GOP 2008 Message

Don't expect big government to solve your problems. The real American heroes take some initiative and work within their own communities to organize people and solve problems.

Also, Americans who take initiative and work within their own communities to organize people and solve problems are complete losers.

Palin's speech II

I was wrong.

It was no tear-jerker. Just jerk.

I forgot, for a couple days, that the base of the GOP really only cares about mocking other people. Hard to believe I forgot that. That's what hope does to you, I guess.

Hillary Clinton's convention speech, to me, was phenomenal. Not just because of the values we share. She was a class act. Even her barbs at McCain were done with respect.

Palin, in no small feat, managed to follow a rabid Rudy by looking petty. She is petty. No wonder they love her. I cannot believe any real Hillary supporters could have watched that and seen anything in Palin they saw in Clinton.

This has been a shallow and ugly convention. I've watched every convention since I was nine years old. I truly believe this is the worst one I've ever seen.

Where there's smoke, there's Segretti

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Digby and dday are in the Mile High City, but here's a view of the convention coverage from closer to sea level. When the news broke last week that the Clinton's formed a "whip team" to handle troublemakers, I immediately realized that any disturbance, no matter how insignificant, would be elevated to a top story. It's kind of like when there's an earthquake and all the helicopters swarm over a burning shack somewhere and people across America get the impression that all of California is engulfed in flames.

The McCain campaign is smart to put out these otherwise ridiculous Hillary Clinton ads this week. The ads may be easy to mock if you are an Obama supporter (they are easy to mock), but McCain's real target audience is his base, which means the tire-swinging press corps.

Naturally, FOX News is already leading the way by not just reporting that it's 1968 all over again, but trying to actually stir up trouble for their broadcasts. But the rest of the media appears to be receiving the message perfectly. CNN is spending most of their time this morning talking about the attempts to "paper over" the big divisions in the party. MSNBC just ran a clip of Teddy Kennedy standing with Jimmy Carter in 1980 as NBC's David Brinkley cooed, "This is awkward."

It's a well-rehearsed GOP strategy and it's going to be monumentally difficult to keep this convention from being turned into a Clinton-Obama civil war -- at least as far as it appears to everybody outside Denver this week.

UPDATE: As soon as I hit 'publish' for this post, Chuck Todd said the Clinton-Obama story "is like catnip for us." He then explained that the media will get over it soon. Yeah, right.

LATE UPDATE: In fairness to Todd, as the convention opened, he dumped cold water all over the topic by telling Chris Matthews that it's not a real story and reporters will likely look back and wonder why they wasted time on it. But wasting time, they are.

There will be no honeymoon

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

On the eve of the Democratic Convention, I think it might be a good idea to remind ourselves what happened after the last one and prepare ourselves for how quickly the Republicans will try to change the subject.

On Thursday, July 29, 2004, John Kerry had a modest lead in the polls and Democrats were energized as the convention came to a close. Delegates, activists and party leaders returned home, ready to re-engage with their communities. But before Monday rolled around and anybody had a chance to gather at the water cooler, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge emerged with an important announcement:

Secretary Ridge: Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. President Bush has told you, and I have reiterated the promise, that when we have specific credible information, that we will share it. Now this afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack. And as a result, today, the United States Government is raising the threat level to Code Orange for the financial services sector in New York City, Northern New Jersey and Washington, DC.

Since September 11th, 2001, leaders of our commercial financial institutions have demonstrated exceptional leadership in improving its security. However, in light of new intelligence information, we have made the decision to raise the threat level for this sector, in these communities, to bring protective resources to an even higher level.

Code Orange!

It was still 2004, so millions of Americans who know now that the Bush Administration will tell them absolutely anything were still willing to accept that there was a legitimate threat and action needed to be taken immediately. It wasn't just Republicans, after all. When crazy Howard Dean suggested there may be politics involved (YEARGHH!), George Bush's favorite Democrat took to the airwaves with outrage:

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: I don't think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think that the president or the secretary of Homeland Security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons.

Perish the thought. This was "specific credible information" and Sec. Ridge had no choice but to come right out that particular Sunday and deliver the grim news. After all, the information they had was, uh, three years old.

Ridge hadn't exactly divulged that the information was in their possession for a long time and was more along the lines of surveillance notes rather than attack plans. But any reporter -- or citizen -- with the ability to think rationally when the government screamed "TERROR!" might have noticed that this is a strange thing to see when you bring your camera to a building that's about to be attacked by al-Qaeda:




Naturally, when there is "specific credible information" that a building is about to be attacked, the Presidential Playbook instructs him to send his wife and children to the target for a photo op with the mayor and governor. Bush's decision was textbook.

It is as clear in retrospect as it should have been to any observer back then: The Bush/Cheney/Rove operation would play on America's fears to win the election. Keith Olbermann has documented this strategy well with his Nexus Of Politics And Terror.

It's also important to note that there is a steep cost to us all when this happens. Not just the psychological damage that comes with an electorate whose judgment is clouded by fear and not just the damage done to our nation when a population ceases to trust a government that cries wolf. According to the American Public Transportation Association, "[e]very day on Orange Alert costs transit systems at least $900,000 a day."

In 2003, New York Governor George Pataki explained that Code Orange isn't free:

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI (R), NEW YORK: Well, there's no question that being at this heightened level of alert has cost New York State hundreds of millions of dollars.

MESERVE: Neighboring New Jersey says maintaining threat level orange costs $125,000 a day. And the city of Baltimore estimates its costs at $300,000 a week.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2003 (PDF) wrote:

[W]we estimate that cities nationwide are spending nearly $70 million per week in additional homeland security costs due to the war and heightened threat alert level. If the war and/or threat alert level continue for six months, cities would incur nearly $2 billion in additional costs.

We stress that these costs come ON TOP OF existing homeland security spending already underway or planned since 9/11. In addition, this survey only asked cities about DIRECT costs, new money that had to be allocated for homeland security because of the war or threat alert. These figures do NOT account for the huge INDIRECT costs cities are experiencing.

In the case of this "limited" Orange Alert in New York, many of those indirect costs were paid by ordinary citizens:

''Anything that slows down the city in general has economic impact, and anything that affects the financial institutions that are still our most important industry also has an impact,'' said Ronnie Lowenstein, an economist who is director of the city's Independent Budget Office. ''It is hard to imagine that these kinds of warnings don't have any impact.''

Rob Kotch, who runs Breakaway Courier Systems, a business that like much of New York's economy depends on speed and mobility, put it another way.

