Heroes update: NBC schedules a full night of episodes Monday night (and Wednesday night there's a new Friday Night Lights)

Awhile back, Mags explained why she and her husband have become devoted watchers of NBC's action-adventure-mystery-fantasy extravaganza Heroes. Monday night, as the networks make a final gasp before being forced to open the vaults and trickle out some new programming, NBC is turning its entire prime time over to three episodes, before introducing a new episode next week.

Meanwhile, NBC has moved, Friday Night Lights, one of my picks among its impressive batch of rookie dramatic series (crowned, of course, by Studio 60), to Wednesday. Last week it too got the back-to-back-to-back episode treatment, with the last three episodes that have been shown. This Wednesday a new episode appears in the new time slot.
[Just because NBC's promo people put out dull, moronic photos like this one, don't think that Friday Night Lights is either dull or moronic. (If you want to make a wild guess about the NBC promo people, be my guest.) Here we see Connie Britton, Kyle Chandler and Aimee Teegarden as the Taylors--Dillon High guidance counselor Tami, Dillon Panthers football coach Eric and Dillon sophomore Julie.]

LUGAR ON FOX THIS MORNING SEEMED TO FEEL CHEERY THAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL KEEP THE BUSH REGIME'S PSYCHO TENDENCIES IN CHECK

With Bush Regime hacks like McCain and Lieberman running around like chickens without heads squawking for escalation and "one more shot" and "surges," saner heads-- on both sides of the aisle-- are eager to get Bush and Cheney and their cowboy crew to start abiding by constitutional restraints on their activities. This morning Indiana Republican Dick Lugar, respected outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Bush that he either starts taking Congress'-- and the American people's-- concerns about his bizarre and disastrous policies serious or... well, it sounded like he was saying that even if the Republican rubber stamp Congress let him do whatever he wanted, a new day has dawned. And that day could be an ugly one for the Bush Regime.

"'[I]n the past, the administration has been inclined not to disregard Congress but to not take Congress very seriously. I think this time Congress has to be taken seriously.' If Bush ignores Congress, Lugar said he should expect 'a lot of hearings, a lot of study, a lot of criticism,' and 'demands for subpoenas.'" It doesn't sound like Lugar is going to have Bush's back in the event of all this coming to pass either, does it?

Another Republican who's about had it with Bush is barely re-elected New Mexico Congresswoman Heather Wilson. Once the very definition of a Bush rubber stamp on the war, yesterday claimed the situation is not improving and that she opposes sending more American troops into Baghdad. Like Lieberman, she has just come back from a trip to Iraq. Unlike Lieberman, the trip apparently, of belatedly, opened her eyes to the catastrophic proportions of the Bush policies in the Middle East. She has told people since getting back that the McCain/Lieberman "surge" strategy (escalation) is a big mistake and that it will be counterproductive.

"There is no question that the situation in Iraq is very dangerous and not improving, particularly in Baghdad with respect to the sectarian violence... I don't believe that increasing U.S. forces in Baghdad in the way and size being discussed-- with a temporary surge of between 10,000 and 40,000 troops-- would secure the city. I think it would be the wrong way to go. At this point we cannot do for the Iraqis what the Iraqis will not do for themselves. They have to stand up and take the lead with respect to sectarian violence with respect to Sunni and Shia."

She was pessimistic after he meetings with Iraqi government officials and says the [puppet] regime there is unlikely to be able to salvage the situation. "The central government is, frankly, weak. The police are infiltrated by militias, and there are elements of the government that are loyal to different factions rather than to the government itself... We need a hard-nosed assessment of what we need, not what we wish. Sometimes I think our national objectives in Iraq-- including by our president-- are described in pretty broad terms. I want Iraqi people to live in a free and democratic society, but that's not our military mission there... that's an aspiration, that's not a vital national interest for the United States."

Of the 5 members of New Mexico's congressional delegation, only one still supports Bush and is gung-ho on the Bush-McCain-Lieberman escalation plans: Steve Pearce, an extremist and reactionary as well as a rubber stamp warmonger. Pearce's district sprawls over the rural southern half of the state and-- big surprise-- includes Roswell.


UPDATE: CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS SCRAMBLE TO STAKE OUT POSITIONS ON IRAQ

Not that many Republicans are supporting the Bush/McCain/Lieberman call for escalation in Iraq, the so-called "surge" strategy. Dead enders and die-hard rubber stampers like the aforementioned Steve Pearce are still sticking with Bush "but the proposition generates far less enthusiasm among rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom must face the voters again in 2008, presenting a potential obstacle for Bush as he hones the plan, according to lawmakers, aides and congressional analysts." Not that many have gone as far as Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith in referring to Bush policies as possibly "criminal," but 2 endangered Republican senators up for re-election in 2008, Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have both come out against the McCain/Lieberman proposals to send in more troops.

Even far right extremists and heretofore bloodthirsty yahoos like Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are making their continued support for Bush's policies conditional. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham is one of the few GOP senators up for re-election is 2008 to have come out-- not of his closet, but in support of the McCain/Lieberman escalation plan. Most, like Boehner, Sununu and even McConnell have their wet fingers to the wind.

SLOW NEWS DAY: NANCY GRACE, REPUBLICAN CONGRESSLOON TED POE, BRITNEY SPEARS AND PARIS HILTON... OH AND K-FED

I'm usually successful at making sure the worst elements of plastic celebrity "culture" are kept as far from me as is humanly possible. Sometimes when I go visit my pal Rus he likes to switch from TV station to TV station and through Rus I've been exposed to some of the most grotesque aspects of our celebrity worshipping culture. Last night, however, I have only myself to blame. I've been out of the country for 5 weeks and I've forgotten where the TV stations are on the dial, not that I watch that many. But where's the History Channel, Comedy Central, MSNBC? I started flipping around and I was confronted by one of the most unfortunate-looking women I had ever seen, unfortunate-looking and with a really nasty personality. I had first seen her on Rus' TV and he said watching her, Nancy Grace, has the fascination of watching a multi-vehicle pile-up on the NYS Thruway. I was about to move on when Grace, who if I recall, interviews celebrity criminals, addressed a question to "Congressman Poe."


Congressman Poe? The braying right wing nutcase from Houston? That might be worth watching. Turns out Nancy Grace was interviewing Congressman Ted Poe about whether or not Britney Spears-- pictured ad nauseum with that skanky Paris Hilton (proving beyond doubt in NancyGraceWorld that she's an unfit mother)-- should/would get custody of her and K-Fed's 2 unfortunate sons. Maybe they explained Poe's expertise in this matter before I tuned in but he felt neither K-Fed nor Brit were fit parents but that she'll get the kinds because "mothers always do." Checking on Poe's record of accomplishments as a congressman, I noticed he has the absolute worst voting record of anyone in his batshitcrazy party, scoring a perfect zero, in 8 legislative areas: Education, Humanities & the Arts, Fair Taxation, Family Planning, Housing, Human Rights & Civil Liberties, Justice For All: Civil & Criminal, Labor Rights and War & Peace. I suppose you could cobble that stellar record together and come up with a reason to invite Ted Poe on your TV show to talk about the Britney Spears/K-Fed divorce. Perhaps Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh pulled out at the last minute and Grace needed just anybody to fill in. Or maybe she invited him because Poe used to be a judge. And Poe could have thought it would be as good as, or even better than, being on the Ali G Show or the Colbert Report.


Whatever the case, it's hard to imagine that his constituents think this is the best way for the congressman to spend his time. Of course, what do I know? I can't imagine anyone ever watching the Nancy Grace show or watching anything to do with Britney Spears, K-Fed or Paris Hilton... or voting for Ted Poe.

BUSH'S NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: MORE AIDS FOR THE THIRD WORLD AND ACCELERATED DESTRUCTION OF EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT

Probably in the last few days all my suggestions that Saddam's execution, albeit maybe a little bit barbaric and primitive, was a great idea and should start a trend for tyrants, especially George Bush, gave you the idea that I think Bush is a particularly evil fellow. Well, I never met the man and whatever I think about that doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It isn't Bush's personality traits that condemn him but the actions of his Regime, actions based on the extremist far right philosophy that guides him in all things.

To take it down to its simplest, there is a basic difference in governance between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats believe in the positive good of collective action. Republicans don't. Republicans believe in greed and selfishness-- "what's mine is mine and fuck you"-- and don't want to pay taxes for the "common good." They also believe that the unseen hand of "the market" will right all wrongs. Basically this is why they have never been fit to govern and why they are still not fit to govern. In fact, under Bush, it's much worse than ever before.

Example: notwithstanding a much diminished gaggle of fanatic psychos and corporate tools like Oklahoma nutcase James Inhofe, even many, if not most. Republicanelecteds now recognize that the debate on Global Warming and Climate Change is over and that Greenland and Antarctica are indeed melting and sea levels are rising and weather patterns are changing. And that it was brought on by men. Late in 2003 McCain introduced a very tepid bill to pair back carbon dioxide levels caused by industrial pollution. It was defeated 55-43. The Bush Regime said McCain's bill would have seriously harmed the U.S. economy. That wasn't based on a study; just a reflex. Cleaning up meat packing procedures once elicited the same response from the GOP. It's what they're all about. One kook, currently being considered for the top job at the University of Missouri, Senator Kit Bond told his colleagues that the bill would cripple the U.S. economy. "Now is not the time to place more burden on our families and our communities," he said.

For a Republican, if something has even a short term negative impact on a business' bottom line-- regardless of the "common good"-- the economy is being crippled and Armageddon is nigh. If business practices are destroying the fabric of society or even planet earth itself, they're sure the unseen hand will be by any minute to fix everything up.

Yesterday David Sirota sent me a story he had worked on about how this attitude is boding very badly for Aids victims in the third world. The Bush Regime is doing its best to keep it quiet but, with the help of shameless former Republican congressman and corporate whore (he's not a former corporate whore or former Republican; he's still those) Billy Tauzen they are bullying Thailand, a country with a significant Aids problem, to back off from licensing generic medicines that could save the lives of thousands of people but might reduce the profits of some of Bush's and the Republicans' most "generous" campaign contributors.

This particular effort is making pharmaceutical giant Merck angry, because if Thailand moves forward, it will be producing cheaper versions of drugs Merck regularly profiteers off of. It doesn't seem to matter that this move could save tens of thousands of lives. It doesn't seem to matter to the Bush administration that Thailand is merely exercising its specific rights under the very same "free" trade agreements it publicly champions-- agreements that drug companies like Merck have used their clout pushing. All that seems to matter is that Merck has given millions to the Republican Party over the last decade, and now its time for a little payback. Thus, instead of say, our government's Centers for Disease Control publicly congratulating Thailand for its aggressive moves to stamp out this plague that presents a global security threat, we get our government's trade officials demanding Thailand back off.

Sirota points out that the Bush Regime has been using the legalisms in NAFTA and similar trade agreements to prevent other countries from taking similar action to prevent this plague from decimating their populations. He points to Brazil and it's hard for me to imagine that Brazil, a country that positively loathes Bush and everything about him, would be bamboozled by his regime. On the other hand, they've pulled similar stunts right here in the U.S. "In 2004, Abbott Laboratories jacked up the price of its key AIDS drug Norvir by 400 percent in one year, despite the drug being developed with $3.2 million of federal money. When Abbott faced questions about its move, the company's CEO said “Abbott is absolutely committed to ensuring that ... not a single patient goes without Norvir because of the re-pricing.” Yet he refused to reverse the price hike. Activists then petitioned the government to invoke a 1980 law that authorizes other companies to manufacture lower-priced, generic copies of taxpayer-financed drugs to address emergency "health or safety needs." Not surprisingly, the petition was rejected by the Bush administration. And perhaps the most middle-finger-giving moment of all, here was our government 'valuing life' by making sure the much-touted Global AIDS Fund would have its purchasing power watered down by holding it hostage to high prices: Within months of Bush appointing Eli Lilly's former CEO to head the Global AIDS fund, the White House said the fund's money had to be used only on expensive brand-name drugs, instead of cheaper generics, thus severely weakening the fund's impact."

This doesn't promise to be a very happy new year for millions of victims of the Bush Regime and their philosophy of Greed and Selfishness. Maybe some can hold on until New Years, 2009.

Quote of the day: Thank goodness, there'll always be a Turkmenistan. Now what do you suppose the guy on the right in this Reuters photo is saying?

I didn't exactly read about what's going on in Turkmenistan, but did you see this photo? It was in black and white in Saturday's Times ("Turkmen Exile Urges Interim President to Step Down"). Here it is in color (click on it to enlarge it):The guy in the middle is the interim president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. If you actually clicked-to-enlarge, doesn't it look to you as if the guy on the right (i.e., to Gurbanguly's left) is saying something out of the corner of his mouth? Wouldn't you figure it has to be one of the following:

(1) "No, no, my dear Gurbanguly, of course you're Moe. All I'm saying is, I'm Larry, and the guy on the other end (Jesus, what the fuck is his name? even I can't remember more than four or five syllables of it) is Curly."

(2) "I think we're okay, Gurbanguly. I distinctly heard him say, 'Simon says, right hand over left nipple.' But if he gives us trouble, can't you just have him shot?"

(3) "If that's what you really plan to wear to Olympus Fashion Week, can't you at least find a different hat?"

(4) "You like this smile? I learned it from photos of the American president Bush. I talked to the great political tsar James Carville, and he says that with my looks and charisma, and the right amount of money, if I can just pick up some of the common touch, I would be a natural for the no. 2 spot on your ticket."

Okay, If you've just gotta know what's going on in Turkmenistan--

The actual photo caption in the Times was: "Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, center, Turkmenistan’s interim president, listening to the national anthem at a nominating session on Tuesday."

And here's the start of C. J. Chivers' story:

MOSCOW, Dec. 29--A leader of the Turkmen opposition in exile demanded Friday that the interim president of Turkmenistan step down and allow for democratic elections in the authoritarian Central Asian nation. But there were signs of disorganization and discord in the opposition ranks.

The demand, by Nurmuhkammed Khanomov, leader of the exiled Republican Party of Turkmenistan, was almost certain to be ignored. Interim leaders in Turkmenistan have been consolidating their hold on the country since the death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the Turkmen president, on Dec. 21.

Turkmenistan, an arid nation of five million, sits atop some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world and is strategically located beside Afghanistan and Iran.

A former Soviet republic, it had been led until last week by Mr. Niyazov, an autocrat who gave himself the name Turkmenbashi, or Head of All Turkmen, and built an elaborate personality cult. . . ."

ONE RIGHT WING DEMOCRAT DERAILS THE WHOLE PARTY IN PA-- MEET THOMAS CALTAGIRONE, REACTIONARY AND TRAITOR

You may have noticed that sometimes I talk about "faithless Democrats," folks who get elected as Democrats but then vote with the Republicans on important, even crucial, issues. Last year we did our best to disrupt the happy lives of some of the worst of this lot: Holy Joe Lieberman (the worst of the worst), Jane Harman, Henry Cuellar, Al Wynn and I had plenty of unpleasantness to say about Democrats who generally support corporate legislation over the interests of workers and consumers, like the two awful Senators Nelsons and the half dozen Democratic House members who most consistently voted the GOP line, Gene Taylor (MS), Dan Boren (OK), Bud Cramer (AL) Collin Peterson (MN; just rewarded for his treachery and reactionary politics with the chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee), Ike Skelton (MO) and Mike McIntyre (NC).

But it turns out there are worse Democrats than these. On election day the news from Pennsylvania was really good, really, really good. Democrats, independents and moderates got together and ousted far right senatorial dingbat Rick Santorum, as well as 4 Republican congressmen (the most of any state): Melissa Hart, Crazy Curt Weldon, Mike Fitzpatrick, and sexual predator Don Sherwood. Meanwhile incumbent Democratic governor Ed Rendell swamped GOP challenger Lynn Swann 60/40 and Rendell's coattails helped the Democrats gain a one vote majority in the State House, their first since 1994.

Enter Thomas Caltagirone (D-Reading), a spoiler and the ultimate faithless Democrat. Caltagirone is reactionary and a vicious homophobe who has no place in the Democratic Party to begin with. He's announced that he's casting his vote next week for Republican John Perzel for Speaker, in effect throwing all the committee chairs and all the power in the House to the Republicans. The anti-choice Caltagirone had previously joined forces with Perzel when they passed the violently unpopular legislative pay-raise last year.

All the Pennsylvania blogs are going bonkers over this and several have vowed to find and help finance a primary opponent for Caltagirone (if he has the gumption to even run again, which is doubtful). This is heartbreaking for Pennsylvania Democrats, not just because control of one of the 2 houses of the state legislature would have made it infinitely easier for Rendell to move his agenda but also because Perzel is widely considered the most loathsome person in state politics. DWT will help.


UPDATE: HALF A DOZEN REFORM-MINDED REPUBLICANS TO THE RESCUE?

Better than a partridge in a pear tree, it looks like Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese may get the Speaker's job afterall. Six Republicans, who are as disgusted with Perzel as most Pennsylvanians, have announced that they will not vote for him despite Caltagirone's treachery. (Meanwhile Perzel is trying to lure more Democrats like Caltagirone with promises of chairmanships... what a mad house!)

ELECTORAL TARGETING: THE 2008 HOUSE RACES

Just a brief word on primaries for faithless Democrats like Ellen Tauscher and Rahm Emanuel and then I won't mention them for the rest of this story. The beauty, though, in primaries is that targeting can be done based substantially, or even entirely, on the record of the incumbent. In other words, if the incumbent gets elected as a Democrat but then votes like a Republican, Democrats have the right duty to hold his or, in Tauscher's case, her, feet to the fire. The $20 million that it cost Holy Joe Lieberman to retain his "safe" seat should serve as a warning to Tauscher-type Democrats. Judging by her actions since the primary, one Tauscher-type Democrat, Jane Harman, has learned a valuable lesson in politics and I think we can expect better things from her because of Marcy Winograd's muscular primary challenge.

Unfortunately, in targeting for the general election, the degree of odiousness of the incumbent is all too often not the determining factor of whether or not to target a seat. The reality of electibility takes precedence. Believe me, it's purely coincidental when the seat of an especially hideous Republican winds up an electoral priority for the DCCC or DSCC. That's what made Jerry McNerney's race against Dirty Dick Pombo so important and that was the one saving grace of the victory by anti-choice Emanuel puppet Heath Shuler over Charlie Taylor.


Late in October I was working on a piece I never got to finish: "The Dirtiest Dozen Republicans in The House." It was meant to be more than just another list of the worst of the worst. I started by noting how all the Democrats seriously targeted by the GOP for the midterm elections were the Democrats who voted most frequently with Republicans on substantive issues. They' didn't go after the liberals, the populists and the progressives who they can't stop screaming about. They targeted the Democrats who have supported Bush and who have most frequently rubber stamped his policies and gone along with his anti-human, corporatist agenda. In this huge anti-Bush year, which augured so well for Democrats, Democratic incumbents reckoned to be endangered included reactionaries like Charlie Melancon (LA), Jim Marshall (GA), Chet Edwards (TX), Leonard Boswell (IA), John Barrow (GA), Alan Mollohan (WV), John Salazar (CO), Melissa Bean (IL), John Spratt (SC). By voting records, outside of housekeeping tallies, these incumbents are hardly Democrats at all. But that's where the GOP put it's money. Conservatives in Georgia, for example, who donated money to the GOP saw their contributions paying for partisan campaigns against Jim Marshall and John Barrow, Democrats who generally vote very much how Georgia conservatives want them to vote, while not a red cent went into defeating a Georgia liberal whose voting record drives them crazy-- John Lewis-- who they didn't even bother to oppose.

