Babeu And Grimm... Grotesque Republican Corruption

The video above has nothing to do with either Arizona congressional candidate Sheriff Paul Babeu or Staten Island Republican Congressman/Mafioso Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm. Instead it's another real world tableau documenting the pervasive political corruption that reaches right up the Republican Party leadership chain. The doofus being interviewed by investigative journalist Lee Fang is third-ranking Republican in the House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). He lies right to Fang's face, claiming not to know about the Buck McKeon and Vern Buchanan scandals roiling their California and Florida districts.

So what does this have to do with Grimm and Babeu? Fang points out that the #2 House Republican, Eric Cantor, said he would have "zero tolerance" for corruption in the House GOP Caucus. Boehner was equally adamant when the Republicans won their majority in 2010. But neither is addressing the outrageous public scandals that both McKeon and Grimm are embroiled in-- with McKeon already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee (which informed McCarthy) and Grimm's case so serious that the NY Times demanded that the Justice Department start looking into it. As for Babeu... he's the favored Republican candidate in a deep red western Arizona district where he's up against incumbent (from another district) Paul Gosar. Or at least he was the favorite until it came out that... well, he came out-- or, more to the point, was outed... by his ex-lover, a Mexican immigrant he was trying to strong-arm and threatening to have deported.

When we first started covering Babeu we suggested that his time as headmaster of the DeSisto School was going to lead to very ugly places. And yesterday the media finally started confirming just that.

Pinal County Sheriff and U.S. Congressional candidate Paul Babeu was the school's Headmaster and Executive Director from 1999 to 2001.

He touts his experience there on his campaign website.

While Babeu ran the school, the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services launched an investigation into repeated allegations of abuse.

The ABC15 Investigators traveled across Massachusetts and tracked down reports that have never been released.

The documents show that during Babeu’s tenure the school was not licensed. Other allegations include detailed instances of physical and sexual abuse.

Holli Nielsen was a student of DeSisto while Babeu was Headmaster.

“It's not unreasonable to say we were cult-like,” said Nielsen.

The school's policy was "tough love" and it led to at least one death-- a boy forced out in a blizzard with no clothes, who froze to death-- and several rapes. And, Babeu, being Babeu, is going to have a lot more seedy crap associated with himself, of course. This is when we get to the part of the danger of these hypocritical Republican closet cases not being treated for their severe mental illness.

Several students we spoke with say they also knew a secret about Babeu.

It was a secret that Babeau’s older sister said she discovered one day after visiting his home.

Lucy Babeu told the ABC15 Investigators she confronted her brother after finding a student from DeSisto school living with Babeu.

“I said what is this student from Desisto doing here? He says, ‘Lucy, he's my boyfriend. I love him’.”

Lucy Babeu told us her brother was having a relationship with the male student.  

“I said Paul get a hold of yourself here,” said Lucy. “You were his teacher! You were his Executive Director! You can't do this.”

ABC15 is not identifying the former student. He has not responded to our interview requests.

At the time, he was 17 which is the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.

“He was of age. He would be what we considered a high school senior,” said Nielsen.

Holli says she knew the student personally.

“It was widely known but not discussed. People were aware of it,” said Nielsen. “It was kind of swept under the rug.”

Babeu left the school in 2001. Three years later, the state investigation forced DeSisto to shut down.

And Grimm? He wasn't having sex with young boys too, was he? Not that we know of... but we do know of a meeting he had at the Crow Bar with the owner, major New York crime figure-- now imprisoned for 30 years... our old friend "Gus" Kontogiannis. Yep... yesterday's New York Daily News published a story about the relationship between Grimm-- basically an astonishingly corrupt cop-gone-bad-- and Kontogiannis, one of the crime figures behind, among other things, the Duke Cunningham scandal. We've been talking about Kontogiannis (and "Mikey Suits" since 2005). Kontogiannis, among his many other crimes, gave Cunningham $400,000 to give George W. Bush in return for a pardon. Kontogiannis became too hot for a pardon but no one has ever accounted for the $400,000. I doubt the Daily News investigation will lead to it. What they came up with, though, was Grimm trying to get Kontogiannis off the hook another way.

Staten Island  Rep. Michael Grimm urged a federal judge to spare a New York-based developer with three bribery-related convictions from serving a day in prison, the Daily News has learned.

Grimm sought leniency for Thomas Kontogiannis in 2008, before Grimm entered Congress as a Republican and after he had left a career as an FBI agent. Kontogiannis then faced sentencing on his third conviction-- for helping funnel $1 million in bribe money to former Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif).

In a three-page letter, Grimm asked California Federal Judge Lawrence Burns to “be as lenient as the law will allow and your conscience accepts, granting him a noncustodial sentence.” Burns sentenced Kontogiannis to eight years [a sentence that has grown over the years].

A lot of people focus on the Republican Party for its ideological extremism and its aggressive international policies. But you never need to scratch too deeply on the surface of conservatism without finding the stench of corruption. They go hand-in-hand because of the adoration with which sociopathic, self-serving behavior is treated. Oh-- and Boehner isn't on Grimm's case either. Last we heard of an interaction between them was when Grimm suggested to the Speaker that Members of Congress be allowed to pack heat and Boehner promised to look into that great idea.

Is everyone ready for the great Leap Day festivities?

"Poke your eyes, pull your hair, you forgot what clothes to wear." Liz gets the situationally mandated eye poke for failing to wear the Leap Day-appropriate yellow-and-blue from -- of all, er, people -- Lutz. Jack Donaghy will register astonishment that "the woman who watches all six pawn-shop reality shows" has never seen the classic film Leap Dave Williams, making her apparently the only American suffering such cultural deprivation. Watch the instant-classic "Leap Day" episode of 30 Rock here.

"Leap Day's not a thing."

-- Liz Lemon, in the "Leap Day" episode of 30 Rock

"We should live every day as if it's Leap Day, and every Leap Day as if it's your last."

-- at episode's end, the real Leap Day William?

by Ken

Politics is one of the uncommon fields in which it's not necessarily a godsend for an incoming officeholder to replace what we would call "an easy act to follow." Look how Barack Obama botched the sweet deal of taking the reins from Chimpy the Ex-Prez. Now there would have been a heap of perilous passage to maneuver based just on the interlocking network of cosmically fine messes the Bush regime psychos and thugs go us into, but it didn't help that the new president often seemed to forget that he wasn't the old one.

In other fields the transition should be easy as pie. Replacing Nancy Franklin as TV critic of The New Yorker, for example. This would have been a cushy gig for anyone from Rose the Talking Parrot to that plucky squirrel you watched climb a tree last weekend in the park. I'm still trying to get a fix on Emily, whose writing at New York magazine I'm unfamiliar with, but there's no question that it's an upgrade. How could it not be? (For the record, I see that New Yorker Editor David Remnick told WWD Media in September, "Nancy decided she was tired of writing for a while, and tired of writing about TV I expect, after she catches her breath, she'll begin writing for us again and I dearly hope so." I'll take the high road and refrain from obvious sarcastic comment, but don't let me stop you.)

I bring this up because just as I've been thinking about the amazing stride 30 Rock has maintained in its belatedly begun new season, I stumbled across a February 23 newyorker.com blogpost of Emily's {"In Defense of Liz Lemon"), in which I learned:

Judging from my Twitter feed, there's been a backlash to "30 Rock" this season, particularly the character of Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey. Here's one example of these anti-Lemon blog posts. [You'll find this link and the following ones onsite. I didn't read them, but you may want to. -- Ed.] Here's another. Here's another. The argument in all these pieces (many by writers I respect) is pretty much the same: "30 Rock" used to be funny, but now it's sour and negative. Liz Lemon was once our heroine -- a sassy, confident, if somewhat neurotic single career lady. Now she's become infantilized and dumb. She behaves as if Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is her daddy. She doesn't trust her own judgment, she's bad at her job, and there's something awfully misogynist about all this! Liz Lemon is pathetic.