''The cost of all this security is friction to the economy,'' Mr. Kotch said. ''You consider the cost of a driver is $45 an hour. Do the math. If you put a dollar amount on waiting time sitting in traffic for security checks, it can be huge.''

Millions of dollars for the First Lady and Twins to "reassure" the people working in one building. Millions of dollars to make everybody in America afraid. Mostly taxpayer dollars. That Aug. 1 Orange Alert remained in effect for 102 days, through the RNC in New York City and until after the election.

And the cost was actually much steeper. It wasn't simply a financial loss America took to change the subject away from John Kerry's convention:

But what's more disturbing, perhaps even more than the new details of al-Qaida's twisted plotting, is the Bush administration's outing of an undercover al-Qaida agent in its rush to justify raising the terror alert. This move, whether politically motivated or rooted in incompetence has terrorism and security experts shocked and dismayed for the harm inflicted on intelligence operations against al-Qaida. CNN reports today that the administration "may have shut down an important source of information that has already led to a series of al-Qaida arrests" when officials revealed Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan's identity to journalists last week (Khan is the computer expert who "flipped" last month and was operating as a double-agent for the Pakistani government). Do we have so many plugged-in al-Qaida double agents that we can afford to lose one and with him all of his connections and leads? Of course not.

Juan Cole looks at the consequences: British intelligence agents scrambled last week to arrest 13 members of a London al-Qaida cell before they fled after learning  from the Bush administration!  that Khan had been arrested. "The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully," Cole writes. And even worse: 5 got away. "If this is true," Cole says. "It is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest. Of the 13 taken into custody on Aug. 3, two were released for lack of evidence and two others were 'no longer being questioned on suspicion of terrorism offences.'"

It may be another election, but George Bush is still president, Dick Cheney is still VP. Karl Rove's team is advising John McCain. Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge are on television every day as McCain surrogates and potential VP picks. The polls are close and all the talking heads believe (as does McCain, evidenced by his reaction to events in Georgia) that anything involving threats to America will help the GOP.

I'm glad Barack Obama already had a week to have fun in Hawaii. There will be no honeymoon after this convention.

UPDATE: By popular demand, here is a 2005 USA Today story about the source of Ridge's announcements:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

For the record, I'm not predicting that there will be a terror alert next week. I'm merely pointing out that this crew will go to serious lengths to change the subject and we might as well prevent the element of surprise from being a factor (and bust out the popcorn).

POWER HOUSE

Super lobbyist, McCain donor and loathsome GOP figure Ed Rogers decided to talk to the Washington Post about Barack Obama last week:

John McCain's celebrity ad was effective. It wasn't uncontroversial and it didn't please all the political scientists, but it sure got noticed, and it made Barack Obama overreact. Questions about Obama's desire for celebrity status will linger. He now has to be very careful about intersecting with Hollywood, pop culture and entertainment. Lee Atwater said the worst thing you can do in American politics is play to your negative stereotype. Well, Obama's negative stereotype now includes the idea that he may be a little too glitzy. (Speaking of negative stereotypes, when Obama was talking about the pictures of presidents on dollar bills, was he introducing the presumptuous notion that his face belongs on American currency? I wonder whom he thinks he should replace.)

At least he was able to refrain from mentioning Obama's middle name while calling him "glitzy."

In other news, NBC has just completed the pilot for their new show, POWER HOUSE. In the first episode, we get to see how Ed Rogers and his wife live in their "Republican Shangri-La" -- an 18-thousand square foot estate in McLean, VA.



Looks just like my livingroom. We must have the same architect.



The genuine cowhide toilet-seat cover really says "I shit you not" with class. The golden studs around it aren't the least bit ostentatious.

And finally, we get to see why the lobbyists and hedonists with whom McCain has surrounded himself have proclaimed Americans to be a bunch of whiners:



That's right. She's standing in front of rows of her designer shoes cutting up sheets of freshly printed U.S. dollar bills with a pair of scissors so she can use them as wrapping paper.

POWER HOUSE.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Digby has written about Surry Hill. Probably because I was too busy remodeling my bedroom after discovering that Ed Rogers has the exact same furniture.

LATE UPDATE: I eagerly await the swift arm of justice:

Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Southern Strategy 2008

Cross-posted at Daily Kos (just cuz I felt like it)

Mike Barnicle on MSNBC is dumbfounded today. He didn't see any of the racial subtext in the Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. Why, he asks, would John McCain want to woo crazy racist voters who would vote for him anyway? He should look in the mirror for his answer.

Let's just get one thing out there that anybody should be able to understand: There is no way -- none -- that the McCain campaign did not know that some people in America would see the racial/sexual subtext in that ad.

It doesn't matter if the ad "really" is racist. If, like Mike Barnicle, you didn't see the racism that I did, no, that doesn't make you an idiot.

However, if you think the McCain campaign was surprised that some people did see racism in an ad in which a handsome black candidate was coupled with a pair of young blondes who are famous for not wearing underwear, then, yes, you are an idiot.

These people get paid millions of dollars for their expertise in putting these ads together. They run everything by a series of focus groups. They have been exploiting racial divisions for decades. It's no secret: Former Republican Chairman Ken Melhman even apologized to the NAACP for it three years ago.

There is absolutely no way the McCain campaign put these ads on the air without expecting some people -- maybe not Mike Barnicle -- to gasp and point out the racial subtext. No way on earth they didn't know this would be the reaction from a good slice of the left. They knew it and they wanted it.

But why, Mike Barnicle asks? They already have the racist vote locked up! True, Mike, but there are millions of independent voters who, like you, didn't get the subliminal message. Millions of voters who might have liked Obama because he's not Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. John McCain wants these voters, independent white voters who don't hate black people, but hate when black people "play the race card."

John McCain, the honorable John McCain, couldn't possibly have known people would think these ads were racist. right? As concerned as the McCain campaign is that they'll be branded as racists, they had no idea that anybody would get the wrong idea from those images. Nobody could have predicted...

Of course they knew. They wanted the reaction and they got it, along with the media's obtuse confusion. Now, to a host of independent voters, Obama is just another Jackson or Sharpton.

UPDATE Josh Marshall flags this must-read article in New York Magazine, which makes my point precisely.

Iowa postscript

DB's brilliant predictions were spot-on:

I will be disappointed with one party's selections and horrified by the other's. Then, I will stop thinking about Iowa.

I'm disappointed that Dodd had such a poor showing (not that I ever thought he'd come away with a significant total). But .02 percent is ugly. The AP story about his withdrawal from the race actually contains more information about him than all the previous stories about the race combined.

