TPP-Fast Track

++The Imperial Post yesterday ran an analysis of how Presidents in the second term buck their party in seeking policy priorities. In W's case, immigration reform, which went down in flames. In Obama's case, Fast Track Authority for TPP.

++Sherrod Brown reports that his Democratic colleagues in the Senate have been lobbied, cajoled, pressured more by Obama officials than on any other piece of legislation, including the Affordable Care Act. 

++President Obama has seemed almost emotional on this front after speaking at NIKE on the West Coast. In comments after comments, he went after Elizabeth Warren, as "just a politician like all of us", for her opposition to Fast Track. 

++If progressives gave President Obama the benefit of the doubt on other issues, this is one area where they are united against him. 

++Chris Weigant at the Huffington Post writes today "Slowing the Fast Track Down", which adequately summarizes both cases. 

++Weigant gets at Warren's insistence for the President to de-classify the trade agreement. President Obama has argued this is the most progressive trade agreement ever--even though trade unions are against it and few Democrats back it. Why? Warren's point is that while Congress can read the whole agreement,they can not disclose its contents. But--and this is where Weigant chimes in--our major corporations and their lawyers can not only read it but negotiate it. So why not print it before Fast Track is approved.

++President Obama's point is that there are several committees negotiating each section of it and that it is being constructed in a collaborative manner. He also is quite write that Presidents do this in a whole host of agreements. 

++The intensity of President Obama's rhetoric on this issue also mirrors the shortening of the congressional time frame--less than ten days left before adjournment. 

++In some ways this is like the Iran nuclear talks where you have a multi-party negotiation where Congress can only blow it up by making exotic demands. 

++Progressives still point to NAFTA and President Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to re-negotiate it. He claims that this agreement is, in effect, a renegotiation because both Canada and Mexico are involved.

++The other overarching image I have is that China and others are cleaning our clock and making multilateral deals around the world, which will eventually freeze us out. 

++Here the Obama Administration blundered by not joining with China on its Infrastructure bank, while Australia, Western Europe and the Israelis did.

++Congress has also helped by drastically cutting aid while China signs comprehensive agreements with Pakistan, India and Africa, leaving us in the lurch.

++President Obama is pushing TPP as his counter to this trend. Unfortunately,both parties seem content in letting the status quo remain.

++I am still agnostic about the whole thing but I can understand both positions. That's why Chris Weigant's piece is so useful

Elizabeth Warren Crushes Joe Biden

++Monmouth University has a poll out that shows Elizabeth Warren at 6%, Joe Biden at 2%, Bernie Sanders at 2%, Andrew Cuomo at 1% for the Democratic presidential nominee. About 30% are undecided. Of course, 48% prefer Hillary Clinton.

++I love Elizabeth Warren but can we take her statements seriously for a change. "Do you want me to put an exclamation mark behind it?" Over 300 Obama campaign staffers have asked her to run and the Beltway punditry are already urging Hillary to announce to cut off the mounting tide surging for Warren.

++We saw in the Senate speeches by Udall,Feinstein, McCain and Rockefeller what having good Senators can do. Elizabeth Warren electrified the audience with her denunciation of the derivatives clause written word for word from the Citigroup lobbyists. I think she should stay a Senator and we can hear her for years to come. 

Mark Begich Has Not Conceded

++While AP pronounced Dan Sullivan the winner,Mark Begich refused to concede the Alaska race because there are thousands of votes still outstanding from rural Alaska and the Indian territories he conducted his extensive outreach in. 

++Elizabeth Warren looks like she may join the ranks of the Senate Democratic Leadership.

++Same Sex marriage became legal in South Carolina and Kansas.

Lunch

++One fact that tells a lot about the United States. 
     68 million Americans do not have checking or savings accounts.

++This fact emerged in the discussion of Senator Warren's proposal that the Post Office provide paycheck cashing and same day loans to Americans. It is estimated that poorer Americans spend over $2,200 on checking cashing privileges and interest on same day loans per year. Her proposal would put a huge dent in the usury business.

++Elizabeth Warren's idea dates back to Theodore Roosevelt's view of the function of the Post Office.

++Meanwhile,for the strict constitutional Teabag crowd, if you really want smaller government, why not wait until 2017 when one third of Federal employees are eligible for retirement. They are demoralized as of now.

++John Boehner said this morning the United States will not default. If he let the whole house vote, they would pass a clean debt ceiling bill. I doubt it.

++The Speaker of the House also announced the House was creating a new website and releasing all the documents on Benghazi--since this will be an issue in the 2014 election for the right-wingers.

++Unlike the Washington Post and commentators on the Left,I support Obama signing the Farm Bill because a veto would plunge Congress into a morass. The Bill actually took 3 years to do.

++Dana Millbank has a column in the Post about his attending the House hearings on Obamacare and another on the IRS. He says the GOP are still devoid of reality.

++But that doesn't seem to matter much. The Koch Brothers' created Americans for Prosperity have already spent $20 million in ads against vulnerable Democrats.

++James Carville has now signed up as a Fox News Contributor. 

++kos of the Daily Kos beat the drum again today that the Democratic base outnumbers the GOP and should vote this year. It is actually true and Democrats really become fatalistic on off-year elections. But Virginia should feel them that a mini-Obama coalition can be organized in an off-year and win.

++Harry Reid wants President Obama to sign an executive order to end discrimination in federal hiring. Unfortunately he can't override restrictions in the majority of the States.

++In Georgia,the big rumor is that the federal government created the snowstorms that hit Atlanta.

++The Great Dictator Obama has signed the fewest executive orders of any President since FDR, who was the King of executive orders.

Sunday News Roundup

++Jason Linkins provides all you need to know about the Sunday talk shows. He talks about his boss on McLaughlin Report probably being stoned and craving pizza. This week, some black people got to appear instead of the ancient, old white men to discuss the meaning of Nelson Mandela.

++Over 3.7 million have visited the Obamacare website and now the talk shows are asking whether enough young people will enroll.

++The week saw a slight uptick in the progressive agenda. Minimum wage fights are breaking out in local areas. Elizabeth Warren fought back against the "Third Way" crowd, pointing to their funding from banks. The Holy Writ of austerity by cutting Medicare and Social Security was damaged this week as more Democrats are arguing for an enlargement in Social Security. This is a seachange in the national debate.

++Chuck Hagel is in Kabul to secure the ever-elusive security pact with Afghanistan.

++John Kerry brought to Israel the details of secuity arrangments for an Israeli-Palestianian deal.

++President Obama appeared at the Saban Institute here in Washington,D.C. to argue that an Iranian deal is about 50-50 and maybe less.

++John Kerry appeared later at the same forum and was more hopeful than President Obama.

++Bibi Netanyahu said if Iran is nuclear, there will be no Palestinian peace deal. His coalition partners are urging him to get serious.

++The Ukraine has the largest protests since 2004. 

++Meanwhile in the Party of No Ideas, Rand Paul says that extending long-term unemployment benefits would be unfair to those workers,the Tea Party gang wants to block another budget deal,one-third of the delegates to the Virginia Republican Party convention believe Medicare is unconstitutional. The John Birch Society met yesterday at Mount Vernon to discuss how subversive the Right can become.

++Rand Paul offered ingenious solutions to Detroit. He wants the city to become like Saipan and attract foreign investors who would have a tax holiday. Meanwhile Christie's valued the Detroit Art Institute's art collection as worth about $1 billion--peanuts for the total debt of the city. Be assured the wealthy will get it for their private collections.

++Naomi Klein slams Nelson Mandela for adopting a neo-liberal capitalist model for South Africa as if in his two-terms he could preserve the peace and confiscate all the industries.

++Rand Paul won't say he is running for President. Elizabeth Warren said she is definitely not. Bernie Sanders said he might if no progressive runs for the Democratic nomination.

++The Times laments the state of South Africa, even though black South Africans feel better. This seems to be the new meme for the post-Mandela mourning. The man was great but didn't do enough. Maybe Romney will beat him next time.

++The relatively good economic news this week brought crickets from my conservative friends. They tell me "Wait until February." They still believe in hyperinflation and that there will be another crash. 

++Thomas Friedman of the NY Times this morning won another Friedman Unit--a term a blogger coined for every inanity he writes. Friedman claims the bad educational scores of our country indicates there is too much power among Teachers' Labor Unions and too many entitlement programs. Maybe he can join Rand Paul in re-creating Saipan in Detroit.

Government Shutdown Ping-Pong

++The House just passed another bill shutting down the government if Obamacare isn't postponed. This time they lost a few Republicans as so-called "moderates" are beginning to tire of this charade.

++President Obama spoke well today about how you don't get a ransom for doing your basic job and told the nation that tomorrow the health exchanges are being set up with or without the government operating.

++Elizabeth Warren, the Senator of Commonsense,was impolite to note that the Senate passed a budget in March that rolled back the Sequester but the House refused to meet in conference to negotiate a compromise budget that would have kept the government funding for a whole year. Then she was impolite to note that the Senate a few months later passed individual funding bills but the House could not. The noticeable failure by the House was the Farm Bill, which ended up with the passage of subsidies for the private farms of House members but another bill to cut $50 billion from foodstamps.

++Steve Benen, whose voice hasn't been amplified now he is at Rachel Maddow blog, points out today that the closing of the government has been the GOP plot since March, pointing to the same disturbing facts Senator Warren did in her Senate speech this afternoon. 

++At slightly after 9pm EST, I have no idea where this will end, except to note that this is a CR for only two months. It is absurd for the President and the Senate to make even one concession for a nothing burger. 