At the outset I had to override my instinctive prejudice against anyone who judges anything by anybody's Twitter feed. Emily went on to write:

Well, I can't get on board the hate train, especially after last week's tour-de-force episode, in which Liz morphed from a crazy old subway lady (every New Yorker's dream: she gets her way at every turn) into Heath Ledger's Joker. Someone needs to speak up for the Lemon, and for the Fey. Because from the beginning Liz Lemon was pathetic. That was what was enthralling, and even revolutionary, about the character. Unlike some other adorkable or slutty-fabulous characters I could name, Liz only superficially resembled the protagonist of a romantic comedy, ready to remove her glasses and be loved. Beneath that, she was something way more interesting: a strange, specific, workaholic, NPR-worshipping, white-guilt-infected, sardonic, curmudgeonly, hyper-nerdy New Yorker. In the first episode, Jack nails her on sight as "a New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, over-scheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for … a week." Even Liz had to admit he scored a point.

That was why the show worked: it rarely made Liz an empowering role model, although many women certainly identified with her. The show let her be the George Costanza, not the Mary Richards. And, refreshingly, this appeal had little to do with sex or relationships: a lot of it was about her job. Liz was professionally successful, but she was a sellout. . . .

I mostly kind of skimmed the piece, and there's a lot about women's roles on TV that I wouldn't be allowed to comment on in any event, since you can't unless you're a woman, but since I do frequently watch 30 Rock reruns from earlier seasons, I don't think there's any question that Emily has a better grasp of how the character of Liz Lemon began and subsequently evolved than the Twitterers she's taking issue with. For example, later she writes, "That has always been one of the most radical things about “30 Rock,” the way it has continually punctured Liz’s image of herself as a spunky brunette underdog." And later:

And the thing is, Liz’s confrontations with her worst qualities have actually strengthened her. That’s what so odd about the backlash. This season, Liz is happier than ever—and for once, she’s rejecting Jack’s influence, finding her own bliss, embracing her oddball nature, going on the Oprah-style vacations she feels like taking.

I'm not sure that Tina Fey would express quite such a pluckily cheery view of where and how Liz has wound up. She seems to be enjoying piling on poor Liz, perhaps relishing the ways in which her fictional alter-ego has stumbled down her Road Not Taken. But the Nussbaum piece is still worth a skim.

AS FOR THE SUBLIME "LEAP DAY" EPISODE . . .

Kenneth the decommissioned NBC page does his much-admired rendering of Leap Day William. We'll find out that apparently he's not, as we (like Jack) would assume, wearing a bald cap.

There isn't much I can say that wouldn't detract from rather than add to the pleasures. It's true that Leap Day has been featured all over the TV dial -- or rather the cable and satellite program guide, but nobody nailed it the way the 30 Rock people did, making Liz Lemon the only noncelebrant in a world gone quadrennially Leap Day-mad. These days the show's writing is so thorough, intricate, and dazzling, and the characters are so ingrained in the writers' consciousness, that there really doesn't appear to be any separation between writing and acting.

Sure, the celebrity cameo roles can become gimmicky, and this episode was studded with them, but they're usually well done, and I thought one of them from this episode, the very last, with John Cullum at his most ineffably charming, dressed as -- what else? -- Leap Day William, who then reappears after the final commercial break as -- dare we imagine? -- the real Leap Day William:

"Well, I guess we all learned something tonight, about love, friendship, about taking chances, about the true meaning of Leap Day. But these lessons aren't just good for every four years. No-o-o! They're good every year, because we should live every day as if it's Leap Day, and every Leap Day as if it's your last. Oh, and if you should ever see an old man in a blue suit bustin' out of the middle of the ocean, take the time to say, "Howdy." It might just be [takes off his hat] worth your while [opens his mouth and reveals a mouthful of short but fanglike teeth.]"

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GOP Staring Into A Big Black-- And Brown And Educated And Young-- Demographic Hole

It may sound paranoid, but the demographic shifts in the United States are such that the GOP-- which has so alienated non-whites and the non-elderly-- is desperate to drastically curtail democracy before it's too late for them. Since at least the French Revolution, the forces of the Right have fought against popular democracy every step of the way. At the founding of this country, conservatives were clear that they would sabotage the whole effort rather than permit universal suffrage to be adopted. Conservatives wanted to make sure that voting would be only allowed for white male property owners, the older the better. One of the Koch brothers' most virulent-- and effective--political arms, ALEC, has been working on the state legislative level to turn the ship of democracy around back in that direction. And in states where the Republicans have gained legislative majorities-- Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, New Hampshire, etc-- they have moved down the path of limiting the franchise in ways outlined for them by ALEC. If you do think this is paranoid, let me point you to Jonathan Chait's article in the new issue of New York, 2012 or Never.

“America is approaching a ‘tipping point’ beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course,” announces the dark, old-timey preamble to Paul Ryan’s “The Roadmap Plan,” a statement of fiscal principles that shaped the budget outline approved last spring by 98 percent of the House Republican caucus. Rick Santorum warns his audiences, “We are reaching a tipping point, folks, when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority.” Even such a sober figure as Mitt Romney regularly says things like “We are only inches away from no longer being a free economy,” and that this election “could be our last chance.”

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis-- that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care-- is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP-- the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes-- is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a natural-majority coalition for Democrats.

The Republican Party had increasingly found itself confined to white voters, especially those lacking a college degree and rural whites who, as Obama awkwardly put it in 2008, tend to “cling to guns or religion.” Meanwhile, the Democrats had increased their standing among whites with graduate degrees, particularly the growing share of secular whites, and remained dominant among racial minorities. As a whole, Judis and Teixeira noted, the electorate was growing both somewhat better educated and dramatically less white, making every successive election less favorable for the GOP. And the trends were even more striking in some key swing states. Judis and Teixeira highlighted Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona, with skyrocketing Latino populations, and Virginia and North Carolina, with their influx of college-educated whites, as the most fertile grounds for the expanding Democratic base.

...[T]he dominant fact of the new Democratic majority is that it has begun to overturn the racial dynamics that have governed American politics for five decades. Whatever its abstract intellectual roots, conservatism has since at least the sixties drawn its political strength by appealing to heartland identity politics. In 1985, Stanley Greenberg, then a political scientist, immersed himself in Macomb County, a blue-collar Detroit suburb where whites had abandoned the Democratic Party in droves. He found that the Reagan Democrats there understood politics almost entirely in racial terms, translating any Democratic appeal to economic justice as taking their money to subsidize the black underclass. And it didn’t end with the Reagan era. Piles of recent studies have found that voters often conflate “social” and “economic” issues. What social scientists delicately call “ethnocentrism” and “racial resentment” and “ingroup solidarity” are defining attributes of conservative voting behavior, and help organize a familiar if not necessarily rational coalition of ideological interests. Doctrines like neoconservative foreign policy, supply-side economics, and climate skepticism may bear little connection to each other at the level of abstract thought. But boiled down to political sound bites and served up to the voters, they blend into an indistinguishable stew of racial, religious, cultural, and nationalistic identity.

Obama’s election dramatized the degree to which this long-standing political dynamic had been flipped on its head. In the aftermath of George McGovern’s 1972 defeat, neoconservative intellectual Jeane Kirkpatrick disdainfully identified his voters as “intellectuals enamored with righteousness and possibility, college students, for whom perfectionism is an occupational hazard; portions of the upper classes freed from concern with economic self-interest,” and so on, curiously neglecting to include racial minorities. All of them were, in essence, people who heard a term like “real American” and understood that in some way it did not apply to them. Today, cosmopolitan liberals may still feel like an embattled sect-- they certainly describe their political fights in those terms-- but time has transformed their rump minority into a collective majority. As conservative strategists will tell you, there are now more of “them” than “us.” What’s more, the disparity will continue to grow indefinitely. Obama actually lost the over-45-year-old vote in 2008, gaining his entire victory margin from younger voters-- more racially diverse, better educated, less religious, and more socially and economically liberal.

...[I]n the cold calculus of game theory, the expected response to this state of affairs would be to accommodate yourself to the growing strength of the opposing coalition-- to persuade pockets of voters on the Democratic margins they might be better served by Republicans. Yet the psychology of decline does not always operate in a straightforward, rational way. A strategy of managing slow decay is unpleasant, and history is replete with instances of leaders who persuaded themselves of the opposite of the obvious conclusion. Rather than adjust themselves to their slowly weakening position, they chose instead to stage a decisive confrontation. If the terms of the fight grow more unfavorable with every passing year, well, all the more reason to have the fight sooner. This was the thought process of the antebellum southern states, sizing up the growing population and industrial might of the North. It was the thinking of the leaders of Austria-Hungary, watching their empire deteriorate and deciding they needed a decisive war with Serbia to save themselves.