Even his (threatened) filibuster of the FISA bill that thwarted Harry Reid's skulduggery for the time being barely netted Dodd any press at all. The system is simply too rigged for a person like Dodd to get the kind of momentum required to make a strong showing in a presidential race. That's a shame, but one I accepted a long time ago.

Obama's win tonight -- and the Democratic turnout -- was impressive. So was his victory speech. I don't have much to add to it that hasn't been said on TV or on other blogs.

On the other side of the coin, Mike Huckabee is a terrible candidate with the right attributes to get support from a certain segment of the nation, one that might be large enough to send him to Washington.

Huckabee is grossly unqualified to be president. There's no denying it. Voting for him because of his religion or his demeanor is inexcusable. Haven't the last seven years taught the Republicans anything?

Besides, Huckabee invented the What Would Jesus Do Loophole: ("Jesus was too smart to [BE IN MY CURRENT SITUATION].")

Memo to GOP voters: You will never, ever have a beer with the next president.

And having someone like this in the White House is just too much for me to fathom:

Five days after the tornado tore through the state, [Arkadelphia, Ark., a] city of 10,000 lay in ruins. The cyclone destroyed an office building, a bank, a pharmacy and 70 other businesses. The electricity was out. The National Guard patrolled the streets. Six people were dead.

In Little Rock, GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee was reviewing a disaster insurance measure that he intended to support when he became troubled: The bill, drawing on centuries-old legal terminology, referred to natural disasters as "acts of God."

In a time of emergency, Huckabee would hold up the measure for more than three weeks to press his personal objection that the Almighty could not be blamed for the region's loss. In the process, he drew damaging headlines and created new strains in his relations with the state's legislature, the General Assembly.

Frightening.

Finally, the television media is as brutally bad as ever. The irony of all these jokers talking about how badly America seems to want change. Howard Fineman said that America wants "a whole new cast."

Yes, and that includes all of you. You don't have front-row seats; you are all part of the same sad show. Today's coverage, with a few exceptions, was agonizing and it didn't even matter what channel my TV was tuned in to. They were all equally bad.

While I'm on the topic... A special "For the love of God, Please Stop!" goes out to Anderson Cooper and CNN for the computer-generated pie chart floating over a hand-held panel and skewing and scaling with every movement, blocking out everybody else's heads.

It made me pine for the halcyon days when Soledad O'Brien shared her time with this guy.

You can also do other things

Words of wisdom from Bob Novak at the 29th annual Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference held at George Washington University on July 31:

If you really want to be a professional journalist, if you want to be a reporter, you want to be in the news business, or television, not the press person for the National Rifle Association, don't tell anybody you're a conservative. Don't tell 'em.

The news media is filled with liberals. It's dominated much more by liberal executives than it was when I first came here 50 years ago and, therefore, it's harder to break in. What you've got to be, you've got to be, like in the old days, a communist. Infiltrating something. You're a conservative and you can do certain things that help your cause. Just telling the truth is helping the cause. But you can also do other things.

And eventually you may be as outspoken as I am, but when you're at your age, don't walk into NBC and say "I want to go on the air as a conservative." They'll kick you right out.

Now, let me give you an example. How many of you know Brit Hume? You all know Brit Hume because he's a big talking head at FOX. He's the managing editor in Washington and he's a conservative. You know he's a conservative.

I first met Brit Hume when he was a leg man, a reporter for the Jack Anderson column, not a conservative column. He was a leg man for Jack Anderson and I sat next to him at some basketball games. He's a great friend of Fred Barnes'. Fred Barnes and I had tickets next to each other at the old Washington Bullets games. We still have tickets next to each other at the Wizards games. And he used to bring... Brit Hume was a guest once in a while. I had some conversations. When you watched the Washington Bullets, you had to talk about something besides basketball.

I said, you know, this guy sounds a little bit like a conservative, you know? Not much, but a little bit. He was a big conservative but he was in the closet. He left Jack Anderson and he got a job with ABC News, no idea of his reporting that he was a conservative, becomes a White House correspondent for ABC. So, he's rising up the food chain and, suddenly, I see an article by him in The American Spectator. A conservative article. So, wow, he's starting, at least in print, to come out of the closet.

That's the model. Be smart. Don't impale yourself on the horns of liberalism.

GOP soothsayers

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Josh Marshall picks up on a key Ron Paul moment in Sunday's debate:

It's sort of obvious now that he said it. But I had not quite thought of it that way. The same people now continually raising the stakes on the price of redeployment from Iraq with increasingly lurid tales of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regional implosion are pretty much exactly the same people who gamed us into this mess in the first place with another bunch of fairy tales.

It is -- and has been -- obvious. Outside the GOP base, the people who dreamed up this nightmare have no credibility, whatsoever. Even if someone had the ability to accurately predict the future of Iraq, why would anyone think these people could? They've already demonstrated they possess the opposite of ESP.

Paul is right to mention Vietnam, the last example of a prophesied domino effect that was never to be. Somehow, nothing quells the war mongers' imaginations, though, when it comes to impending doom. The Washington Times' Tony Blankley delivered the ultimate domino rant on KCRW's Left, Right & Center back in January:

Nobody can predict. But an awful lot of experts who are not supporters of the president think there's a high likelihood that if civil war breaks out completely and were not there to contain it in any way, that Turkey will get sucked into Kurdistan, that Syria will be lapping over to support the Shias, that the Saudis, Egyptians and other Sunni countries will be giving more and more support to the beleaguered Sunni 20 percent. And in the middle of all this of course is little Israel, which according to the London Times last week, a paper of some repute having been in business for a few centuries, that they have a plan, not that they're necessarily planning to execute, they have a plan to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. Now, you can't... you know, plus 19 million barrels of oil flowing through the Hormuz Straights, keeping the world's economy functioning, all in jeopardy, the Saudi oil fields, which are unfortunately for the Saudis or those Sunni country, the Shias happen to live on the Saudi oil, the danger there... so that is the most flammable possible setting.

Amazing how nobody in the White House Iraq Group or any of the president's supporters ever considered that a possibility before the invasion. At least, they never said as much. Some, like Jonah Goldberg, weren't too concerned:

Obviously, Saddam's overthrow could destabilize the region, but since when is stability the highest standard for American foreign policy? Destabilizing a stable system of cruelty and oppression sounds pretty good to me. We're all for destabilizing the mob, right?

Excellent analysis. Of course, Goldberg is now using the potential for post-departure chaos as a rhetorical weapon against the left:

Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.

Nobody is making the argument Goldberg assigns to liberals and, beyond that, there's little reason to believe our current strategy in Iraq is sustainable.