++The New York Times had an excellent op-ed this morning on why President Obama must raise the debt ceiling himself because he would be facing the possibility of breaking several laws at once and raising the debt ceiling would be the most fruitful of all his options. Apparently, the President did consider this last time and Huffington Post submitted a Freedom of Information Request which was turned down by the DOJ.

++Eric Holder didn't let the shutdown talks stop him. The DOJ is suing North Carolina on its Voter ID law.

++Late last Saturday night, the House pulled another boner by inserting language that companies can deprive women of birth control coverage in insurance. I was not even a teenager when the issue of contraceptives was decided by the Supreme Court. So the government could shutdown on the issue of contraceptives and a tax on medical devices, which I suppose the tea baggers think are dildos and other adult toys. 

++One think to consider if you already have health insurance,if the House had succeeded in postponing Obamacare, your premiums would rise from 10-15%. 

++Preliminary polls show over 60% blame the GOP for closing the government and only 13% the President. But I have also seen polls in states like Texas, which blame the Democrats more than Republicans. But I still bet on the GOP taking the blame. Unfortunately, it will not affect the end results in House races in 2014 because Larry Sabato said today there are in good shape and have sufficient money. Voter suppression and gerrymandering will not weaken their position.

++Another side debate is whether John Boehner will crash and fall. Conservatives are all over the map on this. Byron York argues Boehner is immune from a tea party revolt. But then again he won't bring a clean CR to the floor. He must be afraid of something. A straight up and down clean CR vote would pass with Democratic support. 

++Ezra Klein appeared the other night on the Rachel Maddow Show to say a government shutdown will allow the Tea Baggers to get their Ya-Yas out. Ezra thinks that's a good think and then we could have a straight debt ceiling raise. I sincerely doubt it. House Republicans are thrilled at closing the government down. This was the Reichstag fire they wanted all along. And a vast majority do not believe stopping a debt ceiling would matter any. This is a dangerous area to explore and the Teabaggers, who show no signs of understanding basic economics, would go there in a minute.

The Week That Will Not Be

The Senate remains out of session but present so that Elizabeth Warren can't get an appointment. The newspapers in North Carolina lit into Rep. McHenry's rudeness in the Warren hearing and reminded its readers that Warren had warned about the financial crisis ten years before it occurred and that she was the most able spokesperson for all those with mortgage problems. Editorials also reminded McHenry's constituents that she was not the "liberal" the congressman portrays and is working with Mrs. Petraeus to alleviate the financial problems affecting military families. Nice try but it's not going to work. In the Beltway, the punditry is already saying that Elizabeth Warren is polarizing. Since her persona is anything but,I guess they mean that powerful financial interests don't like her.

The House will be in session this week. They will be introducing a "clean bill" on raising the debt ceiling. This whole exercise is purposely futile since you need by House rules a 2/3rd vote to pass. The whole point is to show the Administration that the public just demands massive cuts in government spending to accomodate such a vote.

Paul Krugman writes today that our policy makers have a learned helplessness about job creation and have moved on to ranting about the deficit and national debt. He cites the OECD report that concludes that all industrialized countries have exhausted all the tools at their disposal for creating jobs. Krugman comes up with three of his own--a WPA style program, serious mortgage remodification programs and getting inflation up to 4% to reduce the personal debt issue. But he writes that all of these would just run into a brick wall with House Republicans. But, he urges everyone who is still concerned about unemployment to keep talking about it.

Yesterday's New York Times published an article on the findings of an international think tank about how the debt of all industrialized countries will eventually dwarf the largest economies. But the operative elements of the piece are the suggestions that the large economies should wait until 2013 to pass austerity programs so as to allow for the recovery to stabilize. In addition, elements of debt reduction programs should not really begin until 2019. The point is that this problem is actually manageable and should not be dealt with by panicking. Unfortunately, our wealthy punditry is sounding the alarms before there is an economic recovery.

The media has gained Rapture with Sarah Palin's black leather routine here in D.C. It's Sister Sarah 24/7. The word is that if she bails out before New Hampshire, it's because she is not feeling the positive vibes. If she takes her bus down towards South Carolina, she will pull the trigger.

Lawrence O'Donnell bummed out people like me by plainly explaining why she isn't running. Otherwise, Roger Ailes would have pulled her from Fox by now and they reiterated her status has now changed.

The Right has cut another one of its RHINO ads. This time they are going after Tim Pawlenty. The first ad went after Jon Huntsman. Will the third go after Romney? Stay tuned.

Mitt announces this week. I will be in the hinterlands so I will not be able to miss this historic event.

Tim Pawlenty now is attacking President Obama of being a "doofus", who wants to maintain the status quo. I guess he wants to contrast himself with Newt who claims that Obama is creating a socialist, secular state controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Should be an interesting debate. But speaking of "doofus" maybe Pawenty should have chosen a better word, not a self-description.

This week's commentator of the week is Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly. Benen has been in a groove all week, explaining the various modes by which the GOP ignore the practical answers to the problems facing this country. His writings this week deserve our attention. He's almost hit the same groove Krugman was in when he became a prolific blogger on the Ryan Plan.

Speaking of which, Mitch McConnell says he has put the Ryan Medicare Plan on the table. Whatever that means. It's not even a place to start. Since we are now at an ideological stalemate, let's just do nothing. The Bush tax credits expire by themselves in 2012. Let's keep the withdrawal dates for Iraq and hasn't the date for Afghanistan. You eliminate three biggest drivers of our deficits by attrition. Then we can debate whether you want to dismantle the social safety nets in 2012.

A curious thing happened on the way to the Wisconsin budget bill, the state now finds it will have $600 million more in revenues than anticipated. Not only was all that upheaval for nothing other than the ideological dreams of the GOP but it had no economic rationale. We will find the same is true once the three drivers of the national deficits are done and there is a modicum of a recovery.

Have a Happy Memorial Day. It is in the mid-90s in D.C. And the human race managed to emit more carbon emissions this year than at any time in history. But Sister Sarah says, "She just loves the smell of emissions". She better not tell Frothy Mix Santorum. He might get strange ideas.

Memorial Day Recess*

*Except when it's not.

**The Senate is gone but remains in session. The reason is that GOP Senators fear President Obama will make a recess appointment of a singularly dangerous person, a genuine threat to the nation and our well-being. The previous week this person was called a liar by House Republicans. The person, of course, is my Sweetheart of the Rodeo--America's Own Heroine and Decent Person--the great Elizabeth Warren.

Literally the GOP is so scared of Elizabeth Warren that they keep the Senate in session to prevent her appointment. 44 Republican Senators have actually signed a letter that they would not confirmed her as head of the new Consumer Protection Agency.

In my opinion, if you wanted only one person to be given a post--any post--in Washington, it would be Elizabeth Warren. She has been one of the most articulate spokespersons for the interests of the Middle Class in the country. She has been pioneering in her work on credit card and mortgage issues facing the country. Even her initial critics--the small town banks--have now openly urged her appointment and sing her praises. She talks to any audience and will answer any question of her.

Her basic problem is that she's not corrupt. In olden days, that was the type of person you wanted as the head of an agency to protect consumers. But not now.

I hoped that there would have been a large television audience for the way the House treated Elizabeth Warren the other day. Not to wish it on anyone, but the sharp contrast between her and her inquisitors would have made everything perfectly clear about what the stakes are in today's debate.

** In case, you've have forgotten some of Glenn Beck's conspiracy theories, you should be reminded that the most powerful man in America is Cass Sunstein, also known as the husband of Samantha Powers. Now the House GOP wants to investigate Cass Sustein--not that he's done anything wrong. It's just that he's in charge of Obama's efforts to reform regulations. Previous to being smeared by being associated with President Obama, Republicans used to think highly of him believing he was a pseudo-libertarian. But now ,according to Beck, he is a raving socialist.

**Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly wants you to know that Tan Man Boehner's excuses over the House eliminating Medicare are lame. Boehner argues that the Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare (the old GOP ads in 2010) and the GOP is saving it. Benen is right, of course, but I'm not so sure that the GOP can't pull that line off. Paul Ryan picked up this new line when he argued that his budget restored the Obama cuts. Absolutely, utterly false. but repeated enough, people might buy it.

**Karl Rove just thinks the killing off Medicare issue is really just a messaging problem. He suggests creating a little "college" where newly elected Republicans can learn how to explain it. What about, we killed it, Karl. Or Americans love clipping coupons. Call it Coupon Care. or Better yet something like Kevorkian Care.

**I deeply regret Goodwin Liu withdrawing his name as the nominee to fill the vacancy on the 9th Circuit Court. He was obviously forced to because Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans filibustered his nomination. He has only been hanging around for about two years to be confirmed. He would have been the first Asian-American on the 9th Circuit Court. He received the highest ABA rating and even netted the endorsement of people like Ken Starr. But, some Republicans from the Deep South felt that he was too "sympathetic to Red China." Whatever that means. Basically, he was blackballed because of racism and that he was the most liberal nominee put forth by the Obama Administration. Of course, there was no relationship with Communist China.

**To celebrate Mariano Rivera's record-breaking 1,000 appearance as a Yankee Pitcher, Rudy Guiliani has taken the lead in the CNN poll for the Republican nomination ( yes, a 2011 poll). Rudy gains 16%, Romney 15%, Palin 13%, Ron Paul 12%, Cain 10%, Gingrich 8%, Bachmann 7%.
Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!

**Newt, who opposed Coupon Care because it was radical social engineering, now wants your donation so he can support the Paul Ryan Plan.

**Pizza Man Herman Cain thinks the GOP should stop hiding and called their Medicare idea a "voucher program." Instead, it's like a frequent flyer promo--"Premium Plus".

