests that Obama is trying to revive the "Gestapo" with Obama's "civilian reserve corps" (and a curious non-apology from Broun here - and the Marxists fought the Nazis in World War II, you asshat)...



...Cake ("Never There"; a hell of a great fan video by YouTuber chadkroeker - quite probably describes Broun and Hinderaker's mental faculties).

Happy Veterans Day

Jake Tapper of Political Punch tells us of the remembrance by President-Elect Obama here (Tapper also points out that we've just gone through the fifth election in a row in which the candidate who didn't serve in uniform abroad beat the candidate who did; just sayin').

And speaking of our veterans, I posted about one of our most visible (and highly regarded, IMHO) ones here.

Whistling Past The Dixie Graveyard

The map shown above (property of the New York Times) illustrates just how dramatically this country has shifted in its voting patterns from the 2004 election to the one we have just completed; it is linked in this Times story by Adam Nossiter today (set in that hamlet of diversity and tolerance – snark – Vernon, Alabama), which tells us in part that…

What may have ended on Election Day…is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.”

…

By leaving the mainstream so decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy, experts say.

That could spell the end of the so-called Southern strategy, the doctrine that took shape under President Richard M. Nixon in which national elections were won by co-opting Southern whites on racial issues. And the Southernization of American politics — which reached its apogee in the 1990s when many Congressional leaders and President Bill Clinton were from the South — appears to have ended.

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

What a difference an election makes, ladies and gentlemen.

Why, it seemed like only yesterday when Ralph Reed spouted the following here, trying to imitate Gen. George Patton from WWII: “The Democrats are the enemy. Wade into them! Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!”

Nice (and as long as I’m noting Reed, I should point out this prescient post by Schaller from about four years ago, in which he notes that Reed wanted just about exclusive credit for Dubya’s re-election – can you say “overreach”?).

And not to be outdone by any means, we have the following from Pat Robertson in March 2006 here…

Ladies and gentleman this is a fascinating book. If you want to, you'd better take your blood pressure medicine before you read it, but it's "The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America" and that's just a short list of the 30-40,000 of them, they're like termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it's appalling. This is available at CBN.com and book stores everywhere, and you really ought to read it and be informed.

And finally, we have the guy who is the granddaddy of intolerant “Christians” out there, with the departure of Jerry Falwell, and that would be James Dobson, who told us here in October 2006…

"Isn't it amazing that there's such a sizable number of people in the media and in the liberal community that despise this country and its freedoms, and they're doing everything they can to undermine it?"

Ha, ha, and ha (and back to the story)…

Many people made it clear that they were deeply apprehensive about Mr. Obama, though some said they were hoping for the best.

“I think any time you have someone elected president of the United States with a Muslim name, whether they are white or black, there are some very unsettling things,” George W. Newman, a director at a local bank and the former owner of a trucking business, said over lunch at Yellow Creek Fish and Steak.

Don Dollar, the administrative assistant at City Hall, said bitterly that anyone not upset with Mr. Obama’s victory should seek religious forgiveness.

“This is a community that’s supposed to be filled with a bunch of Christian folks,” he said. “If they’re not disappointed, they need to be at the altar.”

All together now…

WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Among other things, this is the vindication of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy (and I can’t recall where I read this – probably the Daily Kos – but someone put forth the idea of former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe as the new DNC head, which is a choice I wholeheartedly endorse; never in my life have I seen a political campaign such as the one Obama ran, and I certainly mean that as a compliment). Obama won in large part because the Dems forced the Repugs to play defense all over the place on turf they had long since considered to be locked up in their favor.

No more (and it is truly a beautiful thing – and just for the hell of it, let’s give this knucklehead one more boot for good measure).

Update 1: David Corn says here that Plouffe will pass on the DNC chair, but is apparently keeping his options open, which is wise.

Update 2 11/12/08: Hat tip to The Daily Kos for this.

Monday Stuff

And remember, boys and girls, this is coming from the guy who said a couple of days ago that this country is more conservative now than it was in 1994; with this language, maybe he's right (h/t Atrios)...