But let's face it, nobody who said this can claim to truly care about the Iraqis:

Q: If you're the leader of a peaceful and prosperous nation which serves as the last best hope of humanity and the backbone of international stability and a bunch of fanatics murder thousands of your people on your own soil, what's one of the smartest thing you can do?

A: Knock the crap out of Iraq.

Why Iraq? Well, there are two answers to that question.

The first answer is "Why not?" (If it helps, think of Bluto burping "Why not?" in Animal House.)

The second answer: Iraq deserved it.

Now. Here's the important part: Both of these are good answers.

More compassion from Goldberg:

"In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, "Why aren't we killing people yet?" And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people."

The people who support this war don't care about the Iraqi death tolls. They're not motivated by any kind of real fear for the Iraqis' well-being. Of the millions displaced, only a few hundred have been allowed into the United States. The Iraqis are second-class citizens in their own country. Instead of concern for any Iraqis who might have been abused, the Right attacks anybody who alleges misconduct. They attack the credibility of any serious efforts to quantify the loss of Iraqi lives.

I'll not be lectured on compassion or history by any of them. But my point is that, aside from their cataractous crystal balls and pathological lack of empathy, the proponents of this debacle all have ample motives to push this looming-crisis meme, even if they don't actually believe it (assuming they even bothered to consider its validity as opposed to marketability).

We hear about the risks of leaving, but the risk of staying is clear. Every single day our troops are in Iraq, they are an unfortunate incident away from triggering a war with Iran. Thanks to the Lieberman Amendment passed a few weeks ago, our troops now have a Congressional mandate to increase their potential interaction with Iran. The last thing the PNAC signatories want to see happen is our troops leaving that powder keg. Anything they say to dissuade our egress should be viewed through that lens.

And for whatever GOP dead-enders there are whose thirst for blood is nearly quenched, there has to be a set-up for the "I told you so" that will inevitably come with every death after we walk. The "party of surrender" must be held to account for every problem that ensues after the order to leave is signed. The GOP enablers who allowed Bush to turn Iraq into the mess it is today won't be satisfied until they pin all the responsibility on the liberals.

Could the Iraqis suffer more if we leave? It's a possibility. But they don't want us there and the fools who started this war and the lunatics who want to expand it just can't be taken seriously when the question is debated.

The Golden State

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Have you heard the one about the liberal plot to use the issue of Global Warming to seize power?

Isn't it amazing? As soon as the Democrats go from the minority to the majority, the Republicans stop calling them the "party of no ideas" to the "party of the craziest, most sinister ideas, ever." Who could have predicted that?

Well, I'll show you an example of how the issue of Global Warming is being brazenly used for political purposes at the expense of the least fortunate. What a shock to learn it's the GOP putting their own interests ahead of the truly needy.

California's state budget is over a month late because the GOP refuses to pass it. Why? They don't like what Jerry Brown is doing to clean up California's environmental policies.

The two-thirds majority required to pass a state spending plan gives the Republican minority leverage during budget negotiations that it lacks the rest of the year.

It is using that leverage to try win concessions on several other issues. In addition to eliminating the deficit, Republicans are seeking changes on other issues that are not directly related to the budget process.

For example, they want assurances that billions of dollars in transportation bond money approved last year by voters will be spent as intended in the ballot measure. They also are trying to rein in efforts by Attorney General Jerry Brown, who has been pressuring local governments to address the negative effects on global warming of their various development projects.

Republicans fear Brown's actions hold the potential to delay or stop housing and road projects.

Schwarzenegger said he was willing to address that issue later but told reporters, "It shouldn't be part of the budget."

Without a signed budget, the state controller's office said it could not pay $326.6 million to community colleges; $170 million to school districts for programs such as special education and summer school; $140 million to companies that sell products to the state; and $300 million to preschool and day care programs.

Controller John Chiang said he will be unable to pay $2.1 billion due in August unless there is a budget agreement by the end of the month.

On Wednesday, one of the GOP senators, Abel Maldonado, voted with the Democrats to try to pass the budget, but it still came up one vote short. To fully appreciate how hard the GOP is playing here, understand that Gov. Schwarzenegger has line-item veto power and offered to remove parts of the budget that the GOP senators found objectionable. They turned him down.

This isn't about fiscal responsibility, but then, it never is. The Republicans love spending taxpayer money, just not on services for the less fortunate. They are playing with people's lives, fragile lives, and they don't seem to care at all. How else can you describe this kind of avarice?

At nursing homes, the cash crunch threatens not only their ability to pay staff but to buy essential supplies, such as food for elderly residents.

Eduardo Gonzalez, who with his wife owns the Fillmore Convalescent Center in Fillmore, said their food supplier may soon stop delivery. Of the home's 88 patients, 64 are on state-funded Medi-Cal.

[...]

Small homes for developmentally disabled adults are another immediate casualty of the state budget fight. They rely completely on state funding.

Bob Horrigan runs 19 homes, each with six beds, in La Verne and throughout San Bernardino County. He said he had suspended all repairs on vans, houses and wheelchairs, and soon would be unable to pay his employees. He and his wife, who together own the homes, are exploring ways to borrow money. But Horrigan said that his bank is balking and that other potential sources of money carry steep interest rates.

"Times like this you get money wherever you can," he said. "You alienate your family. You go behind on your mortgages."

[...]

The inability of the state to cover its bills is equally hard on the thousands of in-home child-care providers whose clients pay them with state subsidies. The caregivers, many already living on the margins themselves, rely on the state checks to pay their own rent and utility bills. This week the checks stopped coming.

"They will eventually get the money, but they need it right now to pay the rent," said Cliff Marcussen, the executive director of Options, a West Covina nonprofit that facilitates state payments to 1,000 child-care providers.

The state has suspended the subsidies for more than 250,000 children.

"Without payment from the state very soon, our programs — full of children of low-income parents — will have to close, leaving them with no child care," Kathy Lafferty, North President for the Child Development Administrators Assn., said in a written statement. "How does this serve the people of California or its businesses?"

Even if some of the larger institutions that provide state services are able to weather the budget impasse, many of the small businesses that are a backbone of their operations may not.

"I'm already living on borrowed time, as far as my bills, insurance and payroll," said Daniel Rojas, general manager of Midway Care Medical Transportation, an Artesia company that shuttles about 300 dialysis patients from their homes or nursing facilities to treatment centers. Rojas, who employs 25 people, said 95% of his funding comes from the state. He is frantically trying to secure a bridge loan, but his prospects are uncertain.

