Thursday Stuff

I know this is two years old, but I still thought it was kind of neat (yes, MSNBC's videos are still screwed up - wonder if they have a clue as to how much of the great content from K.O./Rachel Maddow/Dylan Ratigan/Ed Schultz etc. can't be distributed because of their apparent incompetence? Or is that somehow their "plan"?)...

...and I think you can file this under "local boys make good."

Thursday Mashup (7/15/10)

(I also posted here.)

You want to read an example of a really stupid post by a left-wing blogger? Click here.

It is in response to this news story.

Yeah, great idea, goofball – give Bill Orally, Sean Inanity and Flush Limbore, along with all of the life forms at Fix Noise, another reason to yell that Daily Kos is a “hate site.”

I know Markos Moulitsas and company don’t need advice from me when it comes to managing this sort of thing, but there’s a time and a place to address our grievances with Deadeye Dick, which are legion. However, a moment when he’s getting a heart pump inserted into his body, a procedure entailing grave medical risk especially for a person with his age and history, is not one of those times.

And as long as we’re dealing with Bushco, I should note that Turd Blossom himself tells us here what he considers to be his “biggest mistake” in the White House…

Top Democrats led their party in making the "Bush lied, people died" charge because they wanted to defeat him in 2004. That didn't happen. Several bipartisan commissions would later catalogue the serious errors in the intelligence on which Mr. Bush and Democrats relied. But these commissions, particularly the Silberman-Robb report of March 31, 2005, found that the "Bush lied" charge was false. Still, the attacks hurt: When they began, less than a third of Americans believed the charge. Two years later, polls showed that just over half did.

Through one of the easiest Google searches in my life, I came across this item from Media Matters, which tells us the following…

During a discussion about a November 20 Washington Post op-ed by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) detailing conflicting intelligence in the lead-up to war, (Charles) Krauthammer responded to National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg's assertion that information had been withheld from Congress by claiming that the Robb-Silberman report "concluded precisely the opposite -- that there was not a scintilla of evidence of that."

In fact, the Robb-Silberman report never examined the administration's use or provision of intelligence, so there was no "opposite" conclusion for it to reach. As The Washington Post noted in a November 12 article, upon releasing the report in March, Silberman said: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

In challenging Totenberg's assertion, Krauthammer also claimed that the Robb-Silberman report concluded that "the information that the president received was far more indicting of Saddam and of the existence of weapons of mass destruction than the information that the Congress received, and Congress came to precisely the same conclusion."

The only section of the report that indicated any difference between intelligence received by the Bush administration and by Congress, however, was an indication that the PDBs and Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs (SEIBs) contained information not "markedly different" from that contained in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) presented to Congress. The report described the PDBs and SEIBs as "more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE," creating "an impression of many corroborating reports where in fact there were very few sources."

And Rove actually sounds in the Murdoch Street Journal Op-Ed as if he thinks he took it easy on John Kerry when Kerry said that, “It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth,” when in reality, he accused Kerry and the late John Murtha, decorated veterans both, of “cutting and running” in Iraq, an act of callow brazenness that few people other than Rove could pull off (here).

Besides, I don’t hear Rove offering a single word in response to the Downing Street Memo, in which British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that that it was clear that Bush had "made up his mind" to take military action (in Iraq) but that "the case was thin."

No, Karl, it doesn’t matter what you could have said in response to the plainly obvious fact that the Iraq war was ginned up to remove Saddam Hussein for personal reasons on the part of Commander Codpiece, to get our hands on Hussein’s oil, or to perpetuate some sort of “pax Americana” in the Middle East in accordance with PNAC’s wet dreams, teasing the “fundies” with an image of some sort of holy path from Jerusalem to Baghdad (or all of the above).

You broke it. You own it. And because of that, we all own it too. And it’s your fault and that of your regime, first and foremost.

Also, on the subject of energy legislation (which we may yet see out of the U.S. Senate one day), the New York Times tells us the following here…

It remains far from certain, however, that Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid can win passage even for the limited legislation. Most Republicans remain firm in their opposition to any cap on emissions, and six Democrats recently joined an effort by Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, to pass a resolution criticizing new Environmental Protection Agency rules relating to greenhouse gases.

“Senator Murkowski won’t support a utility cap-and-trade bill because it raises energy prices on Americans at a time when they are already struggling financially,” said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for the senator. “It’s a light-switch tax.”

And how much, exactly, would this “light switch” tax cost? Paul Krugman gave us some idea last September (here)…

…the best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the effects of Waxman-Markey, concluding that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income. That’s roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day.

By 2050, when the emissions limit would be much tighter, the burden would rise to 1.2 percent of income. But the budget office also predicts that real G.D.P. will be about two-and-a-half times larger in 2050 than it is today, so that G.D.P. per person will rise by about 80 percent. The cost of climate protection would barely make a dent in that growth. And all of this, of course, ignores the benefits of limiting global warming.

Kind of a shame that Times writers Peter Baker and David M. Herszenhorn apparently don’t even read the rest of their own paper.

Another thing – I periodically get updates from Politico, and on occasion, they do break some good stories, such at the piece on Repug U.S. House Rep Thad McCotter of Michigan that I noted here.

Of course, being a product of the Beltway media culture, they are also capable of bloody great wankery, and I’m afraid this falls under the latter category (dealing with why, even when he succeeds, Obama is supposedly a failure – these are the enumerated “reasons” from Jim VandeHei and John Harris)…

1) The flight of independents

Yes, I realize basically that independent voters decide our elections any more due to that oh-so-unpleasant partisanship that David Broder and Steve and Cokie Roberts tut-tut about during their dinner parties, but that doesn’t mean that these people are better informed than anyone else. At this moment, though, no one should govern as if they’re preoccupied with whether or not “independents” approve of them. Their support is always a lagging indicator, if you will, probably up to the moment when those voters step into the voting booth.

2) The “Ideology conundrum”

Even as Obama pays the price for liberal positions, he doesn't manage to reap what should be the rewards. That's because he has never adequately reckoned with the divisions in his own party and taken a clear stand of his own. During the campaign, he avoided the whole question of whether he is centrist “new Democrat” or a “traditional liberal” by insisting the debate was irrelevant, and uniting the party around Bush hatred and the power of his own biography.

Obama does not try to mobilize Democrats by “Bush hatred.” He does so in part by plainly pointing out the messes left to him by his predecessor (reflected in this, by the way).

3) Likeability

Many Democrats on the Hill don’t much like Obama, or at least his circle of advisers. They think the White House makes them take tough votes, but doesn’t care that much about the problems those votes leave politicians facing in tough races in 2010. Numerous Democrats have complained privately that Obama only cares about Obama — a view reinforced by Gibbs’s public admission that Democrats could lose the House.

Gosh, a president who imagines that he’s the center of his own universe. I’ll bet we’ve never had that before! Besides, based on this, it sounds like everyone is playing nice, at least for now (I'll admit, though, that that "mixed message" from Gibbs had questionable worth, trying to be "bipartisan" yet again while motivating the Dem base at the same time, or trying to).