Now what about the Republican incumbents being targeted by Democrats? In the true sense of the term, there are no longer any moderate Republicans, but of the dozen least fascist-oriented Republican incumbents-- ones who occasionally vote in the interests of their constituents instead of for corporate interests-- only 4 were seriously targeted: Chris Shays (CT), Michael Fiztpatrick (PA), Nancy Johnson (CT), and Rob Simmons (CT). (All but Shays were defeated.) Way on the extreme end of the political spectrum, however, where it gets hard to sort out who's a conservative and who's an actual fascist, quite a few lively races were under way that were meant to oust some of the most extreme hate-mongers and right wing fanatics in Congress. Among the worst Republicans who had serious challenges to face in November are Mean Jean Schmidt (OH), Chris Chocola (IN), John Kline (MN), Jim Ryun (KS), Marilyn Musgrave (CO), Thelma Drake (VA), Michael Sodrel (IN), Barbara Cubin (WY), John Doolittle (CA), Dirty Dick Pombo (CA), J.D. Hayworth (AZ), Dennis Hastert (IL), Robin Hayes (NC), Charles Taylor (NC). Six of these extremist ideologues went down to ignominious defeat.

Still, the vast majority of far right fanatics in the Republican House caucus, including some of the absolute most bigoted and most corrupt, got off scott free with virtually no serious challenge. Look, for example at the list of the 33 unreconstructed neoConfederates who voted against renewing the Voting Rights Act this year: Richard Baker (LA), Gresham Barrett (SC), Roscoe Bartlett (MD), Joe Barton (TX), Jo Bonner (AL), Dan Burton (IN), John Campbell (CA), Michael Conaway (TX), Nathan Deal(GA), John Doolittle (CA), John Duncan (TN), Terry Everett (AL), Virginia Foxx (NC), Trent Franks (AZ), Scott Garrett (NJ), Phil Gingrey (GA), Joel Hefley (CO), Jeb Hensarling (TX), Wally Herger (CA), Sam Johnson (TX), Steve King (IA), John Linder (GA), Patrick McHenry (NC), Gary Miller (CA), Charlie Norwood (GA), Ron Paul (TX), Tom Price (GA), Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Edward Royce (CA), John Shadegg (AZ), Tom Tancredo (CO), Mac Thornberry (TX), and Lynn Westmoreland (GA). Although grassroots Democrats supported vibrant campaigns against Doolittle and Tancredo (and against the retiring Hefley's even worse replacement), the other 30 on this list of human scum had almost nothing to worry about. And that doesn't even go to the virtually unchallenged kingpins at the helm of the whole Republican culture of corruption-- Roy Blunt, John Boehner, Don Young, Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter...

So who are Democratic targeters zeroing in on for 2008? The first rule of thumb, after watching for retirements, is to look for seats where the Republicans won by 5% or less. Just going by the numbers that would put 40 Republican-held seats into contention. Seven of them are also freshmen, traditionally considered to be an incumbent's most vulnerable year since they haven't had time to establish themselves as institutions in their districts, delivering bacon to the locals in return for political fealty above and beyond ideology. The seven freshmen who won tight races are Vern Buchanan (FL-13; who didn't really even win and may not be seated), Bill Sali (ID-01), Peter Roskam (IL-06), Tim Walberg (MI-07), Michele Bachman (MN-06), Adrian Smith (NE-03), and Dean Heller (NV-02).

Several grassroots and netroots favorites nearly unseated Republican incumbents and know they can count on no-strings-attached support if they try again. This puts 19 Republicans from the under 55% list in jeopardy: John Doolittle (CA-04), Brian Bilbray (CA-50), Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04), Michael Rogers (MI-08), Joe Knollenberg (MI-09), Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11)-- Michigan will definitely be a battleground state in '08-- Michele Bachman (MN-06), Adrian Smith (NE-03), Mike Ferguson (NJ-07), Jim Walsh (NY-25), Randy Kuhl (NY-29), Robin Hayes (NC-08), Mean Jean Schmidt (OH-02), Deborah Pryce (OH-15), Phil English (PA-03), Jim Gerlach (PA-06), Thelma Drake (VA-02), Dave Reichert (WA-08), and Barbara Cubin (WY-AL).

Several of these Republicans won with less than 50% of the vote, making them particularly interesting as targets-- including Doolittle (49%), Musgrave (46%), Buchanan (officially it was 50/50 but the voting irregularities were so blatantly egregious that this race should be re-run), Jon Porter (NV-03; 48%), Ferguson (49%), Heather Wilson (NM-01; 50/50 with less than 900 votes separating the 2 candidates), Hayes (even closer-- 50/50 with less than 400 votes separating the two), Pryce (50/50 with around 1,000 vote disparity), and Cubin (48%).

The other Republicans who managed to stay in office with 55% or less of the vote were Richard Renzi (AZ-01), Chris Shays (CT-04), Dick Keller (FL-08), Mark Kirk (IL-10), Jerry Weller (IL-11), Mark Souder (IN-03), Geoff Davis (KY-04), Lee Terry (NE-02), Scott Garrett (NJ-05), Tom Reynolds (NY-26), Charlie Dent (PA-15), and Mike McCaul (TX-10).

If you go back to the Blue America archive of candidates we raised money for, you'll find several we will be encouraging to run again in 2008, particularly Charlie Brown, either Vic Wulsin or Paul Hackett, John Laesch (who will be ready to run as soon as Planet Denny Hastert announces he's resigning to replace Bush's ex as the new ambassador to Japan), Angie Paccione, Larry Kissell, Tony Trupiano, Eric Massa, and Steven Porter. Personally I feel we made tremendous headway in CA-25 and CA-45 with Robert Rodriguez and David Roth and I'd like to see them both continue to build a Democratic base in those districts. (And my fingers are crossed that a close watch on incumbent Democrats Al Wynn, Tim Mahoney, and the aforementioned Jane Harman, will either yield acceptable behavior or fresh primary challenges from Donna Edwards, David Lutrin and Marcy Winograd.

LIEBERMAN FOUND SOME GUNG HO COLONELS WHO WANT TO EXPAND THE WAR. BUT THE GENERALS AND THE SOLDIERS SAY IT'S ALL OVER

The other day Holy Joe Lieberman offered cover for the Bush Regime's intention to ignore the bipartisan nonpartisan recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, even though that committee is made up almost entirely of fellow conservatives, corporatists and militarists. But McCain and Lieberman are staking out a position for themselves for 2008-- they think of it as the "grown ups;" others call it the "senile." With virtually all the generals diplomatically telling Washington the war can't be won militarily and that the occupation should end, Lieberman went to the Middle East for 10 days and found himself some ambitious colonels who want to throw some more fresh meat into the grinder. Lieberman, Cheney, Bush and McCain were overjoyed.

They were probably less happy today when their moment of delicious, bloody revenge was interrupted by reports that support for the Bush Regime's military adventures among active duty troops is diminishing... rapidly. According to a Military Times poll, only about a third of American service members approve of Bush's handling on the war. "The American military-- once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war-- has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory. For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it."

Optimism about Bush's job as Commander in Chief-- at least in regard to Iraq-- has fallen from a high of 83% in 2004 to 50%-- with only 35% of our soldiers, airman, marines and seamen saying they approve of the way Bush is handling the Iraq War (down from a high of 63%). "Just as telling, in this year's poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today-- 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll."

A lack of any real progress, coupled with more and more fatalities and casualties have had a profound impact on the trust the military has in Bush and his Regime. Being cheated and treated like shit by AT&T, Halliburton and other GOP war profiteers is starting to take a toll as well. Support for the Republican Party among the military has also dropped sharply. "In the three previous polls, nearly 60 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Republicans, which is about double the population as a whole. But in this year's poll, only 46 percent of the military respondents said they were Republicans." More and more service members are identifying themselves as political independents.

REPUBLICANS IN KANSAS OUT FOR BLOOD-- EACH OTHERS

Yesterday Ken wrote about the fracture inside the Republican Party in Virginia, one that promises to be valuable to Democrats desperately seeking more leverage for the reapportionment battle coming up in 2010. There's an even more vicious Republican civil war going on in Kansas, one that has been building all year and has already had some significant dividends for Kansas Democrats.

In November mainstream conservatives and moderates abandoned the Kansas GOP in droves, defeating far right extremist kooks like Attorney General Phill Kline and Congressman Jim Ryun-- "and the ideological wars inside the Kansas Republican Party show no sign of ending... 'I think the divide between the moderates and conservatives is deepening rather than closing,' said Kansas State University professor Joseph Aistrup. 'This type of politics is continuing into our future, at least another four years'... Against that backdrop, Kline made headlines with his assault on abortion clinics while the Board of Education [several of whom also went down to defeat] drew worldwide attention -- and some ridicule -- for its endorsement of challenges to firmly established Darwinian theory.

Interestingly, one of the most far right and batshit crazy Republicans in the federal government, Kansas lunatic fringe Senator Sam Brownback, has just announced he wants to run for President (of the United States). Scores of mainstream Republican elected officials have switched parties and become Democrats to escape the opprobrium of being associated with fanatics like Kline, Ryun and Brownback. The incoming Attorney General, Paul Morrison, and the incoming Lieutenant Governor, Mark Parkinson (a former State Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party) started 2006 as Republicans and ended it as Democrats. The vast majority of Kansas voters, embraced them as well as other ex-Republican moderates.

In one of the strongest examples of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy-- an utter repudiation of the Inside-the-Beltway/Rahm Emanuel trageting approach-- the Democratic Party re-elected popular Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius, ousted the 5 term Ryun and defeated right-wingers like Kline all over the state. Seven new state Reps are Democrats, including Annie Tietze, right in the backyard of far right psycho "Rev" Fred Phelps.

SHOULD BUSH BE HUNG TOO?

It looks like when you wake up tomorrow morning Bush will have had Saddam Hussein executed, hung. Brutal revenge? Primitive? Barbaric? Yeah. But I'm not crying over Saddam's carcass. The poor and the powerless and their innocent children get killed everyday as a result of decisions made by the wealthy and powerful. It's nice when ruthless political leaders take it in the neck. It happens far too rarely; it should happen far more often. I would hope Saddam's fate would put some fear into the Putins and Bushes of the world. It won't though. The question the members of the DWT team have been debating all day is whether or not Bush should also be hung. No one doubts that Bush deserves severe punishment for his gross crimes. Those who don't believe in the death penalty, however, oppose Bush ever facing execution.

Me, I've always been a big death penalty fan. Even when I was a kid I was all for it. I was so "liberal" on everything else, but I just loved that death penalty. In high school I even won a small scholarship from the UN for debating that point of view. The catch for me is that I feel our Justice system is so utterly imperfect that it is incapable of making a fair and certain decision meriting the death penalty. So I oppose it in practice as strongly as I encourage it in theory. In the case of Bush and his accomplices, though, I'd make an exception. I don't think anyone else at DWT would. Mags mentioned to me that she would rather see a long drawn out life of torment and humiliation. Along similar lines Ken said Bush should be forced to earn an honest living for the rest of his life with no assistance from any of his family's friends.

Looks like the Brits and the rest of the Europeans aren't too pleased with Bush's execution-happy-demeanor in regard to Saddam.

I pointed out that I might be convinced to be satisfied with the long-drawn out torment-- if I could make sure the person supervising was a practiced and venal torturer. But that is so uncivilized. I used to go target shooting, although I haven't in a couple of years. I enjoyed it. I bet there are a lot of people who would pay a lot of money to be on a firing squad if Bush, a huge death penalty fan like me, were tried and found guilty and sentenced to death.

But I'm jumping so far ahead of myself. Let's see Henry Waxman and John Conyers get started with the investigations in the next few weeks before we start figuring out the proper method of execution.


UPDATE: ONE TYRANT DOWN, MANY TO GO-- OH, AND BY THE WAY, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BIN-LADEN?


CNN, al-Hurra, al-Arabiya, Fox "News" (but they're so ideologically tainted that they're not even remotely reliable for reality-based news), Reuters, and both the Washington and Huffington Post are all reporting that it happened. Yes, Saddam is rotting in that special ring of hell reserved for politicians-- and the New York Times reports the great debate among TV news execs about how graphic the pictures they show of the execution should be. Martin Lewis at HuffPo has the best explanation for why Bush did it.


UPDATE: AND NOW NEITHER RUMSFELD, CHENEY NOR EITHER BUSH WILL EVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SADDAM STANDING UP AT A TRIAL-- ONE OF THEIRS-- AND SPILLING THE BEANS


Bob Scheer, no Saddam Hussein fan, doesn't have a very sanguine view of the circumstances of Saddam's trial to begin with. "It is a very frightening precedent that the United States can invade a country on false pretenses, depose its leader and summarily execute him without an international trial or appeals process. This is about vengeance, not justice, for if it were the latter the existing international norms would have been observed. The trial should have been overseen by the World Court, in a country that could have guaranteed the safety of defense lawyers, who, in this case, were killed or otherwise intimidated."

But, aside from the usual perceptiveness and brilliance with which Sheer essays tends to be imbued, there is something more here that needs further thought-- how they've now managed to shut Saddam up... permanently. "The irony here is that the crimes for which Saddam Hussein was convicted occurred before the United States, in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, embraced him.  Those crimes were well known to have occurred 15 months before Rumsfeld visited Iraq to usher in an alliance between the United States and Saddam to defeat Iran. The fact is that Saddam Hussein knew a great deal about the United States’ role in Iraq, including deals made with Bush’s father. This rush to execute him had the feel of a gangster silencing the key witness to a crime."


THE LAST UPDATE: DEAD DICTATORS TELL NO TALES

Today historian Robert Fisk published a story in Britain's Independent, "Saddam takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him. (The subtitle is "How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities-- and then made sure he wouldn't squeal.")

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States-- and Britain-- gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support-- given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War-- is dead.

DO AMERICAN CORPORATIONS PUNISH THEIR LESS WELL OFF CUSTOMERS? TAKE A GUESS. (HINT, THE ANSWER HAS 3 LETTERS.)

In theory I don't mind my customer service calls getting routed to a call center in Bangalore. The harsh reality of a cultural divide, though-- when I'm just trying to get something mundane, and annoying to begin with, done-- sometimes drives me up the wall. I have to admit I've fantasized about creating a page of companies that use Americans for customer service and urging people to send a message to corporations by using those companies instead of the ones that make life harder for us with these damn call centers.

Do corporations know how much people hate the call centers? Yesterday I get a strong clue that they do. Having just gotten back from over a month in South America, I went to catch up on some banking business. There was someone new at the counter and-- damn luck-- that's who I got. I prefer the tellers who already know me and my... quirks and minor eccentricities (especially since I don't know my account numbers and have no ATM card). Anyway, the business was easy enough and afterwards the teller informed me that my account qualifies for an upgrade to a CitiGold Account. "What's that?" I asked, suspiciously.

He rattled off the benefits: you get $50 if you maintain a $100,000 balance and you get your own line. "My own line?" I asked, looking around. I hate waiting on lines and I've done my best to figure out which days and what times the bank is most likely to have the worst lines so I can avoid them. Usually it works; but not always. But I never saw a sign saying "CitiGold Line." I eyed him with more suspicion; "Where's the line?" He figured out where I was coming from and quickly corrected me... "No, no... phone line; you get your own exclusive phone number just for CitiGold members. No more Indians."

"No more Indians? Do we get Pakistanis? Uruguayans? What do you mean?" He got right to the point. Their "best customers" (people with a balance of over $100,000) get to talk to real live Americans when they have a customer service problem. Everyone else undergoes call center torture. Another reason to hate corporations.

A SAD LITTLE ADDENDUM

CNN International may not be any good but it's a lot better than the garbage CNN broadcasts in the U.S. While I was in Argentina I saw an international program about the hopes and aspirations for the new year that young people in India were harboring. Oy... do they love those call centers. It's like the best thing going and all these poor kids in villages were talking about their dreams of going to Mumbai and getting a shot at a job in a call center.

Quote of the day: Paul Krugman says the GOP's "revolution" (a) was always based on a lie and (b) has failed but (c) is, alas, far from gone for good

"As long as people like [Dick] Armey [right], Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public's imagination--all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn't deliver. . . .

"In the end, Republicans didn't shrink the government. But they did degrade it. Baghdad and New Orleans are the arrival destinations of a movement based on deep contempt for governance. . . .

"Is that the end for the radical right? Probably not. As a long-suffering civil servant once told me, bad policy ideas are like cockroaches: you can flush them down the toilet, but they keep coming back."

--Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today, "A Failed Revolution"

December 29, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

A Failed Revolution
By PAUL KRUGMAN

After first attempting to deny the scale of last month's defeat, the apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union. What happened, you see, was that the noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington's corrupting ways. And the recent defeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path.

But the truth is that the movement that took power in 1994--a movement that had little to do with true conservatism--was always based on a lie.

The lie is right there in "The Freedom Revolution," the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don't do anything "to help American families with the needs of everyday life," and that "very few American families would notice their disappearance." He goes on to assert that "there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product."

Right. Somehow, I think more than a few families would notice the disappearance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--and those three programs alone account for a majority of nondefense, noninterest spending. The truth is that the government delivers services and security that people want. Yes, there's some waste--just as there is in any large organization. But there are no big programs that are easy to cut.

As long as people like Mr. Armey, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public's imagination--all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn't deliver.

That's why government by the radical right has been an utter failure even on its own terms: the government hasn't shrunk. Federal outlays other than interest payments and defense spending are a higher percentage of G.D.P. today than they were when Mr. Armey wrote his book: 14.8 percent in fiscal 2006, compared with 13.8 percent in fiscal 1995.

Unable to make good on its promises, the G.O.P., like other failed revolutionary movements, tried to maintain its grip by exploiting its position of power. Friends were rewarded with patronage: Jack Abramoff [left] began building his web of corruption almost as soon as Republicans took control. Adversaries were harassed with smear campaigns and witch hunts: Congress spent six years and many millions of dollars investigating a failed land deal, and Bill Clinton was impeached over a consensual affair.

But it wasn't enough. Without 9/11, the Republican revolution would probably have petered out quietly, with the loss of Congress in 2002 and the White House in 2004. Instead, the atrocity created a window of opportunity: four extra years gained by drowning out unfavorable news with terror alerts, starting a gratuitous war, and accusing Democrats of being weak on national security.

Yet the Bush administration failed to convert this electoral success into progress on a right-wing domestic agenda. The collapse of the push to privatize Social Security recapitulated the failure of the Republican revolution as a whole. Once the administration was forced to get specific about the details, it became obvious that private accounts couldn't produce something for nothing, and the public's support vanished.

In the end, Republicans didn't shrink the government. But they did degrade it. Baghdad and New Orleans are the arrival destinations of a movement based on deep contempt for governance.

Is that the end for the radical right? Probably not. As a long-suffering civil servant once told me, bad policy ideas are like cockroaches: you can flush them down the toilet, but they keep coming back. Many of the ideas that failed in the Bush years had previously failed in the Reagan years. So there's no reason to assume they're gone for good.

Indeed, it appears that loss of power and the ensuing lack of accountability is liberating right-wingers to lie yet again: since last month's election, I've noticed a number of Social Security privatizers propounding the same free-lunch falsehoods that the Bush administration had to abandon in the face of demands that it present an actual plan.

Still, the Republican revolution of 1994 is over. And not a moment too soon.