At varying levels of conscious and subconscious thought, this is also the reasoning that has driven Republicans in the Obama era. Surveying the landscape, they have concluded that they must strike quickly and decisively at the opposition before all hope is lost.

It's what helps explain the Republican Party's embrace of apocalyptic rhetoric-- or even the GOP-dominated Wyoming state legislature's decision to allow for the raising of a standing army... and an aircraft carrier!

Here in California Republican politicians have been dealing with this for a long time, as they turned off the rapidly growing Hispanic voters with their racist rhetoric. And as they've shrunken into a less and less relevant rump of a party, many of their leaders have simply dug in and doubled down. Bigoted Santa Clarita Congressman Buck McKeon is a great example. California's 25th District is a much more diverse district than when McKeon first became its congressman in 1992, both due to shifting demographics and redistricting. The district is now younger with more working families represented by labor unions. Now there is a 30% Latino population and growing African American and Asian/Pacific Islander populations. McKeon has been an ardent opponent to reasonable immigration reform. He opposed the federal DREAM Act and is leading the charge in the district to repeal California's state DREAM Act. McKeon is also anti-equality for gays and lesbians. He personally supported California Prop 8 with campaign funds, opposed the repeal of DADT, supported DOMA, and tried to outlaw same-sex marriage by chaplains in the military. The constituency in the 25th district is definitely moving in a more progressive direction away from McKeon's record, and by alienating such large groups of voters, we think this is the year he can lose his seat to a more mainstream candidate. That mainstream candidate is Dr. Lee Rogers, a young father in his 30s, a professional, married to a Latina and more in touch with the way the district is today (rather than in the 1950s). Please consider contributing to his campaign here.

Chait concludes his article by reminding us that even GOP "strategists like Karl Rove and Mike Murphy urged the GOP to abandon its stubborn opposition to reform. Instead, incredibly, the party adopted a more hawkish position, with Republicans in Congress rejecting even quarter-loaf compromises like the Dream Act and state-level officials like Jan Brewer launching new restrictionist crusades. This was, as Thomas Edsall writes in The Age of Austerity, 'a major gamble that the GOP can continue to win as a white party despite the growing strength of the minority vote'.”

Blue America Welcomes Ken Aden (D-AR)

At 11am (PT)-- 1pm in Arkansas-- Blue America will be hosting a live blogging session at Crooks and Liars with Ken Aden, our newest endorsee for Congress. Ken Aden is the only progressive candidate for Congress Blue America has endorsed this year in a deep red district. Arkansas' third CD, in the northwest corner of the state, has always been Republican as far as anyone can remember. The last Democrat who almost won was Bill Clinton... in 1974. And Ken is undaunted. As Digby hopes to explore with him at the live chat today is Ken's startling grassroots campaign. In fact, his effort should be a model for working class candidates-- who the DCCC refuses to support (they exclusively pick rich candidates or candidates with access to big money; i.e., not school teachers or truck drivers or almost anyone who's undergoing the same financial straits as the rest of us). Ken sees all the classic negatives, of course... and turns them into strengths and opportunities:

There is no question that our campaign will likely be outspent significantly. However, of all the races in the country today, few offer the kind of opportunity this race does. Our district offers the opportunity to run a true grassroots campaign that will engage voters, inform voters, and make headlines in a district that hasn’t seen a credible Democrat run for Congress in decades. Plus, the fact that it has been so long since voters have had a real choice combined with the fact that we will run visible field and media operations mean that this will not be just an ordinary Congressional campaign, but one that gains significant attention not just from local media but national media as well.

In the post-Citizens United environment, there are not a lot of candidates willing to face the kind of odds we face in this district. There are even fewer who do elect to run in races like this who even plan to mount a legitimate campaign-- much less run an aggressive field operation.

I’m running not just because I believe this race can be won, but because I believe voters deserve a choice between a Congressman in the pocket of every special interst from the Koch Brothers to the poultry industry and a person who will, when elected, actually look out for the people and not his corporate cronies.

One of the first times I spoke with Ken he was busy helping organize Occupy Northern Arkansas. "I am a staunch and proud supporter of the Occupy Wall Street Movement," he told me... This is a true grassroots movement made up of young people, veterans, students, and folks from across the middle class just like me who are sick and tired of irresponsible corporations buying politicians of both parties while many in the government stand idly by and give corporate America the keys to the proverbial candy store. It's truly nauseating to know that so many politicians can be so easily bought, and not even loose an ounce of sleep over the fact that they are destroying everything which we hold dear. I  firmly believe that more people need to become involved, and stand up for what is right! Corporate greed is the new pandemic in this country. The ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker is a prime example of the kind of reckless behavior that corporations in this country are exercising on a daily basis. Just look at how many politicians Koch Industries has bought over the last ten years alone. As the next congressman from Arkansas I would support an amendment to destroy the destructive influence of Citizens United. The last time I checked, corporations are NOT and will never be real people.

If you can, please drop by today and meet Ken for yourself. Yesterday he formally filed to be on the ballot. Please take a look at the video of that above. If he's your kind of candidate and if you can help, you can do it at the Blue America page. As Digby wrote to our members Sunday: "Blue America endorsed Ken with great enthusiasm and we are spreading the good word about his grassroots strategic vision to progressive challengers across the country.  We believe that this kind of creativity and energy can pay off.  But he needs all the help we can give him to keep the campaign funded. He won't be able to match a corrupt Republican incumbent, not even close.  But he has a good chance to win if he can put this plan into practice and defeat him with sharp grassroots tactics and hard work. Please donate here if you can."

There's More Going On In Michigan Today Than Just A Primary Between GOP Extremists

Folks across the country are talking about the Republican Presidential primary in Michigan today and the attacks on women by Republicans on the stump. From contraception to maternity care, to a women's right to make choices about her own body the GOP is waging a War Against Women-- and I wish I could say every single Democrat was standing firm against this insanity. I wish. We've been keeping you updated about our friend Trevor Thomas, who is running against Tea Party Congressmen Justin Amash. Trevor is a fighting progressive and supports and is willing to fight for a women's right to choose.  

As Blogging for Michigan and EclectaBlog highlighted on Friday, Governor Jennifer Granholm endorsed Thomas at a time when there is so much anti-women sentiment out there right now:

"This endorsement comes at a crucial moment as the country is engaged in a 1960s debate about women's reproductive freedom and the availability (and even the obtainability!) of contraceptives. Granholm's bona fides with regards to the issues affecting American women will appeal to Democrats and Independents alike, giving them assurance that Thomas is on their side. Granholm, an Emily's List endorsee, has championed the rights of women and groups that support reproductive rights like Planned Parenthood. Thomas, a pro-Choice candidate, will be a stark contrast to the anti-woman, anti-Choice, "take-our-country-back(wards)" approach of Republican Justin Amash."

Today we now know Trevor will have a challenger for the Democratic nomination. Steve Pestka, who has started talking to the local media about his campaign, may be a nominal Democrats... but not when it comes to equality for women. This guy is an anti-Choice fanatic of the Bart Stupak school of misogyny. MIRS, the Michigan political news service, reported:

"Former [state] Rep. Steve PESTKA is considering a run against U.S. Rep. Justin AMASH (R-Kentwood) in the 3rd Congressional District, making him the second Democrat with interest in the West Michigan-based seat. 

"Pestka served in the House from 1999-2003. He lost a hotly contested state Senate race against former Sen. Bill HARDIMAN in 2002 and was appointed to the circuit court bench shortly thereafter by then-Gov. Jennifer GRANHOLM. 