**Sister Sarah is in town today with the Rolling Thunder motorcycle parade for the MIA. She will be taking her Magic Bus throughout the East. Observers say this a preclude for her run for the Gold.

**Karl Rove did get something right. He said that Sister Sarah doesn't believe the rules apply to her. That's true. He was referring to her lack of organization in Iowa and South Carolina and her lack of recent fundraising activities. Her supporters believe--and I tend to agree--that if the minute she runs, she absorbs all the attention and that the Palinbots will desert other candidates and that she can win both Iowa and South Carolina without too much effort.

**Frothy Mix Santorum will be declaring next week, making Dan Savage proud. He's supposed to do it in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania--no jokes please about chutes or other things.

**Rick Perry, the secessionist Governor of Texas,believes he's under the Gaydar so he is thinking about running for President--despite his pledge when he ran for an unprecedented third term for Governor.

** 25% of Minnesota citizens think Michelle Bachmann is qualified to be President. Well, that seems enough for her to travel to Iowa to make her announcement. She warned people that she and Palin are not interchangeable.

**Mitt Romney will announce formally this coming week. I guess the first time didn't take on Youtube.

**I know Tim Pawlenty is running because he said he wasn't like President Obama on a pub crawl. Also, Tim is running on his foreign policy expertise. He thinks the United States is occupying Iran.

**This is something you won't read about in the news. President Obama will make an official Presidential visit to Puerto Rico. He will only be the second President to ever do so. The first was John F. Kennedy. Stranger yet--his task force on the status of Puerto Rico has completed its work and President Obama wants to resolve the island's status before the 2012 elections. That won't happen. But the proposal from his task force is interesting. First, Puerto Rico must determined whether it wants to be part of the United States or independent. Second, if they decide to be part of the United States, then they vote on whether to become a state or remain a commonwealth.

** Another thing you won't read in the newspapers. President Abbas of Palestine is actually trying to get his fusion government to make a proposal on the peace talks which will be in line with the Quartet's requirements. Both Hamas and Fatah would accept the right of Israel to exist and pledge to a non-violent solution. This would take away Bibi's resistance to negotiate with the Palestinians. Abbas also said that the Palestinians had no intent to isolate Israel.

** The G-8 backed the Quartet's plan for the Middle East peace talks but the Canadian Prime Minister insisted that the language about the 1967 borders be dropped from the text. fromer American envoy George Mitchell told liberal Israelis that President Obama was trying to avoid a train wreck this September. Mitchell said that a UN vote would not be good for Israel, not be good for the United States and not be good for the peace process.

**War crimes are forever. Ratko Mladic was finally arrested. Now he will be extradited for trial at the Hague.

**Louisiana and Tennesse actually did outlaw abortion this week. Luckily, both states struck down prison sentences for the women who have them but doctors will face upwards to ten years in prison.

Time For Racheting Down The Rhetoric Is Over

House Republican Study Group has issued its plan to cut $2.5 trillion from the federal government over ten years. In my day, the House Study Group was where the GOP would put the radical right-wingers that didn't have the social skills to be hired as congressional aides. Among its suggestions is to defund USAID, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Endowment for the Arts, Public Broadcasting,all state aid forcing states to cut more government employees, AMTRAK and all funding for High Speed Rail, among other things.

But never fear the House Republicans said their agenda was to create jobs. So after the repeal of healthcare, now they are after global warming. This just edged out a new House bill to oppose all federal funding for abortion even though it doesn't exist now and to provide a "conscience clause" for all medical practitoners opposed to abortion. Randall Terry of Operation Rescue plans to run in the Democratic primaries against Barack Obama to make him answer questions on abortion. His past answer has been abortion should be "legal but rare." What more does Randall want? Rick Santorum blasted Obama--who has not said anything on abortion for over a year--for being a black man who condones abortion. Rick is suggesting that African-Americans are most likely to get abortions and that threatens their race. But since Rick is a member of the Christian Right, his main concern is the demographic winter coming for white people in the U.S.

Down in Tucson, the Arizona Tea Party wants to remove Sheriif Dupnick for his comments that the political rhetoric of the country trigger the slaughter. In Arlington, Massachusetts, a right-wing blogger who said "1 down and 537 to go" was arrested for keeping a large stockpile of weapons on hand. Teabaggers were quick to defend him and also are posting blogs arguing that revolutionary violence is OK because the Catholic Just war doctrine applies.

While most Americans supported President Obama's Tucson speech and the ceremony there, Franklin Graham resented the lack of references to Jesus Christ. Since the target of the assassination attempt was a Jewish Congresswoman, you might think references to Jesus might be inappropriate. I did and that's why I thought Eric Holder's long quotes from II Corinthians, which talked more about Jesus Christ than the usual prayers was wrong. I think Franklin was trying indirectly to defend his soul sister Sarah Palin.

The former Navy Chaplain says that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a threat to national security and is actually a war on God. I always thought the repeal finally made the Navy legitimate."In the Navy..." The only military service represented in the Village People.

Talk about making money, the President's Midas Touch even concerns DADT. The repeal actually saves the American taxpayer $200 million. From TARP to the BP Oil Spill to DADT, Obama just coins money. That's what "Grand Theft Auto" Issa should be investigating. How come a socialist can make so much money?

Meanwhile,in the States, there is an ominous pattern of governments withdrawing Medicare from single Adults. That doesn't sound like anything significant but we are dealing with one of the few parts of the social nets, which supports the mentally ill. Are we going to rehospitalize the mentally ill? Maybe we could privatize mental asylums.

President Obama again betrayed his socialism by appointing GE's CEO Immelt as the head of his economic council, which has been renamed to emphasize jobs. Arianna Huffington seems to be hysterical that Obama ordered a government-wide effort to eliminate unnecessary regulations on business as a way to quietly stimulate the economy. Since this was also done during the Clinton Administration,I really don't see the great danger.

More dangerous is the effort by House Republicans to defund the new Consumer Protection Agency being created by my Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Elizabeth Warren. All she has to do is get it to July and the FED will fund it.

Rep. Peter King wants to start his investigations into American Muslims as part of the intelligence committee. No doubt he will ask Frank Gaffney, Washington's Go-To Islamophobe, to provide scholarly cover. I think we should encourage a widescale witchhunt. How about targeting Kareem Abdul Jabbar for the Muslim plot to corrupt basketball? Cat Stevens for introducing Sufi themes in his music. How about we go after Salmon Rushdie for a change? Why let Iran have all the fun? The possibilities are endless. Then the accused could be waterboarded to see whether they tell the truth. It would be like combining the Inquisition with the Salem Witch Trials and add a little Joe McCarthy. It would be boffo box on Fox News. This is an opportunity the country can't miss. We can then invite Franklin Graham to testify on how evil Islam is and how the Pentagon's National Prayer Committee kicked him off for his position.

Under They envy us our freedom department. I want to thank the Christian community in the United States for their great support for the Chaldean Christians in Iraq, who are being exterminated in the democracy we created. The last Christian left Anbar Province yesterday. Those who haven't been "disappeared" have gone into exile, making the Iraqi refugee flow the largest in the history of the Middle East. Hopefully, our Christians will come to the defense of the followers of John the Baptist, who still live in Iraq but are keeping a low profile. At least those awful Muslims came to the defense of Egypt's Coptic Christians, who had been subjected to suicide bombers and police brutality. The Muslim community in Egypt provided thousands of people to act as human shields against further attacks on the Coptics as they celebrated their Christmas.

Common Cause is taking aim at Supreme Court Justices Fat Tony Scalia and Chuckles Thomas claiming both men have a conflict of interest in the Citizens United case because they attended and participated in the Koch Brothers secret campaign conferences. If it were proven that both men had a conflict of interest, then Citizens United would have to be tried again. My problem is how does the Supreme Court actually regulate conflict of interest issues among justices. We know Elena Kagan recused herself from a series of cases when she got on since she had argued the government's case as Solicitor General but what if she hadn't. What mechanism exists to ensure this aside from impeachment which never will happen?

Rachel Maddow continues to report on the Spokane Martin Luther King bomb. The FBI has said it was the most sophisticated device they have seen in the States. They also claimed its positioning was very professional and that the damage done would have been profound. Federal authorities are already talking about this as "domestic terrorism". White supremacist groups aiming to push for the secession of the Pacific Northwest have been commmenting on this but not claiming credit. We should look back at the Belfast, Maine "dirty nuke" case, which disappeared from the media. There a neo-Nazi, who actually collected Hitler's kitchenware, had all the ingredients for a dirty bomb in his basement. He was upset by the election of Barack Obama and wanted to set the bomb off around Washington,D.C. He was only captured because he had abused his wife once too often and she ratted him out. I would imagine if we probe deep enough in Spokane we'll find some of the white supremacists from Idaho involved.

Speaking of secessionists, the National Enquirer, which gained credibility by exposing the Edwards'affair, reports that Todd Palin may be canoodling with a massage therapist. That's what a member of the Alaska Independence Party might do.

Glenn Beck has returned to his bipolar form. After displaying a slight contrition on Tucson, he is warning the American public about a "Reichstag". Glenn, it already happened, the Republicans took the House.

Paul Ryan has been chosen to respond to President Obama's State of the Union Address. Ryan's Blueprint for America has been buried with all the new GOP craziness. If this surfaces,people will have a field day. Ryan blasted the CBO for actually costing out his Blueprint, which they said would run massive deficits for decades and render the United States a type of Albania. Ryan has been given the most power any Budget Chairman in the House has ever had. He has veto on any budget proposals submitted in the House and also by the Senate in any reconciliation. It should be interesting if he talks about his ideas to privatize Medicare, Social Security and raise taxes on the middle class. Trust me he won't.