Here's a site for anyone interested in seeing how the rest of the world sees the world, including us

By Mags

Lately I have been scouring the net for varying perspectives on American foreign policy (do we have one?) and the world's reactions to Bush's handling of the Iraq war. Like everyone else, I am mystified by what I hear coming from the WH on a daily basis. My usual habit is to piece together news from these perspectives and combine that with what I can understand of human behavior and try to make some sense (even if it is a twisted kind of sense) of what I see and hear. As you well know, this is an ongoing challenge.

However, my purpose in this post is not to lay out for you any methodology to my own mad rantings, but to draw your attention to a web site that is worth visiting. The website is Watching America. You are gonna like it:

http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

Watching America helps us to view ourselves through the eyes of others across the globe. The site is very accessible, easy on the eyes, organized and attractive, with an easy-to-use format. When you visit, you will find the news sorted by region. And in the right-hand margin you will find domestic sources and resources. There are even some MP3 downloads of interviews with Watching America co-founder Robin Koerner.

Koerner and William Kern bring a world of reporting and opinion to your screen. Give them a look-see. (If you have used the site in the past but were frustrated by updates interrupting your reading, you should check it out again. It is now very user-friendly.)

The bitter geographical and ideological divide in the Virginia GOP seems worth keeping an eye on

"Secret Talks Seek Unity For Feuding Va. GOP" (in today's Washington Post) sounds like just a local story. But maybe this bitter split among Virginia Republicans--an ideological divide that is reflected both in a north-south geographic split and in the very different Republicans who dominate the State Senate and House leaderships--is of a kind we need to pay attention to. (The photo is of State Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell, about whom more below.)

If I I've got it right, the immediate issue that has caused intraparty gridlock, if not open warfare, is legislative inaction toward meeting the state's increasingly urgent transportation needs. But this is a stand-in for larger philosophical issues. On the one hand are Republicans, especially in northern Virginia, which has become increasingly hospitable to Democratic candidates, and especially among State Senate Republicans, who are trying to find ways to meet those transportation needs, which means a need to find more money, which all but inescapably means more taxes, as against those, especially in the still more conservative southern part of the state, and especially among Republcans in the House of Delegates, who are unalterably opposed to taxing-and-spending.

The resulting perception is of Washington-style gridlock that two Democratic governors have used to blame the GOP and that has helped Democrats gain six seats in the [state] House in the past three years.

The rift is also fostered by personal dislike. A GOP senator once called House Republican budget negotiators "dumb as rocks." House GOP leaders often deride their Senate counterparts as arrogant, patronizing and mean.

Sources in both camps expressed some optimism that the talks have helped. But getting both sides to compromise after more than five years at each other's throats is proving difficult. No agreements have been reached, they said.

"It's like marriage counseling, and transportation is the adulterous affair," said one Republican familiar with the meetings but not authorized to talk about them. "If you don't deal with that first, nothing else matters."

What's interesting is that the split has become so bitter that these talks between the factions apparently have actually had to be kept secret. Many of the participants' participation is merely alleged, the alleged participants refusing even to confirm that they have participated in talks aimed at bridging the divide.

Attorney General McDonnell is apparently the driving force behind the "secret talks," though even he won't confirm that such a thing is going on. His interest in bridging the party gap isn't surprising, since he's clearly preparing to run for governor in 2009, and you don't have to be a political Einstein to see that the way things are going for the Virginia GOP, the climate is going to be increasingly inhospitable for statewide Republican candidates.

How exactly this affects us on the other side of the aisle and of the political spectrum, I'm not quite sure. I guess we should be rooting for the neanderthals, on the theory that they will drive more and more moderate Republicans out of the fold? But if that happens, won't they be fairly conservative Democrats?

I don't know. I just know that this is a scenario that's likely to be played out, in one form or another, among Republicans in many parts of the country. And I think it's worth paying attention.

"This country has gone to hell on a rocket sled since the pardon," says Noah--and then there's Jerry Ford's work on the Warren Commission

Our friend Noah passes on these thoughts about the passing of President Ford:

I've been away from my computer machine for several days and here I am catching up at 1:30 am.

I've been struck by a couple of things about the general media's coverage of former President Gerald Ford's death:

(1) Despite how it may or may not have come about, I have always felt that the pardon of Richard Nixon was one of the worst things that ever happened to the social fabric of this country. I have not seen or heard anyone in the media address this other than to spew forth some mindless talking point cliche about healing, which, in reality is the opposite of what the pardon helped bring about.

You see, it has always seemed to me that the pardon of Nixon sent a horrible message to all, particularly younger, Americans. That message was and is that it's perfectly OK for anyone, even the person whose job it is to protect the Constitution, to commit high crimes and misdemeanors, and get away with it. The pardon set a very poor example.

In any group of mammals, no matter how small or large, the Alpha sets the tone, defining what is permissable. In this case, Gerald Ford was the Alpha. The result of the pardon has been a generation of people growing up with a different view of right and wrong, social responsibility, and crime and punishment. On a smaller scale, it's like a kid growing up with a crook for a father setting the family example and then having people wonder whether the kid will grow up to be a thief, a used car dealer setting back the odometers, a counterfeiter, or whatever. There have always been people who twisted ethics. Sometimes it even seems that that is taught in law school.

However, I am of a certain age where I have seen the very way in which people conduct themselves change. Post pardon, things got a lot looser. Locked doors and car alarms became a necessity of modern life after the pardon, not during the so-called wild and crazy 60s.

(2) The other thing that I haven't seen or heard from our media parrots is any mention of the fact that Gerald Ford was a member of the Warren JFK Murder Coverup Commission. I guess that the Warren Commission must be quietly seen as a blot on Ford's career in their eyes, too; something that would detract from their glowing portrait of the man. So, it gets swept under the lumpy carpet. (This reminds me of when Nixon died and the media gave Nixon the credit for ending the Vietnam War but none of the credit for being an architect of it in the first place back in the 1950s.) These things are a case of "All the
News That Fits the Agenda." I also guess Ford thought it was OK to take a pass on fairly and honestly examining the murder of a President in the street, too. No, instead we got now-Senator Arlen Specter's nonsensical Single Bullet Theory crap.

The end result to date has been pardons for Iran Contra, the aforementioned public attitudes towards the flexibility of right and wrong, and, now, a group of despicable clowns in the People's White House (some of which were Ford's proteges) who not only think they are above the law in EVERY way, but are enabled by a media and a country of corporate and religious leaders who just regard the situation as one big laugh fest while they fatten their off-shore accounts at the taxpayers' expense and, in all too many cases, LIVES.

This country has gone to hell on a rocket sled since the pardon and, as it continues to go down hill, it's gaining speed. While this happens, the media hacks give us this day our daily photo-ops and little more. In fact, looking back, the pardon itself shifted the discussion of what Watergate was all about to the pardon and away from any further examination of the Watergate crimes. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. "Just Do It."

As for Gerald Ford being a decent guy? Maybe. At least compared to what we have now, but then, virtually any humanoid on Earth would look good compared to that.

AMERICANS JOIN THE REST OF THE WORLD IN RATING BUSH THE TOP VILLAIN OF 2006

I travel a lot. I'm not quite in the Travelers' Century Club (68 out of the 100 needed), but since 1969 I've been all over Europe (where I lived for over 4 years), Asia (I spent 2 years driving from London to India and back), Africa and Latin America. I've never experienced the degree of contempt for our country's leadership that exists everywhere for the Bush Regime. No matter where I went in the world, especially in the past 4 years, people have expressed nothing but fear and loathing for Bush and his cronies. Even in remote villages in Turkey people would manage to say "America good, Bush bad."

Only in the most backward regions of America, in places steeped in bigotry, paranoia, hatred and sheer ignorance and religionist intolerance-- you know, like in Texas and Alabama and Utah-- did I see any sympathy whatsoever for Bush and his policies. Somehow, because of support in these areas, he has managed to stay above the 30% mark in his approval rating.

Yesterday, though, the Associated Press conducted a poll that shows Americans view Bush as a bigger villain-- the world's worst-- than Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Iran's Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong II, Donald Rumsfeld and Satan combined. 25% of respondents voted for Bush as the Villain of the Year. (A paltry 13% saw him as Hero of the Year, more than voted for Jesus, Oprah, Bono, Barack Obama or Angelina Jolie.) 43% of Democrats chose Bush as Villain of the Year and 27% of Republicans picked Bush as their Hero.

As far as the "culture wars" plaguing Americans, the three worst-faring celebrities, in terms of their suitability as role models, are shallow Republican airheads Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Mel Gibson.
(Thanks to John Amato from Crooks & Liars for the classic graphic.)


UPDATE: HANG HIM?

I'm happy enough to see Saddam hang. It sets a good precident that exceptionally bad political leaders pay the ultimate price for their crimes. I might add that a helluva lot of Americans seem to think Bush is a helluva lot worse than Saddam. Does that mean they'd support hanging him too? I'm not even advocating a kangaroo court for Bush, like he gave Saddam. Bush should have a fair trial before he's hung.

LIEBERMAN, CLAIMING IRAQ WAR IS "WINNABLE," SEEKS TO GIVE BUSH AND McCAIN COVER TO ESCALATE IT

Did you ever get the feeling that we were over the top in our jihad against Holy Joe Lieberman? Act Blue collected $453,000 for Ned Lamont's campaign, most of it for his victorious primary battle against Lieberman. Of that $77,000 came through Blue America (the community formed by Firedoglake, Crooks & Liars and DownWithTyranny). Between us we published hundreds of pieces on the perfidy of Lieberman, seeking to warn Connecticut voters about the inherent dangers that went with re-electing Holy Joe. Democrats got the message loud and clear and rejected him. Republicans embraced him and he's in the Senate again.

Today Lieberman has penned a disgraceful editorial of distortions and right wing propaganda in the Washington Post. He seeks to articulate the discredited McCain plan for giving Bush the cover to escalate the disastrous Iraq occupation and to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Lieberman starts his propaganda screed by stating he's just spent 10 days in the Middle east meeting with leaders. He the demonstrates how he learned nothing at all-- not from the 10 days in was there, not from the 4 years we've been fighting in Iraq. His analysis is unrelated to objective reality. The man is clearly unfit for the Senate.


Like Bush and McCain, he is completely confused by the politics of the Middle East and unable to cope with the complexities. He decries the dangers from Iran but seems utterly incapable of realizing that his and Bush's policy has been to act as the cat's paw for Iran's goals. It was so when Bush first stumbled into the region and it so is now, as Bush backs the Shi'a against the Sunni in the civil war that is raging there, a civil war, predictably ostrich-like, Lieberman only mentions as something that could happen if his and McCain's bellicose plans are rejected. (The other main beneficiaries of the Bush-Lieberman policies in Iraq-- not counting their campaign contributors-- have been Al Qaeda.)

The two main points in Lieberman's piece are escalate now-- although it is an ill-defined escalation of more-of-the-same, stay-the-course, pointless and bloody mayhem-- and get ready to attack Iran. "On one side," he babbles idiotically, "are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States." They want it so, so they see it so. They are incapable of leading our nation-- Lieberman, McCain, Bush, Cheney, Rice... utterly unable to take off the ideological blinders and look at reality and deal with it. Lieberman is still trying to tie 9-11 to Iraq. Lieberman is still claiming the big problem is the lack of security in Baghdad. Is he insane? Venal? A little of both? A lot of both?

To turn around the crisis we need to send more American troops while we also train more Iraqi troops and strengthen the moderate political forces in the national government. After speaking with our military commanders and soldiers there, I strongly believe that additional U.S.
troops must be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province -- an increase that will at last allow us to establish security throughout the Iraqi capital, hold critical central neighborhoods in the city, clamp down on the insurgency and defeat al-Qaeda in that province.
In Baghdad and Ramadi, I found that it was the American colonels, even more than the generals, who were asking for more troops.

"Even more than the generals?" The generals know it is pointless. Colonels are thinking about battlefield tactics, not strategies for winning wars. The generals have been clear that they think escalation or-- as McCain and other right wing propagandists call it-- "surge," is a losing strategy. Bush, McCain and Lieberman refuse the listen; refuse to hear. "In nearly four years of war, there have never been sufficient troops dispatched to accomplish our vital mission. The troop surge should be militarily meaningful in size, with a clearly defined mission." And why was that, Mr. Lieberman? Was it because you and Bush and Rumsfeld and the rest of your war party fired military officers-- even General Shinseki-- who said we needed more-- many more-- troops to have even a chance to win in Iraq? Now it's past too late. Why should anyone care what people like Lieberman and Bush-- who have made every wrong decision from day one and have caused the catastrophe that is Iraq-- have to say now. They are proven losers and should be consigned to the scrap heap of history-- the sooner the better.

REAPPORTIONMENT OF CONGRESSIONAL SEATS LOOKS SOMEWHAT DISMAL

These numbers are all based on projections of estimates of 2005 census information. Things could change between now and 2010 but they are as likely to charge for the worse as for the better. The way it stands now the big winners will be 2 red-leaning states, Texas and Florida with each state gaining three seats in Congress. And with state legislatures and governorships firmly in the hands of partisan rightists in both states, it isn't likely that any of those 6 seats are going to look blue or even blueish. Arizona looks to gain 2 seats and there will be one each for Nevada, Georgia and Utah. The states that will lose seats are all in the Northeast and Midwest, with New York and Ohio probably losing 2 each. Single seat losses are likely for Massachsetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. It is likely that Democrats in control of most of these states will be able to make sure that it will be Republicans in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota who lose out, offering at least some modicum of balance for the GOP new districts in the Sunbelt.

JOHN EDWARDS? MAYBE

I haven't made my mind up about John Edwards. I liked him when I first met him in the 2003 and, until Howard Dean came along, I was thinking Edwards was the best the Democrats had to offer. By the time Dean dropped out of the race it was time for the California primary and I had no problem voting for Edwards. But I still don't completely trust him. I mean it isn't like the kind of deep distrust I feel for ruthless, unblinking pathological liars like Bush, Lieberman Cheney and McCain. I'm not even certain Edwards is as untrustworthy as political animals like Clinton, Biden, Obama, and Kerry.

I was pissed that Edwards allowed a big pussy and careerist pol like Kerry to push him around and keep him from challenging Bush's stolen 2004 election-- as though Kerry owned the millions and millions of votes against our country's headlong rush towards fascism. And I was pissed off last summer when Edwards lamely allowed his name to be used by the Rahm Emanuel forces seeking to shape a less progressive Democratic team that would be challenging Republicans in the congressional races. On the other hand, I was happy to see Edwards respond to grassroots anger and immediately revisit his endorsements and add an Emanuel bete noir from North Carolina, Larry Kissell. And I liked the straightforward, hell-with-political-calculations approach Edwards took to the Murtha-Hoyer dust-up (endorsing Murtha's Quixotic bid).

So I'm still undecided here. I have a feeling his populism is genuine and that he really does mean what he says about two Americas and that a President Edwards would work hard and effectively to start the long and difficult process of cleaning up after the criminal clique that has held our nation in thrall for the last 6 years. So I'll be watching closely and keeping an open mind, maybe even cheering John Edwards on a little.

One of my friends, Bob Geiger seems to feel Edwards' announcement today had a far greater significance than anyone else has given it, beyond the drama of announcing in the backyard of a Katrina victim in the 9th ward and beyond his clear and unambiguous mea culpa regarding his 2002 pro-war vote in the Senate. (He called it "a mistake" and explained that "we need to reject this McCain doctrine of surging troops and escalating the war in Iraq. We need to make clear we're going to leave and we need to start leaving Iraq.")

But more than anything, Edwards announcing so early and, more importantly, the way he's entered the race has changed the entire landscape for aspiring Democratic nominees.

For Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich-- the only other declared candidates at the moment-- Edwards is setting a standard for energy and relevance that they will either equal or drop quickly from the radar screen, as Edwards attracts all of the early support and media attention.

For Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Barack Obama (D-IL), Joe Biden (D-DE), John Kerry (D-MA) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), along with General Wesley Clark and Governor Bill Richardson, the sheer magnetism and established support that Edwards brings so early, forces them to either declare their intentions as well or risk losing support to the former North Carolina Senator with every passing week.

And why exactly would I say something like that when we're not even out of 2006?

To begin with, Americans are bone-tired of disliking and disrespecting their president and, I believe, are unusually anxious to begin the presidential season to, if nothing else, give them the feeling that a change is coming sooner than later. People hungered for a change in the Congress and made it happen-- now that strong desire to take out the trash moves to the executive branch of government.

Second, Edwards is starting his campaign in an interesting way by making it not about him personally, but about the problems of the world, the loss of global American prestige, our domestic strife and the extent to which his campaign is about getting people to make change now and not wait for the actions of a newly-elected president.

"We want people in this campaign to actually take action now, not later, not after the next election," said Edwards this morning. "Instead of staying home and complaining, we're asking Americans to help."

Finally, many people, including yours truly, believed in hindsight that Edwards would have defeated Bush in 2004 had he been at the top of the Democratic ticket. Edwards was undeniably a more engaging personality than John Kerry and with so much of the vote driven by sheer disgust with Bush, Edwards would have picked up Kerry's 49 percent of the vote and then some based purely on the likeability factor -- that's not the way a president should be chosen but, in our country, it just is.

UPDATE: RESULTS ARE IN... ALREADY?

No, I'm kidding, But the American Research Group (ARG) just released polling data for the early primary/caucus states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Predictably, Clinton is ahread in each state. Edwards is coming up on her in Iowa (beating out Vilsack) and his native South Carolina. Obama is #2 in Nevada and New Hampshire. No one else-- including Kerry, Biden and Clark-- breaks out of single digits... anywhere. Jonathan Singer has all the numbers at MyDD, including the Republican numbers. Giuliani's ahead in Iowa and Nevada and McCain is ahead in South Carolina and New Hampshire (with McCain #2 where Giulini is #1 and Giuliani #2 where McCain is #1). Gingrich is #3 in every state. No one else is into double digits in any state. No one cares about Mitt Romney anywhere, not even Nevada where there are loads of Mormans or in New Hampshire, which is in the Boston media market.

As you may have noticed, not many things leave me at a loss for words--this one did

Probably I should just have dumped this on the current READERS' POST. I don't know what to say about this, and I don't expect anyone else to. Somehow, though, I just needed to get it out of MY head.

I have a friend who celebrated his 69th birthday last week, who was born in Belgium and spent the war years (that's World War II to you young-uns) in Cuba--of which he has by far his happiest memories--before the family returned to Belgium after the war.

Just for context, I had no inkling that he was LOOKING for such a thing. He just sent me an e-mail with the subject heading "German bureaucracy" which reads:

"I looked and found on the internet the name, date of birth, date of death in Auchwitz at age 62 of my grandfather...."

THE READERS' POST for Thursday, December 28: Jay says he'll "take ambition over genius any day of the week"--but you don't have to talk about that

Over the years, the press has generally favored Letterman, critically anointing him as the heir to Johnny Carson. Leno, meanwhile, has taken a more populist approach, telling TV Guide that he takes "a certain perverse pleasure" in knowing he works more weeks a year than Letterman, makes less money and turns out a more profitable show. "I'll take ambition over genius any day of the week," he said.
[from an L.A. Times piece by Brian Lowry]

In fairness, this maybe makes Leno sound worse than it should. He's actually responding to persistent reports that the ratings gap between him and his onetime friend gnaws at Letterman:

"You'd think after all this time it would be, 'Oh, well, he's successful, I'm successful, everybody is rich beyond their wildest dreams.' I don't know why there has to be such animosity. It just seems odd to me," Leno told TV Guide.

Anyway, this space is for you to talk--to us or among yourselves--about whatever is on your mind. READERS' POST Roundup on Saturday. (New POST on Sunday?)