"We have an opportunity to win this time," Pestka said. "I'm sure Justin Amash is a fine individual, but his voting record does not represent Kent County. His past votes deserve a challenge and a discussion and we're thinking seriously about getting in." (MIRS, February 27, 2012)

We reported earlier this month about rumors that folks with the local Grand Rapids establishment were looking at an anti-Choice, multimillionaire conservative who'd run on the Democratic ticket. It's now clear they found Pestka. They apparently miss the fact that this election is going to be about the working and middle class families hurting right now-- not millionaires like Pestka and Amash-- and it's quickly now turning to the rights of women.

Trevor is the fighting progressive we need. He comes from a working class family and he has a record of helping to pass major federal legislation, namely the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But he needs our help to be the nominee against Amash. As we know, early dollars are critical. Let's help spread the word and work to stop this faux-Democratic challenge and stand by our party's platform to help protect women now. Please consider a contribution at our ActBlue page.

Citizens United Comes Calling In Montana-- A Guest Post By Franke Wilmer

I have to admit something-- I have a special place in my heart for literate candidates. Give me a well-read candidate who knows how to read and write and I'm always happiest. The first time I ever wrote about Montana Democrat, Rep. Franke Wilmer, I compared her to Barbara Ehrenreich... in the title. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Montana supreme court decision to keep corporate money out of state politics, the first person I thought of calling for a guest post was Franke. Although she's busy running for Montana's open congressional seat, she worked on a post-- and she didn't disappoint. (Please consider contributing to Franke's campaign here at the Blue Amerca page.)


How Can You Speak Without Breathing?

-by Rep. Franke Wilmer

Try this experiment: Hold your breath. Now keep holding your breath and speak. You are, in this experiment, what Wyoming gunfighter trial lawyer Gerry Spence calls a “non-breather,” an entity with legal personality other than “breathing” human beings. Breathers can speak, associate, hold beliefs, and participate in the political process by voting or even running for office. But corporate entities-– non-breathers-- whether non-profit or for-profit, cannot vote or run for office.

Conflicting appellate court decisions have been asked whether the government possesses the power to restrict speech by “non-breathers,” and if so, on the grounds of what “compelling interest?” Speech freedom was clearly intended to apply to “breathers”-- human beings expressing political opinions. But when breathers associate for common purpose, as they do when they incorporate (whether non or for profit), does their association create an entity entitled to the same rights as individuals? Must their collective speech be protected, particularly when wealth buys “speech space?”

Constitutional protection of speech must be weighed against other democratic values and should transcend ideological differences. No one wants to restrict speech with which they agree. Unions, citizen action groups, and profit-making corporate businesses are all non-breathers.

The debate about Citizens United raises two important questions (1) is money spent to express political opinions protected by the First Amendment regardless of who is speaking (a breather or non-breather) and (2) if so, is there some compelling reason to restrict monied speech? My answer is “yes” to both questions.

Citizens United holds that fair access to the means of expressing of political opinions is not necessary to our democracy. It is wrong for two reasons. First, Citizens United may have reduced some “chilling effect” on corporate speech by creating a “chilling effect” on the speech of regular breathing people who cannot compete for access to “speech space” in a world where that space goes to the highest bidder. Wealthy non-breathers win. Citizens United gives a megaphone to the speaker with the most money to the point of being able to drown out virtually all other speakers and their opinions.

Second, campaign finance laws, including Montana’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act, restrict campaign contributions because direct contributions create a likelihood or appearance of corruption in the form of quid pro quo favors from the winning candidate. Do unlimited independent expenditures present the same risk of corruption raised by direct campaign contributions? In Citizens United the court simply found no evidence that it does.

The court is wrong. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy concludes that:

"[I]ndependent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

Really? The “appearance of influence or access” has been apparent for years, with only 9% of the electorate having a favorable view of Congress and recent opinion polls showing that the Citizens United decision is intensely unpopular. Sixty-two percent of Americans across the political spectrum oppose the ruling. The “appearance of influence or access” has already caused the electorate to lose faith in this democracy. What planet do the five justices concurring in the majority live on?

Most of the money candidates spend is to exercise “speech freedom” advocating their own positions and candidacy and tearing down their opponents’ records or suitability to serve. There are limits on the campaign contributions associations of citizens may make to a campaign, consequently limiting the candidate’s speech. How is this different when the “donor” expresses exactly the same speech but does not “collude” with the candidate by donating directly?

The potential for corruption when donors spend money to say what the candidate wants them to say and expect favorable treatment in return, and ability of the wealthiest speakers to drown out the rest, are serious concerns and apply to all non- breathing speakers.

Corporations are imperfect citizens. Corporations benefit from limited liability, cannot vote or run for office, they pay taxes, and enjoy speech freedoms. But in no way do they enjoy all the same fundamental freedoms, civil liberties, and responsibilities that living, breathing human citizens enjoy. Independent expenditures are not independent. They express a political opinion during a campaign that is intended to favor one candidate and defeat another. In return, the candidate they speak in favor of will inevitably be indebted to their efforts. And that is what is undermining “our faith in this democracy.”

If we have "military Keynesianism," sez Willard Inc., why not "crony Keynesianism"? After all, aren't cronies people, just like corporations?

FLASHING BACK TO MY 4TH OF JULY POST, 2010:

So THAT'S why we're in Afghanistan! It's "military Keynesianism"

"This is what the American dream has come to? Your founders warned you about this. Warned you that standing armies and unrestrained banks would cost you your freedom. And the sad thing is that most Americans are ok with it." (Ian Welsh, today -- see below)

"Obama has to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. The economy is in bad shape, and it needs that stimulus. Since he can’t get a new large stimulus through Congress that means he MUST keep the Afghan war going if he doesn’t want an economic disaster, which would then lead to an electoral disaster."

-- Ian Welsh, in a recent blogpost,

"Actually, Afghanistan is a war of choice"

"The bottom line is that a lot of consultants are making a lot of money from Mitt Romney with mixed results."

-- an "unaffiliated GOP campaign-finance attorney," speaking anonymously to WaPo's Dan Eggen "in order to be candid"

by Ken

I couldn't help but flash back to my belated discovery of the concept of "military Keynesianism" when I noticed this hilarious story washingtonpost.com this afternoon (presumably destined for tomorrow's paper):

Consultants benefit from Mitt Romney campaign


By Dan Eggen, Monday, February 27, 12:24 PM

Spencer J. Zwick started his career a decade ago as Mitt Romney's 22-year-old personal assistant at the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, then went on to become a senior gubernatorial aide, co-founder of an equity fund with one of Romney's sons and a top fundraiser for Romney's 2008 campaign.

Now Zwick serves as Romney's finance chairman for the 2012 presidential election. But he doesn't actually work for the campaign. Instead, he is paid through a Boston company he created, SJZ Inc., which has taken in nearly $5 million for "fundraising consulting" from Romney so far this election season.

Zwick is among a close-knit and intertwined group of senior Romney advisers who work at firms that have collected millions of dollars in consulting fees from the campaign and, in some cases, from the pro-Romney "super PAC" that is assisting in his run for the White House, according to recent campaign disclosures.

The extent of the campaign's reliance on outside firms is unusual for a major presidential bid, experts say. And records show that most of the firms are staffed by longtime advisers or former employees from Romney's 2008 campaign.

The arrangement not only has benefitted several of those close to Romney, but it also makes it harder to determine how the candidate is spending his donors' money, since salaries and other details about the outside operations are kept under wraps.

Romney campaign officials, who declined to comment on the record, said their use of consultants is no different than that of numerous other candidates, including President Obama.

Most political campaigns use consultants to produce ads, run polling and perform other specialized work. Obama, for example, has a clutch of longtime advisers, such as David Axelrod, who run outside consulting shops that do business for the campaign.

But Romney's use of consultants extends to areas such as fundraising, which is common for congressional races but far less so for major presidential campaigns, according to experts and disclosure reports. Romney has paid $4.6 million to Zwick's firm for fundraising consulting, for example, compared to $75,000 reported by Obama for the same type of expenditure.

"The bottom line is that a lot of consultants are making a lot of money from Mitt Romney with mixed results," said one unaffiliated GOP campaign-finance attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid. . . .

There's lots more, but I think you get the general drift. And couldn't you just bust a gut laughing? I think this is simply high-larious! Whadja expect! That those fat COWs (Cronies of Willard) were going to have to sit on their butts waiting for Willard to make it to the White House to cash in? Why, that would be positively un-American. And anyone doesn't think so is just envious.