Conservatives are panicking over the rise of China. Even Mitt Romney believes the United States has to increase its military spending to compete because "the Chinese army works for very small pay." Of course, Republicans might pass funding for high-speed railso we can compete with China in this and other areas. What is it about economic development that the New GOP doesn't understand?

Personally, I am very skeptical that China will surpass the American economy anytime soon. And I also do not believe they manage capitalism better. I don't believe China can maintain its growth rate at 8% for the foreseeable future, which they claim they need to. Also by the time they are scheduled to surpass our economy, they will have a greater percentage of elderly in their population than we would. What terrifies the Chinese is the prospect of internal instability and their own military strategy suggests that.

Yesterday the Chinese leader tried to reassure Americans that they are playing a mature role in the global system. He pointed to the issues of Iran,Afghanistan and economic issues where the United States and China are cooperating closely. While Americans should be concerned about human rights issues, the preponderance of concern here in Washington is that China is about to surpass us. First, we have to drum up the Islamophobia. Then we can generate the fear of the Yellow Peril. We don't have energy for both right now.

I found it ironic that the Uighurs demonstrated here in Washington against the Chinese government. Under the previous administration, the Uighurs ended up being tortured in Gitmo and interrogated by the Chinese. When President Obama started releasing them, Congress made sure they could not be repatriated to the United States, despite having host families volunteering to take care of them.

Deatheaters Swarm D.C.

With President Obama plunging to 50% in the polls and Congress soaring to 8%, the table is being set for the entrance of the most extreme right House in our history. The previous Republican House member had a 92% Conservative Union rating, now you must exceed 95% of be considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only). This past week teabaggers made it clear that former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen was not fit to run because he was "too moderate" at a 92% rating.

Flying back from Hawaii, President Obama displayed his remarkable cool in telling a pesky news corps that Republicans will be playing to their base for the next couple months before they settle down and actually get serious. It's a good lesson to everyone who is panicking to try and maintain some calm as the insanity hits the fan.

The Signpost Up Ahead says you are about to enter "The Twilight Zone". Just a sample of the attitudes of congresscritters awaiting the President. 53% of all Republicans believe there is no evidence the earth is warming. Over 70% of the tea party believe this. Of the 38% who still believe in global warming, only 16% believe humans have anything to do with it. In 2007 (you read that right), over 62% of Republicans said that solid evidence existed for global warming. In today's GOP, over 50% are creationists and do not believe in the science of evolution.

FYI-- Believe or not the idea of Cap and Trade was originally a Republican idea as was regulating carbon emissions. This coming House wants to neutralize the EPA's efforts to regulate carbom emissions.

The new non-rationality will be on full display this week. Incoming freshmen will be lectured about the Constitution by Fat Tony Scalia. Tony just said that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee that women have any constitutional rights against discrimination. The American Taliban will be proud. Tomorrow the House will read the full constitution, if John Boehner doesn't confuse it with the Declaration of Independence. I think it will come as a shock because it won't be the Articles of Confederation.

Just an aside--Don't you find it odd the America's leading guru on Constitutional Originalism is a member of the Catholic secret society "Opus Dei"? Do you think maybe this clouds Scalia's thinking?

If we're lucky this year, the Christian fundamentalists will turn out to be right--that the world is going to end on May 21,2011. The sad thing is that there is virtually no biblical basis for rapture--either the word or concept. All these folks will be left all alone.

Remember how Republicans spent the last two years complaining about the thousands of pages of laws the Democrats passed. They've gone to the Ernest Hemingway School of Legal Drafting. On the 12th, they will introduce two, 2-page bills to repeal all of healthcare. See if you run on dismantling all of government, you don't need alot of words.

What is fantastic about this move--not only it's direct slap at the President before his State of the Union Address--is how the new Republicans suspended all rules about accounting for the repeal's cost. According to the CBO, which was used as a hammer against the Democrats for the last two years,repeal would add $143 billion to the deficit through 2019 and over a $1 trillion during the life of the bill. The Republican leadership waived any mention of the cost.

In future discussions of any bills, they have moved to accept figures from other sources than the CBO. So be prepared to hear the authoritative numbers from the Heritage Foundation and the Petroleum Institute in the future.

The Democrats, who are more liberal now than before with the defeat of all the Blue Dogs, will be introducing amendments to the bill trying to put Republicans on record as against the most popular aspects of the reform--like insuring adult children on a parent's account until 26 , eliminating exclusion of prior conditions, and eliminating the lifetime caps for coverage. The Democrats failed the first time around to focus on these aspects of the bill and instead opposition was really based on the sausage-making process of the legislation.

Democrats are being a little smug because this repeal will not pass the Senate or the president's desk. But the Republicans want to establish the optics that government is crooked and can not work to solve problems. They do not care about governing but campaigning. There is no intention to have any Republicans do any heavy lifting. They just don't care. They are not that into you--sorry.

The new House will zero in on the money being spent to enforce the Food Safety Bill, which the last time I looked passed the Senate with 75 votes. The first reform of our food safety system since the Great Depression was thought to be way overdue.

Darrell ("Grand Theft Auto") Issa hit all the talk shows about how President Obama is the most corrupt President in history. Wow, that was quick--less than two years and he made another record. Issa, who has a record of stealing cars during his wayward youth, plans to investigate the $1 trillion "walking around money" Obama received with the TARP funds, which he forgot was passed during George W. Bush, something that ignited the Tea Party Movement. He has to keep the false narrative alive. Watch for more racial dogwhistles this year--"walking around money" being one of them.

Unfortunately,by the time Issa starts on TARP all the money will have been paid back to the Treasury. But, never fear, Issa wants to examine the vast $1 trillion waste of the stimulus package. Only it was about $800 billion--over half of it was the largest middle class tax break in history. And the Administration has a website where you can follow the stimulus money. Undoubtedly, there will be a couple of wasteful projects, which will be highlighted 24/7 on Fox News. Issa claims the stimulus did not create or save any jobs. He says that an example of waste was that it took $175,000 to create a teacher's job. So Obama's great act of corruption so far is hiring teachers--who are target number 2 this year.

Issa wants to investigate why Eric Holder ("Black man") hasn't arrested Julien Assange yet as a terrorist. What's fascinating to me is to see the conservative movement drop all pretense of law. Maybe Julien Assange hasn't been arrested yet because no one can figure out what law he broke.

Issa also wants to investigate waste in Afghanistan. One should welcome this and urge him to broaden his investigation into the years of waste in Iraq. Issa claims he wants to examine the Inspector Generals of the executive branch and claims he can save $250 billion a year in fraud alone. All he has to do is look across the Potomac at the Pentagon and he'll make his quota. But that's not going to happen.

Issa also invited all the corporate lobbyists in to list all the regulations they want eliminated. This includes the pharma companies, banks, oil and gas and banks.

The Republicans are not playing anymore. Instead of political operatives,the House leadership is hiring corporate lobbyists with financial experience as chief aides. They have also saddled the new Tea Party members with chiefs of staff who were prominent lobbyists on "K" street.

Corporate romancing is also being done at the Presidential level. President Obama is thinking of hiring MorganStanley's Vice President William Daley as his chief of staff. Before the congressional recess, President Obama met with leading CEO to try and persuade them to invest some of their $1.75 trillion in creating jobs in America. The counter offer seems to be American corporations aiming for a tax holiday for the additional $1.5 trillion in profits that they have squirreled away in tax havens.

As our corporations experience a V-shaped recovery, compared to the L-shaped recvery for the rest of us,I've noticed a new corporate refrain. We hear about "our international corporations" such as Dubai-based Halliburton and other American firms who have relocated overseas. The CEO of Chevron had the chutzpah the other day to talk about a $5 gallon of gas this year because "The Obama Administration is not fulfilling America's role to increase the global supply of oil." He was referring to the Obama Administration's ban on offshore drilling in light of the BP disaster. In other words, Drill Baby, Drill is now being couched as American doing its part for the well-being of planet earth. Quite clever, really.

Rep. Steve King, christianist from Iowa, has been made the chairman of the Immigration Committee. This is too rich since King only likes white people. King has been chatting up the possibility of investigating the payments to black farmers as "reparations", the New Panther Party, and ACORN's role in electing President Obama. Here he seems to crossing wires with other Republicans, who share his concerns and want to grill Eric Holder on these and why he's not enforcing the Voting Act for white people. I'm not making this up.

The other Rep. King from New York wants to grill Eric Holder on his trials of terrorists and why Holder is lax on terrorism or whatever crimes the attorney-general is committing.

I suggest the new House Republicans get Dan Burton back shooting at watermelons so he can prove Barack Hussein Obama really did kill Vin Foster.

Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute scholar and black libertarian, shows how depraved people on the right--particularly once respected thinkers--have become in their thinking and writing. He claims President Obama hates America, taking his cues from Distort D'Newsa, and says that President Obama wants Sasha and Malia to grow up under Sharia Law. We are talking here about a man who has had many moments of insights and a prolific publishing career. Thomas Sowell used to be considered a nerd and a grind. Now he sounds like Glenn Beck.

Meanwhile I agree with Glenn Beck. America can not survive if it doesn't make fundamental changes. And the Pentagon budget should be cut in half. He is hyping his shows for the year, which indicate to me that he has had many GOP operatives writing his talking points to set the rhetorical tone for this year's attack on the President, his family and the rest of America. Apparently,Beck is having ratings problems with his radio show and now has been dropped from the New York market.