HOW MANY SENATORS BESIDES GORDON SMITH THINK BUSH'S IRAQ WAR IS "CRIMINAL?"

While I was out of the country, Oregon Republican Senator, Gordon Smith, denounced the Bush Regime's Iraq policies, calling them "absurd" and possibly "criminal." I doubt anyone in Buenos Aires had ever heard of Gordon Smith before that. By December 8, Portenos, along with Americans who live neither in Oregon nor in DC, heard quite a lot about Senator Smith. Today's New York Times described him as a rather colorless Republican backbencher who had voted for the war and then shut up about it-- until December 7.

In a state that has been turning bluer and bluer, the 2-term Senator Smith is up for re-election in 2008. Bush only managed to get 47% of Oregonians to vote for him in 2000 and again in 2004. Distancing oneself from him and his unpopular war is not politically heroic back home. I'm not claiming Charlie Cook is a negative indicator of future results but Cook's current rating of the Oregon Senate race as "Solid Republican" is premature, naive and, as usual, based on an old and thoroughly outdated analytical perspective. This year all of the Republican senators up for relection with lower approval ratings than Smith's tepid 54% were defeated-- DeWine, Talent, Santorum, Burns, Macacawitz, and Chafee and one, Doctorbill Frist, resigned. With an average approval rating across the Senate of 57%, Smith looks like he's in trouble, or at least in enough trouble to have a more careful prognosticator than Cook downgrade that "solid" to maybe a "likely" (like Susan Collins, Libby Dole, John Sununu and Crazy James Inhofe") or a "leans" (like Wayne "Walking Dead" Allard or Norm Coleman).

The Beltway Republican Establishment was furious. Smith says he sensed "a cold shoulder or two." He also says many of his colleagues came up to him-- surreptitiously-- and said "Boy, you spoke for me." Judd Gregg (R-NH) isn't up for re-election in 2008. "I don't believe it's true that a lot of Republican senators are ready to break with the White House on Iraq. I don't think the views he expressed represent a significant number of senators in the Republican caucus." (New Hampshire voters, who Gregg won't be facing any time soon, just made it clear-- by unceremoniously dumping two GOP House incumbents for two outspoken, grassroots, anti-war Democrats, and by voting against Republicans in every race they could-- that Gregg and the dominant reactionary elements of the GOP are out of step with voters, not Gordon Smith.)

"Smith's attitude began to change over the past year, particularly after he visited Iraq in May. In an interview, the senator recalled two occurrences in Baghdad during his visit, one in which a massive bomb killed about 70 people and a second in which some American troops were killed on patrol." Smith purposely used the word "criminal" to describe Bush's Iraq policies because of a history text he's been reading and mulling over-- something virtually no higher ups in the Regime ever do. It's a book on World War I by British military historian John Keegan. Smith has been haunted by the book, which explains the "practice of British generals, sending a whole generation of British men running into machine guns, despite memos back to London saying, in effect, machine guns work." Smith, like Keegan, has concluded that Rumsfeld's strategies are "needlessly getting kids killed." Rumsfeld's sunny day stay the course blatherings started getting Smith sick-- and angry.

Smith says he "had decided not to speak out before the midterm elections, both out of political loyalty and a fear that his words would be drowned out by partisan attacks." (See my comments earlier this morning about ex-President Jerry Ford's fear of the Bush Hate Machine, amply illustrated within hours of his death and the printing of his anti-Iraq opinions, by right wing hack Bill Bennett.) "Then we were back in Washington for the lame-duck session," he said, "and I woke up one morning and turned on the news and another 10 soldiers had been killed. And I went from steaming to boiled. And then I went to the floor... It is not easy to stand up to the president of your own party to say you are unhappy with the way this has been managed," Smith told The Times. "But if you can't speak up, then you should go home."

Judd Gregg will be able to avoid that for a few more years. His colleagues John Sununu, Susan Collins, Pete Domenici, Elizabeth Dole, Norm Coleman and Wayne Allard won't. These are Republican senators who will have to face angry voters in November, 2008 and if this crew doesn't get behind Smith fast they can all expect to go the way of DeWine, Santorum, Talent, Burns and Macacawitz.

(Photo above shows Senator Smith on the right.)

NOW THIS FORD STUFF IS STARTING TO GET A LITTLE INTERESTING

When it was announced that Ford died I can't say it had much (any) impact on me. I don't hate him; I never admired him. He just was. Then I got pissed. It was all over the TV news... blah, blah, blah... as though it was as important as the passing of James Brown or someone who really did have an impact on people. "Gee, I don't want to write about this," I thought. And when I powered up DWT Ken had already done a superb job. End of story? It should have been; but I couldn't leave well enough alone and I had to butt in on what I was basically thinking of a fake non-story. It was Bush's hollow, canned praise for Ford that put me over the top; Bush has that effect on me.

But finally, today, there actually is a story beyond some unelected president who pardoned his crooked predecessor getting real old and dying: Ford did an embargoed interview with Bob Woodward denouncing the Bush's Regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq. He had agreed to the interview if Woodward agreed not to publish it until he was dead. The body's not even in the ground yet and it's all over the boob tube.

The interview was done in late July, 2004. CNN ran an audio tape this morning of this comment by Ford: "Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. Whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interests, there comes a point where they conflict. And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security." Other quotes: "I don't think if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly, I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer... I think Rumsfeld, Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction... And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

Maybe Ken knew what he was talking about when he was less rough on Ford than many in the blogosphere. Woodward's piece in today's Washington Post makes Ford look pretty decent-- especially when you compare him to what we have now came after him. Too bad Ford was too scared of the Bush Hate Machine to allow his thoughts to be known when they could have done some good though.


UPDATE: BILL BENNETT KICKS FORD'S CORPSE AROUND FOR THE RIGHT WING NUTCASES


The face of right wing hypocrisy in America, blowhard Bill Bennett, was a lot harsher on Ford for not making his criticisms known before he died than I was. Basically, he called him an indecent coward this morning. (See, that's what I meant about the fear many feel in regard to the Rove-managed Bush Hate Machine of which Bennett is a small, but thoroughly repulsive, cog.) Your man Bill Bennett: "The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can't be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn't have to defend himself...he simply drops it into Bob Woodward's tape recorder and let's the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent."


ONE LAST UPDATE: A PERTINENT MR. FISH CARTOON VIA MAGS:

click on Bush's nose if you want to be able to read his stupid remarks

FORGET PARIS HILTON-- BUSH'S ECONOMIC "STRATEGIES" HAVE LEFT AMERICAN FAMILIES UP THE CREEK WITHOUT THE PADDLE

I was surprised this morning by the number of e-mails I got from people with questions about the "Paris Hilton story" yesterday. And, wisely, no one acknowledged Paris Hilton's existence. Basically, everyone was stunned by one fact. Here's an example from Dan:

holy shit. so I just read your amazing/chilling "Paris Hilton" post, and, well, among the whole sordid cesspool of numbers, one jumped out at me:

"Number of households using credit to cover basic living expenses: 7 in 10."

Does that not count mortgages on homes? Like, does it only count groceries and health care and stuff like that? (Hint: please say it also counts mortgages. Please...)

This morning's Agonist has a powerful piece showing how American households are in the worst financial shape since World War II. Considering the competence, selfishness and ideological mania of our national leadership, this should surprise no one. But it's laid out so well that I want to recommend that everyone read it in full and look at the charts as well. Briefly, consumer debt is doing American families in. A comparison of the total outstanding household mortgage debt with total household real estate holdings-- the leverage ratio that economists and financial people use to determine if a household has enough assets to cover all its liabilities-- shows that homeowner equity, which represents the amount a person actually owns in real estate, is at a post WWII record low.

"Household liquidity fell to a post-WWII low in the third quarter of 2006... Households already have borrowed so much that their level is at a post-WWII high. Secondly, households have already borrowed so much that their debt service burden is at a 25-year high. And thirdly, residential real estate which accounts for 30.5% of the total market value of households assets, is the single largest asset in households portfolios compared with deposits, credit market instruments, corporate equities and other tangible assets. Of these other asset categories, residential real estate probably is the least liquid. In sum, household have never been as highly leveraged as they are now or as illiquid as they are now, and their single largest asset is in danger of actually falling in value." In effect, we now have a record low in family assets to pay off debts... Households," he concludes, "have never been as highly levered as they are now or as illiquid as they are now, and their single largest asset is in danger of actually falling in value."

Quote of the day: Alexander Cockburn offers the definitive word on "our greatest president"

"Here at CounterPunch it has always been our position that Gerald Ford was America's greatest President. Transferring the Hippocratic injunction from the medical to the political realm, he did the least possible harm."
--Alexander Cockburn, in his "Farewell to Our Greatest President," on his CounterPunch website


http://counterpunch.org/

December 27, 2006

Adieu, Gerald Ford

Farewell to Our Greatest President

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

We bid a sad adieu to Gerald Ford. Here at CounterPunch it has always been our position that Gerald Ford was America's greatest President. Transferring the Hippocratic injunction from the medical to the political realm, he did the least possible harm. Under Ford's tranquil hand the nation relaxed after the hectic fevers of the Nixon years. And, of course, it was Ford who finally pulled the US troops out of Vietnam.

As a visit to the Ford presidential library discloses, the largest military adventure available for display was the foolish U.S. response to the capture of the U.S. container ship Mayaguez by the Khmer Rouge on May 12, 1975. As imperial adventures go, and next to the vast graveyards across the planet left by Ford's predecessors and successors, it was small potatoes.

Ford was surrounded by bellicose advisors such as his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger; his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller; his chief of staff, and later secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld and his presidential assistant, Dick Cheney. The fact that this rabid crew were only able to persuade Ford to give the green light for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor--an appalling decision to be sure -- is tribute to Ford's pacific instincts and deft personnel management. Unlike George W. Bush, Ford was of humane temper and could mostly hold in check his bloodthirsty counselors.

Kissinger was part of the furniture when Ford took over, after Nixon's resignation on August 8, 1974. With latitude to chose, Ford made sensible selections, none more fruitful than his Attorney General, Edward Levy [sic--it's actually "Levi"], who in turn prompted Ford to nominate John Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has long distinguished himself and dignified Ford's choice by being the most humane and progressive justice.

As a percentage of the federal budget, social spending crested in the Ford years. Never should it be forgotten that Jimmy Carter campaigned against Ford as the prophet of neo-liberalism, precursor of the Democratic Leadership Council, touting "zero-based budgeting".

If Ford had beaten back Carter's challenge in 1976, the neo-con crusades of the mid to late Seventies would have been blunted by the mere fact of a Republican occupying the White House. Reagan, most likely, would have returned to his slumbers in California after his abortive challenge to Ford for the nomination in Kansas in 1976.

Instead of an weak southern Democratic conservative in agreement to almost every predation by the military industrial complex, we would have had a Midwestern Republican, thus a politician far less vulnerable to the promoters of the New Cold War.

Would Ford have rushed to fund the Contras and order their training by Argentinian torturers? Would he have sent the CIA on its most costly covert mission, the $3.5 billion intervention in Afghanistan? The nation would have been spared the disastrous counsels of Zbigniev Brzezinski.

Those who may challenge this assessment of Ford's imperial instincts should listen to the commentators on CNN, belaboring the scarce cold commander-in-chief for timidity and lack of zeal in prosecuting the Cold War. By his enemies shall we know him.

During Ford's all-too-brief tenure a mood of geniality was the rule. Even the attempted assassinations of the president by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Moore, in September, 1975, had a slapdash, light-hearted timbre. The arts flourished, as is attested by Vicki Carr's frequent appearance in the photographic record of White House galas.

At the side of America's greatest president was America's most sympathetic First Lady, Betty, whose enduring memorial is the Betty Ford Clinic, home port for beleagured boozers. We send our sympathies to the former First Lady.

STILL NOT TOO LATE TO HIRE PARIS HILTON TO HOST YOUR NEW YEARS EVE PARTY-- AND IF YOU'RE A CEO WITH A TRIAL COMIN' UP, DO WE HAVE A COOL IDEA FOR YOU!

You probably have noticed me using the DMI grades when I talk about congressmen. The policy institute uses a diverse basket of legislative bills to analyze how friendly or unfriendly our solons have been to middle class interests. Yesterday, for example, I was trying to demonstrate how reactionary Charlie Melancon (D-LA) has been. I'm also on a DMI bloggers advisory board. Today they published the 2006 Injustice Index and I thought I'd share some quick facts and figures from the report with you, you know-- the kinds of stuff you can throw out an a New Year's Eve Party.

Wages that an average CEO earns before lunchtime: more than a full-time minimum wage worker makes in a year. The ratio of the average U.S. CEO’s annual pay to a minimum wage worker’s is now 821:1. [Nobody beats the U.S. when it comes to the difference in pay between CEOs and the average worker. In 2000, on average, CEOs at 365 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies earned $13.1 million, or 531 times what the typical hourly employee took home. The corresponding ratio in 1980 was only 42, and in 1990 it was 85.  As one source has put it, "in 2000 a CEO earned more in one workday (there
are 260 in a year) than what the average worker earned in 52 weeks. In 1965, by contrast, it took a CEO two weeks to earn a worker's annual pay". US CEOs' pay rose 313 percent from 1990 to 2003, an advocacy group UFE said. By contrast, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index rose 242 percent and corporate profits gained 128 percent.]

The total compensation in 2005 of Barry Diller of IAC/Interactive, the highest paid CEO in the US today: $469 million. Additional amount that Mr. Diller received in new stock options “to motivate Mr. Diller for future performance”: $7.6 million. [The bright side of that coin is that at least there doesn't appear to me any anti-gay discrimination way at the top of the corporate food chain.]

Percentage of Americans who feel chronically overworked: 30

Years of unused vacation time that American workers collectively give back to their employers each year: 1.6 million. [Ken, are you paying attention?]

Percentage of women earning less than $40,000 per year who receive no paid vacation time at all: 37

Payment per episode that Donald Trump receives to host The Apprentice: $3,000,000

Average amount that companies spend to recruit a new CEO from outside the company: $2,000,000

Probability that the newly hired CEO will either quit or be fired within the first eighteen months: 1 in 2

Estimated number of people lined up outside the new M&M store set to open in Times Square responding to ads for “on-the-spot” hiring for 200 jobs, 65 of which were fulltime: between 5,000 and 6,000

Starting salary that drew them there: $10.75 per hour


Fee Paris Hilton is seeking to host a New Year’s Eve party in NYC, Miami, or L.A.: $100,000 plus a private jet. [DWT one-time art director, Adam Fox, once begged me for tickets to see Paris host a promotional party in Miami. I warned him that she messes up worse than Bush but he was trying to seduce and impress someone and felt a Paris Hilton party was just what the doctor ordered. Of course he was furious after the fact, when she was rude, drunk and disorderly, arrived late and left early, cursing out the attendees and calling them losers. What did she expect? I mean, really, who but a terminal loser would actually voluntarily go to a Paris Hilton party? Even for free.]

Amount that Ms. Hilton is set to inherit from the Hilton Hotel fortune: $350 million.

Number of times that Congress has reduced the estate tax since it last raised the federal minimum wage: 9.

Longest period in which the federal minimum wage has not been increased: 1997–2006. [Do you know anyone who has ever voted for a Republican member of Congress?]

Number of workers who would directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage: 5.6 million.

Number of very large estates that would directly benefit from a reduction in the estate tax: 8,200.

Highest price per custom-fitted, handmade power suit in Armani’s new line, which hopes to respond to what ex-Gucci head designer Tom Ford calls “a lot of pent-up demand for true luxury [from men who] are getting rich first, and they want to deck themselves out before they deck out their wives”: $20,000.

Number of households using credit to cover basic living expenses: 7 in 10.

Amount in tax breaks and subsidies that last year’s energy bill paid out to the gas and oil industry during a period of record profits and higher prices at the pump: $6 billion.

Campaign donations that Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who voted for the energy bill, received from the oil and gas industry: $500,000, making her the top recipient of oil contributions in the 2006 election cycle.

Percentage of U.S. workers who are confident they will be able to live comfortably after retirement: 68.

Percentage who have saved less than $25,000 toward their retirement: 53. [Yes, you are meant to try to correlate this percentage with the percenatge preceding it. Let us know if you get anywhere.]

Percent of African-American and Latino families that have zero or negative net worth, respectively: 31 and 38.

Date on which USA Today reported that Dr. Anthony Griffin of the Beverly HillsCosmetic Surgery Institute, who appears on the ABC program Extreme Makeover, predicted that CEOs will lead a surge in male cosmetic surgery because, he says, "for instance,executives on trial for corporate scandals would improve their chances for acquittal with a makeover just before trial": November 4, 2006.

Date on which the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its all-time high: October 26, 2006. (Umm... until today when it closed over 12,500 for the first time ever.)

Decrease in percentage of Americans who own stocks from 2004 to 2006, the first such decline on record: 51.9% to 48.6%.

Total Wal-Mart received in government subsidies, sometimes called “corporate welfare” by activists, in 2005: $3.75 billion.

Percent of the decline in welfare caseloads that is due to TANF programs failing to serve families that are poor enough to qualify, rather than due to a reduction in the number of families poor enough to qualify for aid, in the ten years since "welfare reform": 57 [Bill Clinton, there was a lot worse about him than Monica whateverhernamewas.]

Projected total in Christmas bonuses that investment banks in New York City will pay out in 2006: $23.9 billion.


Estimated additional amount U.S. workers would receive annually if all employers obeyed workplace laws: $19 billion.

Ratio of compensation of CEOs of publicly traded defense companies to privates before September 11th, 2001: 190 to 1.

Ratio in 2006: 308 to 1. (So this is what Bush was talking about when he said the economy was growning!]

Percentage increase in out-of-pocket medical expenses for the average American in the past 5 years: 93


Estimated amount the U.S. would save each year on paperwork if it adopted single-payer health care: $161,000,000,000. [What what about Doctorbill Frists' family? Don'y you want them to be billionaires?]

Date on which incoming Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announced “Amid this country’s strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren’t feeling the benefits. Many aren’t seeing significant increases in their take-home pay. Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising health care costs, among others”: August 2, 2006.

According to exit polls in the midterm elections, percentage of Americans who think life for the next generation will be about the same or worse respectively: 28, 40.

JERRY FORD IS DEAD

Basically there's nothing in Ken's timely coverage of the passing of Jerry Ford I disagree with. I knew DWT should say something about it and I was delighted to wake up this morning and see he had and that I didn't have to. What does bother me though, is the Mary Poppins TV coverage I've seen today. In fact, it's all so patently fake and full of crap that it makes me want to throw up. Hat tip to Atrios this morning for pointing out the September 23, 1974 Time cover story on the anger generated by Ford's precipitate pardon of Nixon.

We have to think carefully about the role of pardons since this is going to be a very big deal as more and more Republican elected officials and operatives are exposed for their gross criminal behavior over the last 6 years, possibly even the nitwit-in-chief himself. Reading the 32 year old Time story helps one understand how the DC Establishment rallies round its own and covers for even the worst examples of treason against our Nation.

Throughout the most painful week of Gerald Ford's fledgling presidency, public protest continued to batter the White House. Far from easing after the first shock of Ford's precipitate pardon of Richard Nixon for any and all federal crimes committed during his presidency, the controversy grew. It was fed partly by Ford's refusal to explain further his mysterious reversal on his Executive intervention, partly by White House fumbling on whether all the other Watergate offenders might also be pardoned. Ford's inexperienced aides-- almost all of whom had opposed the timing of the pardon-- were left scrambling futilely to justify the President's action.