"If this doesn't get settled by the 10th, I would have to shut the doors down," Rojas said. "It's going to put us out of business."

There you have it: The Grover Norquist Republican Party. Dialysis patients and low-income children, used as pawns because the GOP doesn't approve of Jerry Brown and his environmental agenda.

The Ivory Tower

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Washingtonian punditry has given us much to revile, but there are few examples more illustrative of what vexes me than this, from David Brooks:

As Mark says, there's been this year-long momentum, but it has stopped or at least stalled for the time being. And I personally think the Senate will do nothing to change Iraq policy at least for another three or four months.

And that's for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of Republicans who detest where the White House is are furious at Harry Reid. And a colleague of mine wrote a good piece today saying that partisan feeling, rancor in the Senate was already phenomenally high, but now it's extra-phenomenally high. And over this issue, a lot of Republicans would like to peel off from the president, but they feel that Harry Reid is making it impossible. He's taking this as an issue, forcing them to vote with the president for political reasons. So that's stalled it on partisan grounds.

As Digby noted, the piece to which Brooks refers is likely that of Fred Hiatt.

The savants at the Washington Post have really had a banner month. David Ignatius wrote in 2006 that the media's failures in the run up to the Iraq War were excusable, as "the media were victims of their own professionalism," if you can believe that. He explained that "journalistic rules" prevented them from challenging the administration's claims. They were simply powerless to "create a debate on [their] own." The blame, therefore, should be pinned on the Democrats for not being critical enough.

Two weeks ago, however, Ignatius decided that the country would be better off if the Democrats and Republicans stopped disagreeing. "Political disharmony," he wrote, is bad for America. So, even if Bush and Cheney are completely and dangerously wrong about something (imagine that), journalistic rules tell Ignatius not to question the president unless the Democrats do -- and they shouldn't, either.

That would leave it up to us, but David Broder followed Ignatius with a column explaining that any criticism the public might have should simply be ignored, again, for the good of the country. In other words, the view from the ivory tower at the Washington Post is that nobody should question the president. This president.

And now this nonsense from Hiatt, that Harry Reid has done a great injustice by forcing GOP senators to choose between they think is good for their party and what they believe is best for America.

Were an observant outsider to step into the ivory tower, in which all things are viewed solely in a political context, our visitor might ask a few questions. Wouldn't doing what they believe is best for America also be good for their party? Did Bill Frist or Dennis Hastert ever once schedule votes for the benefit of the Democrats? Isn't it strange that my colleagues in the ivory tower find it irresponsible for Reid to make the GOP vote on legislation that would actually accomplish something the American public wants, while they expressed little outrage when the GOP forced votes on resolutions that did nothing but say "hooray for our side" in an obvious effort to embarrass Democrats?

But with midterm elections less than five months away, House leaders -- driven in part by dissenting voices in their party -- decided that their members needed to confront the Iraq issue directly.

"I think all members are going to have to express themselves on this issue as the year goes on. There is no way of avoiding it," Boehner said.

But Republicans wanted to air it out under the most favorable circumstances, debating over 10 hours a leadership-tailored resolution that would not be subject to amendment and would not face competing policy statements. By drafting a resolution that supported U.S. troops, emphasized triumphing over terrorism and called for victory in Iraq, GOP leaders had constructed a measure that was "hard not to support," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.).

After the vote, Republicans crowed that they had held ranks while highlighting Democratic division. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said, "We are pleased that 42 Democrats defied their leadership and stood with House Republicans to support both our troops and their mission to win the global war on terror."

Those would all be obvious questions for an objective person, not full on cocktail weenies, to ask. But they would still represent the view from the ivory tower, where everything is a game and there are absolutely no consequences. In the real world, one might instead ask these questions of David Brooks and his colleagues:

How would delaying a vote in order to placate the Republicans be any different than "stalling it on partisan grounds?" How long should we stick with a failed policy just to allow the GOP senators time to feel comfortable about doing what's right for America? How many soldiers should America tolerate sacrificing while GOP senate aides channel their inner-Frank Luntz and write a series of Friday press releases? 100? 200? 1,000?

How many limbs is it OK for our troops to lose while Mitch McConnell figures out how to save face? How many more terrorists should we be OK with breeding in Iraq? How many more billions of dollars should we be willing to spend?

How much deeper should we dig the hole we're in before the Washington Post decides it's no longer "irresponsible" for Harry Reid to make life awkward for Bush's minions? The Republicans like to portray the Democrats as defeatists who believe the troops are dying for nothing. Now the GOP is actually asking soldiers to die so they don't have to look bad on C-SPAN.

Here's a tip for the pundits at the Washington Post: Nobody gives a crap if any senators are furious at Harry Reid. In the real world, people die when politicians play stupid games. They're not pawns on a board. They're people. These are what we call "consequences."

Independence

At TPM, Steve Benen writes:

There was, however, one piece of information from the report that struck me as odd.

While these independents swung substantially to the Democratic side in 2006, 77 percent of them say they would seriously consider voting for an independent if one were running.

Is it me, or is 77% a little low? Nearly one-in-four self-described independents wouldn't consider voting for an independent? Then why even consider yourself an independent?

That doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are plenty of reasons to consider yourself an independent without supporting an independent candidate. First of all, you might despise the two-party system, but wouldn't consider voting for a candidate you don't think has a prayer of actually winning.

Second, in some states, there's not really a reason to actually register as a member of a party. In California, for instance, you can vote in any primary you choose. What is the benefit of being in a party? You can still give money to any candidate or party you like. Even if you were emphatically supportive of a particular Democrat or Republican, what is the incentive to register with that party, unless you intend to run for office yourself?

Or, you could be happy with a member of either party. Personally, I think every GOP candidate is utterly unsuitable, but there are some people who would be happy to see either Obama or Rudy. I can understand why Benen would assign those people to the "no-idea-what-they're-talking-about bloc." I'd tend to give them that classification, too, but they're not all as oblivious as those voters who told pollsters they would either like Howard Dean or George Bush back in 2004.

Even if half of that 23 percent were clueless, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that 12 percent or so of independents simply don't see a point to associating themselves with a party, but would still consider a vote for a candidate outside the two-party system to be a waste. I imagine there are more than a few Nader 2000 voters who wish they could go back in time (even if they won't admit it.)

Presidential Power

Thinking about how radical the Bush administration has been led me to pick up my dusty copy of Richard E. Neustadt's Presidential Power, one of the best books ever written about the executive branch. I just wanted to see how (my outdated copy of) the book holds up in light of the absurd nature of politics and the media in the early 21st Century. In some respects quite well, in others, not so much.