If you haven't see Elia Kazan "Face in the Crowd" with Andy Griffith as Lonesome Roads, make a New Year's Resolution to see it. The suggestion by Keith Olbermann that Beck is Lonesome is probably Keith's greatest contribution to our political understanding in many a year.

Elizabeth Warren is chugging along with the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency and has enlisted the help of Mrs. Petraeus, wife of General,to work on behalf of the military people who get ripped off by scam artists and car salesmen. The House is slated to go after the Consumer Protection Agency too. I perverse want to see them pull a Joe McCarthy on Elizabeth Warren, America's sweetheart. The contrast of thuggish men grilling her at a Congressional Hearing would sink the Republicans.

By the way has any one seen the hair coloring of Republicans lately. Jim DeMint has become a red-head, Darryl Issa has adopted the dark black Reagan look and then , of course Lindsey Graham wears too much make-up. But something has happened since eletion in the cosmetics department.

Back from Away

Only two hours away from the United States and America looked ridiculous. From abroad, we look like a bad reality show with the sans culottes running around. Tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends. Apparenty, there seem to be alot around. The victory of Christine O'Donnell in Delware is like randomly picking a neighbor to be a nominee for the U.S. Senate. Imagine my surprise when from afar I saw Karl Rove actually accuse a Republican of waging a dirty campaign. After all he is the architect. But he soon came back to support her. The question is whether her victory will solidify the larger story of the Republican Party simply going mad.

I came back to E.J. Dionne wakening from a deep sleep to discover moderates are gone from the Republican Party, something anyone breathing could tell you after the last 18 months. Olympia Snowe, who was a long-time friend of Mike Castle from their days in the House, lamented the diminishing number of moderate conservatives left in both chambers. In her home state of Maine, where she won re-election with over 70% of the vote, the tea baggers have taken over the Republican Party and now 68% of them want a more conservative nominee than Snowe the next time around. The role of Senator deMint in fostering runs against incumbent Republicans is beginning to tick Republicans off. Charles Cook, who had predicted a Republican takeover of both houses of Congress has backed off, saying that the O'Donnell win ends the GOP's chances for a victory in the Senate.

How bad is Christine O'Donnell? Besides the various appearances on Bill Maher's comedy shows, she has been sued by a Farleigh Dickinson University for failure to pay outstanding debts, she accepted a graduate scholarship at Claremont even though she didn't graduate from college until this year, and she paid her rent and personal expenses from campaign funds from the last campaign against Joe Biden. She says she is being followed everywhere and must check her bushes. She keeps her home residence private because bill collectors are after her. And she hasn't had a real job in years. She sounds like Allan Keyes without the minimal qualifications.

She must be bad news. The night she beat Mike Castle, his campaign manager walked across the street to the Coons headquarters and picked up lawn signs for Coons. Christine O'Donnell also has imaginary friends--she claims to have been backed by a Catholic group that simply doesn't exist.

What observers have not mentioned about the five tea bagger candidates for the Senate is that all of them are extreme Christian right-wingers, even Marco Rubio in Florida, who is more of an opportunist. Christine O'Donnell is the most visible extreme Christian after Christian reconstructionist Sharron Angle. Joining Ken Buck, they are absolutists against abortion, even though they proclaim to be small government conservatives. Throw in Mike Lee from Utah and Joe Miller from Alaska and you have candidates that have no ideas about the economy whatsoever.

Another characteristic is that almost all, with the exception of Rubio, avoid debates and the press. This is a deliberate strategy because they want to avoid expsoure to the average voter. Joe Miller on Fox News was a astonishing in his economic illiteracy. He claims unemployment insurance is unconstitutional--something the Supreme Court has actually ruled on. And he claims we are going to face almost $140 trillion in a national debt in a short time--that's ten times the amount we have now. He wants to end Social Security and Medicare. This seems to be a tea bagger perennial.

A Canadian said to me that these people don't care, they've given up. In a way, he is right. They have given up on self-government. That's why there are no standards by which they observe. Lisa Murkowski commented how the tea baggers pumped $600,000 into Alaska to run a campiagn against her totally based on lies. If you check comments out of Ms. O'Donnell's mouth you'll also notice that she is a habitual liar. The same applies to Sharron Angle and the other tea baggers. In their worldview, this simply doesn't matter.

SO AFTER A WEEK, how do the mid-terms look? Nate the Great still has the Republicans taking the house by 223 to 211 but he has blinked somewhat upping the odds of the Democrats retaining control to 37%. The Republicans are now campaigning on de-funding everything that passed in the last Congress--which ups the stakes for Democrats. And if you care about the national debt, keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich will add another 3.8trillion to the national debt. Interestingly, all the teabaggers are for keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. Paul Krugman had a wonderful op-ed about the selfish rich today.

But what still makes me hesitate is the massive unpopularity of the Republicans as compared to the 1994 wave election. For example, a CBS/NYTimes poll conducted September 15 has Republican approval at 20%. In a Washington Post poll on who deserves to be re-elected, Democrats top Republicans 34 to 31%. But what is most astonishing is that the GOP net favorable is now a negative 25, which means they have fallen by three times since July. And now President Obama is in the campaign mode and Organizing For America has ramped up their operations even more since I left. Remember President Obama has about a 48% approval rating, while campaigning against people with a 20% approval rating. The AFL-CIO just sent out their largest mailing in years to solidfy the Democratic base. Even though there is little more than 40 days left to the election, I think only a small percentage of Obama surge voters can turn the tide. I also have noticed that even the disgruntled Left is getting its act together because they understand the stakes.

President Obama did himself and the rest of us a service by appointing Elizabeth Warren special adviser with the task of creating the new Consumer Protection Agency. But I have a question? What in Elizabeth Warren's speeches make her a "progressive"? I know she appeared at Netroots Nation and frequently on the Rachel Maddow Show. But when is defending the middle class the sole property of "progressives"? The whining from the Republicans about her should tell you how far that party has grown away from the middle class. But nothing Elizabeth Warren has said or written is anything but clear-headed and commonsensical. I read in the Washington Post that her appointment was popular but polarizing. After watching countless interviews and Youtubes of her lectures, I can not think of a less polarizing figure. I think any fair-minded person would see her as a straight-talking person of intelligence and commonsense. Already we have the Wall Street Journal raising doubts about whether she can really create the Consumer Protection Agency because of legal restrictions and other hoo-haa. This reminds me of the constant challenge on anything President Obama does.

For election junkies, Steve Singiser had an interesting post at the Daily Kos "Likely Voters, Unlikely Voters" about the accuracy of polls based on registered voters versus those of likely voters. The conventional wisdom is that likely voter polls favor Republicans, particularly in low-turn out mid-terms. But what Singiser's analysis shows is that likely voter polls generally favor the front-runner. But at the end of the day, his analysis of polls from 2006 and 2008 indicate that polls based on registered voters won 32, polls on likely voters 21 and three were ties. For a full analysis, his post is worth reading because it's conclusion is counter-intuitive to how ,at least, I've been taught to think.

And file this away--I just came across my notes on Hans-Herman Hoppe, who is a favorite of libertarians. When thinking of the tea-baggers, remember Hoppe advocated something called "anarcho-fascism". He wrote "Democracy: the God That Failed". Through in a dab of Christian theocracy and you basically have tea-baggism.

Sunday in the Park with George

Congressional Quarterly has posted their House and Senate ratings as of now. On the House side, Democrats are now at 219 and the Republicans are at 180 with 36 toss-ups. This falls back into my view that Republicans must sweep the 40 targeted Democrats--a really high goal.

The Senate--CQ has Democrats now at 48 and Republicans at 40 with 12 seats at toss-up. Yesterday I saw a CQ projection that Republicans would take the Senate with 50-49. But this would mean taking 10 out of 12 toss-ups.

The teabaggers are going for the gold in New Hampshire and Delaware. In New Hampshire,the Manchester Union-Leader has endorsed the teabagger.

The phony doctor's association which counts Rand Paul as a member has issued a statement that Barack Obama won the 2008 election by mass hypnosis. Jack Conway should raise this in the Kentucky Senate race.

The Tan Man said today that he would be open to Obama's tax plan for the middle class, and the possibility of foregoing the tax cuts for the wealthy. It's no coincidence that a raft of polls came out this week showing that close to a majority want those tax cuts to lapse, and another 15% want all tax cuts to lapse. This accounts for the Republican hesitation.

The progressive think tank NDN broke down the Tan Man's Economic Plan for House Republicans and concluded Boehner's plan would increase the national debt by $3.781 trillion. His dandy idea of going back to 2008 level spending on non-defense discretionary spending would only save $36 billion next year and nothing the following two years because Obama already declared a freeze on discretionary spending.

No one burned any copies of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics yesterday. There were Qurans burned by individuals at the 9/11 commemorations in New York and one lone wolf tore up pages from the Quran in front of the White House. I was thinking of burning Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy because Al Qaeda took its name from it right after it was published in Arabic and became a best-seller among young Muslims. If Dune had been published then, it would have become the name of Bin Laden's group and been more appropriate.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's celebration of 9/11 with their boozefest was preceded by prayers from the "Christian" fringe pastors, one of whom said that Obama was too much of a coward to declare America a "Christian" nation. Maybe it really is because it's historically not true.

Islamophobia seems to be breaking out around the country and fueled by even the moderate Right. 9 years after the fact, this seems strange but remember the Republican leadership at the time of 9/11 was heavily tied to the Saudis and had to put a lid on any reaction. The Right always believed we are in a holy war against Islam and now they can become full-throated about it.