4) West Wing is unsteady

But Democrats privately complain that the real power center — the West Wing staff — isn’t nearly as impressive. A common gripe on the Hill and on the lobbying corridor is that the communications team isn’t great at communicating, the speech-writing team isn’t great at speech writing (exemplified by Obama’s flaccid Oval Office speech last month on the BP spill and energy policy) and the political team often botches the politics.

See above (though the point about the energy speech is well-taken, unfortunately…parts were great, but parts also went thud.)

5) Numbers matter

Indeed they do (and here are some for consideration).

6) Liberal echo chamber

The liberal blogosphere grew in response to Bush. But it is still a movement marked by immaturity and impetuousness — unaccustomed to its own side holding power and the responsibilities and choices that come with that.

So many liberals seem shocked and dismayed that Obama is governing as a self-protective politician first and a liberal second, even though that is also how he campaigned. The liberal blogs cheer the fact that Stan McChrystal’s scalp has been replaced with David Petraeus’s, even though both men are equally hawkish on Afghanistan, but barely clapped for the passage of health care. They treat the firing of a blogger from the Washington Post as an event of historic significance, while largely averting their gaze from the fact that major losses for Democrats in the fall elections would virtually kill hopes for progressive legislation over the next couple years.

Aw, c’mon! You just knew that Harris and VandeHei were going to find some way to blame the DFHs, didn’t you?

And by the way, Dave Weigel was basically fired from the WaPo because he communicated in unflattering terms about conservatives through a listserv that he thought was private. That had no impact at all on his actual reporting, which was top-notch.

7) BP cam

Obama is not responsible for the leak, and realistically there was little he could do to expedite the repair. But for an irritable public the Gulf coast debacle was a reminder — horribly timed from Obama’s perspective — that big business and big government are often a problem, not a solution.

Don’t you just love the way they so con-vee-niently conflate the two like that?

Yes, Team Obama needs to tighten up their message discipline a bit, especially as we proceed further into the electoral season. They need to be as forceful about telling everyone what they’ve done right as Bushco was about telling everyone what they’d done (as it turned out) wrong (and we in the field have to do all we can to support them, even if we get highly POed at them from time to time).

Unfortunately, Politico will be one of the outlets they’ll need to get the Obama story told (and told straight, as it were).

More’s the pity.

Finally, I give you the latest from the Patrick Murphy for Congress campaign…

AMNESIA WATCH:

Is Congressman Fitzpatrick Confused About His Own Immigration Record?

Bucks County voters demand answers on why Congressman Fitzpatrick supported amnesty and voted against (an) Arizona-Like measure.

(Bristol, PA) – In recent days, former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick has again assumed that voters in the 8th district have amnesia – this time on immigration.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick now claims to support the new Arizona law, but he voted against nearly identical legislation while he was in Washington. The legislation he voted against would have given state and local authorities the ability to detain illegal immigrants in the course of the officers’ regular duties.1 Further, Congressman Fitzpatrick voted to allow “sanctuary cities” to continue their practice of ignoring federal anti-immigration laws.2

Patrick Murphy doesn’t just talk tough on illegal immigration. He actually does something about it. Patrick broke with his party to support the Arizona law, which requires police to check the immigration status of individuals stopped for other crimes. He was the lone Democrat to vote in support of an amendment to prevent the Obama administration from using federal funds to sue Arizona over the law.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick also voted against providing $20 million for construction of a fence to protect our borders from the flow of illegal immigrations.3

Patrick Murphy, on the other hand, has constantly fought to beef up security along our borders and introduced legislation to increase penalties for border agents who help smuggle people into the country, a serious breach of national security.4

While he claims to be tough on illegal immigration, Mike’s voting history from his time in Washington falls far short of his newfound rhetoric. He also fails to match up to Patrick Murphy’s record of being tough on illegal immigrants as well as the employers who hire them.

Talk is cheap. Mike might hope people in Bucks County have amnesia, but it's impossible to forget a voting record this appalling.

1Roll Call Vote #659, 109th Congress, 1st Session
2 Roll Call Vote #177, 109th Congress, 1st Session
3 Roll Call Vote #669, 109th Congress, 1st Session
4 Secure Borders Act (H.R. 4622)

(Yes, it's true that I oppose the Arizona law, for purposes of disclosure. My point is to publicize Mikey's record here.)

And here is a letter from today’s Courier Times…

I can't believe Republican congressional candidate Mike Fitzpatrick has the nerve to make statements about Congressman Patrick Murphy.

Fitzpatrick sold his country out on CAFTA when he served in Congress, while sending our jobs overseas. He said Murphy isn't doing enough about immigration. It just shows how much he doesn't know.

Murphy opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants and supports the E-verify law. He is in support of the Arizona law. Who is Mike Fitzpatrick trying to kid?

State Rep. John Galloway probably spent years trying to get the E-verify bill passed in the state House.

Patrick Murphy is overqualified for his position; he could be the next John Kennedy. God knows we need it. I wish there were a hundred more like Murphy.

Chuck Clayton
Levittown, PA

(Hey, a little unbridled enthusiasm from time to time doesn’t hurt, people.)

And as always, to reward good behavior (you know the rest)…

Wednesday Stuff

I'll try to say more about this tomorrow, but apparently, today marked the final column in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Former Senator Man-On-Dog (shocking, I know). So, for the occasion, I thought I'd feature this clip of Santorum doing what all "values" Republicans do best, and that it to talk down to people they know nothing about (usually African American)...



...and when I think of PA's former senator from Northern Virginia, this is one song that comes to mind.

Wednesday Mashup (7/14/10)

I think it’s time for those nice men wearing their clean, white coats to bring a butterfly net or two (or, more likely, a straight jacket) for Bernie Quigley (here)…

If President Obama wants to win in 2012, and the race has already begun, he desperately needs some new friends. I would like to suggest four who like him and who have supported him: the senators from Virginia, Mark Warner and Jim Webb, and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, who advised them; and Toby Keith.

When Hillary quits in six months to run against him, Obama should replace her as secretary of State with China secretary Jon Huntsman Jr. And ditch the white guy from central casting standing in at VP, Joe Biden. Replace him in the 2012 campaign with Warner.

Implied racism notwithstanding, what makes Quigley think that Mark Warner is any less of a “white guy from central casting” than Biden? If Quigley wants a “conservadem” on the 2012 ticket, which Warner and Webb have become as a matter of political survival (and God almighty, why on earth are we talking about that now??!!), then Quigley should just say so.

And Toby Keith as an advisor to Obama – ROFLMAO!!!

Quigley also invokes “Cheech and Chong” liberals and claims that Paul Krugman is Obama’s “economic front man” (would that that were true) and he should be replaced with Niall Ferguson, which is indeed interesting because Ferguson is a Harvard historian who, as noted here, once compared Obama to Felix the Cat (see, because Obama is so “lucky” – yeah, if you believe that inheriting two wars, an imploding economy, a melting planet, and a hopelessly compromised federal government overrun by Bush cronies in perhaps the same way ants at a picnic would overrun a basket full of Lorna Doone cookies has anything whatsoever to do with luck!).