How did the Afghanistan adventure illustrate the working principles of military Keynesianism?

Obama has to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. The economy is in bad shape, and it needs that stimulus. Since he can’t get a new large stimulus through Congress that means he MUST keep the Afghan war going if he doesn’t want an economic disaster, which would then lead to an electoral disaster.

This is the sad truth of America: the only acceptable form of Keynesian spending is military Keynesianism. Instead of hiring tens of thousands of teachers, building a high speed rail network across the country, refitting every building to be energy efficient and doing a massive solar and wind build-out to reduce dependence on oil, well, the US would rather turn Afghans and Pakistanis into a fine red mist.

That fine red mist is what’s keeping the American economy from going under entirely. And so, even if it’s the wrong thing to do, even if it’s the graveyard of America’s Empire, the war will continue.

And wouldn't you know, as soon as the new generation of austerity-packing deficit hatcheteers had the prospect of serious cuts in military spending thrown at them, they wailed in unison about the terrible hit the economy would take from the loss of all those jobs! These worthless sacks of doody who would have gleefully thrown their grandmas out of work -- well, maybe not their grandmas, but sure as shootin' yours -- in the name of "fiscal prudence," who bray at every opportunity that there ain't no such-a thing as government economic stimulus, 'cause as we all know government can't create jobs, turn out to be die-hard Keynesians, committed to the stimulative value of government spending, as long as it's on cool stuff like a war machine and actual wars.

Already I think we knew that Ian might have wished to expand his statement, "This is the sad truth of America: the only acceptable form of Keynesian spending is military Keynesianism," to encompass all forms of national-security spending, for which "fiscally prudent" right-wingers are always prepared to issue blank checks.

But now, thanks to our future real "CEO president" (not to be confused with the parody version we had before the present occupant), we learn that there's another form of what I learned in high school economics to call "priming the pump": shoving megabucks at your cronies. Just remember that all that campaign loot being shoveled into JRZ Inc., the company set up for the purpose by Willard Inc.'s old P.A. from the glory days of his Salt Lake City Olympics scamming, is available to be spent on jewelry and yachts and foie gras and whatnot, enabling the jewelers and yacht makers and vendors and duck- and goose-liver-stuffers to hire more staff and so on down the trickle chute.

I love it when grass-roots Republicans in primary states tell marauding journalists that they're leaning toward Willard Inc. because of his business background and understanding of how to get the economy going. Yeah, sure -- if you're a lucky COW.


THEN THERE'S MURDOCH-STYLE CRONY KEYNESIANISM,
WHERE THE CRONIES PAY OFF THE GOVERNMENT WHORES

From nytimes.com this afternoon:

Inquiry Leader Says Murdoch Papers Paid Off British Officials

By SARAH LYALL
Published: February 27, 2012

LONDON -- The officer leading a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers said on Monday that reporters and editors at The Sun tabloid had over the years paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for information not only to police officers but also to a "network of corrupted officials" in the military and the government.

The officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, said that e-mail records obtained by the police showed that there was a "culture at The Sun of illegal payments" that were authorized "at a very senior level within the newspaper" and involved "frequent and sometimes significant sums of money" paid to public officials in the Health Ministry and the prison service, among other agencies.

The testimony was a sharp new turn in a months-long judicial investigation of the behavior of Murdoch-owned and other newspapers, known as the Leveson inquiry. It detailed financial transactions that showed both the scale and the scope of alleged bribes, the covert nature of their payment and the seniority of newspaper executives accused of involvement. . . .

But of course the U.S. media properties of Master Rupert's News Corp. would never do anything like that here, would they? Probably the company has already investigated just to make sure, just the way the British News Corp. properties did.

#

Anti-Immigrant Mormons Set To Save Romney's Ass In Arizona Mañana

Predictably, Arizona's accidental and very tragic governor, Jan Brewer, endorsed the GOP Establishment candidate for her party's presidential nomination. That what's she's programmed to do so it would have only had been news if she had endorsed one of the other lunatics. But in a state where Mormons vote in enough of a lockstep bloc to have disproportionate power inside the state GOP, there was never any question about what Brewer would do-- regardless of the noisy, embarrassing kerfuffle over Romney campaign co-chair, Sheriff Babeu, and his immigrant boyfriend, Jose.

Nor should it be news to anyone that what the polarizing cloddish Brewer is best known for one thing: her hysterical anti-immigrant mania. She's led her state into a shameful anti-Hispanic kind of ethnic cleansing that is reminiscent of the pre-gas chamber Nazis. Two weeks ago we talked about the shame of Alabama's anti-immigrant policies. The difference is that Alabama doesn't have many Hispanics. Arizona does-- and always has... long before there were non-Hispanics, in fact. But the Republican Party there-- like in Alabama-- wants to drive them out of the state.

I've been quoting Joshua Holland's book, The 15 Biggest Lies About The Economy, a lot and he has a whole chapter (i.e., the debunking of a whole web of lies, about the GOP anti-immigrant myths). Let me just focus on a brief summary in honor of tomorrow's primary ion that state and Romney's assertion that Arizona's policy of ethnic cleansing should be a model for the whole country:

Reaction to the bill was swift. Within weeks of the law’s passage, two of Arizona’s largest cities, Flagstaff and Tucson, announced that they were suing to block the law. A boycott of Arizona goods and services was called. The Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland city councils stopped doing business in the state, and, as of this writing, New York and Washington, D.C., were considering following suit. San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, suspended all official travel to the Copper State. According to the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association, nineteen conferences were canceled just in the first week after the bill was signed.

According to an analysis by the Immigration Policy Center, “If significant numbers of immigrants and Latinos are actually persuaded to leave the state because of this new law, they will take their tax dollars, businesses, and purchasing power with them.”

The University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy estimates that the total economic output attributable to Arizona’s immigrant workers was $44 billion in 2004, which sustained roughly 400,000 full-time jobs. Furthermore, over 35,000 businesses in Arizona are Latino-owned and had sales and receipts of $4.3 billion and employed 39,363 people in 2002, the last year for which data is available. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time.

Again, the federal government has exclusive domain over regulating immigration to the United States, so Arizona’s law is unlikely to withstand legal challenges. But if it does, what follows would be utterly predictable: the state not only will lose out on tourism and international business travel, but a huge share of its workforce, both legal and otherwise, will also seek less nasty climes. Arizona will face enormous litigation costs, and local police agencies will start to complain that they don’t have the resources to enforce other laws. Brand Arizona will continue to take a pummeling, companies will face a whole new set of hiring challenges, and the state’s business community will start to complain. Eventually, the very same lawmakers who pushed the new law will admit that it didn’t work out as they’d intended.

I say this with the confidence born of past experience. In 2007, Arizona passed another tough “enforcement only” immigration law, which mandated the use of an (unreliable) electronic verification system and subjected employers to the loss of their business licenses for hiring the wrong people. It turned out to be a disaster that might rank up there with the Edsel or New Coke in the pantheon of bone-headed ideas.

The state had a very low unemployment rate when the law was passed-- it was, at least in part, a “solution” to a problem that Arizona didn’t have. Unemployment was at 4.1 percent when the law went into effect in early 2008 and had been at 3.7 percent when a judge upheld the measure a year earlier. By the middle of 2008, lawmakers were scrambling to undo the shock they’d inflicted on the state, as up to 8 percent of the population-- according to one estimate-- decided to hightail it out of Arizona en masse. The state faced new labor shortages, as well as a loss in demand from all of those worker-consumers. Eventually, the law was amended, in part due to pressure from Arizona businesses.

The people of Arizona learned the hard way that immigrants not only supply labor, but also demand goods and services in turn. In addition, they learned that newer immigrant communities have a mix of people with different legal statuses all jumbled together, and that when there’s a widespread perception that politicians (and citizens) are attacking immigrants, it doesn’t much matter that some people differentiate between those who are “legal” and “illegal”-- Arizona lost plenty of citizens and lawful permanent residents with that drop in population.