Interestingly, I found two opposite pages (164-165) that stuck out in my mind for different reasons, and both are bouncing around in my head today.

The first is this:

In 1898, two years before Wilson's apologia, a scholarly observer who may well have influenced him wrote a deeper book than Congressional Government. This was Henry Jones Ford, his book The Rise and Growth of American Politics. Correctly, in my view, he even then put the Presidency at the system's center:

The agency of the presidential office has been such a master force in shaping public policy that to give a detailed account of it would be equivalent to writing the political history of the United States.

The evidence... history affords seems conclusive of the tact that the only power which... define[s] issues in such a way that public opinion can pass upon them is that which emanates from presidential authority. ...

The rise of presidential authority cannot be accounted for by the intention of presidents; it is the product of political conditions which dominate all the departments of government, so that Congress itself shows an unconscious disposition to aggrandize the presidential office. ...

Eighty years later the trend seems the same.

Today, the talking heads are having a field day with the news that Congress has abysmal approval ratings. Lou Dobbs is reporting that fact as I type this.

In the comments to my posts this week at Hullabaloo, it was plenty clear to me that people have lost faith in Congress' ability to rein in this president. The failed Iraq Supplemental opportunity to end the war and the fact that Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is off the table seem to have crushed a great deal of whatever optimism voters had after last November's elections.

No doubt, it is true that the power this president has was ceded to him by the GOP-controlled Congress of the recent past, and has yet to be reclaimed by the thin majority the Democrats "enjoy" presently. Personally, I don't think they have the votes to change that much. The only real weapon they have is to continue investigating this reprehensible administration and hope that something comes out that is so egregious, even John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't be able to save Bush.

What is incredibly gut-wrenching to so many of us is the previously unimaginable extent to which the GOP Congressional leadership and noise machine has been willing to defend the indefensible. Which brings me to the opposite page (165) of my copy of Presidential Power:

In the aftermath of Watergate, however, we have seen occasions where distinctions between reputation and prestige seemed to dissolve, where Washingtonians seemed quite like members of the general public, reacting to a President in almost the same terms, conducting themselves accordingly.' One such occasion was the "Saturday night massacre" of 1973 when Nixon fired the Watergate Prosecutor, forcing resignations from the Attorney General and his Deputy, all of whom responded on TV. This dramatic sequence-televised and thus "firsthand" in all parts of the country seemed so to contradict the President's contentions as to drain them of credibility, enlarging what we now label a credibility "gap," indeed extending it so wide as to cast doubt on his legitimacy and with it his authority as President. Nixon seemed to be engaging in a cover-up of criminal activity. He seemingly was fighting law enforcement. But he had sworn an oath of office encompassing the "take-care" clause. Hence the cloud on his legitimacy. The "massacre" tripped off impeachment proceedings. It is easy to see why.

What was striking then is that inside the government or near it, in the watchful circle of the Washington community, reactions against Nixon seemed to have so much in common with the popular impressions outside government. Citizens at large were swept into a "firestorm" of protest and suspicion. But so were commentators, congressmen, and civil servants. Apparently the President's behavior planted the same question in all minds. Some Washingtonians, waiting upon evidence, were slower than others to draw ultimate conclusions, and slower by far than some citizens, but he was treated henceforth with reserve throughout the Washington community. Diplomacy aside-there was a crisis in the Middle East-he turned away from governing and focused on the prospect of impeachment. Had Nixon tried to be assertive in domestic spheres, I take it that he would have been ignored or resisted. All over town officials shook themselves free of the White House, released by suspicion from deference, distancing their programs from his person. This occurred within one year of his triumphant re-election, three years before expiration of his term. For Washingtonians it was a most uncharacteristic reaction, especially so early in the term. Calculations about possible impeachment played a part, no doubt. But so did outraged feelings about Nixon's performance. There was precious little rallying around him. Instead, so far as I can judge, there was a widespread sense, even in some quarters of the White House, that he had compromised his right to be there and should go, impeached or not.

It is hard to imagine Washingtonians having less "in common with the popular impressions outside government" today (or during the Clinton impeachment proceedings.) As Digby correctly noted in her magnificent speech, the mainstream media -- the High Broderism and Meal Ticket Journalists -- have failed us completely.

Glenn Greenwald wrote today:

Only in the true fringe -- what Digby calls "the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush," as well as their establishment media enablers -- does opposition to the Iraq War, or Guantanamo and torture, or the abolition of habeas corpus, or the grotesque deceit of the Limbaugh Right make one a "leftist" or fringe liberal, as those terms are used in their pejorative sense. The reality is that the views Digby identifies as the crux of the "progressive blogosphere" are entirely mainstream American views. "Extremism" is marked by those who reject those beliefs, not by those who embrace them.

Radicals and extremists are those who believe that we ought to invade and occupy foreign countries which have not attacked and cannot attack us, or that we ought to lock people away indefinitely with no process and/or torture them, or that the president has the power to ignore our duly enacted laws. As is true for any collection of large numbers of people, there surely are liberal bloggers who hold views that are shared only by a small minority. But objectively speaking, the defining views, the ones that its members hold almost unanimously in common, are anything but radical or "fringe."

It is not only our national character that has changed fundamentally over the last six years. So, too, has our political spectrum. As I've argued many times before, the term "liberal" or "the Left," as used most commonly, now denotes "opposition to Bush radicalism." Anyone who meaningfully deviates from the worldview of the Bush movement, who devotes themselves to opposing it, finds themselves -- for that reason alone -- described as "on the Left." Even the CIA, and Bush appointees such as Richard Armitage and James Comey, are so described that way. That is how profoundly these terms have been transformed.

Ideas that were always previously so radical as to be unthinkable are now routinely identified as "mainstream conservatism." Conversely, political principles that have been such an integral part of America's political identity as to be unquestionable are now the hallmarks of "fringe liberalism" (a "fringe" which, as our last election demonstrated, now includes an ever-growing majority of the population). Those whose views of "bloggers" are based upon the caricatures of Time Magazine and The Washington Post would undoubtedly be shocked to learn of just how unremarkable is the Platform of Beliefs of the "Progressive Blogosphere" as articulated by one of its leading and most admired commentators.

The litany of abuses of the public trust, to the point at which one of the highest ranking officials in the administration was convicted by a jury of obstructing the only significant criminal investigation of wrongdoing in the White House, has been so well-documented there's no reason to go through it here. When John Ashcroft was willing to resign to stop Bush and Cheney from hatching one of their schemes, we wondered what could have been so bad to make him say no.