Oh, and just to let us know that he’s still “opining” away, Quigley tells us here that Sarah Palin is “a political genius.”

My guess is that Bernie’s has been out in those gorgeous New Hampshire woods just a tad too long.

Also, I give you the return of Ken Blackwell, whether you want it or not (here, and I'll overlook his awful attempt at a pun)…

President Obama made much of the Executive Order he signed last March. It was supposed to stop federal funding of abortion. It was given as a fig leaf to formerly pro-life Democrats who had voted for ObamaCare and enabled it to pass, narrowly, in the House of Representatives.

Most pro-life Americans knew the Obama order was a charade. We have had this administration pushing vigorously for abortion-on-demand from the first day they took office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had hardly taken her oath of office before she told a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing early in 2009 that “sexual and reproductive rights and health” were a major goal of the Obama administration. She assured House members she would do all in her power to help overturn foreign countries’ pro-life laws. The Obama administration may not want to protect democracy demonstrators in the streets of Tehran. That would be, they say, “meddling.” But they are more than willing to trample the sovereignty of other nations to advance the Planned Parenthood agenda.

Take Kenya, for example. Kenya suffered terrorist attacks back in 1998 because of their close ties to the U.S. You would think that this East African ally would get a special measure of respect, especially because Barack Obama’s late father, and many of his relatives, hail from Kenya. Think again.

Umm, not quite; as noted here…

Added Bill Ryerson, president of the Washington-based Population Institute: "There were so many areas in which the U.S. slid back during the Bush administration"...

"The gag rule (that banned U.S. government money from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion) alone led to closure of one-third of the family planning clinics of Kenya. As a result, the birth rate went back up, which has badly affected women's lives."

And as noted here…

(AP) Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum is far from America but not from America's battle over abortion.

Aid workers and experts say President Barack Obama's decision to allow aid money to flow again to international groups that offer abortion counseling will help restart programs desperately needed in Africa, the continent hardest hit by (the) "gag rule."

Dr. Walter Odhiambo, the country director for Marie Stopes Kenya, said his family planning organization had been limping along on European aid because of the U.S. rule Obama overturned on Jan. 23 in one of his first presidential acts. Now, Odhiambo said, he would be applying for U.S. funds he hoped to use to expand counseling and other services, particularly in rural Kenya.

"Family planning was not given the prominence it needs," Odhiambo said.

And do you want to know what happens when “the Planned Parenthood agenda,” as Blackwell so ridiculously puts it, is ignored, and right-wing ideologues dictate government policy? Real-world misery, that’s what, such as this…

Marie Stopes Kenya, which does not offer abortions, closed two slum clinics after losing its USAID funding because of its association with Marie Stopes International, one of the world's largest family planning organizations.

Odhiambo, the country director for Marie Stopes Kenya, said it was likely that women who would have used his group's contraceptive services became pregnant instead and joined the 300,000 Kenyan women that Marie Stopes says seek dangerous, illegal abortions each year.

Two years ago, Joyce and her cousin Carolyne went to a Kibera slum clinic for a contraceptive injection. Because supplies were low, the doctor shared one between the two. Joyce, then a shy 18-year-old high school student, became pregnant. Her boyfriend deserted her and she had an illegal abortion.

"The fetus came out but she did not stop bleeding," recalled 29-year-old Carolyne. By the light of a small kerosene lamp, the two women used every sheet and towel in Carolyne's small house to try to stop the blood. Joyce spent the night twisting in pain on the floor, crying out for God to forgive her and screaming for her mother.

At dawn the two women went to a government hospital and had to plead with doctors to treat Joyce without informing police of the abortion.

The story from CBS News tells us that “even without the U.S. policy, abortions would be controversial here. They are illegal in almost all African countries, many of which have conservative Christian or Muslim populations _ one of the reasons women interviewed about their abortions declined to give their full names.”

And given the fact that sub-Saharan African women have had to endure such immense hardship because of typical Bushco bungling, Blackwell and his pals have no grounds whatsoever for criticizing anyone of denying “a special measure of respect.”

Besides, if Obama really were as bad on choice as Blackwell alleges, he would have pushed for the Freedom of Choice Act to pass out of Congress (remember that one?).

Finally, it looks like Scott (“Ready For My Closeup”) Brown is not going to support the DISCLOSE Act based on this…

Rather than reform our campaign finance laws and provide increased transparency, the DISCLOSE Act advances the political agenda of the majority party and special interests in an effort to gain a tactical and political advantage little more than 100 days before an election. No matter how one feels about McCain-Feingold, at least that was an honest attempt to reform campaign finance laws that would not have gone into effect until after the next election cycle. The DISCLOSE Act does the opposite – it changes the rules in the middle of the game to provide a tactical advantage to the majority party.

Even more astonishing, this bill does not treat all organizations equally and does not apply to everyone. For example, not all the disclosure requirements apply to labor unions and other special interest groups – despite these groups being among the most active political organizations. Labor unions and their political action committees spent more than $450 million to help their allies in 2008, and they have already pledged to spend upwards of $100 million in the midterms. Yet they would be carved out of this legislation and not face the same regulations that would apply to everyone else.

I wonder if Scott’s nose grew an inch or so longer as he typed that second paragraph. It should have, because, as Ben Smith of Politico via fdl tells us here, there is no “carve out” for big donors to labor unions.

Also, Brown disingenuously tries to side with the ACLU in his opposition; in reality, that group’s concerns are diametrically opposed to his. As the ACLU tells us here…

Just to kick us while we were down, the House included a provision that would protect anonymity for the largest political groups because they feared the Democrats beholden to the gun lobby, a.k.a. the Blue Dogs, would otherwise not support the bill. Members worked with the National Rifle Association on an amendment that would exclude organizations from the disclosure requirements, but only when they have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, and have a presence in all 50 states. This means that new organizations like the gay rights groups of the 1960s, pro-life groups of the 1970s and drug law reform groups of today would be forced to reveal their supporters, while the associational rights of the members of well-established and mainstream groups are protected. This makes no sense, and provides the direct opposite effect of the protections the court upheld in the NAACP case (in which Alabama, in response to the Montgomery bus boycott, tried to ban the NAACP from any further business in the state and issued a subpoena that would have forced them to disclose their membership).

And for anybody out there who thinks that individual donors to labor unions on behalf of political campaigns, for example, wouldn’t be punished, read this story about what happened when management at a million-square-foot distribution center for Rite Aid Corporation in Lancaster, California changed hands (the employees rejected a Teamsters offer to unionize in 2002, and came to regret it…and speaking for myself, I once worked for a Philadelphia freight-forwarding company around the time Bill Clinton was elected president, and I heard the CEO say in the elevator one day that he would fire every Democratic Party supporter who worked for him in response).

Oh, and one more thing, Scott; the unemployment rate has nothing whatsoever to do with disclosing campaign contributions.