But one interesting fact remains-- the last Gallup poll shows that only 1% of Americans believe terrorism is the number 1 issue facing the country, compared to 46% right after 9/11. And now all these people exist in the burning remains of the neoconservative movement and among 2012 presidential aspirants who need the radical Christian Right to survive the primaries.

Speaking of which, Newt Gingrich speaking at a Values Summit meeting ,along with other presidential wannabes, flashed onto Dinesh D'Souza's strange comment in the National Review that Obama had the "Kenyan anti-colonial mentality". Newt said that was the most brilliant thing he had heard in six months. I distinctly remember that Kenya was a most reliable African ally in the Cold War and actually supported us out of principles, not bribes.

Dinesh's remarks reflect the rhetoric against Obama coming from London during the Presidential campaign. Ancient conservatives, who resented losing the colony, claimed that Obama's father was a terrorist. They linked him to the Mau-Maus. This got some traction in the states but then wiser heads prevailed knowing that Jomo Kenyatta, the head of the Mau-Maus, had been a long-time friend of the United States. So Newt is just recycling fourth-hand nonsense. Newt even said that Obama had learned Saul Alinsky's trick of disguising one's true self to deceive people into supporting your radicalism. That must account for Obama's sly endorsement of small businesses and corporate tax breaks.

If you actually want to read about Saul Alinsky, Nicholas Von Hoffman has a new memoir out recalling his lifelong friendship with Saul Alinsky and recording what Alinsky actually said about his work. Saul Alinsky's son must thank Glenn Beck everyday when Beck highlighted Rules for Radicals as the Bible of Barack Obama. All the teabaggers have to learn and use these principles so that old tired book is getting a second life and probably will sell more this time around.

Republican candidates are openly campaigning on closing down the Government if they win the House. That would have the sole benefit of them not passing anything. But think about that for a minute. The United States is in two wars, in the midst of a borderline Depression, and your political platform is to close down the Government. This is not a random statement but is emerging as a real idea among House candidates.

Forget about the external world but the immediate effects would be Social Security and Medicare payments would not be made, Veterans' benefits would cease, Unemployment iinsurance payments would stop. The last time this happened under the Clinton Administration there was a firestorm of reaction against the Republicans and their leader, Newton Leroy Gingrich.

Chris Van Hollen issued a statement on behalf of House Democrats on this subject, warning all voters what this would mean in practical details.

Elizabeth Warren has drawn over 250,000 supporters on petitions demanding Obama appoint her. Amen!

Governor Moonbeam has emerged with a new ad with Peter Coyote providing the narration. Meg Whitman had gambled that her spending $120 million by Labor Day would create a 10-15 point lead, which Brown could not erase by election day. Brown for his part didn't spend any money but now has started his campaign around California, challenging Whitman to appear with him at 15 townhall meetings. So far she's refused. The Race is basically tied so it's going to cost Whitman about another 75 million of her personal wealth.

Speaking of wealth, the Koch brothers are fighting back against the Jane Mayer expose in the New Yorker with their minions writing op-eds and letters to the editors. Even Howard Hughes maintaned his anonymity better than these guys. Should teabaggers really be named Koch suckers?

The war the Koch Brothers are waging against Barack Obama is reminiscent of their Dad going against Ike "the Kike". Dad helped create the John Birch Society, which encouraged the smears of General Marshall by Joe McCarthy. So it's interesting to recall that Ike passed the Federal Highways Act to create the interstate highway system. In today's dollars it would cost $179 billion. Barack Obama's infrastructure rehabilitation plan costs a paltry $50 billion. But to pay for it might require eliminating some of the oil industry's tax loopholes. Poetic justice for the Koch Brothers, the owners of the world's largest private oil company.

Instead of 9-11, I am heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia this week to visit the memorial to the 10,000 American prisoners of war that died at the hands of the British in the 1812 War. Lest we forget the Brits sent 300,000 white folk to America as slaves before the Revolutionary War. Interestingly, black slavery followed, only when the British companies realized it was more cost effective and profitable to use blacks, rather than whites. While this blog has had to defend Thomas Jefferson from the lies told about him by the Texas Schoolboard and David Barton, I have to admit Thomas Jefferson tried to paper over this aspect of our history and minimize the number of white folks who had actually been slaves or former criminals.

Friday Wrap-Up

Nate the Great Silver at www.fivethirtyeight.com has finally delivered his House predictions. He puts the odds at 2 out of 3 for Republicans to take back the House. Feeding all the polls, money factors and other odds and ends in his kitchen sink, he comes out with probable gains of between 45 and 50 seats, slightly less than 1994. But remember this is the first time out for his House picks.

I have read two more studies of computer runs that came out identical --the GOP taking the House by one seat. That would be a 40 seat pick-up. Then with about a dozen ethics cases breaking against the GOP, within moments everything would be up in the air again.

Meanwhile, Byron York writing in the Washington Examiner quotes several off-the-record Republicans skeptical about the tidal wave election. Only Vin Weber came forth to be quoted directly. The view was that the intensity gap would start to close as traditional Democratic base groups like Labor ramp up their efforts and Democrats will come back to the fold. Weber also points out the managerial mess at the RNC and the lack of organizational structure in the Republican efforts. Robert Craemer also wrote an article pointing out the same thing that the Democrats at this point have huge cash advantages and better organization. Like Weber, he pointed to the difference with 1994 in that Republicans have a worse approval rating by far than the Democrats and that all their allies like Big Business, the Health Insurance industry, and Banks have far worse approval ratings than even the GOP.

Meanwhile on the campaign trail, Democrats are showing they are holding their own in Swing States. Eastman in Ohio now has edged Rob Portman in the Ohio Senate race; Boxer again leads Fiorina, Marco Rubio only holds a few point lead over Crist, and Democrats are out in front in House seats, which everyone has predicted as goners. In my opinion, there seems to be some solidifying in the Democratic position. However, on the overall House front, it's hard to tell.

Always remember Nate the Great's predictions are his first cut and he keeps updating the model as we come closer to the election. On another front, several pollsters are pointing to the GOP taking 27 state houses and not 30 as Nate predicts.

In any event, aren't you glad Obama got most of the big stuff out of the way first? People criticized him for doing too much too soon but it showed he understood that the honeymoon would be quick as every President knows.

The big news from today's press conference was that President Obama didn't wear his wedding ring. Really. The greatest question was "Do you think you've been a failure because you have captured or killed Bin Laden yet?" And you wonder why Republicans might have a chance? Or maybe that's Obama's October Surprise--wouldn't that be great.

Christine O'Donnell, the teabagger candidate for the Senate in Delaware, went really over the line. She has aired a commercial suggesting that Mike Castle is cheating on his wife with a man. This has been a constant theme for her in the last week suggesting Mike Castle is gay. The producer of the ad said that "We have no proof of this but we thought we would put it out there anyway." Stay classy--that's the motto of the New Conservatives. While Castle claims his own polls show he will win but today hinted he might run as an independent. (FYI--I know many of the GOP who really are gay, many who lead the conservative movement--but I have never heard this about former Governor Castle. Then, of course, so what?)

Lisa Murkowski is trying to get back into the Alaska race and is in negotiations with the Libertarian Party. How this would play out is anyone's guess.

In New Hampshire , the teabagger candidate is gaining ground on the Attorney-General Ayottte and if victorious David Hodes, the Democrat, has a real chance at picking up the seat.

While the President lectured us again about the right of Muslims to worship freely, Newt Gingrich and Calissa have released a new DVD "A Nation At Risk", which argues that the United States is in danger from Muslims because they want world conquest.

It's clear it's no coincidence that Pastor Jones was a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh. The last we heard from Pastor Jones he gave the Imam of the Park 51 project two hours to agree to move the Islamic Center or he would burn the Quran. The Westboro Baptist Church is hurt that no one saw them burn Qurans in 2008. So now they are going to burn both Qurans and the American Flag. Kudos to the London Telegraph for being the only newspaper to have printed how Pastor Jones uses his congregation as 'slave" labor to support his for-profit business.

A correction from yesterday's post. Some of Obama's tax breaks will be beneficial, particularly the ability of business to write off 100% on capital equipment in one year. I learned this from Ed Schultz, who has several small businesses of his own. And yes David Axelrod had to clarify that President Obama would veto a bill with tax breaks for the richest. Senator Voinovich said that he would back Obama's small business bill, making it 60 Senators. So it should hit the floor next week sometime.

In his press conference, President Obama came very close again to naming Elizabeth Warren as the first head of the Consumer Protection Agency. Just get it over with!

One member of the press asked why with Financial Reform passed two months ago, nothing has changed? One third of the stimulus package hasn't been spent yet so why haven't we seen the final results? Jesus Louise, these guys are amazing.

President Obama is thinking of appointing an envoy for manufacturing. I guess you can't call it a Czar or that would make Glenn Beck's blackboard. President Obama is the biggest advocate for small business since Ronald Reagan and like Ronald Reagan is one of the few Presidents actually to talk about American manufacturing. A point I told a right-winger who called me today to ask,"Are you sorry you voted for Obama yet?" When I pointed these two things out--there were crickets.

The Republicans did win a big victory yesterday. A Federal judge ruled Don't Ask Don't Tell unconstitutional. The suit was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, whose members include many gay veterans. Think about it -- the leading conservative lawyer wins the Prop 8 case with a Republican judge ruling; Gay marriage is upheld by a Republican Supreme Court in Iowa. And the DOMA act is ruled unconstitutional by another Republican judge. This all might be an aftermath of the dominance of the conservative movement by the gays in the 1980s. What will the Focus on Your Family crowd think?