...Bush scandals again: more stuff coming out against Georgia before Russia intervened in the conflict this year, Blackwater could face even more fines for about 900 weapons on the loose in Iraq (nice), and typical Bushco lack of transparency in the bailout (from here, and congrats to K.O. on the contract extension)...



..."We now know what a truly deregulated market looks like: it looks like the derivatives industry" (and if you guessed that those words were spoken here by Naomi Klein, then you win a free copy of "The Age Of Turbulence" by Alan Greenspan, suitable for shredding and lining your cat's litter box)...



...and as a tribute to Miriam Makeba, here's her U.S. hit "Pata Pata" from back in the day.

Obama-Rama And The Teutonic Twit

(By the way, I also posted over here today about a local matter.)

This Der Spiegel story tells us that, while most of the world has extended good wishes to President-Elect Barack Obama, there are some individuals who need to emerge from the dark ages, you might say…

(Veteran Austrian television personality Klaus Emmerich spoke) a string of blatantly racist remarks regarding the election of Barack Obama in the US. Speaking on a talk show on the Austrian public channel ORF on Wednesday, he said: "I wouldn't want the Western world to be directed by a black man. When you say that is a racist remark: right, without a doubt."

Americans are "racists, now as before, and it must be going very badly for them that they so convincingly ... send a black man, and a black, very good-looking woman, into the White House," he said.

So what did this genius do when he was given the opportunity to climb out of his hole, you might say? Why, he just went on digging, of course…

…Emmerich himself voiced no regret. On the contrary, he even took a harder line in subsequent interviews. Obama's victory was an "extremely disconcerting development" he told the Austrian Standard on Wednesday, because "blacks aren't as politically civilized." Meanwhile, he told Die Presse in an interview published on Friday that Obama has "a devil-like talent to present his rhetoric so effectively."

Yep, dat sho ‘nuff be it; we all jus’ gave it up to dat "devil-like" jungle rhythm!

Good God…

Well, at least Emmerich has now assured himself of a viable career with Fox Noise, as opposed to a respectable news organization (Roger Ailes and his demented shouters being primarily responsible for this).

WHYY Should We Tolerate The Marrazzo Salary Mess?

(Stepping back from politics a bit here…)

To its credit, the Philadelphia Inquirer revisited the whole issue of the salary of public radio and TV station WHYY CEO Bill Marrazzo in this story yesterday (a prior post appears here based on a fine column by Karen Heller – it feels strange to give the Inky all of these compliments, but they’re deserved for a change).

The main difference between the prior Marrazzo post and this one is that, last year, I noted that he was awarded $430,786 in salary and an additional $56,250 in benefits during fiscal year 2006 (borne out here, along with lots of other financials).

However, as staff writer Carolyn Davis NOW tells us…

President and CEO William J. Marrazzo's potential pay, benefits and expenses totaled $740,090 in the year ending June 30, 2007, according to its most recent tax filing. The package consists of $415,993 in salary, $317,240 in benefits and $6,857 in expenses.

Those benefits include $280,000 in deferred compensation reported to the IRS that Marrazzo will receive next July if he meets performance goals, as he has in the past (all told, Davis tells us that this is a 14 percent increase in Marrazzo’s compensation over the prior year).

At this rate, Marrazzo will be pulling down a mil by the end of the decade; actually, he’s just about there now when you consider the fact that, as Davis tells us, “(Marrazzo) has maintained professional ties with utility companies. As a director for American Water Works Inc. and for Amerigas Partners (where he sits on both firms' compensation committees), he earned a combined $153,500 last year, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.”

I must tell you that I know of no one whatsoever who has achieved a 14 percent increase in compensation over the prior year as Marrazzo has (hell, we’re all still lucky to even have our jobs).

And who are the geniuses responsible for this farce? Why, that would be WHYY’s Board of Directors, including one Gerald H. Sweeney cited in Davis’ story, who has no problem with this debacle (a list of the culprits is here).

Also, as I read the list, I happened to notice something strange, and that is the appearance of Marrazzo’s name on the board of directors; I’m not an expert in corporate governance, but I think it sends a pretty rank message that the CEO of a company can sit on that company’s board and potentially have a say in his own compensation.