On balance, I support the DISCLOSE Act, though it definitely has some bugs to be addressed (and as noted here, Scott has some "DISCLOSE-ing" to do of his own).

Tuesday Stuff

Meet the new (would be) boss(es), same as the old boss(es), as the song goes...



...and as I mentioned earlier, here is just one of the many great performances from Live Aid.

Tuesday Mashup (7/13/10)

Wow, did you know that Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota was awarded his Senate victory last year by “felons” (here)?

Uh, no.

Fix Noise also tells us here that, in response to a resolution by the NAACP branding the Tea Party movement as "racist," a teabagger group in Missouri has drafted a resolution of its own condemning the civil rights group for reducing itself to a "bigoted" and "partisan attack dog organization."

And I’m sure they were taking their cue from the guy who, quite rightly, is ridiculed here.

Next, we have Repug U.S. House Rep John Campbell telling us the following here…

When you woke up on June 30, you may not have realized that you were waking up to a historic day. However, this was not a day that marked American achievement, innovation, or recovery. It was a morning that witnessed a $166 billion single-day increase in American debt. That would be the third largest deficit hike in American history and, shockingly, we reached this extraordinary mark in just two years of wanton, unchecked spending initiated by President Obama and carried by this Congress.

In Campbell’s defense, it should be noted that, according to here, he has only served in Congress since 2005 (he was tabbed to run in a special election to replace fellow Repug Chris Cox, who resigned to become Dubya’s SEC chairman). So Campbell wasn’t in the U.S. Congress when both of Bushco’s ruinous tax cuts were passed and signed into law.

However, Wikipedia also tells us the following…

On June 17, 2009, Campbell signed on as a co-sponsor of H.R. 1503, the bill introduced as a reaction to conspiracy theories which claimed that U.S. President Barack Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen.[1]

In 2009, several watchdog groups accused Rep. Campbell of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from used car dealers, and then introducing legislation exempting them from consumer protection laws.[2][3][4]

So Campbell is both a birther and a crook in his own right (and he has the gall to wax propagandistic about deficits).

California’s 48th should be so proud (and, given that that’s a bedrock conservative district, I’m sure they don’t “do irony”).

Also, Marc Thiessen bloviates as follows at the WaPo (here – there’s a ton of stuff in his screed that could be refuted, but I’ll just focus on one item for now because life is short; Thiessen apparently gazed into his navel too long and theorized that the coalition that elected Obama is full of “fading embers”)…

To repair the breach, Democrats have turned their legislative agenda over to the unions. Instead of moving appropriations bills, they are pushing legislation that would shield unions from the campaign finance reporting requirements of the Disclose Act and force the unionization of public-safety workers in 21 states. And they have allowed the teachers unions to hijack the war funding bill for our troops…

Oy…

If anything, including the teacher funding in the war supplemental is, I’ll admit, a questionable tactic, but for a wholly different reason than the one espoused by Thiessen, and that is to encourage votes for funding the appropriation from House reps who might not vote for it otherwise because of opposition to the war (here).

And I would ask that you keep in mind the caterwauling from the “pain caucus” about the deficit when you consider that, as Think Progress tells us above, the $10 billion came from the Race to the Top program and the Teacher Inventive Fund, both Obama Administration favorites, in the name of deficit neutrality.

As Think Progress also tells us…

Race to the Top, according to the New Teacher Project, “has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.” “While Race to the Top has only been in existence for a short time, it has yielded some of the most dramatic state education reforms the country has seen in many years,” said (Center for American Progress) Vice President for Education Policy Cindy Brown. The Teacher Incentive Fund, meanwhile, is one of the best ways to support the development of teachers.

(I would tend to think that Outgoing Dem House Appropriations Chair David Obey is being a little harsh in criticizing Race To The Top as a “slush fund,” but in this era of media preoccupation with those Club For Growth wannabes wearing their funny hats and carrying racist signs, all the rage is deficit reduction, so my guess is that he’s trying to placate these life forms for some reason.)

So, no, as usual, Thiessen is wrong. The “teachers unions” aren’t “hijack(ing) the war funding bill for our troops.”

If anything, quite the opposite is true.

Also, it seems as if David Obey isn’t the only Congressional Dem upset with Obama (here)…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants President Barack Obama to be “more firm” and stop avoiding "confrontation" with Republicans.

“He is a person who doesn't like confrontation. He's a peacemaker,” Reid said in an interview with Las Vegas television station KSNV.

“Sometimes I think you have to be a little more forceful. And sometimes I don't think he is enough with the Republicans,” said the Nevada Democrat, whose allegiance with the White House is hurting his reelection prospects.

“On a few occasions, I think he should have been more firm with those on the other side of the aisle,” he said.

Simply put, this is too hilarious for words.

How many speeches has Obama made recently about “grabbing a mop” and not letting the Repugs have the keys to the metaphorical car again after driving it into a ditch? And I think this is particularly cowardly on Reid’s part especially since Obama just came to Nevada and attacked Sharron Angle the way Reid should have done if he actually had a spine.

Has Reid forgotten that we endured that ridiculous fiasco over health care reform last year, brought on in large part by Reid’s deferring to Max Baucus who, as Senate Finance Committee chair, very nearly scuttled the proceedings in the name of “comity” with those across the aisle, particularly Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley, whose only intention was to derail health care reform from the start? Or that, in the name of obtaining the blessed 60 votes for passage, he signed off on the “Cornhusker Kickback” (here, which Obama disposed of before he signed it into law)?

If Reid manages to win in the fall, it will be because he had the good fortune to end up facing a darling of the teabaggin’ crowd who, because of her laughable public comments and professed positions on the issues, would have been a more viable candidate in 1910 than 2010. And only for that reason.

And in addition to everything else that’s wrong with this wretched company, this tells us that BP may have been involved in the release of the human mistake convicted in the Lockerbie plane bombing…

A U.S. lawmaker is calling on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to investigate whether BP influenced the release of Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey wants to know whether a quid pro quo led to the 2009 decision by U.K. and Scottish lawmakers to set the Libyan terrorist free. Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison in 2001, but released last year when doctors said he had only three months to live before dying of cancer. A doctor now says he could live a decade, according to the Associated Press. The senator wants to know whether the bomber's release was connected to a BP plan to drill for oil off Libya, which the senator says could earn the company up to $20 billion.

A bomb aboard Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people, 189 of them American. The plane was headed from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's JFK International Airport.

By the way, the story also tells us that al-Megrahi, contrary to reports that he had only three months to live, “could survive 10 to 20 years.”

Oh, but Libya is a “friend” to us now.

Sure they are.

Finally, this date marks two noteworthy anniversaries: the first is Live Aid, which took place 25 years ago.

I guess, of the handful of memories I have from the concert, the ones that come to mind immediately are the outstanding performances of Queen, The Pretenders, Status Quo, and Elvis Costello, though they had a lot of company. The worst ones for me were Led Zeppelin (which, at their request, is not included on the DVD collection) and Bob Dylan (wheezing through “Blowin’ In The Wind” with Ron Wood and Keith Richards).