A University of Arizona study concluded that economic output in Arizona would drop 8.2 percent annually if foreign-born workers left the state’s labor force. “Getting rid of these workers means we are deciding as a matter of policy to shrink our economy,” Judith Gans, an immigration scholar at the university’s Udall Center, told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re filling vital gaps in our labor force.”

Little Ricky The Rooster Santorum Favors War With... Iran... Or Eastasia Or Oceania Or Holland... Whomever

I wasn't planning to make this a Little Ricky the Rooster day but Santorum inserted himself so forcefully all over the news yesterday, while Obama was at church thanking God for smiling on him and Romney was hiding under a bed wishing the whole thing was over and Rove, the Mormon Church and the Koch Brothers would just bring him his tiara, scepter and orb already and skip over all this pesky, vulgar voting, campaigning and caucusing nonsense.

As we mentioned earlier this morning, Rooster was on full tilt boogie with George Stepanopoulos yesterday advancing his ideas for a theocracy, forgetting he was talking to a national audience instead of to a convocation of the leaders of Opus Dei. But that isn't all he was running his mouth about. He also kept insisting that Obama, the president who finally killed Osama bin-Laden, ended Bush's unjustifiable war against Iraq and removed Muammar Qadaffi, is... weak. And campaigning in Marquette he kept calling the Afghan protestors "evil" for demonstrating against the burning of the Koran and the presence of what has turned out to be murderous NATO troops in their country for a decade. He claimed there that by Obama apologizing for the burning of the Korans, it showed weakness and encouraged more violence. I suppose it never occured to little Rooster, who worked hard to avoid military service himself, that the presence of American troops in their country for a ten years-- "accidentally" killing hundreds and innocent civilians (what do they call it? ...collatoral damage!)-- might be enough to set off the anger of the Afghan people.

I spent nearly a year living and traveling in Afghanistan right after I graduated from college. These are proud, defiant, independent people-- your best friend or your worst enemy; you can decide which by your actions towards them. How would Americans react if a Muslim Army occupied our country for a decade, killed untold numbers of civilians "by accident," and burned our sacred symbols (and urinated on the bodies of people fighting for the country's liberty)? Would Rooster join the Freedom Fighters? There's no reason from his past actions to think he would do anything but collaborate with the occupiers. But now he-- and the rest of the hyenas running for the GOP nomination (i.e., all of them but Ron Paul)-- want to push this country into a war with Iran. David Sarasohn captured the dangers inherent in this agitation by the GOP candidates towards war in yesterday's Oregonian.

Wars are most popular before they happen.

At that point, they carry no casualties, no complications, no collateral damage. Wars prewar are all about clear, positive, easily achievable objectives, to be gained with minimal effort. We like to use the word "surgical"-- although surgery rarely puts more than one life at risk.

Before the first shot had been fired in Iraq, the Bush administration canned its budget director for telling Congress the war might cost more than $50 billion, maybe as much as $100 billion or $200 billion.

That was, of course, almost a decade and something over a trillion dollars ago.

Iran is now in the easy, alluring phase, the part when an air attack to knock out its nuclear bomb effort seems just a matter of reaching out and fixing a problem. This could be why last Wednesday, in the Republican presidential debate in Arizona, it seemed that three of the hopefuls couldn't wait to get started.

Technically, it's true that the United States is still trying desperately to extricate itself from two other wars in the neighborhood. But somehow, for Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, Iraq and Afghanistan didn't come up at all in the discussion of what they wanted to do-- not when we're in the stirring, no-cost phase of an attack on Iran.

Wednesday, it seemed the three candidates could barely wait to attack Iran, or at least encourage Israel to launch its bombers eastward.

"I do believe there are moments when you pre-empt," said Gingrich, eagerly. "If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons."

Romney complained that Obama "opposes military action. This is a president who should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table. They are in our hand." He later demanded "a very clear statement that military action is an action that will be taken if they pursue nuclear weaponry."

Both sounded dovish next to Santorum, who declared, "I have been on the trail of Iran and trying to advocate for stopping them getting a nuclear weapon for about eight years now... Up against a dangerous theocratic regime that wants to wipe out the state of Israel, that wants to dominate the radical Islamic world and take on the great Satan, the United States, we do nothing. That is a president that must go. And you want a leader who will take them on? I'll do that."

In just four minutes, the conversation featured more enthusiastic muscle-flexing than an entire Mr. Universe competition.

No candidate noted the strategic difficulties of taking out dozens of Iranian sites, many deeply bunkered, and that at best Iran might be set back a year or two. Nobody mentioned that a foreign attack would massively increase the regime's support in Iran, the likelihood of a sizable retaliation against Israel and American sites around the world, or the immediate impact on the world economy.

As we've learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, you don't think about those things in the early, exciting part of the war. Those discoveries come later, when it's too late.

...All of those parts-- the U.S. casualties, the unforeseen consequences, the backlash in the countries we attack, the discovery that it's a lot simpler to go in surgically than to get out surgically-- are realities we come to see much later.

That's when a war gets less popular.

Although there is pretty solid support in Congress for war, few are more committed to it than House Armed Services Committee chair Buck McKeon (R-CA), who gets massive legalistic bribes from the Military Industrial Complex in return for pushing forward their agenda in Congress. For the first time ever, McKeon is in danger this year of being defeated. Redistricting wasn't kind to him and he has his first serious opponent in Blue America-endorsed progressive, Lee Rogers. I asked Lee how he differs from McKeon on the issue of aggressive wars. Short answer: A LOT. Here was his response in full:

McKeon's position is clear; as the largest recipient of campaign contributions from the defense industry, he needs more conflicts to keep the military-industrial complex busy. With the Iraq War over and the War in Afghanistan coming to a close, weapons manufacturers will have to scale back productions. McKeon has already broken ranks with Republicans and Grover Norquist saying he would raise taxes to fund his defense contractor friends.

No one wants a nuclear-armed Iran. But we haven't yet given diplomacy and sanctions a chance. The sanctions are having an effect. Iran is becoming desperate, threatening to cut off oil to some European nations and blockade the Straight of Hormuz.

Some Republican hard-liners want to preemptively go to war. That is an awful decision that is based on the economics of oil and the defense industry, more so than an actual threat to the United States. It will cost countless American lives and overwhelm our Veterans system with more physical and emotional injuries. 

McKeon has said that the sequestered defense cuts might lead to the US to reinstate the draft. Implementing a draft to go to war with Iran would tear this country apart. His statements show he doesn't care about the troops, only how much more money he can have the US spend on products of war and benefit his rich friends.

Two U.S. officers were shot in the back of the head in one of the most secure buildings in Afghanistan and several other Americans were killed since the Koran burning sparked a the resentment that almost every patriotic Afghan feels about the NATO occupation of their country. The Republicans are trying to drum up war fever for all the regular reasons-- from the purely financial motives of a low-life bottom-feeder like McKeon to the GOP primary candidates' desire to show how much tougher they are than anyone else. (Ironically, the only Republican who served in the military-- in fact, the only one who didn't actively work to avoid serving-- Ron Paul, adamantly opposes the GOP drive towards war.)

The race to the bottom has been set by Newt Gingrich, the most desperate of the lot, who on Tuesday charged that "the president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States" because his administration has dared question the wisdom of Israel attacking Iran and proposes a slight reduction in the bloated defense budget.

...If Bush had taken out bin Laden, the Republicans would have by now had W's head chiseled into Mount Rushmore, but since it is Obama's success, they are driven mad by this turn of events. On Tuesday, Gingrich came totally unglued, telling a student audience at Oral Roberts University that defeating Obama is "a duty of national security" because the president "is incapable of defending the United States."

Why? Simple. Obama has accepted the eminently sensible proposal endorsed by the Pentagon brass to trim $32 billion from the $655 billion defense budget in 2013. That small cut from a Cold War-style budget that accounts for 45 percent of world spending on the military despite there being no sophisticated military enemy now in sight for the U.S. was judged by Gingrich to render the president "willfully dishonest."