What it will take to make the rest of today's Washingtonians to say no? What it will take -- beyond a veto-proof majority -- to hold Bush accountable for his misdeeds and get this country back? The simple answer to my simple question is probably "nothing."

Still, this member of the "fringe" will not relent.

Fear Factor

John McCain said during the GOP debate tonight that he would "take the lead in fighting this transcendent issue of our time: the battle and struggle against radical Islamic extremism." He might have even exceeded Rudy in describing the vastness of the threat facing our nation:

It is a force of evil that is within our shores. Look at the events of the last few days at JFK, attempts at Fort Dix, the London suicide bombers.

My friends, this is a transcendent struggle between good and evil. Everything we stand for and believe in is at stake here. We can win. We will never surrender, they will. I am prepared to lead. My life and my experience and my background and my heroes inspire me and qualify me to lead in this titanic struggle which will not be over soon, but we will prevail.

This was, of course, a common thread among all the Republican candidates (save Ron Paul). "These are real problems," said Rudy. "This war is not a bumper sticker. This war is a real war."

Another wonderful moment of unanimity was this:

MR. BLITZER: Is there anyone here who believes gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the United States military? If you do, speak up now. (Silence.)

So here's the hypothetical DB would greatly appreciate hearing in the next GOP debate:

The questions in this round will be premised on a fictional, but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it. Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured.

U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack, possibly involving a nuclear bomb, is planned and could come at any time, but the attackers do not speak English and the only person immediately available who speaks Arabic is openly homosexual.

What do you do?

How amazing would that be to watch?

What a day

Scooter gets the sentence he deserves, Schlozman gets the grilling he deserves and Rudy gets interrupted by God while explaining why he's not Pontius Pilate.

Some days I have nothing to blog about. Today, too much to know where to start.

Pathological

One month ago, DB wrote a post about my fears over the logistics of an American withdrawal from Iraq:

But then, I'm afraid, it will get even uglier. Assuming he hasn't started anything with Iran by then, with a majority of Congress calling for withdrawal, Bush will have to start redeploying. It is important to realize that extracting ourselves from Iraq will be a complicated and dangerous operation.

Consider the incompetence of this administration for a moment. Now imagine this Commander in Chief presiding over that redeployment. It has the potential to be a disaster. And, as Pat Buchanan has been saying all week, they will blame every problem and death on the "party of defeat."

Philip Carter wrote an excellent piece about what the withdrawal will probably look like.

But then I reached a point in my post that caused me a great deal of anguish. I revised it three times, eventually toning it down. Here's what I wrote:

I'm not suggesting that they will deliberately make the exit a disaster. I will not enter "Republican Strategist" Ed Rogers' dwelling:

The clumsy politics that the Kerry campaign is playing on terrorism should be offensive to all Americans. And the media should blow the whistle on them. I think -- in my heart of hearts, I think that they're hoping for an attack, so that they can say, I told you so.

(I must say it makes me quite apprehensive to hear people with such a pathological lack of empathy and who are the embodiment of solipsism making comments like that.)

But, no, I will not go there. I will only go as far as asking how much this administration, which hasn't given a crap about the troops throughout the entire war, will care about them at this dangerous juncture?

Part of me wanted to "go there," but the thought of following Ed Rogers there -- even for the sole reason that he is already there -- was too much for me.

But I cannot deny that this administration and its mindless defenders scare the crap out of me. I truly believe they are pathological and have a disturbing lack of empathy. Consider how far removed from the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes you have to be to think Katrina survivors might think it's "kind of fun" to lose their houses and be forced to live in shelters. Or that the victims might actually be better off since they were so poor. Or that Iraq is not in that bad shape since it looks peaceful from 30,000 feet above. I mean, imagine how much you would have to be disconnected from the suffering to say, "And are people being killed? Yes. And is it unfortunate? Yes."

It's just disgusting. There's no way to account for the lack of compassion on behalf of the people running this country other than to say simply that they lack the fundamental ability to see things from other people's perspectives. And the conclusion that follows is that they are solipsistic and everything out of their mouths says more about them than the people they are trying to smear.

When they blame the media for being biased, I have always felt that clearly indicated that they themselves felt no obligation to speak honestly. I reasoned that if these people felt that the public forums provided by the modern era were fundamentally dishonest, then they would also feel that the proper way to play the game was to lie "just like everybody else." I still think this is true, but I realize now that it stems more from a projection of themselves than it does from any legitimate analysis of the environment they are in.

Which leads me back to Ed Rogers' horrible, horrible accusation. I really didn't want to write this a month ago, but I have a deep fear that when somebody like Rogers suggests that liberals want to see an attack on American soil, it's because he would think the same thing if he thought his party would benefit from such an attack. Perhaps he truly believes liberals think like that. He probably does. But he's wrong... and worse, he's projecting.

You know, I'm still not willing to believe that the Bush administration -- not even Cheney -- would deliberately allow the withdrawal to be a disaster so the Democrats could be blamed for ending the war. I still think they're incompetent enough to make it a disaster, but I won't say they'd be evil enough to make it a disaster deliberately.

But I revisit this topic today because I just read this, from Dennis Milligan, Chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party:

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."

Unlike this important Republican, I pray we never have another attack on American soil. Unlike another important Republican, I won't even wish the next attack upon his family.

The modern GOP is the lowest assortment of cretins we've ever had at the helm of our nation.

Try to remember a day in September...

DB wrote on Friday that the Republicans know this war is over, that they want General Petraeus to allow them to exit gracefully, that they will use his report in September to do so and that in the meantime, they will follow Nixon's lead in labelling the Democrats as the "party of defeat" or "surrender," even though they themselves are certain that "victory" could not be achieved.

Since Friday, DB has been too busy to post anything here, not even a poem or two to appease the insatiable Dover Bitch readership.

But let's take a quick look at what has happened in the past five days:

On Tuesday, the Washington Post, in a piece called "September Could Be Key Deadline in War," featured these quotes:

"Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me."

[...]

The fixation with September is all the more striking because funding bills that cleared the House and Senate this spring were looking well into 2008 to mandate significant changes. The Senate-passed bill set March 2008 as a goal for withdrawing U.S. combat troops, while the House envisioned combat troops being withdrawn by the end of August 2008. In the ensuing weeks, however, news from Iraq has shown little improvement, while public opinion has continued to harden against the war.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has taken a hard line in Bush's favor, said Sunday, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B."