Like many of you I’m sure, I watched much of the program on commercial TV, and to say that I got tired of Sally Field and her weepy entreaties every five minutes or so to help those starving in Africa (a worthy goal, I realize) is an understatement. Also, the version I saw of the Wembley Stadium performance featured the audio malfunction when Paul McCartney performed “Let It Be” as the next-to-last number (that to me was always a questionable choice to perform for the concert anyway, though I realize that the Beatles’ songs and McCartney’s “Wings” catalogue really didn’t lend itself to something more appropriate). It was also scary to watch David Ruffin singing “My Girl” with Hall and Oates, realizing how emaciated he had become due to his cocaine addiction that would eventually kill him (even creepily referring to himself as a “skinny man” when singing the song).

Still, I thought the project was a worthy one, and it’s never a bad thing when Philadelphia is featured in as favorable a light as it was on this occasion.

Also, on this date in 1955, Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of her lover David Blakely; she was the last woman to die of capital punishment in Great Britain (here), despite a public outcry (this is the subject of a great film called “Dance With A Stranger” starring Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett, also from 1985).

Monday Stuff

Hey, Christine Flowers, Kevin Ferris, and every other wingnut trying to breathe life into the supposed "story" about the Black Panther thing at the Philadelphia polling place in '08 - check out this video from K.O. tonight (can't embed still - unbelievable! - but at least I can give a link).

And here's something to keep things interesting a bit.

Monday Mashup Part Two (7/12/10)

(Part One is here.)

Good catch by Politico here, I have to admit…

Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.) has spent at least $30,000 in taxpayer-provided Republican Policy Committee funds to hire a consulting firm run by his chief of staff’s brother, Saul Anuzis, even as McCotter planned to kill the policy committee because it’s a “superfluous” waste of federal money.

The payments of $5,000 per month to Anuzis’s Michigan-based Coast to Coast Strategies, discovered by POLITICO in a review of RPC spending records, could roil a high stakes Republican leadership power struggle over the controversial proposal by McCotter, chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, to eliminate the 61-year-old policy shop — a fight that carries larger implications for the House GOP’s balance of power.

And of course, Anuzis believes that there is nothing “improper” about the arrangement by which he received $30,000 in taxpayer-provided RNC funds through a policy committee that McCotter has promised to “kill.”

I wonder if now, as a result, we will be treated in another lesson in how to speak “Democrat” as the one McCotter provided here, something else to consider along with McCotter’s opposition to the “stim,” of course, besides his vote against expanding the (Michigan) State Children's Health Insurance Program, which rightly earned him criticism from Catholics United for it (that, allegedly, is McCotter’s faith); McCotter called the group "the devil" over it.

At least Catholics United isn’t “skimming” from taxpayer funds for the benefit of your chief-of-staff’s brother, you hypocrite (not to my knowledge, anyway).

It depresses me unutterably that so many politicians who supposedly practice the same faith that I do are Republicans.

Also, I found myself wincing more than a little bit over this story in the New York Times yesterday…

MANNING, S.C. — On a blisteringly hot afternoon here, Alvin M. Greene talked in a perfunctory way about his improbable candidacy for the United States Senate. But his voice intensified with grievance when the subject turned to his short-circuited career in the Army, from which he was discharged in August involuntarily.

Mr. Greene said the Army discriminated against him by not promoting him. And yet, he said, it promoted to the rank of major a man who would later be accused of shooting 13 people to death last year at Fort Hood, Tex.

“I didn’t have one promotion in six-and-a-half years of active duty, full time,” Mr. Greene lamented in an interview the other day at his father’s house on the outskirts of this small town in the south-central part of the state.

Yes, this is the same Alvin Greene who somehow won the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina to run against Jim DeMint (who, sadly, probably won’t even bother having to campaign to keep his seat).

Also…

(Greene) is still due in state court Monday on (an) obscenity charge, in which a student at the University of South Carolina said he showed her pornography and tried to go to her dorm room with her. Afterward, a relative paid the $500 fee to a bonding company for him to be released on $5,000 bail.

And in addition, this tells us the following…

ON THE ECONOMY, he wants to produce Alvin M. Greene action figures.

“Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays,” he told a British newspaper, The Guardian. “Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an Army uniform, Air Force uniform, and me in my suit.”

Hey, don’t laugh too much – it worked for Obama’s predecessor (a stretch, I know).

And finally, it seems as if Joe Pitts has too much time on his hands again (here)…

In March, the Department of Energy asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw the government’s application to approve Yucca Mountain, Nev. as the nation’s nuclear waste repository. By law, the government is required to collect nuclear fuel and provide for safe storage. Without such storage, no new nuclear power plant can be licensed.

So what is Yucca Mountain? Over the last 23 years the government has been constructing a waste repository beneath a mountain in the middle of a military facility. The desert stretches for miles around the site located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Because of decades of intensive study, we know more about the geology of Yucca Mountain than perhaps any other place on the planet. Between 1987 and 2002, the government spent $3.8 billion on scientific and technical studies of Yucca Mountain. Miles of tunnels and hundreds of boreholes have been dug into the mountain.

In 1998, the Department of Energy, under President Clinton’s leadership, concluded that Yucca Mountain was an appropriate site. Approval was granted in 2002 and work began to move forward on building the appropriate containment facility. During all this time, scientific studies continued to be conducted.

Now, with $90 billion already spent to build the repository, (Energy Secretary Steven) Chu has halted the project and cut off funding without a substantive scientific study to back him up. Instead of relying on decades of existing studies, President Obama and Secretary Chu have created yet another “blue ribbon panel” to determine what we should do with nuclear waste.

Only a life form as dim as Pancake Joe would take the issue of Yucca Mountain and frame it as a policy debate between Democrats and Republicans (and Yucca Mountain, by the way, really isn’t even remotely close to PA-16, last I checked).

Yes, a certain Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History ordered Yucca Mountain to go online in 2002 (here), but former presidents from Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter to Poppy Bush opposed it. It also currently faces bipartisan opposition from both embattled Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (who credits Obama for “zeroing out” the Yucca Mountain project to store the nuclear waste here) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Pitts does have an ideological kinsman (woman?) on this issue, and that would be Reid’s Repug opponent in the campaign for his Senate seat, Sharron (Wrong) Angle (here)…

…In short, American Presidents since Gerald Ford have come to see the issue of reprocessing nuclear materials as fraught with environmental, non-proliferation, and budgetary problems. This brief history of Administration policies on reprocessing also illuminates a lack of depth in candidate Angle's understanding of the intrinsic issues related to nuclear material reprocessing.

(Angle) appears not to understand that launching a commercial/military reprocessing operation at Yucca Mountain would require far more than a simple reversal of a Bush I administration's executive directive. The installation would require re-negotiation of non-proliferation agreements which might, in part, have an impact on our current international efforts to sequester the contemporary attempts by the Iranians to elude regulations.