The AFL-CIO this week warned Sarah Palin that if she kept up her slander of the labor movement she would join the ranks of people like Joe McCarthy. But she already has. Her adviser is Greta Van Cistern's husband, a leader in the scientology movement, and Greta herself, is the daugher of---get ready for this--Joe McCarthy's campaign manager. Greta should fly down to Nevada to get Sharron Angle to write out her list of the domestic enemies in Congress, something Michelle Bachmann also claims. Then her destiny would be complete.

The Arnold is getting a little snarky. He tweeted while flying to Asia from Alaska he couldn't see Russia from the airport.

Tomorrow Sister Sarah and Glenn Beck will host a boozefest celebrating 9-11. Glenn Beck has already been shamed by the news media to donate his speaking fee to charity. No word from the Sister. Some wag suggested that the two were celebrating the September 11, 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende by Pinochet.

Liz Cheney is running attack ads against Admiral Sestak in Pennsylvania, claiming he was weak on Israel. Whatever that means these days. Her candidate Club for Greed candidate Pat Toomey came out today against the Hate Bill legislation,saying you can't legislate how people think. But you can legislate on how people are physically tortured and killed because of their race or gender preference.

I actually had a conversation today with a conservative Republican who really wants to repeal the 14th Amendment. He also once argued that it was a shame slavery was outlawed because it ruined the South's economy. Am reading now White Cargo: the Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America by Dan Jordan and Michael Walsh. To my horror my fantasy retirement land--Popham Beach in Maine--was the site of a Fort to house White Slaves on the Kennebec River in the 17th century. Maybe the counter to the Christian Revisionist History of the American Revolution is to consider our rebellion against Britain as the first White Slave Revolt.

President Obama's plan for a $50 billion multi-year project to rehabilitate and modernize America's infrastructure is almost two decades overdue. The last time a President addressed this issue was Dwight David Eisenhower with the creation of the interstate highway system, which created a national market for the first time in our history. So I guess it's appropriate that David Eisenhower is about to print a memoir of the last decade of Ike's life at Gettysburg. David had won the pulitzer for his account of his grandfather in war-time. The Eisenhowers, including David and his wife Julie Nixon, backed Barack Obama's bid for the White House. Maybe he felt compelled to re-insert his grandfather into the national debate. After all it was during Ike that the John Birch Society was created, and it was under Obama that the conservative movemment welcomed it back into the fold after decades of exile.

You Don't Know What's Happening Here,Do You, Pastor Jones?

First up, the great International Quran Burning Day in Gainesville, Florida. I have yet read a piece that this whole stunt by one Pastor Jones is about erasing the tax liens on his properties. The Church also houses his for-profit enterprise and his congregation--all 40 of them--serve as "volunteer" labor for his business. Pastor Jones and his wife own real estate in the surrounding areas estimated to be worth $5 million and some of it is in arrears for taxes. It seems the whole Quran Burning event is a scam to raise money to pay off his taxes.

This is not so dissimilar to the Westboro Baptist Church scam, which generates protests at military funerals and sometimes anti-semitic and homophobic demonstrations. This so-called church basically consists of one extended family and a few followers. The whole purpose of their obnoxious stunts is to provoke physical attacks on their members so that the Church can file suit and collect damages. This is the whole raison d'etre of their existence and so far they have been very successful at it.

Our third scam artists are The Quitter from Wasilla and Glenn Beck, who are exploiting 9/11 in Anchorage, Alaska at an event where they are charging $250.00 for an entrance fee. Talk about Chutzpah since Glenn Beck frequently proclaimed how sick he was of hearing from 9/11 families. I guess he was repulsed because they didn't charge money.

During Labor Day weekend, I got to drive a brand-new Chrysler Minivan over highways refurbished under the Recovery Act. So, I was thrilled to hear President Obama come firing out at the Milwaukee Labor Day celebration and announce plans for a $50 billion infrastructure program. This was followed by a strong economic speech in Cleveland, where he drew the lines between his recovery policy and the Republican non-plan.

So where are we with the Midterms? I listened to Larry Plotkin on NPR on Labor Day claim the Republicans will take back the House by 22-25 votes and have a chance at taking the Senate. Charlie Cook doubled down on his prediction of Republicans taking back the House and suggested Democrats could lose the Senate. Charlie Cook today then criticized Organzing for America, suggesting they would not have any influence on this year's election. Another polling firm reneged on its prediction that the Republicans would retake the House yesterday. Then, the Gallup poll came out and the great 10 pt. generic lead by Republicans vanished and it was again tied.

President Obama's approval rating continued to tank. Oh wait, it remains the same as it has been for the past 15 months--pretty consistent given the situation of the economy. But most surprising is his approval rating among those who told pollsters they were not going to vote--75% approval. And there lies the Democratic strategy.

David Plouffe addressed the OFA members via video-conferencing about his plans for the mid-terms. His view is that the mid-terms will be decided by a series of races where the vote margins will be below 1,000 and percentages like 51-49%. OFA has been ramping up their efforts with the view of opening several offices in key states and nation-wide contacting 15 million Democrats or leaning Democrats, who are ambivalent about voting this year. Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage over Republicans and just moving a percentage of these ambivalent voters would affect the results of elections determined by low turnouts.

In addition to this, the AFL-CIO and other unions are gearing up for a massive voter turnout effort. To galvanize their memberships, the unions, civil rights groups and environmental groups are marching on Washington October 2 for a public display of strength.

Chris Van Hollen, who is handling the Democratic House races, "leaked" several internal polls that directly contradicted the media's narrative about a change in the House. He choose races where the incumbent Democrat was said to be threatened. In each it showed the Democrat in the lead.

That's not to say that Republicans right now don't have the intensity factor on their side, but their candidates are frightening and Democrats are exploiting that with independents. Gov. Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania has come right out and told independents that the Republicans this year are "wack-o's." David Axelrod echoed this sentiment saying the Republicans this year are farther right than George W. Bush. But ,Democrats face one astonishing fact--58% of the electorate believe the Republicans will have ideas different from George W. Pete Sessions and John Boehner have made it clear they are doubling down on the Bush economic policies despite the havoc they sowed. This is where President Obama in his campaign mode is useful to the Democrats by drawing a sharp contrast between his vision of the future and the Republican plans.

The line on the tax issue has been drawn in the sand--Obama backing middle-class tax cuts and Republicans insisting on maintaining tax cuts for the upper income brackets. There is alot of nonsense within the Beltway about the legislative fights ahead. Since Obama made his position clear yesterday, Huffington Post and other blogs are asking when Obama will cave on this issue, citing his avoidance of saying he would veto such tax breaks. It's amazing how the well-paid, high-income tax bracket media wishes to maintain this tax break, despite buckets of evidence that it would only increase our deficit by billions--actually hundreds of billions--and that it would do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. The same occurred during the Healthcare debate when the media cried over provisions affecting people earning over $250,000 a year.

President Obama is also offering about $300 billion in tax breaks to corporations, particularly small businesses, once the base of the Republican Party. His offer to write-off R&D costs over the next two years is being met with phony counter offers by the GOP. There is a reason for this cat-and-mouse. If you examine President Obama's recent tax offers, you'll realize he just co-opted the best items in his 2012 rival's plans--Mitt Romney. Just as he did with parts of the healthcare reform. He's practicing his rope-a-dope two years early. (A P.S. it's doubtful that the corporate tax breaks will actually stimulate the economy.)

How this plays out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess but at least Obama will place the Democrats on the side of working and middle-class families and Republicans with the wealthy. This is almost a caricature of past political rhetoric but for the first time in a long while it is actually true. Even Democrats charging that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security is actually true for the first time in my memory.

Meanwhile Haley Barbour, the GOP King of GOTV, is heading that operation out of the Governors' Association since the RNC is dead. Barbour is also organizing the GOP to campaign solely on the economy and not get distracted by social issues. The Republicans for the first time in a while are waging a 50 state campaign, mirroring the past efforts by former DNC chairperson Howard Dean. However, even Haley knows he has some ringers. He's already pulled the plug on the GOP candidate for Governor in Colorado because he's lied about being an undercover FBI agent and other exaggerations on his resume.

The marriage of the teabaggers with the GOP is getting rocky. The teabagger win in Alaska by Rick Miller has propelled Democrat Scott MacAdams into contention and with a real shot at winning the election. I listened to Scott MacAdams on a podcast last night and realized if the teabaggers were actually populist and not an ideological campaign he would have been their nominee. Rick Miller has claimed various social programs are unconstitutional and he has vowed to ween Alaska off the federal tit. But his background is very suspicious. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has never held a job over 6 months, progressing from position to the next. It's clear that he doesn't believe a word he says but is a pure opportunist. It was Todd Palin who got him the nomination, not Sarah, to get even with the Murkowski family.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Sitka simply lucked into the Democratic nomination because he was asked to fill in at a candidate training seminar and asked to make a fake stump speech for the Senate. The attendees of the Alaska Democratic convention liked it so much they made him the candidate. Now ActBlue has taken up his cause and he is raising competitive money from the grassroots even though the national Democratic Party has neglected him. Even Rasmussen has him polling less than 5 points behind Miller.

Next up is Delaware where the teabaggers hope to bump off veteran Mike Castle, who has never lost an election. Christine O' Donnell has the Tea Party support and buckets of money. But she is plagued by her history of personal insolvency and campaign funding hijinx. She probably is the first Senate candidate in American history whose major issue is masturbation. She hopes to ban it. As the ads hit the airwaves, the nasty exchanges between the two Repubican camps have given Jeffrey Coons, the Democratic nominee, the opening he can exploit. He's hit the airwaves with a positive ad, highlighting his role in cutting budgets and acting in a bipartisan manner. Right now Castle has a huge lead over Coons. But if the teabagger wins , it's Coons in a walkaway.