The idea of Newt Gingrich calling anyone else dishonest is an affront to reason, but, with the exception of Rep. Paul, those vying with the former House speaker for the nomination have been quick to indicate they are in full accord with the accusation. Gingrich's rabid support for the U.S. lining up behind an Israeli attack, even a nuclear one, may be explained by his campaign being kept afloat by a Nevada gambling billionaire who contributed $10 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC and whose prime cause is the Israeli far-right. Rick Santorum offers biblical bromides for his support of Israeli militarism, and for Mitt Romney, the thirst for war just seems a natural extension of his innate say-anything opportunism. What a disreputable crew.

As Andrew Bast pointed out in the Daily Beast, President Obama, is unlikely to pay them any heed.

Obama and Netanyahu may be marching in the same parade, but they are not in lockstep. Netanyahu has repeatedly made his country’s interests clear. When he addressed the U.S. Congress last May he said, “Time is running out, the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” He went on, “I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message that America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.” In recent weeks, his defense minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli President Shimon Peres have furthered that request.

But Obama cannot send any such unequivocal message to Iran. He will not be able to support-- either overtly or covertly-- Israeli military strikes. Assuming Netanyahu doesn’t come around to Obama’s position that military action is avoidable, the two will part ways with the strategic gap widening between them. “Over the past year, perhaps even over the last four years, the evidence has been growing that U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical,” says Stephen Walt, a political scientist at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “And if you’re in the Obama administration, you do not want a war right now.”

Indeed, even the most well-conceived and precisely executed military campaign would have unintended consequences. For example, should Israeli fighter jets attack Iranian nuclear sites, even in the best-case scenario the ensuing struggle in the Gulf would result in several weeks of higher prices at the pump. Obama is already fighting a political battle for reelection with gasoline prices at all-time highs—he is not likely to gamble on upping those by a dollar or two more this summer.

There are strategic risks, too, associated with a strike that have not been accounted for. As former Israeli official Ehud Eiran wrote on Friday, “Israeli policymakers are ignoring several of the potential longer-term aspects of a strike: the preparedness of Israel’s home front; the contours of an Israeli exit strategy; the impact on U.S.-Israel relations; the global diplomatic fallout; the stability of world energy markets; and the outcome within Iran itself.” With too much left to chance, and the fact that military action would likely only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few years, the possible costs outweigh the potential benefit.

Anyone who tells you where the American public stands on striking Iran is blowing hot air. Polls this month from CNN and The Hill reached exactly opposite conclusions. Obama has built much of his foreign policy record on ending wars in the Middle East. To unleash a new one just months before a national election would, despite the hawkish harangues from his Republican opponents, stink all the way to the ballot boxes on the 6th of November.

The uncertainty that accompanies military action is all the more unpalatable to the Obama administration right now because, for the moment at least, things are beginning to look up for the White House. The economy, although still sputtering, is at least starting to make strides toward a sustainable recovery. Republicans are spending the vast majority of their time tarring and feathering each other. Accordingly, White House spokesman Jay Carney said explicitly last week, “There is time and space to attempt to resolve [the Iran conflict] peacefully.”

But this is where Obama’s real conundrum begins, not ends. To be sure, sanctions have taken their toll on Iran. They are chipping away at the country’s economy and wearing down the everyday lives of the Iranian people but “so far they are not blaming the regime,” says Hooman Majd, the respected author who spent most of last year living in Tehran. “Actually, they seem to be blaming the West. The sanctions are, in a way, providing the leadership cover for their own economic mismanagement.” So there is an argument that even as the White House’s top tactic is hitting its target, it is delivering counterproductive results.

Little Ricky The Rooster Santorum Favors A Theocracy

Saturday at the National Governors Association get-down in Tampa, Maine's accidental teabagger governor, Paul LePage, pretty much said all his party's presidential nominees make him want to throw up.

Even as Republicans Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum compete for front-runner status with a win in Tuesday's Michigan primary, LePage said the entire field of GOP candidates is damaged goods because they have spent too much time bashing each other.

"I would love to see a good old-fashioned convention and a dark horse come out and do it in the fall," he said.

...LePage said the current GOP candidates broke Ronald Reagan's rule about not speaking ill of a fellow Republican and "have injured themselves and injured the party" with their attacks on each other.

"The candidates in this primary have beat themselves up so badly it would be nice to have a fresh face that we all could say, 'Okay.' The country deserves better than having people stand up and keep criticizing each other."

No one much cares what LePage, a clownish figure reviled even in his own state, has to say about national politics. But his always heavily pursued press coverage on this reminds us that we used to have presidential candidates like the one in the video above. When Little Ricky the Rooster Santorum and I were growing up on the East Coast it was far from uncommon for Catholic families to have framed pictures of President Kennedy in their homes. There may have even been one in the Santorum home-- but certainly not in the room of Little Rooster himself, who soon went on to be the president of the Penn State College Republicans. (Yes, yes, I know... he wants to trick elderly GOP voters into thinking he home-colleged himself, but the fact of the matter is, he spent a full decade in the same taxpayer-funded institutions of higher learning he now wants to defund.) Anyway, Little Rooster was on ABC-TV yesterday with George Stephanopoulos and he was happy to explain why President Kennedy upset him so much that a speech he made about a basic concept in the U.S. Constitution so upset him that he "almost threw up" [his words].

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have also spoken out about the issue of religion in politics, and early in the campaign, you talked about John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston back in 1960. Here is what you had to say.
 
(VIDEO CLIP)
 
SANTORUM: Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That speech has been read, as you know, by millions of Americans. Its themes were echoed in part by Mitt Romney in the last campaign. Why did it make you throw up?
 
SANTORUM: Because the first line, first substantive line in the speech says, “I believe in America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country. 
 
This is the First Amendment. The First Amendment says the free exercise of religion. That means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square. Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, no, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate. Go on and read the speech. I will have nothing to do with faith. I won’t consult with people of faith. It was an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent (ph) at the time of 1960. And I went down to Houston, Texas 50 years almost to the day, and gave a speech and talked about how important it is for everybody to feel welcome in the public square. People of faith, people of no faith, and be able to bring their ideas, to bring their passions into the public square and have it out. James Madison--
 
STEPHANOPOULOS: You think you wanted to throw up?
 
(CROSSTALK)
 
SANTORUM:  -- the perfect remedy. Well, yes, absolutely, to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American who is seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that you will do what the government says, we are going to impose our values on you, not that you can’t come to the public square and argue against it, but now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.
 
STEPHANOPOULOS: We got a lot of questions on this on Facebook and Twitter, and I want to play one of them to you from Doc Seuss, Chris Doc Seuss. What should we do with all the non-Christians in this country? If I do not hold this belief, which I do not, how does he plan on representing me?
 
SANTORUM: Yes, I just said. I mean, that’s the whole point that upset me about Kennedy’s speech. Come into the public square. I want, you know, there are people I disagree with. Come to my town hall meetings, as people have done, and disagree with me and let’s have a discussion.  Let’s air your ideas, let’s bring them in, let’s explain why you believe what you believe and what you think is best for the country. People of faith, people of no faith, people of different faith, that’s what America is all about, it’s bringing that diversity into and challenge of the different ideas that motivate people in our country. That’s what makes America work. And what we’re seeing, what we saw in Kennedy’s speech is just the opposite, and that’s what was upsetting about it.

You can see why even a dim bulb like LePage realizes this kind of lunacy-- which can appeal to a fringe on the extreme right of the Republican base-- is absolutely toxic to mainstream American voters. If Santorum is the Republican nominee, Obama can rest easy. On top of that states like Maine the extreme right will lose it's hold on state legislatures. And the Democrats will probably win back the House and perhaps even hold the Senate. So I say... You go, Rooster! Make lots of speeches that demonstrate to the American people exactly why Pennsylvania voters threw you out of office by the largest margin of any senator of either party in 2006. GOP propagandist Alex Castellanos, no doubt with Rooster in mind, told Maureen Dowd for attribution in the NY Times that “Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular.”

He said his party is “coming to grips with a weaker field than we’d all want” and going through the five stages of grief. “We’re at No. 4,” he said. (Depression.) “We’ve still got one to go.” (Acceptance.)

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates-- be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes-- and try to destroy them with it.

...How can the warm, nurturing Catholic Church of my youth now be represented in the public arena by uncharitable nasties like Gingrich and Rick Santorum?