At times like this, I wish Pitts would stick to doing what he does best (a debatable prospect, I know – the assumption that Pitts is a master of much of anything except setting a bad example), and that is to vote No (and once more, to do something in response, click here).

Friday Stuff

Once again, if you want a cogent, thoughtful analysis of the day's events, turn to Jon Stewart (and I know some of this duplicates what I said earlier today, but I thought it was good)...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Latino 911!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Update 7/13/10: Wow, I didn't know Napolitano was a DFH also (here) - I never saw him at one of our meetings :-).

...and fifteen years ago today, The Grateful Dead played its last concert at Soldier Field in Chicago; Jerry Garcia died a month afterwards - here is a remembrance from 1980.

Friday Mashup (7/9/10)

Hey everybody, it looks like “Bullsh*t Petroleum” has finally figured out a way to keep the oil from spewing into the Gulf. And if it works, that means that the Gulf will have been polluted for only three months, that’s all!

This story tells us that the relief well they’re planning to install could be ready between July 20th and the 27th.

Oh, and did I mention that the 27th is also the date that the company will issue its financial earnings report?

But there’s no coincidence there at all, of course.

None whatsoever.

Also, do you remember how Repug U.S. House Rep Paul Ryan claimed the following here last week…

“With this budget failure – a first in the modern era – Democrats are missing a critical opportunity to provide the fiscal discipline economists say is needed to create private-sector jobs and boost our economy”...

What Ryan was talking about was when the Congressional Dem leadership issued a “deeming resolution” that a budget had been passed in lieu of actually voting on the budget.

Well, guess what David Waldman of Daily Kos found out here…

The phrase (or any variation of it, including Ryan’s) is being repeated verbatim by teabagger types, wherever you can stand to look.

But is it true? Well, I suppose PolitiFact might say, "barely true."

Why? Well, because it's true that the House has never before failed to pass a budget and then deemed one passed instead.

But the Senate has. Four times. And all under Republican control. And as we all know, it couldn't make less of a difference whether the House alone did or didn't fail to pass a budget and then deem one passed. It matters only whether or not the Congress fails to pass a budget and then deems one passed.

And it has. As I said, four times. And again, all under Republican control.

Looks like those evil bloggers in their bathrobes taking their hallucinogenic drugs and watching “School House Rock” have scooped our somnambulant corporate media again.

Also, I give you the latest comedy stylings from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

With less than four months before his first midterm election, President Obama's lawsuit against Arizona's new illegal immigrant law is running against a strong tide of American support for the measure.

Acting through the Justice Department, the Democrat administration seeks an injunction to stop the state law, S.B. 1070, from taking effect on July 29 and allowing Arizona officials to enforce federal laws against illegal immigrants, nearly a half-million of whom are estimated to be in Arizona. The federal suit actually duplicates an earlier one filed by the ACLU and supported by the Mexican government.

Leave it to a “Republic” Party sympathizer like Malcolm to note that Obama’s lawsuit is supported by only 33 percent of those polled thus far; Gallup is pretty reliable I’ll admit, but I wasn’t able to determine how many of those polled were Hispanic. Also, for what it’s worth, while 33 percent support the suit and 50 percent oppose it, 17 percent of those polled had no opinion.

Well, maybe Malcolm should have a talk with fellow conservative Andrew Napolitano, who also happens to be a judge. As Media Matters tells us here, Napolitano said the AZ law was “unconstitutional” and noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that immigration laws are "strictly a federal issue."

Indeed, in an effort to further smear Obama’s suit, Steve Doocy of Fix Noise ignored a High Court ruling in the 1941 case of Hines v. Davidowitz (here); the Court examined a Pennsylvania statute that mandated every immigrant to register with the state once each year, provide other information and details that the state Department of Labor asked for, obtain and carry an identification card, and display it when asked by police, among other stipulations. The federal government challenged the state law because the law "encroached upon the legislative powers constitutionally vested in the federal government." The Supreme Court agreed, concluding that the federal government:

is correct in his contention that the power to restrict, limit, regulate, and register aliens as a distinct group is not an equal and continuously existing concurrent power of state and nation, but that whatever power a state may have is subordinate to supreme national law.

So really, what Obama is doing with the suit against Arizona’s “illegal to be brown” law is merely to try and enforce federal authority (and as far as advocating amnesty for illegals after they “pay a fine and wait in line”…well, it looks like a presidential predecessor of the opposing party beat him to it here).

Also, I give you the following from last week’s congressional votes, taken before this week’s holiday break (here)…

House

Financial regulations. Voting 237-192, the House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 4173) to impose new financial rules on Wall Street in hopes of preventing further U.S. economic meltdowns. The bill outlaws or regulates many of the reckless practices that led to the Great Recession's investment-bank failures, taxpayer bailouts, and epidemic of mortgage foreclosures.

A yes vote was to approve the conference report.

Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Joe Sestak (D., Pa.).

Voting no: Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Yet again, the Repugs (with the exception of Mike Castle, doing his best to position himself as a moderate for his Senate contest) just loves “the banksters.”

Afghanistan withdrawal. Voting 100-321, the House defeated an amendment to require the military funding in HR 4899…to be spent on orderly U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan instead of combat operations.

A yes vote backed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Voting no: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Pitts, Schwartz, Sestak, and Smith.

I’m not really happy with anyone in this bunch who opposed funding the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan (though maybe a percentage of the funding could have been voted on instead?), but I just wanted to say thanks to the 93 Dems who are trying to restore some sanity to our debate about what to do in the land where empires die (here…and I know some Repugs voted Yes also, but I’m not about to give Dana Rohrabacher credit for anything).

And last, but certainly least (he was overdue for a really awful No vote, actually)…

Extended jobless benefits. Voting 270-153, the House passed a bill (HR 5618) to provide extended jobless benefits through November at a cost of $34 billion in deficit spending. Senate Republicans (below) blocked a similar bill. Both bills would immediately send checks to an estimated two million people whose eligibility for jobless benefits expired June 1 or later. Congress will revisit the issue after it returns July 12 from its current recess.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Schwartz, Sestak, and Smith.

Voting no: Pitts.

This tells us that Lancaster County’s unemployment rate went up over the last year from 7.0 to 8.0 percent (and as always, to send Pitts packing, click here).

Finally, this letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times this morning…

On June 28 I attended a protest rally on Mill Street in Bristol: Tea partiers vs. supporters of Congressman Patrick Murphy. What a joke!

Standing in front of Murphy's office were some very misinformed tea partiers. On the opposite side of the street were over 50 sign-holding Murphy supporters. The tea partiers were angry that Murphy was hosting a job fair.

Do we not need jobs? Do we not want to keep our homes?

All I have to say about those people yelling "We don't want socialism!" is hand over your Medicare cards.

Cynthia Genis
Middletown, PA

Yep - also...

(Bristol, PA) – ON JULY 8, 2010 Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8th District) hosted an Economic Forum to discuss efforts to revitalize the local economy. He was joined by panelists with extensive experience in the trade and manufacturing sectors to talk about what is being done to protect American jobs and rebuild the manufacturing base in Bucks County.