This is the same Boehner who said this a week ago:

“House Republicans will oppose any bill that includes provisions that undermine our troops and their mission, whether it's benchmarks for failure, arbitrary readiness standards or a timetable for American surrender."

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), who captivated DB with his party-of-surrender poetry on the floor of Congress last week, followed that performance by quoting a KKK Grand Wizard. Bravo!

And today, we have the coup de grace, via Tim Russert:

In a sign of the growing fissure between the White House and its congressional allies over the war, NBC News reports tonight that 11 Republican members of Congress pleaded yesterday with President Bush and his senior aides to change course in Iraq.

The group of Republicans was led by Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charlie Dent (R-PA), and the meeting included Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, and Tony Snow. One member of Congress called the discussion the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president,” and NBC’s Tim Russert said it “may have been a defining pivotal moment” in the Iraq debate.

Russert described the conversation:

[O]ne said “My district is prepared for defeat. We need candor, we need honesty, Mr. President.” The president responded, “I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I don’t want to pass this off, particularly, to a Democratic president,” underscoring he understood how serious the situation was.

Brian, the Republican congressman then went on to say, “The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There is no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus.” The meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and was, in the words of one, “remarkable for the bluntness and no-holds-barred honesty in the message delivered by all these Republican congressmen.”

So there you have it.

Debates: The morning after

Over at FDL, scarecrow writes the post I wish I wrote last night but I was too tired after breaking it all down. Here's a sample, but read the whole thing:

They do not see a nation angry at them about the war nor shamed by a government that sanctions torture. With their Reaganesqe optimism, they do not see families struggling with health care costs, job security, retirement security, and college tuition. They don’t seem to worry whether the government is doing enough to protect us from unsafe working conditions, unsafe products, unsafe foods and drugs. They apparently don’t see global warming as a national security or economic threat. American democracy is not threatened; the Constitution is not under siege, and Americans don’t hate the Bush regime for what it has done to our liberties (Paul excepted). Attacks on the rights of women, gays, and immigrants and anyone who looks like the “enemy” are non-issues.

The collective denial shown by these men was even more surprising because one of the first questions asked concerned the fact that about only 22 percent of the American people think the country is on the right track, but you’d never know it from listening to these men. And because they seem so completely disconnected from what the American people believe, there is no possibility that any of these men could successfully address the nation’s concerns. Last night, the Republican Party declared itself to be in denial and irrelevant except as an out of touch opposition party with no ideas left for any of the hard questions of governnance.

I missed spelled Giuliani a bunch of times last night, so that's been corrected.

Ron Paul has now dropped to 30% positive, 30% negative now in that MSNBC poll, with 53,972 votes in. He's still the only candidate without more unfavorable ratings than favorable ones, but he now trails Romney by one point in the positive ratings. It must be his "optimism."

Debates: Other thoughts

First of all, thanks to the International Herald Tribune for the debate transcript I've been using.

Here's some final thoughts on the debate, in no particular order:

Tommy Thompson's answer that employers should be allowed to fire gays was not only a low point for DB (of many), it actually seemed to bring the debate to a brief pause. There really seemed to be an uncomfortable pause after he answered. In any event, he offered a weak retraction after the debate.

[UPDATE: Thompson offers a full retraction and expands on his answer to the question about racism.

Good for Thompson. DB still finds there to be a lack of any serious discussion about race among the GOP hopefuls and party in general.]

Mitt Romney's attack on Patrick Fitzgerald was pathetic.

I can tell you that I think it was outrageous for the prosecutor, knowing that Scooter Libby was not the source of the leak, to go ahead and begin interviewing him, gathering information, setting up a case against him. I think it was prosecutorial indiscretion.

Memo to Mitt: Libby lied multiple times to investigators before Fitzgerald was even appointed. This lame answer from Romney shouldn't come as a surprise since Barbara Comstock is one of his advisers.

Romney apparently wanted to look presidential and probably succeeded enough to convince some people he could play one on TV for four years. There's nothing else there. He's probably wondering right now why Duane Wade really wants to be in Charles Barkley's "Five."

When John McCain said he'd follow Bin Laden "to the gates of hell," DB shuddered. Not because of McCain's insane forcefulness. I just felt a tremor in the force when all the writers at The Corner slid off their seats at the same time.

The questions were better than the ones asked at the Democratic debate. But politico.com ducked the good ones that were submitted. Chris Matthews' question about Bill Clinton is exactly why I can't stand him.

For the most part, this was a chance for 10 men to talk about how much they love Ronald Reagan and hate abortion.

Ron Paul won't win the nomination, and I probably wouldn't vote for him in a general election, but he was the one candidate who said things I was happy to hear.

Jim Gilmore actually seemed reasonable in many ways, but didn't say anything extremely memorable or revolutionary.

Rudy Giuliani did not do well. I think he's doomed.

Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo are fighting for the same turf. Hunter wins that battle.

Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback are also vying for the same votes. But not DB's, so I can't say who will come out on top.

Debates: Immigration

There were no really no surprises in the debate for immigration issues. Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo dueled for the Lou Dobbs vote.

Hunter:

REP. HUNTER: You know, it's a way to win, but we need to win the right way. And you know, about a hundred miles south of here is the -- in my town of San Diego we built the border fence. When we built that fence, we had a border out of control, and we built that fence. And it's a double fence, it's not that little straggly fence you see on CNN with everybody getting over it.

He built a fence, Tom. Can you top that?

REP. TANCREDO: I would say pardon [Scooter Libby], but right after or before you pardon Ramos and Compean, two people who are presently serving in -- prison time for actually doing their job on the border.

Zing! Hunter?

REP. HUNTER: You know, we won World War II, World War I and the Cold War with a major industrial base. We're losing our industrial base through bad trade policy right now. China is cheating on trade. I would enforce trade laws. That's something that the president is not doing.

China! Tom?

MR. VANDEHEI: Congressman Tancredo, David Kim from here in California wants to know, beside yourself, who do you think should be the Republican nominee for president of the United States, and why?

REP. TANCREDO: ...I am telling you this; that there are issues that I believe have not been addressed tonight, not in full, and I believe that they do separate us, and I certainly believe the issue of immigration and immigration reform and what's going to happen to this country unless we deal with this forthrightly.

No more platitudes. No more obfuscating with using words like, "Well, I am not for amnesty but I'm for letting them stay." That kind of stuff has got to be taken away from the political debate, as far as I'm concerned, so people can understand exactly who is where on this incredibly important issue.

And when they see that, I think, frankly, I'm --

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, time.

Oh! Sorry, Tancredo. Hunter wins the Lou Dobbs portion of the debate.