Bummer Friday

Beautiful weather but the zeitgeist is getting funky.

Dana Milbank doesn't take kindly to Glenn Beck showing up in town. The early videos of his arrival show the short-sleeved munchkin surrounded by security dressed as secret service types and white women reaching out to shake his hand. But Milbank is writing a book about Beck and doesn't think highly of the new messiah. He reminds readers that it has just been over a year since Beck called the first-African-American president a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Beck says that Obama is "moving all of us to slavery". He accused Obama of seeking "reparations" from white America, seeking to "settle old racial scores". This is also a chronic theme of Rush Limbaugh's rantings.

Beck has spoken about "radical black nationalism" in the White House and "Marxist black liberation theology" influencing Obama. He has also determined that the New Black Panthers have "ties to the White House in a myriad of ways" and are part of Obama's "army of thugs". Where do I join? Beck choose the date of his rally because of "divine providence". Like Sharron Angle running for Senate. Like Jan Brewer running for Arizona. Does God now have alzheimer's?

Beck now believes the civil rights movement was distorted by civil rights leaders, who may have known King personally but purposely distorted his ideas. Over the last century, Beck says, "no man has been free,because we've been progressive." He argues the anti-tax conservatives are the "real civil rights movement." Well done, Dana.

Ken Mehlman, the man who ran George W.'s 2004 campaign, has discovered he is gay. This is a man who presided over the Republican Party when it ran anti-gay referenda in every state to boost the turnout and encouraged the passage of DOMA in Congress. He is now saying he was quietly trying to persuade Republicans to go easy on the Gay. It's simply not believable. Now he wants to support the cause of same-sex marriage. He is in a long line of gay conservatives beginning with Roy Cohn, who run the Republican Party. There is a wonderful book there or else a piece for a psychology journal.

Nate "The Great" Silver is making me nervous. Do you remember when he was "poblano" over at the Daily Kos? Nate appeared on Hardball and started talking about "wave" elections and mentioned Speaker Boehner. This coming week, we'll see what Nate has produced.

Chris Van Hollen , who is handling the Democratic House elections, claimed this morning that the Democrats will hold both houses of Congress.

But Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien , all reputable political scientists, have done their preliminary House predictions by running a 1,000 computer simulations. They predict Republicans will take back the House with a majority of 229 seats to 206 for Democrats. They do include all the necessary scholarly caveats. But still...

If Republicans win back the House, they plan to do what I wrote about before--investigate the Obama Administration from soup to nuts. Politico reports today that Republican staffers are already researching the areas of these probes. Of course, a major one will be the DOJ's handling of the so-called New Black Panther voting intimidation case. You see white people are being intimidated now from voting like with ACORN. So we will have several investigations to prove Barack Obama is an African American and to link him to the more ephemera of African American culture.

One of the heroes of New Orleans is back in the news. "Brownie", the former head of FEMA and horse breeder, told the press that President Bush hid how horrible Katrina was from the American people. Brownie is heading to New Orleans to "celebrate" the five-anniversary of the disaster. The crime of the Government's response to Katrina was that FEMA for several consecutive years ran practice sessions on exactly this precise level Hurricane striking this precise city. The plans for this particular disaster were upgraded nearly every year beginning in the Clinton Administration. And yet nothing suggested by these run-throughs was ever carried out on the days it happened or weeks afterward.

Richard Trumpka, the AFL-CIO's President blasted Sarah Palin at a union gathering in Alaska. Not to be outdone, Palin called union leaders "thugs", the new refrain from the Republicans, and said that union members were better off supporting conservatives. Because you know, they would be better off if the auto industry had failed and the rest of their homes would face foreclosure. The good news this year is that all the unions are coordinating to raise their stake in the mid-terms to $100 million. While it can't outgun the some $400 million being pledged by conservative groups, the money comes with people to organize and get out the vote. Apparently, the Democrats' ability this year to run an effective get-out-the-vote campaign has caused Karl Rove to panic and he's scrambling to raise significant funds for a GOTV effort of his own since the RNC's effort is bankrupt.

So far, I've been impressed by how prepared the Democrats have been in blunting GOP attacks. They seem to be playing more offense at this stage than defense and have so far neutralized the negative ads run by Republicans. The Republican candidates provide a target rich environment for the Democrats to hang them by their radical right-wing agendas.

Some of the candidates are truly astonishing for both their character and their ideas. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor of Florida, had the honor of paying a $1.5 billion fine for Medicare fraud by his hospitals. Several candidates openly support banning abortion even in the case of rape and incest. Sharron Angle said that teenage women just have to make lemonade out of lemons. One of the best candidates is running against Russ Feingold. He claims he is a self-made millionaire, who started in business after graduating from high school. Turns out he married a very wealthy woman, was given a department of the family business to run, and also never graduated from high school. Rick Miller in Alaska may have won as a teabagger with Sarah Plain's endorsement and has the most anti-Alaskan campaign of them all. He wants to stop the pork from going to Alaska. They get roughly $2 for every $1 they contribute to the national economy. He could really run on "Vote for Me and You will Die."

The Congressional Budget Office is preparing for a war if Republicans win in November. They announced that any repeal of the Medicare provisions in the healthcare bill will cause about $450 billion in additional deficit. This raises the issue about pay-go rules. For instance, if the Republicans actually want to keep the tax cuts for the rich, Congress this time--unlike last time--has to pay for them. The actual cost of the tax cuts for the rich is roughly twice the cost of the healthcare reform bill for all of America. Now, we know Republicans will not cut defense so the tax cuts for the wealthy have to be paid for by cuts in anything the lower or middle classes might get. If you analyze this, Pat Ryan in his "Blueprint for the Future" actually gave the game away. His plan called for cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them for everyone else. He also listed entitlement programs that would have to be cut. That's what the end-game of the GOP tax-cuts for the rich actually means. And I believe that's why the GOP leadership is trying to push Ryan off to the side for now. They are afraid that their whole gig will be up.

An idea for Democrats: Make the real cost of the tax-cuts for the rich explicit. They have to be paid for and the rest of America must subsidize the wealthy. It is true that the deficit would increase but I don't think that's how it would play out this time with pay-go. Of course, all the tax cuts, including for the Middle Class, have to be paid for through pay-go rules. So watch this space for what actually goes next year.

Fidel Castro wants you to know that Bin Laden is a bought and paid for CIA agent.

Our anti-corruption effort in Afghanistan seems to have run into a few roadblocks. It seems that all the corrupt Afghan officials that need to be removed are paid CIA agents.