“American families have been put through the wringer,” said Congressman Murphy. “We need to get our economy back on track by building things in America again.”

In his remarks, the Congressman laid out his economic priorities, which include fighting against trade deals that ship American jobs overseas and working to close tax loopholes that encourage job outsourcing. He noted that failed economic policies and ill-conceived trade agreements have dealt a heavy blow to the manufacturing sectors in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Bucks County alone lost 35% of its manufacturing base –15,000 jobs – over the last 30 years.

The Congressman also discussed incentives for manufacturing he has championed, including tax credits for companies to invest in clean energy technology. Gamesa USA, a Fairless Hills company that manufactures turbines used in wind energy, qualified for a $2 million tax credit to create green energy jobs in Bucks County.

One of the panelists, Mike Russo, is President of the United Steelworkers of America Local 4889 and represents the employees at the Gamesa site. As a former US Steel employee, Russo witnessed firsthand the impact of the manufacturing giant’s collapse in Bucks County. Families who were once securely rooted in the middle-class suddenly faced the possibility of losing everything they’d worked for. Russo discussed how continuing to bring new American manufacturing jobs to the region is key to revitalizing the local economy.

“Working families in our area have had it tough, especially those of us who used to work in the steel industry,” said Russo. “The fact is, the future lies in clean energy and we’ve been proud to work with Patrick Murphy to bring those jobs here to Bucks County and put people back to work.”

Other panelists included Jim Horan, president of local clean energy company Y-Carbon, and Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who laid out a blueprint for protecting American jobs and what investments need to be made to revitalize the American manufacturing sector.

To reward our congressman’s good behavior, click here.

Thursday Stuff

Straying into sports again here - for the longest time, I absolutely couldn't give a fig where that egomaniac ended up playing (I guess referring to him as an egomaniac, since he is a pro athlete, is probably redundant), and I still don't, truth be told, but I can appreciate how these Cleveland fans now feel (though starting a bonfire like this is a bit much - still though, it's their right as long as no one gets hurt...and yes, I'm bypassing MSNBC because their vids are still screwed up)...



...and I need to owe up to the fact that I neglected to note a recent birthday for Commander Codpiece himself - my bad; I think this is an appropriate tune for the occasion.

Thursday Mashup (7/8/10)

Gosh, whaddaya know? It’s time for more “Foto Funnies” with J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times (here).

I’ll give you a hint, J.D. – it’s two “Ns” (and referring to her as a "rat" - nice).

And yes, I wish the Obama White House had done more on jobs to date also. But before anyone dumps on Number 44 too much, remember that his predecessor oversaw the worst record of job creation in about 60 years (here), so anything Obama did (or didn't do) was bound to be an improvement.

Also, the “Doughy Pantload” strikes again (here); see, Jonah Goldberg tries to bring teh funny over Iran’s ban on the “mullet”…

Ban tofu and the New York Times letters section will light up with outrage.

Ha, ha, ha.

In response, this tells us the following…

Tofu is (a) good source of protein. Also, it is a (remarkable) source of calcium, zinc, vitamin B and iron. Countless researches (sic), clinical trials and laboratory investigations have demonstrated the wonderful advantages of consuming soy and soy products.

The health benefits of tofu are numerous and far-reaching, the chief benefits being protection against cancer and averting cardiovascular disorders.

And that’s something that at least some of Goldberg’s audience should consider, given this item which tells us that “more than 30 percent of the South is obese.”

I guess that's why Goldberg didn't crack wise about banning "Little Debbie."

Also, the New York Times opined today here about the recess appointment by President Obama of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, stating in part the following…

Dr. Berwick’s major credential for the job is that he leads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a consulting group that promotes measures to improve the quality and safety of health care while reducing its costs. He has been enormously successful at getting health care professionals and institutions to work together to reform their practices — exactly what the agency needs.

His appointment is backed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and scores of other health organizations and patient advocacy groups. He has been endorsed by three predecessors who held the same job in Republican administrations.

Of course, the recess appointment by Obama has met with the typical right-wing umbrage over Dr. Berwick's past praise about "socialized medzin'," as noted in this Hill article with the odious Max Baucus joining the opposition chorus (considering that Baucus did his best to derail health care reform by trying to suck the life out of it before it emerged from his Senate Finance Committee, he really has no room to talk about health care reform, or much of anything else for that matter).

And for anyone out there harrumphing over the recess appointment of Dr. Berwick (which brings the Obama total to 15), here is information on recess appointments by A Certain Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History.

Finally, this Courier Times story tells us the following…

Congressman Patrick Murphy and candidate Mike Fitzpatrick agree on one thing: Arizona has the right to protect its border with Mexico since the federal government has failed to do so.

This is disappointing, but not surprising, as is the claim from Fitzpatrick that "the current administration has defunded chief operations of our border security."

Uh huh – as noted here by The Hill…

…the House last week passed the fiscal year 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Bill, which includes $700 million in border security funds, including $50 million to deploy National Guard troops to the border states.

Oh, and by the way, I have a message for “Dems” Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords; STFU. As I noted here a couple of days ago…

The Obama Administration has exceeded Bush Administration efforts on border control. Last year saw the highest number of people ever deported: 387,790, up from 116,782 in 2001 and 349,041 in 2008. Thus far this year, some 185,887 people have been deported, a record pace that, if maintained, will nearly double the number of deportations in 2010 to 604,133. The Administration has also doubled the number of agents assigned to the Border Enforcement Security Task Force and tripled intelligence analysts along the Southwest border.

I realize that it’s not good short-term politics for a Dem to attack the “illegal to be brown” law in Arizona and advocate a path to citizenship for illegals (pay a fine, get in line – makes sense to me), but I’m sorry – Patrick Murphy really should know better here.

As the New York Times tells us once again (here)…

As the Justice Department points out in its complaint, the Arizona law will divert resources from the government’s pursuit of dangerous aliens, including terrorists, spies and violent criminals. It will harass authorized immigrants, visitors and citizens who might not be carrying their papers when stopped by the police. It will ignore the country’s cherished protections of asylum and will interfere with national foreign policy interests. (Already several Mexican governors are refusing to meet with their American counterparts in Arizona, a sign of the diplomatic disarray produced by the law.)

The courts have repeatedly made these fundamental ideas clear. A federal court in 1997 struck down Proposition 187 in California, which would have denied social benefits to illegal immigrants and turned state employees into enforcement agents because it was pre-empted by federal authority. (Appeals in the case were dropped.) The Supreme Court has said federal authority can pre-empt state law when the federal interest is dominant and where there already exists a system of federal regulations. The government has done a poor job enforcing its immigration rules, to say the least, but they do exist, and clearly fall under what the Constitution calls “the supreme law of the land.”

We do not have comprehensive immigration reform in this country because of Republican obstruction, pure and simple (goaded on by right-wing hate radio). That is so even though Obama’s predecessor supported a policy of not prosecuting illegals for violating immigration law, and instead receiving eligibility to apply for "green cards" and eventual U.S. citizenship without penalty if U.S. employers are willing to give them jobs (here).