“It makes the party look like it isn’t a modern party,” Rudy Giuliani told CNN’s Erin Burnett, fretting about the candidates’ Cotton Mather attitude about women and gays. “It doesn’t understand the modern world that we live in.”

After a speech in Dallas on Thursday, Jeb Bush also recoiled: “I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective.”

Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, recently called Santorum “rigid and homophobic.” Arlen Specter, who quit the Republicans to become a Democrat three years ago before Pennsylvania voters sent him home from the Senate, told MSNBC: “Where you have Senator Santorum’s views, so far to the right, with his attitude on women in the workplace and gays and the bestiality comments and birth control, I do not think it is realistic for Rick Santorum to represent America.” That from the man who accused Anita Hill of perjury.

Republicans have a growing panic at the thought of going down the drain with a loser, missing their chance at capturing the Senate and giving back all those House seats won in 2010. More and more, they openly yearn for a fresh candidate, including Jeb Bush, who does, after all, have experience at shoplifting presidential victories at the last minute.

Their jitters increased exponentially as they watched Mitt belly-flop in his hometown on Friday, giving a dreadful rehash of his economic ideas in a virtually empty Ford Field in Detroit, babbling again about the “right height” of Michigan trees and blurting out that Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs.”

Romney’s Richie Rich slips underscore what Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist, told the Ripon Forum: “If we are only the party of Wall Street and country clubbers, we will quickly become irrelevant.”

Just One Word To Describe Each GOP Candidate

When John King asked the clownish Republicans-- think: evil clown-- REMAINING in their party's presidential nomination process to describe themselves with one word, I was ready with twitter. The DWT Republican Primary Caricaturist considers Ron Paul beneath his dignity but here's a composite of the 3 tweets:

Resolute, Courage and Cheerful-- not necessarily in that order

The Daily Beast was on to the next step in the art and science of caricature. They asked their Facebook friends to describe each candidate with one word-- removed the unspeakable ones-- and then combined with Wordle, an online application that converts text into word clouds. The results:

MITT ROMNEY



RICK SANTORUM



RON PAUL



NEWT GINGRICH



Sanctimonious is the word that's forever on the tip of my tongue when I'm writing about ex-Senator Frothy. But it never comes up in time. Now I'll always have the above image to reference.

"Worst Cooks in America" is back, once again putting the "o-o-o" in "bo-o-ogus"

Ah, noodle-pulling! A wonderful skill, and a pleasure to watch as done by someone who knows what he's doing, like Chef Lee here. However, it's not only an extremely difficult skill but a totally unnecessary one for even the most skilled home cook. Yet here it was in this batch of worst cooks' second session! (A Food Network caption for a different photo from the field trip says, "Anne and Bobby bring their recruits to Chinatown to make their own noodles, which brings fear -- and tears -- to both teams.")

by Ken

As I write, I'm struggling to get through an episode of Season 3 of Food Network's abominable Worst Cooks in America, a repeat of last week's Episode 2, "Going Global." (As one of the "recruits" noted on camera, she hasn't even gotten basic American cooking down, and now she was supposed to produce Asian cuisine?) As I've written in the past (most recently last February, in "Should everyone involved in producing Worst Cooks in America be shot? Just 'cause I can't think why not doesn't mean there isn't a reason"), this show enrages me to a degree that I makes it all but unwatchable for me. Yet here I am, doing my quasi-journalistic duty. I can't write about the third iteration of this TV abomination without watching it.

Or can I? It turns out to be essentially the same fraud as it was in the first two seasons: a show that pretends to be providing instruction to cooking plebes but does no such thing, instead using them as props for the entertainment of viewers who presumably have as little regard as the producers do for both the skills involved in cooking and the process by which we humans learn. The notion that any professional chef would lend his or her presence and credibility to such an enterprise is shocking and shameful. After all, who should more respect for both the knowledge base and the process of acquiring it than someone who had to go through his/her own learning process and develop a proper respect for ingredients and skills?

And yet here is Worst Cook in America "returning champion" Anne Burrell, back for the third season, now squaring off against Bobby Flay. I had just a smidgeon of curiosity about this, since both Anne and Bobby make no secret of having undergone extensive formal training. Since they have shown no hesitation in identifying themselves with the institutions with which they have been and still are associated, you'd think that some of the people there would be taking the lead in a campaign of professional shunning.

Oh, but of course, it's only entertainment!

So what, for example, what could that recruit have been thinking when she expressed the thought that perhaps she ought to be learning some kitchen basics before venturing into Asian cuisine? Surely she didn't think that anyone connected with the show cared whether she acquired any skills? If she's lucky really, simply being exposed to all those people cooking all that food, and witnessing weekly one-off demonstrations and getting the occasional hint (maybe helpful, more likely not), may enable her to absorb some odd shards of cooking knowledge, or at least just a tiny bit more confidence in attempting to cook. If so, it will be purely accidental. Of course, it seems to me equally likely that all the wild misinformation the recruits are being exposed to will increase their confusion about what they need to learn and how they could learn it.

Noodle-pulling? Come on, gang! Hey, if I thought I had to become a noodle-pulling master to be a competent cook, I would probably throw in the kitchen towel without a second thought. Or later in the show, when the recruits were all required to make a meatball dish (more about this in a moment), they were required to grind their own meat! This is certainly a potentially useful skill for the home cook. For ages I've thought about getting into grinding my own meat (often in comjunction with a fantasy of getting into sausage-making, and maybe terrine- and pâté-making). I've never done it, though. And I know, just as every person on the planet knows -- with the possible exception of the oafs at Food Network, it's a totally non-essential skill. And again, to throw it at totally unskilled cooks in their second session?

By contrast, meatball-making could be an actually useful kitchen skill, and the recruits might just possibly have gleaned a few tips in the one and only demonstration they get of any technique. The only thing is, they weren't just making meatballs. Each of them was making a foreign meatball-type dish, chosen by a random drawing. (Who doesn't like random drawings? This is great TV!) So nearly everyone was attempting to produce a dish with which he/she was totally unfamiliar, in both conception and taste.

The assumption, I guess, is that actually teaching technique wouldn't be of interest to bored-out-of-their-mind viewers. Such viewers are presumed, quite possibly correctly, to have no attention available for watching people actually being taught the various skills involved in meatball making, with demonstration, explanation, practice, and correction. How tiresome! Who would want to watch that?

So we have a show pretending to teach people how to cook, conceived for people who are presumed to have no interest in how one actually learns how to cook. The goal, of course, is to have the final contestants, the last ones standing after the others have been thrown off the island by Chefs Anne and Bobby, produce "a restaurant-quality meal." Again as I've pointed out, this is both a preposterous and an irrelevant goal for home cooks. Lots of home cooks regularly produce dishes superior to most of what's turned out at restaurants, who are basically in the hospitality, not the culinary, business.

I admit there was a moment early in the "Going Global" episode where I felt a flicker of interest. In one of our rare glimpses into what the promotional campaigns always refer to as "boot camp," yet a boot camp where there doesn't seem to be any serious repetition and corrective instruction, we saw a bit of the recruits attempting to apply Chef Anne's now-you-see-it, now-you-don't "lessons" in knife technique. Julienning and chiffonading, as I recall -- when you can't recall what was demonstrated, let alone what the demonstration(s) consisted off, you may guess that not much knowledge was imparted.

No, I don't mean when Chef Anne delivered her witty mot about one recruit's chiffonaded cabbage looking like it came from a lawn-mower bag. Ha ha, Chef Anne! No, I'm thinking of the moment -- and it was just a moment -- when suddenly there was Chef Bobby providing actual hands-on correction of one of the recruits' knife technique! Except that what he was telling the poor fellow was to be looking at the knife, not his fingers.

Doesn't Food Network have lawyers? Was there really no one to wonder how many lawsuits they may be subject to by viewers who wind up in hospital ERs with sliced-up hands trying to apply what they "learned" here from Bobby Flay?

In the end, though, you can't be ashamed for other people. Still, the fact that nobody connected with this assault on the craft and art of cooking, and the ability of humans to learn, is experiencing profound shame may be what's most upsetting.

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