I would ask that you remember this the next time another public television station offers a new broadcast of “Nova,” “The American Experience” or other new, original programming on a Saturday evening in prime time and WHYY offers a Shirley Temple retrospective instead.

A Monday Mashup Of Neocon Nuttery

Doing what I do so you don’t have to – to begin, Oliver North at creators.com tells us here (in response to what President-Elect Obama may do concerning Iraq) that…

…a "total pullout" from Iraq invites the theocrats in Tehran, who are the world leaders in exporting terror and are intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, to further ambition and adventure in the region. This week, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, obviously concerned about a premature U.S. retreat, said that candidate Obama "reassured us that he would not take any drastic or dramatic decisions." In case the point was missed, he added: "When there is a reality check, I think any U.S. president has to look very hard at the facts on the ground. The gains that we have attained and won with hard struggle and a great deal of sacrifice need to be sustained."

Based on this Times Online story, though, I think Zebari seems at least as concerned about what we would be able to do legally within his country under the status of forces agreement (which apparently has not been ratified because of squabbling over a withdrawal date – my source on that is the K.O. video from here) as he is about “a premature U.S. retreat”…

In one of the most detailed insights yet into the content of the deal, (Zebari) has also told The Times that the US military would be barred from unilaterally mounting attacks inside Iraq from next year.

In addition, the power of arrest for US soldiers would be curbed by the need to hand over any detainee to a new, US-Iraqi committee. Troops would require the green light from this joint command before conducting any operation.

The Pentagon refused to comment last night on the proposals laid out in the draft agreement between Baghdad and Washington that covers the status of US forces beyond 2008.

By the way, for anyone wondering why I’m commenting on someone like Oliver North, it is because in this New York Times Magazine story yesterday about the flawed, fetid reign of Bushco, retiring Virginia Repug Senator John Warner is discussed, and the article notes how Warner refused to campaign for North when the notorious Iran-Contra figure ran for the U.S. Senate in 1994; with that, it’s safe to say that Warner did his state and the country a favor (it would have been so far beyond a joke if North had actually won, seeing as how he lied to members of the very body in which he hoped to serve – Wikipedia tells us here that North was convicted of three charges related to Iran-Contra, though those convictions were eventually overturned with the help of the ACLU, strangely enough).

(And speaking of Iraq, Atrios tells us the following from here, just before Joe Scar's "F" blast.)

Next, we have Kimberly A. Strassel of the Murdoch Street Journal telling us the following (so much here to wade through, but I’ll concentrate on this excerpt for now)…

All but one of (Sen. Harry) Reid's 51 caucus members voted last year to proceed with legislation eliminating union secret ballots, and all 50 knew it would never become law. (Chief “Roadblock Republican” Mitch) McConnell has his own list of vulnerable Democrats who he -- with the help of the business community -- will remind of the electoral consequences of enacting a measure hated by 80% of the country, according to polls.

Really? 80 percent of the country opposes the Employee Free Choice Act?

Not according to economist Mark Weisbrot, who tells us here that…

A poll by Global Strategies Group this month found that 68 percent of middle-class Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act. Polls also indicate that tens of millions would join a union if they had the choice.

And finally, what would the “Monday stupids” be without the latest piffle from the New York Times’ conservative quota hire Kristol Mess himself here…

…there was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.

In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country. Conservatives and the Republican Party will have a real chance for a comeback — unless the skills of the new president turn what was primarily an anti-Bush vote into the basis for a new liberal governing era.

I guess it would have been too much for Irving’s boy to read his colleague Frank Rich yesterday, who tells us here that…

We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

Well, at least, among the “faithful,” you can count on Mike Huckabee pal Chuck Norris to be honest here; wrong, but honest.

Sunday Stuff

One hell of a great New Rules segment from Bill Maher a couple of days ago...



...Death Cab For Cutie ("I Will Possess Your Heart"; actually, I'll settle for your page reads and/or views and leave it at that - tuning up for a few minutes before they get going, but still cool).