But you’d better not call that policy “amnesty,” you dern li-bu-ruul (that’s not the way it’s done in Texas, I suppose).

And I wish Murphy (and any other Dem who supports Arizona’s law) luck in trying to mobilize a Latino vote for the fall. Also, this will win no support among the wingnuts, who, sad to say, will despise Murphy anyway.

It's "Duck Amok" Time In Philly

By the way, given this ongoing story, perhaps the good folks at the Parks and Recreation Service should have listened to Walt Sherman (he hasn't posted to this site for awhile, though...maybe he wasn't so "crazy" after all).

At this moment, two people are still missing from the boating accident - our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and we hope they turn up safe (and then, afterwards, these ridiculous "duck tours" will be cancelled once and for all).

Wednesday Stuff

(This may be it for today's blogging, by the way.)

"Worst Persons" on "Countdown" last Friday (Repug U.S. House Rep Louie Gohmert of Texas, of course, warns us about "terror babies!" without, apparently, finding out any information on their grandparents - your first clue; Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer alleges that Mexican drug gangs are beheading U.S. citizens and burying the bodies in the desert - I'll admit that Mexican drug gangs are pretty messed up, but it would be nice if Brewer had some actual proof before she made a charge like that; but the winners here are those 26 percent polled in the US who didn't know which country we fought our Revolutionary War against...color me shocked - I always thought it was the Republic of Togo :-)...



...and I know I've been in a bit of a "boomer" song mode lately, but I think this is the perfect day for this one (could probably clean up the sound a bit, though).

Tuesday Stuff

I don't know about you, but I've seen a lot of references lately to the "Democrat" Party, including some from people who should know better; Hendrik Hertzberg tells us what's wrong with that here, and I think this is a fitting comeback from Dem U.S. House Rep Anthony Weiner of New York (most of what Weiner talks about here is the climate crisis, which makes this post all the more meaningful)...



...and it's actually Wednesday morning in these parts, so I can now officially say it; Happy Birthday, Ringo! (no vid for this one).

Tuesday Mashup Part Two (7/6/10)

(Part One is here.)

I have a leftover item from the holiday weekend here from the New York Times. The paper ran a few articles about how the Fourth would be observed at some historical landmarks (including the Liberty Bell), and one place they reported on was Tampico, Ill, one of the two locations in that state claiming to be the Reagan birthplace…

Visitors climbed a steep staircase here the other day and crowded into a second-floor apartment-turned-museum. This was the simple bedroom where Ronald Reagan’s mother gave birth to him.

Here was the neighbors’ window he was handed through when the Reagans needed a baby sitter. Out another window, across Main Street in this western Illinois village of 800, was the store where the future president’s father sold shoes.

For all but the most studious Reagan followers, though, there comes a moment of confusion. Was he truly from here or was he from Dixon (a city 30 minutes away and almost 20 times as big)?

…

“People go to Dixon first” (where Reagan spent his “formative years” hating Democrats I’m sure, a party to which he was once a member – ed.) acknowledged Joan Johnson, volunteer coordinator of the Tampico museum. “It’s not as far off the beaten path.” When Ms. Johnson gets caught up in the Tampico-Dixon question, she said others calm her with a reminder: “This is Bethlehem. That is Nazareth.”

Geez, when I refer to him as “The Sainted Ronnie R,” I’m only kidding, but it seems these people are serious (by the way, you may have to click on the "Gipper" icon in the upper right corner of the page to read the story).

Also, Florida Senator George LeMieux (holding the seat until the election is decided in the fall, and once more, to help out a worthy Dem, click here) recently complained here that “there are only 20 skimmers” off the coast of his state to try and dispense of the oil approaching from the BP disaster.

Funny, but according to this story, Florida had 112 skimmers at work. That’s quite a difference, I would point out.

Just sayin’…

Finally, this “Hill” post from Eliseo Medina of the SEIU tells us the following (and yet again, you can tell how correct she is by the level of vitriol in the comments, including one person calling him (?) a "gangster," I believe)…

Those of us frustrated by perpetual inaction on immigration reform were reminded yesterday that President Obama was elected president, not king. Despite his every effort to deliver a federal fix to our broken immigration system, the president cannot act alone.

The smart, workable reform plan laid out by the president would target the bad actors that profit off of our broken immigration system, restore the rule of law, and move us forward together. But despite months of outreach by the president and Democrat lawmakers, where on earth are the Republicans?

Where indeed, particularly since Huckleberry Graham decided to pick up his toys and go home; as noted here by Politico…

(Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid suggested he would push an immigration bill ahead of comprehensive energy legislation, a schedule Reid has now agreed to reverse. But Graham has said he will not back a bill this year — a move designed in part to help protect Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is facing a tough Republican primary.

The policy behind Graham’s move is ridiculous, but the politics have a certain lunatic logic to them, with Graham trying position himself ever rightward with McCain in AZ, particularly since the Obama DOJ has made good on its promise to challenge that state’s “illegal to be brown” law here.

One irony about this, though, is that Obama has actually gone to the right of the GOP on immigration reform, as noted here…

The Obama Administration has exceeded Bush Administration efforts on border control. Last year saw the highest number of people ever deported: 387,790, up from 116,782 in 2001 and 349,041 in 2008. Thus far this year, some 185,887 people have been deported, a record pace that, if maintained, will nearly double the number of deportations in 2010 to 604,133. The Administration has also doubled the number of agents assigned to the Border Enforcement Security Task Force and tripled intelligence analysts along the Southwest border.

In fact…some immigrant-rights groups, already peeved at the lack of action on comprehensive reform, are calling for a boycott in the 2010 elections. It is a powerful threat. Latino voters are credited with helping Obama flip red states in the 2008 elections, including Florida, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. And Democratic candidates in close races in those states and in California, Texas and Arizona are hoping for similar high levels of Hispanic turnout as Dems look at potentially losing more than 30 House seats.

The Time article by Jay Newton-Small also tells us what has happened to the 23 Repug senators, including “Straight Talk” McCain, who supported reform in ’06 (hence his rightward shift due to his primary challenge from J.D. Hayworth alluded to above).

The real story about the Repugs and immigration, though, is surmised by Kevin Drum here, who tells us that, “The Republican leadership caved in to rabid fearmongering, Hispanics defected en masse to the Democratic Party, and the entire topic has been radioactive ever since. If you want to know what's happened to the Republican Party over the last decade or so, this is it in a nutshell.”

And make no mistake, on this issue perhaps above all others, the Repugs take their marching orders from this guy (and I dare a single one of them to go on his show and tell them that that isn’t the God’s-honest truth).

Monday Stuff

I'm planning to crank everything up again tomorrow, but in the meantime, I thought that this was a cautionary reminder that, as tough as we have it, there are others who face bigger challenges than we do...

...and it's going to be a hot one in these parts for a little while - just be safe and check up on anyone you know who may be infirm, a shut-in, elderly, etc.