Squandered Trust. There was as yet no evidence that Ford's motives were other than high-minded and merciful. Indeed, some of the criticisms of his action were overwrought and hysterical. Suggestions that justice was dead in the U.S. or that Ford's Administration had been irrevocably compromised were exaggerations. Nevertheless, Ford's first major decision raised disturbing questions about his judgment and his leadership capabilities, and called into question his competence. He had apparently needlessly, even recklessly, squandered some of that precious public trust that is so vital to every President. By associating himself so personally with the welfare of his discredited predecessor, he had allowed himself to be tainted by Watergate-- a national scandal that the courts, prosecutors and Congress had labored so long and effectively to expose and resolve.

Thus, barely a month into his presidency, Gerald Ford found himself jeered by a crowd of pardon protesters outside a hotel in Pittsburgh, where he addressed a conference on urban transportation. They waved signs bearing such taunts as THE COUNTRY WON'T STAND FOR IT-- a mockery of Ford's declaration about a pardon for Nixon, which Ford made during the Senate hearings to confirm him as Vice President. In an otherwise pleasant outing to help dedicate a World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst, N.C., Ford faced more banners: IS NIXON ABOVE THE LAW? and JAIL CROOKS, NOT RESISTERS.

Outside the White House, some 250 pickets from George Washington University lofted a bedsheet with the words PROMISE ME PARDON AND I'LL MAKE YOU PRESIDENT-- a reference to a widespread cynical suspicion that Nixon as President had exacted a pledge of a pardon from Ford before naming him Vice President and putting him in the line of succession.

That week Ford's Gallup rating dropped by 20 points. Judges, lawyers, political scientists and legal scholars felt the pardon was an arbitrary assault on the basic principles of Justice. "By a vote of 347 to 169, the California State Bar Association denounced the pardon as violating the tenet 'that all persons stand equal before the law' and claimed that it threatened to 'undermine' the 'American system of justice.' Leaders of the City Bar Association of New York charged that Ford had acted 'prematurely and unwisely' and bluntly urged him to 'permit the administration of justice to proceed without further hindrance.'"

Politically, the pardon revived Watergate as an issue, permanently ruined Ford's pubic persona dooming his chances for re-election, and generally helped Democrats and hurt Republicans. "Undermined, too, was the pleasant notion that Ford, a direct, uncomplicated Midwesterner who used to prepare his own breakfast, is wholly unlike those crafty politicians who maneuver for personal prestige and luxuries during careers on either coast. Columnist George Will thus notes the death of the 'English Muffin Theory of History... that a President who toasts his own English muffins for breakfast is somehow different from the general cut of politicians.' Was Ford just another devious politician? Particularly among the young, the answer was a disquietingly prevalent yes."

Bringing some reality to the orgy of fake national grieving led by ravings-hungry news networks and President Chimpy, was a note I got today from distinguished Law Professor Michael Froomkin: "The line I recall best about Ford while he was President was that if he happened to go outside the White House and found a cold child living on the street, Ford would literally give that child the shirt off his own back-- then go back into the White House and veto a child care bill."


UPDATE: THE #1 THING HE DID WAS PARDON NIXON

Taylor Marsh and some of my other friends are far less forgiving than Ken. Jim summed it up even more colorfully in a letter he just wrote me:

Gerald Ford?

Selected by the GOP power brokers to be appointed Vice President so he could later pardon Richard Nixon.

Played too much football with his helmet off (LBJ).

Spare us the the 'mournful nation' bullshit.

Gerald Ford trivia question:

Q.Who were Gerald Ford's two Chiefs of Staff as president?

A. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

RAHM EMANUEL MAY BE A TERRIBLE CONGRESSMAN BUT HE SURE KNOWS HOW TO PLAY FOOTSIE WITH THE MASS MEDIA-- & WITH A BOTTOM FEEDER LIKE RYAN LIZZA

I couldn't wait to go on my vacation. I was so burned out by the middle of November and I was so lucky that Ken decided to fill in for me (again). All I wanted to do was lose myself in the vast remoteness of Tierra del Fuego and forget politics. I think it was maybe a week before I started sending Ken news clippings that I thought he might want to consider for stories. It was probably 3 weeks before I actually wrote one myself. One of the smartest political observers in the country, David Sirota, is on vacation now too. But that didn't stop him from sending us a head's up on a Rahm story he just did based on an article that he said nauseated him on the plane while he was reading it. (What David was expecting to find from New Republic shiteater Ryan Lizza, this time in GQ, I'm not certain-- although he certainly wouldn't be the first progressive masochist I know and admire.) I can't tell you how disappointed I was to get back to the country and see that Emanuel still hasn't resigned from Congress after his role in the Foley child molestation case came to light.

If you've spent any time at all looking at DWT you probably know that there are no Rahm Emanuel fans here. I won't go so far as to say he's public enemy #1; after all, there are Republicans out there and some of them are even worse than Emanuel-- although few are as dangerous to progressive values and principles as the slimy, craven, disgraceful Emanuel.

The GQ piece is the kind of ass kissing fantasy that Emanuel has been a master of-- like his nonsensical stories about losing a finger fighting Syrian tanks on the Golan Heights; he actually lost it because it got infected after an accident at a deli when he didn't bother to clean himself. He may not make much of a real fighter but he certainly knows how to wrap insecure pissants like Lizza around his little finger. As usual, Sirota hits the nail right on the head:

Similarly, that Rahm happened to be head of the DCCC in 2006 doesn't make him the MVP of the 2006 election (or, as Lizza froths, the Kingmaker of the Democratic Party) - and it certainly doesn't negate the simple truth that this man did much within his power to lose the election, thanks to his generally unprincipled hackishness on most major issues including, of course, war and peace. No matter how much the Ryan Lizzas of the world inevitably translate their own personal need to feel loved by Serious People, the very clear facts show that this election was not some validation of Rahm Emanuel, his lack of ideology, or his self-serving Clintonite comrades now pathetically trying to retain their relevance. It was exactly the opposite - a rejection of those factors, because Democrats won in spite of them.

Sirota writes Lizza off as a fabricating "power-worshipping Beltway journalist," but it's important to remember that Emanuel has effectively controlled the mass media's perception of the Democratic Party, Pelosi's #1 failing so far as Speaker, especially considering that he's used this to clobber her again and again. He does this through a self-generated perception of power, perpetrated by pet quasi-journalists like Lizza. You want to share in Sirota's nausea? Read the whole GQ puff piece, "Kiss The Ass Ring."

"He's the new kingmaker of the Democratic party. The man who handpicked candidates, twisted arms, crushed dissent, and delivered the nation from one-party rule. So what does the Clinton vet and former ballet dancer plan to do with all that power?" Were Lizza an actual journalist instead of Emanuel's fluffer, he might point out that most of Emanuel's handpicked candidates lost and that most of the Democrats who did win were not supported by Emanuel. But that would be contrary to Lizza's preordained storyline and not in whatever interests he is seeking to advance.

A real journalist might also look a little more deeply into Emanuel's contention that he was somehow a champion of anti-Iraq war feeling when he was opposing-- and in some cases crushing-- candidates because they were against the war. On the other hand, a psychiatrist might want to look at why the ex-ballet dancer is always trying to paint a persona of a street thug and macho tough guy.

One of the most disconcerting paragraphs among all Lizza's puffery was some bragging by an Emanuel DCCC Lapp-dog about how ole Rahm would take over the Democratic House caucus. "The Democratic caucus under Rahm," says Lapp, "will be like a DCCC on the Hill." That's bad news because Emanuel is a loser. As Sirota points out, "by any objective analysis, Rahm Emanuel was the beneficiary of being in the right place at the right time. His targeting and rejection of the 50-state
strategy proved to be a fairly horrific failure-- many of his most highly-touted candidates lost, and he didn't put resources into some of the races that ended up being the closest Democratic losses in the
country. Put another way, Democrats won in spite of Rahm's targeting and-- as this blog post shows-- also in spite of his critical early advice on the issue that swung the election. I mean, this is a guy who was the architect of NAFTA and yet is now taking credit for an election where Democratic candidates’ opposition to NAFTA provided the margin of the new congressional majority."

I wish I had even a hint that Nancy Pelosi is finally paying attention to the fact that there's a vicious, powermad little snake in her bosom.

About Jerry Ford (1913 - 2006)

I know it isn't all about me, but I'm pleased that by chance I posted a photo here of Jerry and Betty Ford mere days before the former president died. Of course it was Mrs. Ford I was writing about, and the courage pushing on into heroism she displayed in making public her struggles, first with breast cancer and then with substance abuse. Still, it seemed appropriate to portray them together, partly because they so clearly thought of themselves that way, but also because in both cases--and probably especially with the even riskier decision to go public with her substance-abuse problems--it clearly was a family matter.

This may not sound like much of a compliment, but I think it is one: Maybe the nicest thing I can say about Jerry Ford is that here for once is a former high-ranking official we don't have to lie about. Oh, some people will pretend he was a better president than he was, but at the same time no one is forgetting the pall cast over his presidency by the possibly understandable but nevertheless terrible decision to pardon the man who made him vice president, Richard Nixon.

And for once, glory be, we can say good-bye to a decent human being. He lived a full life, and at 93 had clearly been failing healthwise in recent years. It's hard to feel that he was cheated there.

Since everyone so far is stressing his old-school "friendship across the aisle" approach to politics, I was relieved to hear Andrea Mitchell recall on MSNBC that "he could be very partisan when he was minority leader in the House." But, just as everyone is stressing, it was a very different school of partisanship from the scorched-earth version of, say, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Doctorbill Frist.

And for all the difficulties of the Ford presidency, I think Andrea Mitchell was also unquestionably right in saying that Ford "left the presidency in better shape than when he inherited it." And perhaps younger folks can't fully appreciate that accomplishment because the nation tolerated the scumbag Nixon's decades-long whitewashing of his reputation, and indulged in such an orgy of lying when the old turd finally died. The road map for a president trashing the Constitution was drawn by Nixon.

Chris Matthews, to his credit, explained lucidly tonight on MSNBC why the Nixon pardon was so devastating--at a time when the government had taken to large-scale lying and cover-up, and to vilifying the press that, however feebly, had to try to penetrate to the truth, the country needed to get the truth out. Ford thought he was doing us a favor by putting Watergate behind us. The problem was that we needed first to know what exactly we were getting beyond. Matthews later expressed doubt that Ford, not exactly a deep thinker, even imagined the depth of feeling the pardon was going to generate, that he did it "without fully grasping the consequences."

As I write, MSNBC has finally gotten Keith Olbermann on, and not surprisingly he is reminding us of some of the darker realities of the Ford presidency--but without diminishing the sense of relief it brought a country in need of it. He even makes the case in favor of the Nixon pardon, or at least appreciates the courage it took to put his own reputation on the line for the sake of the theory that the country couldn't stand a protracted period of investigation and prosecution of the former president.

Every now and then an outraged voice of "fairness and balance" demands to know why we won't give George W. Bush credit for being a sincere, decent patriot doing his best to grapple with difficult problems. The answer is obvious, though always hard to express: because he's not. There isn't a sincere or decent cell in his carcass.

All you have to do is set him alongside this sincere, decent patriot, Gerald Ford.

IS THERE SOMETHING BETTER THAN IMPEACHMENT ON THE HORIZON FOR BUSH AND CHENEY?

Yesterday Rob Kall, publisher of OpEdNews took an interesting look at impeachment and came up with a novel conclusion. Perhaps Pelosi and Conyers have something even better in store for Bush than a long drawn out, politically inconclusive impeachment hearing and trial. Kall, like anyone who admires and respects the values behind our nation, wants to see Bush and his henchmen rotting in prison cells as fast as possible. By taking impeachment "off the table," he thinks "Pelosi and Conyers are doing things exactly right and they have a better chance of my goal-- removal of Bush and Cheney from office-- than if they were going the impeachment route."

Americans, and friends of America all over the world, are looking towards Democratic committee chairmen, particularly Conyers and Henry Waxman, to start the investigations next month-- and to go wherever the investigations happen to lead. "They will be using prosecutors on their investigative teams. One of the most effective ways prosecutors work is to interrogate and 'nail' smaller, lower level perpetrators who then 'roll over' to inform on higher ups. This is what will be happening all over Washington. The sweet thing about congressional hearings is that there are no lawyer-client confidentiality priveleges. Yep. The lawyers have to squeal like stuck pigs or face contempt of congress charges-- which they are not very likely to do. The rolling over will quickly reach the upper echelons of power. The evidence and testimony will build."

Kall predicts this will lead directly to Cheney and he predicts that Cheney will resign, ala Spiro Agnew, rather than face the serious criminal charges he so richly deserves. Kall also predicts that Waxman and Conyers will be saving the most damning evidence for what comes post-Cheney: Bush and the Republican congressmen and senators who conspired with him against the U.S. Constitution.

At this point, the Republicans, about fifteen or sixteen of those in the senate, particularly ones up for re-election in 2008, will take a walk-- not a phone call, not e-mail-- a walk, to the oval office. They will inform the president that he must resign to save the Republican party from implosive destruction. They will tell him that to save the Republican party they are willing to join with the Democrats to impeach him out of office. They will instruct him to do the right thing for the country and save it the trauma, mostly at the expense of the Republicans, of a horrible impeachment, which is inevitable, since the most revelations about testimony and evidence on Bush has brought his ratings down to less than 20% approval rating.
Bush will, in his attempt to negotiate, ask for either no criminal sentence or a minimal one. The Dems should not let him off scott free. Bush should do time in jail and he should be fined Billions. That's right. Billions. Not only that, he should be banned from profitting from his presidency and includes making any speeches or consulting as a lobbyist. Send him to his ranch to clear brush.

I don't know how realistic this scenario actually is. It certainly sounds good to me and, more important, it sounds plausible as well. Waxman and Conyers have had years to prepare and these guys are a lot smarter than Bush, Cheney and Rove.

(Photo courtesy of BartCop.)

ONE OF CONGRESS' MOST REACTIONARY DEMOCRATS IS EYEING THE LOUISIANA GOVERNOR'S RACE

Charlie Melancon's congressional voting record is one of the absolute worst of any Democrat's. He has voted with Bush and his far right supporters again and again and again and is someone big corporations know they can almost always count on to betray the interests of consumers and working men and women. He voted for the shameful right wing bankruptcy bill, for making a repeal of the estate tax permanent and against the rights of consumers to get fair representation in courts against big corporations. Overall, only 7 Democrats have voted more often with the Republicans than Melancon. Looking at a wide package of legislative bills impacting middle class Americans that came before Congress in the last 2 years DMI gives Melancon a big fat F.

With the even more reactionary Republican congressman Bobby Jindal getting ready to toss his turban hat into the ring for next year's Lousiana gubernatorial race, incumbent Governor Kathleen Blanco (whose Katrina ratings are nearly as dismal as Bush's; mostly because she allowed him to push her around) is wavering about running again. A recent GOP poll shows Blanco losing substantially to Jindal, who nearly beat her last time.

If Blanco bows out, her friend and ally Melancon will probably jump in. Melancon, who just won his second congressional term-- running on an anti-choice, anti-gay platform-- was only elected in 2004 (eking out a 500 vote win) because of a bitter split in Republican ranks and because his eventual Republican opponent, Billy Tauzin's ridiculous son Wilbert Tauzin III, has a criminal record too disgraceful even for Lousiana politics. Last month Rahm Emanuel made retaining Melancon's seat a major DCCC priority (Emanuel being extremely partial towards Democrats who vote with Bush on crucial bills). Melancon beat his Republican opponent this time 75,000 to 55,000.

In 2010 Louisiana will probably lose a House seat because of the post-Katrina diaspora and in all likelihood that seat will be the 3rd district, the one currently represented by Melancon, pictured above with Governor Blanco.

KNOW YOUR CONGRESS: Meet the Senate committee staff directors for the 110th Congress

From your DWT Nuts 'n' Bolts Dept.: Today's Washington Post introduces us to some of the guys 'n' gals who'll be overseeing the real legislative work in the new Senate. Although most of the incoming chairs are mentioned in the text, we've taken the liberty of inserting all their names, since most of us don't have the new lineup down yet.

(We also thought we'd do some value-adding by adding photos, but on the first half-dozen names we tried, a quick search didn't turn up any (hmm . . . )--except a few people who happened to have the same name as one of our people. There are, for example, any number of other Mary Naylors. But we didn't see how it would help to show you any of them.)


The New Majority
Senate Committee Staff Directors Set Session Agenda

Tuesday, December 26, 2006; A23

There is a whole new lineup of committee staff directors as the Democrats prepare to take control of the Senate next week. They all bring long years of service and expertise to highly demanding jobs, and they will be working for Democratic chairmen who have vowed to provide close scrutiny of the Bush administration and its handling of domestic policies and the war in Iraq. Here is a sampling of the staff directors of major Senate committees:

APPROPRIATIONS
chair: ROBERT BYRD (W.Va.)

Terrence E. Sauvain, 66, graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received a master's degree from George Washington University. A Cleveland native, Sauvain started his public service career in 1965 as a budget analyst for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He joined the Appropriations Committee in 1973. He has worked as the majority staff director once before, between 2001 and 2003.

Sauvain and his wife, Veronica, have three children. He was awarded the University of Notre Dame's 2006 Rev. John J. Cavanaugh Award, presented annually to one of its alumni for accomplishment in public service.

ARMED SERVICES
chair: CARL LEVIN (Mich.)

Richard D. DeBobes, the staff director-designate, is a veteran: 26 years in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, attaining the rank of captain, and 18 for the Armed Services committee -- the last three as the top staffer for the incoming chairman, Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.).

The spotlight will be on the committee, not only because it will focus on Iraq, but also because it includes two likely presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

The committee is known for its bipartisanship and, DeBobes said, "there's no reason for that not to continue."

Still, that atmosphere may become strained. DeBobes, 68, is putting together a new three-person investigative team to challenge the administration on detainee treatment.

BUDGET
chair: KENT CONRAD (N.D.)

Mary Naylor comes to her new post from the office of Democratic staff director, where she has served since 2001, when Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.) became ranking Democrat. Before that, Naylor served as Conrad's deputy chief of staff.

When these profiles were compiled, staffers said Naylor was battling through the snow en route to her hometown of Fargo, N.D., for the holidays.

Naylor, 39, graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in political science. She began work in Conrad's office in 1989, and she served there for three years before embarking on a two-year stint on the staff of former senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.). Then, in 1993, it was back to Conrad's office, where she served as a senior legislative assistant before becoming deputy chief of staff in 1999. She became minority staff director of the Budget Committee two years later.

ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
chair: BARBARA BOXER (Calif.)

Bettina Poirier, the first woman to serve as staff director and chief counsel for the committee, has a work history that has placed her in touch with many of the stakeholders in environmental regulation. An environmental lawyer for nearly two decades, she has served for the past six years as senior counsel to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) working on environmental and agriculture issues.

Boxer has said "her focus will be on . . . global warming issues," Poirier said. "We'll be making sure that issue gets a lot of hearings and plenty of discussion so we can look for solutions that come with a lot of benefits" to local economies, providers of technology and labor for efforts to combat the problem.

Beyond that, Poirier, 45, will pursue Boxer's aim of "making sure that children are specifically considered in the environmental laws," such as clean air and water regulations. She points out that while many of its issues are seen as classic Democratic concerns, in fact the committee has a long history of bipartisan cooperation. "We'll look for opportunities to reach and work across the aisle on these issues," she said.

FINANCE
chair: MAX BAUCUS (Mont.)

Russ Sullivan has been in the heart of the committee's business, tax policy, since the tax fights of President Bush's first months in office. Chief tax counsel in those days, he moved up to Democratic staff director in 2004.