One of the most important developments is a wholesale defection of Republican businessmen, including Reagan's RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, to Harry Reid. Sharron Angle has scared the daylights out of these men and they have gone very public in their support of Reid.

Various analysts still see Democrats holding between 51-53 seats in the Senate. Nate the Great has bumped his odds of a GOP takeover to 25% but he admits this is caused by fooling around with his methodology and not because of anything real. The Democrats are at a disadvantage because they are allowing North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas go by the boards. This means they have less margin of error. Somehow, I do think they will turn a few Republican seats. I'm still at 54-55.

Republicans still look like they will pick up some state houses. Nate the Great says 30 but others peg it at 27. The Texas gubernatorial contest is very close, with White actually leading in some polls. Alex Sink looks in a strong position to take Florida. And we are all praying Governor Jerry Brown will rise from the dead and start battling Meg Whitman in earnest. After spending over $100 million, she's just a couple points ahead in some polls and behind in others. The Republican Midwest sweep looks less certain than when I wrote about it. Minnesota and Wisconsin, which looked automatic, have gotten shaky with the GOP candidates acting in bizarre ways.

MEANWHILE--The 9th Circuit Court is not demanding the State of California actually defend Prop 8. Arnold and Jerry Brown both refused to support it in court. This leaves an interesting question whether the religious proponents can have the right to defend it. It's highly questionable. I think we may expect a ruling sooner than previously advertised.

Elizabeth Warren again visited the White House this morning. She's already cancelled her teaching position at Harvard this fall. Obama would only say she was advising him and Geitner on how to establish the Consumer Agency. An announcement soon would be a big boost for progressives prior to the elections.

There is also some discussion that the DADT repeal will be appended to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Again another point on the progressive agenda.

I am expecting a hurricane of books shortly. We have a new Mary Oliver, Tom McQuane, Gary Snyder, V.S. Naipul, John Le Carre and more all-stars to pick me up.

Cleaning Up The Mess and Other Items

After listening to President Obama's speech on Iraq and having heard him in New Orleans a few days before, it is staggering the amount of destruction he has to clean up and ,at the same time, how he has to rhetorically thread the needle. I am still haunted by Gore Vidal's comment that "Barack Obama's problem is that he is too intelligent to lead people like Americans." He is going up against the perpetual myth of American indispensability and God-given destiny as the number 1 country on the planet. There simply is no room for reflecting on how we are now lagging behind almost every developed country in the world in every category that measures the quality of life. While every speech of the Administration incorporates some aspect of how we are developing the tools to continue to lead the world, our own parochialism blinds us to the reality that the world really is moving on without us and that today's America, while still the wealthiest country on the planet, is in tatters.

The two new "memes" of the Republicans are that the President is incompetent (unlike ,say, George W. Bush) and he is not gracious because he did not thank Bush enough for W's role in the surge. If you ever have had any contact with Barack Obama, he is the epitome of gracious and unfailingly polite, and a warm human being. As for competence, he could quit the Presidency right now and be considered one of the formidable President in history. Given the vitriol and hate aimed at him and his family, who could blame him from just saddling up and leaving after one term. There is precedent for this. James K. Polk listed everything he wanted to accomplish in office and when he completed the list he refused to run again ,even though he would have won.

The best news in the last few days is the lack of news coverage or punditry on the Middle East peace talks. What coverage exists is cynical, skeptical and claims the Administration just needs the photo opportunity to prove their commitment to a Middle East peace process. The remnants of the neo-conservatives simply don't believe in diplomacy of any kind on anything. So they are ignoring this right now. They figure their ally Bibi Netanyahu will scuttle the talks and further damage Obama. I think they are in for a surprise. Israel came to Washington with a full complement of able negotiators on every subject that needs to be completed.

While Israeli public opinion has been polarized for the past two years, there are wiser heads suggesting something must be done in the way of transitioning to a Palestinian state. The rest of the world still has an historical memory. For 20 years, both United States and Israel's public stance has been to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state. The current administration of Mahmoud Abbas has created security and administrative structures paid for and often manned by Americans and Europeans. There have been quiet moves since the Gaza Flotilla disaster on both sides to move to some new arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yesterday, President Obama gave a one-year timetable for this to be done. Serious talks begin today and will be mediated by Secretary of State Clinton. I expect we will see some basic agreements and then the parties will leave Washington and we will see a brief flurry of pontificating. And, since all Presidents since Jimmy Carter have failed, I'm betting on Obama to succeed. Call me crazy. I just like how there are no expectations this time and no one believes it can be done. There is that time when the warring parties blink and realize no one in the outside world cares anymore. And I also believe that Hamas will recognize Israel within one or two years.

And then to the Catfood Commission and the outrage over Alan Simpson's attacks on Social Security and Veterans' Benefits. If President Obama says he's going to strengthen social security and just tinker with it to lengthen its viability, I believe him. I checked out our national budget--we now spend 58% of the annual budget on defense, and only about 4-5% in debt servicing. The bulk of the rest goes to Medicare, leaving only about 20% to pay for everything else. If Alan Simpson is beginning to grumble over veterans benefits, no matter how curlish, I think we might see the Commission actually recommend further cuts in defense spending. Everyone has started gaming the politics of the Commission, producing like Ezra Klein conclusions that it predominantly shifts right. This may be true but by December I believe the Administration will produce a very viable strategy to reduce the national debt without the catastrophic human costs the Republicans advocate.

I still don't understand the news reports that "Democrats can't repeal Bush's tax-cuts". These tax cuts naturally expire so you must affirmatively pass them again. So let's say Evan Bayh, Nelson, Lincoln and a few Democrats are in favor of tax-cuts for the rich, they must get the Senate to pass them. Their may be a compromise to extend for two years. But all these must be paid for, according to the Pay-Go rules.

Elizabeth Warren has notified Harvard she is not returning to teach contract law this year. Hmmm. Katherine Van der Heuvel of the Nation tweeted again that her nomination will be made soon. It would spark some enthusiasm among progressive Democrats and normal human beings. The New York Post printed a piece that Wall Street is bracing itself for a Warren nomination.

Maybe President Obama could make the announcement at his Labor Day speech in front of the AFL-CIO familes in Milwaukee. It's interesting to actually see a President join the AFL-CIO to celebrate Labor Day. It's been quite a while.

In mid-term elections, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball column says that Republicans will take back the House and have a shot at the Senate. And if they come short in the Senate, then the Kingmakers will be Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman--Uggh. I'm still not there yet on either predictions. I saw for one nano-second Nate Silver's House analysis, which doesn't quite indicate the House is a done deal by any means. The blog however doesn't show it yet. nate does admit that Democratic fortunes have deteriorated in the last month--but then they always do in August.

If you want a horrifying read, Will Bunch has published The Backlash: Right-wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama (Harper, 2010). This is better than Markos Malitos' American Taliban because Will, an Obama supporter, actually travels through the country to interview the average Teabaggers and Glenn Beck fans and how the backlash against Obama began. And if you want to learn about which country, they want back, you can read it in this book. I had to put it down after the first 100 pages to gather strength to continue.

This is Richard Hofstader on steroids. And Bunch admits that with the network of right-wing radio stations, the internet and Fox News, the paranoid politics of today may become deadlier and more powerful than the past. He also points out that Glenn Beck is the perfect synthesis of the sickness of the media age. In this book, you're learn why Obama really didn't win the election, that the "Other" includes all urban areas, not just gays, Latinos and blacks, and that Tea Baggers are not against Big Government, just one presided over by a black Muslim Kenyan, who wants to enslave us all.

Parts of the book remind me of what Thomas Franks wrote about in What's The Matter With Kansas, where Kansas went from being an economic populist state to a right-wing conservative state. These people are actively working against policies that actually help them, many are on the border of unemployment, many have serious health issues who would benefit from health reform, and virtually none of them blame Bush and Cheney for anything. A good deal of those interviewed have self-acknowledged psychiatric and alcohol problems.and many became fundamentalist Christians after a decade of drugs and excess. A surprising number were radicals during Vietnam or Vietnam vets, who became right-wing Republicans or even Third Party members. Bunch says these people are about 25% of the voting population and believe the government is run by a bunch of elitists and rich people --true.

They truly believe the myth that the United States was created as a Christian nation and that we are literally the last hope of mankind. And they see the last election as the triumph of the Leftists, who hate America and will bring it down. And they really believe we should wage war endless against Muslims and torture them. The last thing these people are concerned about is the cost of militarising foreign policy. They positively love it.

For a devastating--if you can do that anymore--portrait of Sarah Palin, read this issue of Vanity Fair, where she tells people under her that she's so powerful she'll destroy them. A real classy dame.

The GOP strategy is to have semi-normal spokespeople accent "Jobs, Deficit and Healthcare", while allowing the Becks and Limbaughs to pile on about a Muslim President, etc. The ultimate goal is to totally de-legitmize Barack Obama and to divide Democrats from him. E.J. Dionne this morning had a piece that calls for Obama to build back his popularity to help Democrats. E.J. is being foolish here. Obama is doing better than others with such an economy and in this day of polarization it is very unlikely that even with winds at his back that he can get to 55% anytime soon.

And I found out why I like Republican Mike Castle, who was always nice to me when I ran IRI. He's the great-great-great-great (fill in the number) grandson of Ben Franklin. How cool is that? Even so Mike may be heading to defeat in Delaware against a teabagger lady. Then I would flip an automatic Republican gain to leaning Democrat.