Nowhere in Congress will the transition from minority to majority be as seamless as in this committee. Under Republican leadership, Democratic staffers were given wide latitude to explore policy and oversight options, taking their cue from the close relationship between then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking Democrat Max Baucus (Mont.). That bipartisanship is likely to continue.

From 1995 to 1999, Sullivan, 55, was tax counsel and legislative director for then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). He then became the Finance Committee Democrats' chief tax counsel under then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).

FOREIGN RELATIONS
chair: JOSEPH BIDEN (Del.)

Antony J. Blinken brings skills as an academic, journalist and policy planner to his new role. A former international lawyer, for the past four years Blinken, 44, has served as the committee's Democratic staff director and as senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.). Prior to that, he served six years on the White House National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.

The committee's "first and most urgent challenge is Iraq," Blinken said. "Putting us on a better path in Iraq would give us much more freedom, flexibility and credibility to deal with other important issues," such as Iranian and North Korean nuclear plans, unrest in Darfur and Afghanistan, and the emergence of China and Russia.

HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS
chair: EDWARD KENNEDY (Mass.)

J. Michael Myers has worked, on and off, for the incoming committee chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), for 20 years. If the past is a predictor, Myers, 51, will spend next session focused on a long list of issues including immigration and refugee policy, early childhood education, college loan costs and the effort to raise the minimum wage.

While pursuing his master's degree in political science at Columbia University in the late 1970s, Myers worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He came to Kennedy's staff to work on foreign policy issues after six years with the humanitarian relief group Church World Service. During the Clinton administration, Myers worked for nearly two years at the Pentagon's Office of Humanitarian and Refugee Affairs, and worked on immigration and refugee issues in various roles for the Senate Judiciary Committee throughout the mid-1990s. Myers has been minority staff director on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions since 1998.

HOMELAND SECURITY
chair: HOLY JOE LIEBERMAN (Ct.)

Michael L. Alexander, 50, has served on the committee for five years and has worked on intelligence reform, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and issues surrounding disaster relief -- including emergency preparedness, first responders and communications.

Before joining the committee, he was legislative director for then-Rep. Mike Espy (D-Miss.) and served as acting deputy director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights. A native of Griffin, Ga., Alexander worked as a reporter and columnist for the Jackson Advocate in Mississippi before coming to Washington.

He said the top priority for the committee and its incoming chairman, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), is to enact laws that implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Other priorities include improving rail and transit security, oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and securing more funding for first responders.

INTELLIGENCE
chair: JAY ROCKEFELLER (W.Va.)

Andrew Johnson will serve as staff director, one of the most unusual jobs in the Senate. Unlike most other committees, the intelligence panel does not have a majority and minority staff, and it works in great secrecy in an office with no windows and a guard out front.

Johnson, 47, received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Maryland at College Park. Selected as a presidential management intern at the Department of Navy, he worked on contracting issues until coming to Capitol Hill in 1990 to work on defense and international affairs for then-Sen. Jim Exon (D-Neb.). Under Michigan's Levin, he came to the intelligence committee to monitor satellite and geospatial agencies. In 2004, he became the staff director for the committee vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

Johnson said the committee has much work to do in terms of oversight and restoring a bipartisan tone to its efforts. "The committee has not done its necessary work in understanding and evaluation of national intelligence," Johnson said, referring to the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program and the CIA's system for detention and interrogation.

JUDICIARY
chair: PATRICK LEAHY (Vt.)

Bruce Cohen brings 15 years' experience as a litigator and a decade as Democratic staff director and chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee to his new, majority role.

During his early law career, Cohen, who received his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975, practiced in Philadelphia and Washington, where he was a partner in the law firm of Dechert Price and Rhoads, and in Los Angeles, where he was a partner in the law firm of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro. He spent two years in the early 1980s as chief counsel of the subcommittee on juvenile justice, when it was chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Cohen, 56, joined Sen. Patrick J. Leahy's (D-Vt.) staff in 1994 and served as chief counsel of the subcommittee on technology and the law. A year later, he became Democratic chief counsel of the subcommittee on antitrust, business rights and competition, filling that role for a year.

OTHER COMMITTEES

Veterans Affairs
chair: Daniel Akaka (Hi.)
William E. Brew

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
chair: Tom Harkin (Iowa)
Mark Halverson

Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
chair: Christopher Dodd (Ct.)
Shawn Maher

Commerce, Science and Transportation
chair: Daniel Inouye (Hi.)
Margaret Cummisky

Energy and Natural Resources
chair: Jeff Bingaman (N.M.)
Bob Simon

Staff writers Al Kamen, Lyndsey Layton and Elizabeth Williamson and special correspondent Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.

It's THE READERS' POST for Tuesday, December 26: Have you finished exchanging your Christmas gifts?

More good thoughts, and fun fantabulizing, on on the last READERS' POST. Thanks to all who've joined in, and let's keep it going. Updates may come at any moment before the roundup scheduled for Saturday.

WAKE ME UP AND LET ME KNOW WHEN BUSH IS READING DAILY KOS AND FIREDOGLAKE

When I stepped onto the American Airlines jet at the Buenos Aires international airport it felt like home-- although not as much as like home as when I when I had to go through the borderline psychotic Bush security checks at a layover in Dallas/Ft Worth. The feeling of home on the plane went beyond all the English-as-a-first-language flight attendants. For me though it was when the stewardess offered me a New York Times, the first I'd seen in 5 weeks. I put down the book on Argentine history I was reading and grasped the Times reverently... well quasi-reverently. I was so excited. Then I was disappointed. Maybe the Christmas Eve edition is the worst one of the year but I had finished it before we took off and was back to the far more engrossing Felipe Pigna before we were out of Buenos Aires airspace.

But apparently, my disappointment with newspapers isn't shared by our feckless president. Today's Times informs us that Bush can read and that he reads newspapers. "Is there hope for newspapers after all?" asks Katherine Seelye. "Readers may be abandoning the printed versions, but over the last couple of years, at least one person seems to have started reading them, at least sometimes. He lives in the White House. President Bush declared in 2003 that he did not read newspapers, but at his final news conference of the year last week, he casually mentioned that he had seen something in the paper that very day."

What makes this in any way remarkable is that earlier in his term Bush had told Fox "News" that although he glances at headlines sometimes, "'I rarely read the stories,' because, he said, they mix opinion with fact. He said he preferred to get his news from 'objective sources'-- like 'people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.'" The genesis of the tragedy of his regime? Nah, just another little piece of the ghastly puzzle.

Was he out of touch with average Americans? What a joke! He started back-peddling on the "I don't read the stinkin' newspapers" claim over the last few years but stood by his claim that they have no impact on his thinking. "I'm the decider and I decide what's best," he blurted out one day when Rove was preoccupied with his own legal problems. Meanwhile Seelye points out that both Laura Bush and Tony Snow both claim Bush reads newspapers, although neither will say which ones. But if he wants to be in touch with the average American and know what real people are thinking, are the newspapers the place to go? A big iPod fan-- even going so far as to illegally download Beatles songs (no wonder the Chinese don't take his regime's demands about protecting intellectual property seriously!)-- Bush should just skip the silly and elitist newspapers and get right down into the blogosphere. If he wants to know what people really think the communities around Crooks and Liars, MyDD, Firedoglake and, of course, Daily Kos will give him a dose of reality that neither the Washington Times nor the Washington Post will never approach.

THE BUSH REGIME AND THE MASSIVE FRAUD ON THE GULF COAST

Yesterday I was on one of those all-night-all-day flights from Buenos Aires back to L.A. It's great to be home! I hope you had a chance to see my last post from Argentina, a quote from 1647 by Juan De Solorzano y Pereyra, addressing the seriousness of government corruption. Although he was writing about the disastrous nature of the morally bankrupt Spanish monarchy, he could just as easily have been looking into our own time and writing about the morally bankrupt Bush Regime. And when I did manage to get home yesterday, I noticed that the Associated Press was pointing out the same thing, although in regard to the massive and tragic corruption-- and the convenient veil of incompetence enshrouding it-- that has been the Bush Regime's #2 boondoggle (after Iraq): New Orleans.


Even if 1647 is so long ago as to be utterly incomprehensible, you'll recall that way back in 2005 (September 15 to be exact-- hat tip to Matt Ortega for the quote-- Bush was making all sorts of promises about rebuilding New Orleans, a scene he recalled fondly of some of his teenage debauchery. Despite Planet Denny Hastert's suggestions that New Orleans be bulldozed and it's citizens left to fend for themselves, Bush decided there was something in the tragedy for his family and supporters. "Our goal is to get the work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and wisely-- so we’ll have a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures... The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. When that job is done, all Americans will have something to be very proud of-- and all Americans are needed in this common effort."

The inspectors general have found the Bush Regime inadequate, as have the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and as have the vast majority of Americans. Over and above the political considerations and over and above his Iraq-related high crimes and misdemeanors the malfeasance in the rebuilding effort alone should be enough for Bush to be impeached and removed from office.

No one can deny the incompetence-- from day one-- of the Bush Regime's response to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. But t is important to keep in mind that for scores of Bush-Cheney political contributors, the mess on the Gulf Coast has been anything but a tragedy. "The tally for Hurricane Katrina waste could top $2 billion next year because half of the lucrative government contracts valued at $500,000 or greater for cleanup work are being awarded without little competition," is how the AP Report begins. It doesn't get any better as it goes on.

"Federal investigators have already determined the Bush administration squandered $1 billion on fraudulent disaster aid to individuals after the 2005 storm. Now they are shifting their attention to the multimillion dollar contracts to politically connected firms that critics have long said are a prime area for abuse." Who cares about Bush and his minions squandering a billion dollars? Well, certainly not the 30-something percent of Americans who still think he's a capable or even a "good" president. And will the audits coming next month change their minds? Unlikely, even though the non-political official audits will show that substantial amounts of the $12 billion spent on "reconstruction" in the Gulf Coast disaster area went primarily-- and in some cases exclusively-- to bolster Bush's political machine with little, if any, regard for the welfare of those who suffered the most from the catastrophe.


Bush's own former Homeland Security Inspector General, Clark Kent Ervin, is positively disdainful of the Bush Regime's record so far and he expects worse. Calling Bush's use of politically-motivated no-bid contracts inexcusable, he says that "based on their track record, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw another billion more in waste." Ervin chalks it up to a combination of laziness, ineptitude and "nefariousness." Sounds like the hallmark of the Bush presidency. Among the huge corporations which have profited most handsomely from the Katrina disaster are 4 with close ties to the Bush Regime and to congressional Republicans: Bechtel, Fluor (which bribed donated almost a million dollars to Republicans), Shaw and CH2M Hill. I don't know if the American people will ever demand war crimes trials for Iraq or if there will ever be war profiteering prosecutions for Bush-connected companies for what they did in that country. But there should certainly be prosecutions for the criminal behavior surrounding the "rebuilding" of New Orleans.

Shining a spotlight on that night in Cincinnati in 2002 when the media helped George lie us into his Iraq debacle while ignoring demonstrators outside

By reader TIMCANHEAR

Probably many of you have already read this comment, which reader timcanhear added to yesterday's post of Michael Butler's "It Is Time for a National Spotlight on the Media." Tim offers such a good (and dramatic) instance of the corporate media defining their own version of reality that I wanted to make sure everyone sees it. --Ken


Pan the spotlight to just before the war. Bush came to Cincinnati, at Union Terminal, an old WW2 era train terminal where soldiers came and went on their way to Europe to defend against Hitler. It's a noble building to be sure, an icon of strength, standing tall and wide. A perfect, phony metaphor for a weak president about to lead us into temptation and deliver us to evil.

Outside were the protesters. No spotlight on they, the conscience of the people. No no, the spotlight shone inside. America was strong, Bush was a hero and standing in front of a massive backdrop of the globe, he babbled about a free world.

Pan that spotlight outdoors if you will please. But no, America doesn't want to see or hear resistence to this ill fated war, they want cherry pie and to know that all will be fine, that we can shop with pride, knowing that we're doing all we can to thwart terrorism from the shores of America.

The truth of course is quite the opposite. Outside Union Terminal, the protesters grew in such numbers that the supporters of this phony administration were dwarfed in numbers until, eventually, they cowered away, literally. But there was no spotlight. There were only voices.

The voice of America was silenced that day by the corporate media who chose to ignore them. I know, I was there and I watched as the corporate ceo's who were "invited" to the speech drove by; big gop supporters like billionaire Carl Lindner in his beautiful, ivory colored Rolls Royce.

It truly is time for spotlights on the media. We need to shine a light on every goon who put us into this mess. We need to be reminded by their foolish faces what happens when we blindly accept what we're told. These minions need to be marganilized, penalized and then taken OUT of the spotlight. In-out, In-out, In-out.

From the faces of Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove, to Rupert Murcock and to whomever it is that runs the pathetic news organizations known as CNN, CBS, NBC, CLEAR CHANNEL, INFINITY, DISNEY. Let's shine a light on the fools who created this mess. They should be the poster images of all that is wrong in America. Let's give them one more shot under the lights. They wanted to be hero's, now let's show America what they really are. They deserve public humiliation as their punishment, then, to be collectively assigned a seat into the halls of shame for denying the truth to the people they are assigned a license to tell the truth to.

Up first, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. The light shines on thee oh Billy boy. And none of these goons should be allowed an exit strategy.


Speaking of Bill Kristol, did everyone see the poor boy reduced to snapping and whining at Jon Stewart in his latest Daily Show appearance? These right-wing loons have grown used to coming on the show to sell their books from Hell and being treated with courtesy as they babble their nonsense. I'm guessing that Jon has realized that his basic civility is being taken advantage of, and has grown steadily more insistent, not on debating guests, but at least pointing out the obvious unreality of statements that are obviously unreal.

And was Bawling Billy ever unhappy! Which is understandable, I guess, considering that where he comes from--the Land of the Gibbering Right-Wing Idiots--everybody gibbers the same gibberish. Well, we know how people with contrary opinions are treated on air by such brain-dead blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Basically, like raw meat offered to their mad-dog maws.

ARGENTINE QUOTE OF THE DAY-- FROM 1647, BUT IT COULD BE FROM ANYWHERE AND FROM ANY TIME

I've been so taken with Argentina that I found a bookstore that sells English language books above and beyond cheap airplane ride novels. Ateneo on Florida is the place (places; there are a couple of 'em)-- and I found a thoroughly engaging volume by one of Argentina's most popular contemporary writers, Felipe Pigna. Although I was searching for a book on Argentine history that would give me more information about the very substantial Argentine cooperation with the Nazis during World War II and/or about the Chaco War-- I still can't figure out how impoverished little Paraguay somehow thought it was prudent to simultaneously take on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay (and maybe Bolivia) and then kept fighting until it had lost 80% of its male population-- but I found something completely different. The book I'm halfway through is called The Myths of Argentine History and, basically, it seeks to show the roots of Argentine current events in the earliest incarnations of the nation.

I came across a quote from Juan De Solorzano Pereyra (1647) which rings pretty universal in terms of both time and space:

The corrupt are greater and more insolent sinners than thieves, as these steal in fear, while the former do it openly and securely. The thief fears the law's whip, while they want to turn their deeds, no matter how noxious, into the pillars of the law. The thief might cower under the threats of the law and refrain from doing what is forbidden; but corrupt rulers shape the laws to whatever illicit advantages their malice and cowardice might lead them to.

Merry Christmas.

Mrs. Bush says she's glad the information about her skin cancer got out, and hopes it will prompt people to pay closer attention to signs of cancer

"Actually it never occurred to me to make it public."
--to Bob Schieffer on a Face the Nation segment aired this morning

Uh, yeah, thanks, we noticed.

A lonely crusader suggests that "it is time for a National Spotlight on the Media," and even though it's never going to happen, it is a swell idea

Our friend Noah passed this piece on a couple of days ago after it was forwarded to him. Everything we know about author Michael Butler can be found on his Synthesis Institute website, but we suspect that what he has to say about the media's performance will resonate with a lot of readers.

Of course, it's only fair to point out that the media really aren't "pretending you are the voice of the people, pretending you serve our interests." They're only making a show of pretending this. That's all they have to do, since by now in reality there's hardly any segment of the major media that isn't in the control of megacorporate interests. And like all good corporate minions, first and foremost they serve their masters.

Oh, there have been people warning us for several decades now about the inevitable result of this increasing concentration of media control. Cassandras, our poorly educated right-wing media loons would probably call them--and once again they would be unintentionally right, because once again the Cassandras were right. And because we didn't pay attention to them, all the media have to do now is make believe they're pretending to serve our interests.--Ken


It Is Time For a National Spotlight on the Media
By Michael Butler

It is time for a National Spotlight on the Media.

I don't mean a candlelight vigil. This is not about mourning; not about keeping hope alive; not about lifting a lone flame, not even in prayerful numbers, against the oppressive wall of darkness.

This is about turning on floodlights, shining a beam of insistent knowledge, casting a ray of illumination at the heart of deception, cynicism and cold money motives, to tell moguls, editors and reporters:

We see you.

I would stand in front of the studios and offices of Fox News, CNN, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and aim a simple flashlight at their door.

Forget the White House, the Capitol and the local Federal Courthouse. They do not control the narrative. They do not frame the questions; and at the end of the day (when the evening news comes on), it is not the President or the Pope or the Chief of Police who gives the explanations.

Say to MSNBC, CBS and the Washington Post:

We know what you are doing.

If our collective will is strong enough--if our purpose is true enough--if we move in the right spirit, will they listen to a beam of light?

Then when they come to ask, or if anyone wants to know, "Why are you standing here?" we will frame the questions, and we will give the explanations.

We will ask:

For what Noble Cause are American soldiers dying in Iraq?

After all, you are The Media. You are The News. You are not just a mirror of America, like some kind of empty, blank slate that fills up with random notes. It is your job to make sense of the world, to tell us what is really going on.

Why are you not performing your job?

And what should we call a Free Press that only presents part of the picture, distorts the meaning of the picture, and tells us outright lies?

How is it that a majority of Americans seldom or never hear their own views echoed and amplified in the mainstream media, but are told what to think and what to think about by an alien voice that makes them feel isolated in their opinions?

How is it that the majority of Americans understand perfectly well the most fundamental truth about American politics in the modern era, a fact that is virtually never heard or mentioned or investigated: that regardless of which party or leader controls the White House or the Congress, the same Owners are calling the shots?

Too much, too often, the insurance companies write their own regulations; the HMOs make the rules they abide by; the energy companies, the timber companies, the mining companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the auto makers, the defense contractors, the banking sector defines legislation to their liking and their privilege. And on and on, the profit of momentary advantage takes precedence over the long-term interests of local community values, sustainable development, even life and health and safety of the common people.

And who made the choice to leave out the facts, to make-believe pink is purple, and to fill the screen with titillating distractions?

We see you, hiding there, pretending you are not the instrument of change, pretending you are not the wall itself that keeps us prisoner of your will.

How is it that important committees in Congress can be confronted by evidence that demands impeachment of the President of the United States, can face wrenching battles of conscience and political will that decide the fate of the nation by a single vote or two, and be a story that rates not a mention, not a paragraph, not a phrase in any of the major newspapers and news outlets of this country?

How is it that hundreds of thousands of people can fill the streets in protest against works of evil done by government in their name, while the message of a few hundred people holding a counter-demonstration on the fringe is given equal weight and equal or greater time?

How is it that massive numbers of people can turn a spotlight toward issues of grave national concern, putting hands and hearts and feet to a path that one news director deems "not newsworthy," while one influential pundit marginalizes and dismisses their efforts with prominent and well-reported spite?

How is it that poll after poll, not once but numerous times, repeated over the course of more than a year, shows a majority of Americans favor due consideration of evidence by the august body of our national legislature, and impeachment of President George W. Bush if the facts so indicate, yet hardly a columnist will touch the story, no network tracks the development, and nary a commentator salutes the national will?

We see you, pretending you are the voice of the people, pretending you serve our interests.

How many times must a white dove sail, before this land is our land?

It's time for a National Spotlight on the Media.

It's THE READERS' POST for Sunday, December 24: Your chance to talk about whatever's on your mind

Howie and Mags and I have e-conferenced and agreed we want to keep hearing from you, and just have to fine-tune the format.

Now there's no reason why we couldn't put up a READERS' POST every day (it's not exactly heavy lifting), and if the traffic demands it, maybe we will. But for this week, I'm going to try posting this one today, and then new ones on Tuesday and Thursday--so you don't have to dig back too far in the blog to find one. Then for Saturday Howie suggests a "weekend wrapup." Of course by then we may have pounced on items we can't resist pursuing right away.

Talk to us, or talk among yourselves. So far it hasn't been necessary to delete any posts deemed inappropriate, but if it happens, we will. Even if you just want to share your holiday thoughts, or share what you're doing for the holidays (is it the same as holidays past, or different?), have at it.

And meanwhile, happy holidays to all!--Ken

Quote of the day: Can you imagine how much money Pfizer's shitcanned chief exec would have been worth if the bozo had done a good job?

"The Pfizer board of directors has been inept. Over a long period of time, it has obligated Pfizer shareholders to pay Mr. McKinnell staggering sums for continuous, unmitigated failure. This is nothing other than a betrayal of Pfizer employees and shareholders."
--Dallas money manager Frederick E. Rowe Jr. (left), president of Investors for Director Accountability, "a grass-roots organization that organized a vote against directors at Pfizer's shareholder meeting last April" (according to New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson), referring to the $200 million severance package Pfizer has given ousted chief executive Hank McKinnell, details of which were just made public

"Remember that being a business leader is about giving--not taking. . . . We've corrupted the system by hiring boards of directors that feel beholden to the C.E.O."
--James E. Burke, former chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, named by Fortune magazine in 2003 as one of the "10 Greatest CEOs of All Time"

We'll come back to Mr. Burke in a moment, or rather Ms. Morgenson will, in the complete column text below. But to return to Mr. McKinnell: "The most curious figure of all, though," she writes, "is $305,644--rounded up to the nearest dollar, presumably--that represents the value of Mr. McKinnell's unused vacation days."

And what are some of the other figures?

* "pension of about $6.65 million a year for as long as he lives"

* "$78 million in deferred compensation"

* "an estimated $18.3 million in performance-based shares" ("Given Pfizer's recent results, perhaps it would be more accurate if these were identified as failure-based shares")

* "$12 million in severance, vested stock grants worth $5.8 million and a $2.15 million bonus"

* "$576,573 worth of medical, dental and life insurance as well as the unspecified value of continued medical and dental coverage under Pfizer's retiree plans for him and his partner, Joanna Slonecka" ("Included in this pot is the cost of financial counseling programs. Maybe he can dip into that amount to help line up some therapy for Pfizer's board")

Actually, considering the quality of the bozo's performance, the $305,644 worth of vacation days may be Pfizer's best investment. From the company's standpoint, it's just a shame he didn't use those vacation days. You figure every day he was off the job would have saved them who-knows-how-much money.

Of course, one might argue that Mr. McKinnell's record of spectacular failure isn't even the issue, or the big issue, which is more properly the delusion that anyone is worth that kind of money--like that guy who just got, what was it?, the $54 million bonus.

Anyone who thinks that he (or she, though this seems vastly less likely) is worth such sums, or any board that is contemplating paying anyone such sums, should qualify for immediate transport to a padded cell.

December 24, 2006
"Fair Game"
GRETCHEN MORGENSON

A Lump of Coal Might Suffice

HERE'S hoping that Hank McKinnell [right], the former chief executive of Pfizer, chose a giant Sequoia for his Christmas tree this year, because there is no way he could fit the $200 million gift that his old board gave him a few days ago under a mere Fraser fir.

Since Pfizer dumped Mr. McKinnell last July, we have been awaiting the details of his severance arrangement. We guessed it would be dizzying--his pension alone had been estimated at $83 million.

But after the company said late last Thursday that the terms of the package would soon emerge--on a day when shareholders, distracted by holiday shopping, might not notice--we knew the amount would be odious.

Here's how Mr. McKinnell's $200 million package adds up. First is his pension of about $6.65 million a year for as long as he lives. The company estimates its value at $82.3 million. Sweet.

Next comes $78 million in deferred compensation, which includes $67 million in pay that Mr. McKinnell has set aside over the years. Then there is an estimated $18.3 million in performance-based shares. Given Pfizer's recent results, perhaps it would be more accurate if these were identified as failure-based shares.

Tack on $12 million in severance, vested stock grants worth $5.8 million and a $2.15 million bonus and Mr. McKinnell has all the makings of a very, merry Christmas. But that's not all.

Mr. McKinnell, 63, also received $576,573 worth of medical, dental and life insurance as well as the unspecified value of continued medical and dental coverage under Pfizer's retiree plans for him and his partner, Joanna Slonecka. Included in this pot is the cost of financial counseling programs. (Maybe he can dip into that amount to help line up some therapy for Pfizer's board.)

The most curious figure of all, though, is $305,644--rounded up to the nearest dollar, presumably--that represents the value of Mr. McKinnell's unused vacation days.

"The Pfizer board of directors has been inept," said Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager in Dallas and president of Investors for Director Accountability, a grass-roots organization that organized a vote against directors at Pfizer's shareholder meeting last April. "Over a long period of time, it has obligated Pfizer shareholders to pay Mr. McKinnell staggering sums for continuous, unmitigated failure. This is nothing other than a betrayal of Pfizer employees and shareholders."

Paul Fitzhenry, a Pfizer spokesman, said Friday that the payouts to Mr. McKinnell were the company's obligation under an employment contract struck in 2001 when Pfizer shares were at $46, far above the $25.97 at which they closed on Friday.

"The stock had risen more than tenfold over the preceding 10 years and Hank McKinnell played a large role in increasing Pfizer share value during that period," Mr. Fitzhenry said. None of Pfizer's directors, including Mr. McKinnell, were available to discuss the exit package, Mr. Fitzhenry added.

According to the regulatory filing that outlined Mr. McKinnell's take, the package was priced as of Dec. 13 and his resignation letter was signed Dec. 18. But the company waited until late on Dec. 21 to file the terms of the deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The $200 million that Mr. McKinnell walked away with is also indicative of how much executive compensation can remain hidden from shareholders' ken. Recall that Pfizer has prided itself on being an enlightened corporate champion of full disclosure and transparency; its proxy statement last year provided significantly more details on pay than is typical.

Still, that proxy was silent on the $78 million in deferred compensation owed to Mr. McKinnell. This means shareholders can assume that the amount and nature of what was under wraps at Pfizer is not an exception but rather the rule across corporate America.

Mr. McKinnell's $200 million is even more disturbing when put next to the roughly $137 billion in market value that vaporized on his watch. That Mr. McKinnell forced his shareholders to pay $305,644 for his unused days off after draining them of $137 billion is downright stupefying.

But this is how too many leaders behave in 2006. They give large numbers of pink slips to employees. They create really big losses for their shareholders. But they make sure they chisel the company's owners for every nickel and dime, including dental coverage, unused vacation days and financial counseling programs.

Contrast Mr. McKinnell with James E. Burke [left], the former chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, who led that company through the Tylenol crisis of 1982, when every bottle of the medicine had to be recalled after seven users were poisoned in Chicago. The brand not only survived, it thrived. And Johnson & Johnson went on to become the dominant health care company in the United States.

Back in 2003, Mr. Burke was honored by Harvard Business School, his alma mater, with an Alumni Achievement Award. "Remember that being a business leader is about giving--not taking," Mr. Burke said in an interview at the time, which is archived on the school's Web site. "We've corrupted the system by hiring boards of directors that feel beholden to the C.E.O.," Mr. Burke said, adding that business executives need to "recreate a trust agenda."

Mr. Burke's views resonate even now, three years later, but the lessons were clearly lost on Mr. McKinnell. And Mr. Burke's thoughts are especially meaningful given that many executives are lobbying hard in Washington and elsewhere to recreate the pre-Enron "trust me" agenda.

At least there is this: while Mr. Burke is recognized as one of the greatest business leaders of all time, Mr. McKinnell will go down in history as something else: the quintessential me-first executive, mismanaging the company and then wringing from his shareholders every penny possible on his way out.

Lest Mr. McKinnell's accomplishments be forgot, Mr. Rowe said Investors for Director Accountability has decided to create an annual prize, beginning in 2007, to recognize the public company board that has enabled the most self-serving performance by a chief executive in America. It will be called the McKinnell Award. Stay tuned to see who the recipient is.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, Hank. From the shareholders who lost $137 billion on your watch and the workers who will lose their jobs because of your stewardship. We hope you enjoy the money piled under your tree.

Every last nickel.

The Judith Regan-HarperCollins dust-up gets even more delicious: Now there's a telephonic listener-inner! Sometimes these people just find each other

When last we left former ReganBooks publisher Judith Regan, she was being escorted unceremoniously out of the building by security people of News Corp. subsidiary HarperCollins Books, allegedly for anti-Semitic remarks, said remarks having been her alleged complaint that a "Jewish cabal" was out to get her. As a matter of fact, there appear to have been a number of people in the company who were out to get her, and who are Jewish, and they apparently ran a-tattling straight to that wizard of sensitivity and tolerance Rupert Murdoch, the master of News Corp.

The latest development (as reported by the AP's Hillel Italie)--and I swear, you couldn't make this up--is that Ms. Regan's lawyer now has proof that his client never uttered the damnable phrase "Jewish cabal." The proof? Her "temporary assistant" was listening in on the phone call and swears the words were never uttered!

Um, er . . . huh????????????????

Attorney Bert Fields issued a statement Friday saying that Regan's temporary assistant, Carmen del Toro, had called his office to say she had listened in on the conversation and backed Regan's claim that she never said "Jewish cabal," only "cabal."

Now from the fact that Ms. del Toro only recently made this information known to Ms. Regan's attorney, we may reasonably infer that she wasn't listening in with Ms. Regan's knowledge, let alone consent. Which would mean that she was, to put it bluntly, eavesdropping.

Meanwhile, we're told that "News Corp. based its allegations on notes taken by [HarperCollins attorney Mark] Jackson during the phone call." Jackson, for the sake of clarity, is one of the HarperCollins Jews who would be part of the Jewish cabal if there was one. So it's the eavesdropping assistant, with presumably no ax to grind (unless perhaps there is some connection to the "temporariness"--a week--of her HarperCollins career) vs. the note-taking Jewish-cabal member, with Rupert the Just presiding as judge.

Oh yes, Ms. del Toro "was not immediately available for comment Friday."

Sheesh!

Witness Defends Regan in 'Cabal' Dispute
By HILLEL ITALIE
AP
Updated:2006-12-23 11:13:56

NEW YORK (Dec. 23)--A lawyer for fired publisher Judith Regan says a new witness has emerged to dispute allegations that she called four industry veterans a "Jewish cabal" conspiring against her.

Attorney Bert Fields issued a statement Friday saying that Regan's temporary assistant, Carmen del Toro, had called his office to say she had listened in on the conversation and backed Regan's claim that she never said "Jewish cabal," only "cabal."

"We now have a witness saying that she never said it," Fields told The Associated Press. "So it is defamatory and to false to say she said it."

Regan was fired Dec. 15 after a telephone argument with HarperCollins attorney Mark Jackson. According to News Corp., Regan accused four perceived foes--Jackson, HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, HarperCollins Executive Editor David Hirshey and longtime literary agent Esther Newberg--of being a "Jewish cabal."

News Corp. based its allegations on notes taken by Jackson during the phone call.

Ms. del Toro, whose weeklong assignment with ReganBooks has since ended, was not immediately available for comment Friday. HarperCollins spokeswoman Erin Crum confirmed that Ms. del Toro had been employed, but added: "We respect Bert's loyalty to his client (Regan), but unfortunately he continues to be terribly misinformed about the facts. "

Fields, a Hollywood attorney whose many clients have included Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, also said Regan will likely sue for breach of contract--and possibly libel--right after the new year.

Since 1994, Regan had headed the lucrative and risque ReganBooks imprint at HarperCollins, News Corp's publishing division. But her standing was badly shaken last month after News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch canceled her reviled O.J. Simpson book and television interview, for which the former football star was to have discussed how we would have killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

Simpson was acquitted of murder in the 1994 slayings. But civil jurors awarded $33.5 million to the families of Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, sued Simpson on Tuesday, seeking any money from the abandoned project.

As U.S. Jews disgrace themselves trashing Jimmy Carter for trying to tell the truth, one of the foremost journalists in the Middle East weighs in

This has been bugging me for a couple of days, since a friend passed on a post--picked up from somewhere online where such posts get posted--seeming to raise the question of whether Jimmy Carter is anti-Semitic. The post listed a whole bunch of supporting charges that are made by people who make such charges, purporting to evaluate them, and even purporting to find some of them not notably credible,

Of course, you know it's all bull droppings, that in fact the poster undertook the post convinced that he could prove many times over that Carter is in fact a dirty Jew-hater. I suppose the former president must have known he was inviting this treatment when he published a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

I'm not going to burden you by digging the whole post out. I'll just say that, while I was skeptical, I was prepared to listen. Hey, you never know.

I was skeptical, because my take on Jimmy Carter, which has changed surprisingly little over the decades he's been a public figure, is that he has one of the better, and more ruthlessly honest, hearts on the planet, and that there aren't many people with as powerful an inner aversion to hatred and bigotry. I also suspect that the place where he pounces most ruthlessly on any sign of such things is inside himself. To me he has the hallmarks of a stern moralist, but like any real moralist, the one person he feels totally free to judge is himself.

But, as I say, who knows? By the time this inquisitorial post reached me, it was festooned with comments, mostly of a "Let's lynch the cracker son of a bitch" kind. One of them pointed out sagely that you often don't find out who a person really is until he's older. And I couldn't dismiss any of the proffered "proofs" of Carter's anti-Semitism out of hand. However, they did have a strangely forced, even manufactured quality. One of them in particular struck a suspicious note:

Look at the things he wrote in the L.A Times: "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine...What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint...Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations...?

I don't know if it's those discreet ellipsis dots or what, but something about this made me curious to actually "look at the things he wrote in the L.A. Times." The link was there, so I clicked on it. And here is what he actually wrote, with the portions discreetly omitted by our Inquiring Poster in boldface:

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

That leaves the final sentence quoted by the Inquiring Asshole, which has been tacked on (with those discreet ellipsis dots) as if it is more or less continuous with the previous sentences: "...Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations..." In fact, this comes from four paragraphs farther down in Carter's piece, in a totally different context--he's contrasting the official response to his book as reflected in published book reviews with the overwhelmingly positive response he has witnessed from people who actually read the book.

Among the claims the I.A. presents to brand Carter as a possible anti-Semite is that he carefully "selects" from among masses of material only those thngs that are unflattering to Israel, and then that he "suppresses" any possibly exculpatory material. These accusations, the I.A. says solemnly, Carter is surely guilty of.

Of course it isn't Jimmy Carter but this sniveling scumbag who is doing the fraudulent "selecting" and "suppressing." Just look at what he has done to this one paragraph. It's just not possible that these distortions are accidental, or the result of mere stupidity or incompetence. The misrepresentation is so blatant as to amount to deliberate out-and-out lies.

I find the scale of this dishonesty, I have to confess, simply shocking. When you're that ruthlessly deceptive, rather than pretending to honest intellectual inquiry, you really ought to just keep your lying trap shut.

One of the I.A.'s clever poses is to pretend to distinguish between "anti-Zionism" (i.e., opposition to the state of Israel) and broader-based "anti-Semitism." Of course this is a blatant lie too. Because this scumbag isn't measuring support for Israel; he's simply fishing for "evidence" of any deviation from lick-spittle servitude to the looniest and most bellicose factions of the Likudniks, which has, alas, become a general habit of the leadership of many (most?) of the American Jewish organizations. They don't care about a fair or just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem; they just care about having their way.

In fact, Jimmy Carter has been a far better friend to Israel than any of those "spokesmen." (That is, of course, President Carter in the photo with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David, Sept. 6, 1978.) Their slavish subservience to the most regressive, repressive and generally repulsive forces in Israeli political life seems almost designed to bring about the destruction of the state. You would think that it might be a wake-up call for them to look in the mirror and see themselves in lockstep with the vilest forcest in American political life--the people I like to refer to as "anti-Semites for Israel." (Why? Because these are people who really and truly hate Jews, as their Jewish dupes will find out as soon as push comes to shove.)

After writing the above, I did some quick online searching regarding the new Carter book, and saw a link for a piece called "Banality and barefaced lies" by Robert Fisk. Now Fisk has done an incredible amount of desperately important reporting on the Middle East (for the British newspaper The Independent). I wondered, was he jumping on Carter? This I would take seriously.

Not at all, it turns out. On the contrary, Fisk says he picked up Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at the San Francisco airport "and zipped through it in a day." He calls it "a good strong read" and an "eminently sensible book," then adds, "Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book--until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour--Egypt--secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords."

Robert Fisk: Banality and barefaced lies

Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise

Published: 23 December 2006

I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent--the Middle East--and see a landscape which I do not recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?

I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights".

Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them".

Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book--until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour--Egypt--secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".

Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president of the United States".

But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller--and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman.

But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa--one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid--paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book.

At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report--which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad--dream zone would be a more accurate title--there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks--the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman--full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".

The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.

But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he "agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing". Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that--yes--"we're not winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis.

I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It's a draw!

Virgil Goode thinks of himself as an independent thinker. The people around him need to let him know he's really a plain old anti-American bigot

"That's Virgil exactly. He's very strong in what he believes and doesn't mind speaking what he believes."
--Virginia State Del. Allen W. Dudley (R-Franklin), "who [according to Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig, in today's Washington Post] grew up with [Rep. Virgil] Goode and attended Franklin County High School with him in the mid-1960s"

No, not quite "exactly," Al. What you left out is the part about Virgil being a religious bigot who is attempting to flout the Constitution as well as destroy the most fundamental American value.

Of course, if what you meant to say is that your pal Virgil is the same flaming anti-American asshole he's always been, well, that seems to be beyond argument.

Goode Has Often Inspired Political Ire
Friends Say Congressman Unlikely to Back Down in Flap Over Muslim Representative

By Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 23, 2006; B01

RICHMOND, Dec. 22--Virgil Goode is used to having people mad at him.

His Democratic Party bosses pitched a fit when he challenged Chuck Robb in the 1994 U.S. Senate primary. They steamed in 1996 when he forced his party to share power with Republican lawmakers in the state legislature. And they seethed in 1998 when he voted to impeach President Bill Clinton.

Goode responded with a shrug, and by switching parties, becoming a Republican member of Congress after decades as an independent-minded Democratic state lawmaker and representative of Southside Virginia.

Now, by taking aim at a newly elected Muslim member of Congress from Minnesota, the Democrat-turned-Republican congressman has sparked the ire of immigrant groups and invited unwanted attention from national TV networks and newspapers.

"That's Virgil exactly," said state Del. Allen W. Dudley (R-Franklin), who grew up with Goode and attended Franklin County High School with him in the mid-1960s. "He's very strong in what he believes and doesn't mind speaking what he believes."

What he believes now, according to a letter he wrote to a constituent, is that Muslims should not be elected to Congress. He was responding to a decision by Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to carry a Koran into his swearing-in ceremony next month.

"If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran," Goode wrote in the letter dated Dec. 7 and reported this week. "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary."

Ellison was born in Michigan and converted to Islam.

In a news conference Thursday, Goode said "the letter stands for itself" and added, "I do not apologize, and I do not retract my letter." In an interview on Fox News, he noted that one constituent he talked to "thinks I'm doing the right thing on this."

Goode did not return calls seeking an interview Friday.

His letter and subsequent refusal to apologize have infuriated and energized advocates for immigrants and his political adversaries. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) called on President Bush yesterday to condemn Goode's comments, which were characterized Thursday by the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as "ignorant and divisive."

State Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), one of Goode's former colleagues and sometime adversary, said Goode should apologize for the letter immediately.

"There's no getting around that it was a bigoted remark. You can't sugarcoat it," Saslaw said Friday. "Either there is a personal animus, or he's pandering to that kind of prejudice in his district. Either way, he's wrong."

Goode represents a sprawling district that stretches along the foothills, from Charlottesville south to Danville on the border with North Carolina. The district, which takes in all or part of 18 counties, stretches east into the heart of the state's rural tobacco country.

Friends say he is not a racist, as some liberal bloggers have been writing this week.

"The Virgil Goode that I know is not a hateful person. Conservative yes. But hateful, no," said former Democratic delegate Albert Pollard, who worked on Goode's U.S. Senate campaign.

But Pollard predicted that Goode will not be pushed into an apology, either by his political enemies or allies.

"He's not going to back down," Pollard said. "Virgil doesn't know the word contrition."

People who know Goode say his comments stem from an intense concern about immigration and its effect on such places as his economically struggling district. R. Wayne Williams Jr., the mayor of Danville, said Goode's opposition to free trade agreements makes him popular in a district that has been bleeding jobs to overseas plants.

In the 1950s, Dan River Fabrics in Danville employed 14,000 people, Williams said, making it the city's largest employer. Many of those jobs migrated overseas during the 1970s and 1980s. And last year, Danville's economy got another jolt when an Indian chemical company bought Dan River Fabrics and announced it would be moving the jobs of most of its remaining 1,600 employees overseas.

The exodus of jobs, coupled with images of immigrants coming into the United States illegally and finding work, has left many of his residents bitter, Williams said.

"The people around here, they feel like immigration laws are not being enforced and the federal government has ignored the working class of Southside Virginia," Williams said. "Virgil is standing up for everybody here."

Goode, 60, has come a long way since his start in politics at the age of 27. Then a young man just a few years out of law school, he campaigned earnestly on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment, winning a special election to the state Senate as an independent.

In the Senate, his independence was frequently on display. He was an ardent defender of gun rights but also an early and enthusiastic supporter of former governor L. Douglas Wilder, the state's--and the nation's--first black chief executive, who became famous for cracking down on the sale of guns in Virginia.

In 1985, it was Goode who nominated Wilder for lieutenant governor at the Democratic Party's political convention.

Goode's speeches on behalf of tobacco are legendary in Richmond, where lobbyists recall his concern that his elderly mother would be denied "the one last pleasure" of smoking a cigarette on her hospital deathbed.

But he wore out his welcome with the state's Democratic Party in the late 1990s with his push for power sharing in the state Senate and his later vote on Clinton. Shortly after winning his congressional seat as a Democrat, he became an independent and finally a member of the GOP.

"It was obvious he didn't really fit in the Democratic Party anymore," said David Brown, the mayor of Charlottesville and a former chairman of the city's Democratic Party.

Last year, a Goode campaign donor was implicated in the bribery scandal involving California congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Goode denied doing anything wrong and easily defeated Democratic challenger Al Weed for a second time in November.

Here's a DWT Christmas post, complete with a professorial case that it's a holiday "for us all"--or try celebrating the way Handel and Berlioz did

"The whole truth about Christmas . . . reveals why all can enjoy it. It is the perfect example of America's mainstream process, a national rite that dissolves the boundaries between sacred and secular, pagan and civilized, insiders and outsiders."
--Harvard sociology professor and current New York Times guest columnist Orlando Patterson, in his column today, "A Holiday for Us All"


Anyone who's read DWT a bit may have picked up the hint that among those of us who hang out here, Howie and I at least aren't exactly religiously fervid.

I am prepared to acknowledge, at least, that over the millennia there have been a large number of sincerely religious people whose religiosity led them to do good deeds and live good lives, lives that improved those of at last some portion of their fellow humans.

But then you have to set against that the routine destruction and even monumental evil perpetrated through history in the name of religion. Not to mention its apparently irresistible invitation to authoritarian control among the leaders (sometimes just for the sake of power itself, sometimes for profit, often for both), and surrender of mind and will, and with them moral responsibility, among the followers. Not a pretty picture.

But it's Christmas! How could anyone except Scrooge himself be a Scrooge on Christmas?

Don't try saying that to that puling pussyboy Bill O'Reilly or his fellow psychopaths who have dreamed up the bizarre psychotic fantasy that somebody has stolen Christmas, indeed that Christianity itself is somehow under siege here in the U.S. of A. Really now, what the heck is the point of having loony bins if it's not keep brain-damaged people like that from posing a threat to themselves and especially to the rest of us?

Anyhow, the point I was getting at is that DWT is not the optimal place to come for a heapin' helpin' o' Christmas cheer. About the best I can come up with--and it's not nearly as entertaining as the recent Studio 60 vivisection of the holiday--is this erudite pro-Christmas column by Orlando Patterson. (Although I think he thinks he's said the final word on the subject, I will actually have a more final word after he's had his holiday say.)

December 23, 2006
Guest Columnist

A Holiday for Us All
By ORLANDO PATTERSON

Christmas seems to bring out the worst in America's culture warriors. The Christian right continues its crusade against those waging "war against Christmas." Multiculturalists have nearly banished "Merry Christmas" and "Silent Night" from the public domain and are now going after outdoor Christmas trees. Atheist activists like Sam Harris are goaded into defending the outing of their Christmas trees with the argument that it's all secular anyway.

Harris is only partly right. The whole truth about Christmas is far more interesting and reveals why all can enjoy it. It is the perfect example of America's mainstream process, a national rite that dissolves the boundaries between sacred and secular, pagan and civilized, insiders and outsiders.

From the very beginning Christians have always had a tenuous hold on the holiday. The tradition of celebrating Jesus' birth on the 25th of December was invented in the fourth century in a proselytical move by the Church Fathers that was almost too clever. The pre-Christian winter solstice celebrations of the rebirth of the sun, especially the Roman Saturnalia and Iranian Mithraic festivals, were recast as the Christian doctrine of the re-birth of the Son of God. Like many such syntheses, it is often not clear who was culturally appropriating whom. Certainly, throughout the Middle Ages, Christmas festivities like the 12 days of saturnalian debauchery, the veneration of the holly and mistletoe, and the Feast of Fools were all continuities from pagan Europe.

For this reason, the Puritans abolished Christmas. As late as the 1860s, Christmas was still a regular work and school day in Massachusetts. By then, however, its reconstruction was well on the way in the rest of the nation. America drew on the many variants of Christmas brought over by immigrants. It is telling that, in the making of Santa Claus, it is the English Father Christmas, derived from the pagan Lord of Misrule, rather than the more Christian Dutch St. Nicholas that dominates.

The commercialization of the holiday began as early as the 1820s, and by the last quarter of the 19th century a thoroughly unique American complex had emerged--ornaments, Christmas trees and the wrapping of gift boxes. Christmas further evolved in the 20th century with department store displays, Santas and parades, the outdoor Christmas tree spectacle, postage cards and secular Christmas songs. All American ethnic groups contributed to this national ritual.

The re-Christianization of the holiday emerged in tandem with its commercialization during the 19th century. Secularists did not distort or steal Christmas from Christians: in America they made it together. What's more, as the cultural historian Karal Marling shows, the festival's most compassionate aspect, charity, came mainly from the influence of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," which, however, drew heavily on the largely invented accounts of a romanticized Merrie Olde England by the American travel writer Washington Irving.

The outcome of all this is a uniquely American national festival perfectly attuned to the demotic pulse of the common culture: its openness and vitality, its transcending appropriation of eclectic sources, its seductive materialism. It is, further, a mainstream process that dovetails exquisitely with more local expressions of America like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, the former a reinvention of a minor Jewish rite, the latter a pure invention, in a manner similar to the wholly fictitious Scottish highland tradition that pipes up around the New Year. Kwanzaa borrowed heavily from Hanukkah, right down to the menorah, in fashioning the American art of mirroring the mainstream while doing one's own ethnic thing. Decorating public Christmas trees with menorahs should be a soothing natural development in this glorious hall of cultural mirrors.

Ejecting Christmas from the public domain makes little sense, and not simply because religion only partly contributed to its emergence as a national rite. It should be possible to enjoy Christmas while recognizing its muted Christian element, even though one is neither religious nor Christian, in much the same way one might enjoy the glories of a Botticelli or Fra Angelico in spite of the unrelenting Christian presence in their art. In much the same way, indeed, that one might enjoy jazz, another gift of the mainstream, without much caring for black culture; or the American English language that unites us, in spite of Anglo-Saxon roots that are as deep as those of Father Christmas.

THAT FINAL THOUGHT I PROMISED (THREATENED?)

I don't really have strong feelings about Christmas one way or another. I can even be inspired by the myth of the baby Jesus as celebrated, for example:

* in Handel's Messiah. Isn't it enough of a miracle that "For unto us a child is born"? Especially if he happens to be "the prince of peace"? Of whom the ineffably beautiful alto aria sings, "He was despis-èd, and rejected of men. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."

* in Berlioz' L'Enfance du Christ. In the great opening narration, which I've still never heard performed really well, the tenor sings: "Now learn, Christians, what a monstrous crime was then suggested to the king of the Jews by fear--and the heavenly warning that, in their humble stable, was sent to the parents of Jesus by the Lord." It's just an innocent infant we see being saved by his parents' unhesitating departure, leaving behind a heartbreakingly caring chorus of their shepherd friends, fleeing to Egypt, where we see the holy family, on the brink of death from starvation and thirst, saved by the unhesitating and unstinting generosity of an Ishmaelite family. There is a moment of ineffable tenderness when Joseph, restored to health, introduces his family to his hosts, and the Ishamaelite father, learning the baby's name, sings, "Jesus! What a charming name!" And then a moment of surpassing humanity when the men discover that they are both carpenters.

So, you see, there is material in the Christmas story that can stand as inspiration for us all. It just doesn't often come to the fore. (I think one reason I can't recommend a really satisfactory recording of Berlioz' L'Enfance--see below--is that so many performances are smothered with a fake piety that isn't in the score at all.) It's also, I think, not at all what Professor Patterson is talking about.

And as to his notion that this is a holiday for us all, I wonder if he ever had the experience of being a Jewish kid in a public school, surrounded by mostly Christians, being forced each year to sing "Silent Night." I guess it's been awhile since that sort of thing was allowed in public schools, and I rate that a good thing.

Christians, after all, have plenty of time to sing about round young virgins in their own place and time, don't they? It really isn't essential to their faith to bully anyone who doesn't toe their party line into submission, is it? Well, maybe it is. Maybe that, way more than the secularization of Christmas, is the mark of the debased spectacle "junk" Christianity has descended to in our place and time.


RECORDINGS OF MESSIAH AND L'ENFANCE

Recommendations are hard to make because: (1) There have been lots of good recordings of Messiah (but also lots of mediocre and outright bad ones), (2) there hasn't, to my knowledge, been a single really satisfactory recording of L'Enfance, and (3) in any case, I have only the sketchiest idea of what's actually available now--or even, often, what "available" even means in today's record market. So let me just make some suggestions:

* MESSIAH

It was when listening to an old 78-rpm recording conducted by Malcolm Sargent--on actual 78s, in fact--that I first heard the tenor singing the oratorio's first vocal number, the recitative "Comfort ye, my people," as singing to me personally, all the more so when he continued with the message from "your God": "Sing ye comfortably to Jerusalem, that her warfare is accomplish-èd, that her iniquity is pardon-èd." That tenor was James Johnston, hardly a household name, but the performance still moves me to tears in the so-so American Columbia LP dubbing I have.

Sargent (right), who wound up Sir Malcolm, wound up recording Messiah four times--two of them in stereo!--and I wouldn't give up any of them. Well, maybe the first LP version? He was an old-fashioned conductor, was Sir Malcolm, which in the case of Messiah means very little interest in "correct" baroque performance practice. But he was also as deeply musical a conductor as I know of. He is most often thought of as a fine choral conductor and conductor of English music, which he undoubteldy was, but he was also a fully worthy concerto partner for countless soloists, including--and this is saying quite a lot--the great Artur Schnabel in the Beethoven piano concertos; he made a gorgeous recording of Smetana's quintessentially Czech cycle of tone poems Ma Vlast; he made Gilbert and Sullivan recordings with a dimension that no other conductor has looked for. I'm sure I must at some time or other have heard a Sargent performance that seemed to me less than totally musical, but I don't remember it.

But we digress. The coming of "authenticity" to the baroque repertory started out encouragingly, and in fact produced one truly great Messiah: Colin Davis's first Philips recording, with the London Symphony and a fine group of soloists. Davis has always struck me as an almost incomprehensibly variable conductor, and many of his most famous performances seem to me of no interest whatsoever. But man, does that first Messiah hold up! (The fine contralto Helen Watts sings a memorable "He was despised.") Davis's later recording, with Bavarian Radio forces (for such an English piece? hey, don't ask me), doesn't have that same sense of every-number-in-the-moment rightness, but is still pretty good, and also has a pretty good solo roster.

More rigidly enforced "authenticity," where supposed correctness takes the place of musical insight and conviction, has gone far toward making Messiah and the rest of the vast baroque repertory a parched wasteland. And in the case of Messiah, there's an additional issue: the dimension of cosmic vastness that the wicked old Victorians imposed on the score. The only thing is that they were right. What they heard in this enormous score is clearly there--and it's not hard to understand why as deeply feeling a conductor as Sir Malcolm Sargent refused to give it up.

For this dimension of Messiah, if you should happen to see Sir Thomas Beecham's last recording of it, the RCA stereo one, revel in its sheer sumptuousness and joy. But the recording I would really suggest you watch for, which somehow manages to combine stylistic awareness with a willingness to pull out all the stops when the music cries out for it, is a wonderfully satisfying version that Andrew Davis (right--no relation to Colin, and actually the better conductor in my book) recorded for EMI when he was music director of the Toronto Symphony--with the American mezzo Florence Quivar doing a bang-up "He was despised" and bass Sam Ramey in top vocal estate ("The trumpet shall sound" indeed).

* L'ENFANCE DU CHRIST

Boy, this is a tough piece to perform! Which I think is why it took me so long to "get." Berlioz is always hard. The tone is always so individual and precise--and changing, often from moment to moment--like that transition, in the opening narration, from Herod's monstrous crime to the miraculous heavenly warning.

One way you can guarantee getting almost none of it right is by slathering old-fashioned fake piety over the whole thing. A lot of the music lends itself to a kind of sing-songy soppishness that will simply destroy one of the most original and profound creations in the musical repertory. Another difficulty is that the vocal solo parts are extremely demanding but also not very long, which means that you don't often hear them sung by good enough singers--and even star singers who "walk into" a performance are seriously challenged by music that is so far from obvious.

As a result, even the recommendations I can make fall into the "better than nothing" category, and I'm especially worried here about the choices that are actually available.

Still, overall, the best recording, it seems to me, is the '60s one made with French Radio forces (including some pretty good soloists) conducted by Jean Martinon (right), which the late Teresa Sterne found somehow and made a mainstay of the Nonesuch Records LP catalog. I don't know that it's ever made it to CD, but it's worth watching for.

Otherwise . . . hmm. Charles Munch was a great Berlioz conductor, and he made a number of important Berlioz recordings for RCA while he was music director of the Boston Symphony. The L'Enfance, though, is dangerously overromanticized, and the brand-name soloists aren't as good as you would hope. Still, these are quality musicians, who have at last a general idea of where the piece is going.

And then, well, there was a pretty good 1959 Paris recording conducted by Pierre Dervaux for Ades, with maybe the best Narrator I've heard, the character tenor Michel Senechal (right), and a memorable Herod from the fine bass Andre Vessieres. (I'm not so happy about the Marie and Joseph.) And I do get some message from the audio portion of a 1985 Thames Television performance, issue by ASV, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Philip Ledger. (Has the actual TV version been issued on DVD?)


ANYWAYS . . .

Happy holidays to all!

Quote of the day: You know, that boy who cried wolf must have lived among smarter people than the amnesiacs of Chimpy the Prez's America

"There's no doubt that it will have an immediate impact on their ability to conduct attacks."
--U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins (feel free to make your own joke), speaking about the death of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, "a top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar," according to the AP, who "was killed [on Tuesday! it appears that news in, or maybe from, Afghanistan travels slowly] in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday"

Note: "A Taliban spokesman denied the claim." But you know those Taliban fibbers! Also: "There was no immediate confirmation from Afghan officials or visual proof offered to support the claim. A U.S. spokesman said 'various sources' were used to confirm Osmani's identity." (One hates to be overly technical, but wouldn't "immediate confirmation" have come Wednesday or maybe Thursday? Oh right, there was no annoucement till Saturday.)

Meanwhile, even the fizzy Colonel Collins says, "But the Taliban is fairly adaptive. They'll put somebody else in that position and we'll go after that person, too." I bet we will. And our favorite colonel will be there to tell us about it when it happens.

As to who and what the great and mighty Mullah Akhtar is, or rather was, he is, or rather was, "regarded as one of three top associates of Omar," and "is the highest-ranking Taliban leader the coalition has claimed to have killed or captured since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting bin Laden." (And if it turns out that there really was such a person, and he really was killed Tuesday, or sometime, will any of us be surprised if it turns out that being Mullah Omar's No. 3 meant that he handled party favors for the mullah's weekly wienie roasts?)

I can't wait to hear Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, our trusted Rummy, tell us how we've really got those TallyBs on the run now! Then we'll mop up the Iraqi bad boys, and . . .

Oh, he's not? He what? Who? Gates? Well, he's gonna hafta tell us all about how we're wiping their butts in . . . in . . . you know, over there. Right?

[About the photo: "This undated photo," says the AP, "which has been handed out by the U.S military, shows Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani. A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader." Just so you know.]

Add Happy Rockefeller to the list of public figures who've made the choice to go public with their private afflictions in the hope of helping others

I just noticed this terrific comment left by reader eileen in response to my post about Laura Bush's all-too-predictably Bush-esque secretiveness about her recent skin-cancer surgery. I offered the contrasting, life-saving example of former First Lady Betty Ford. Eileen adds another important example, which I hope she won't mind my trying to make sure everyone sees. Thanks, Eileen!--Ken

Just wanted to mention that Happy Rockefeller (wife of Nelson) openly discussed her breast cancer treatment as well (as did Nancy Reagan). Rockefeller was the first prominent woman to discuss breasts that I can remember.

I was about ten at the time, and it was shocking to see the word "breast" in the newspaper and to hear it on the news. I asked my mom why Happy would talk about her breast in public, and she explained that Happy wanted women to be aware that cancer can strike anyone, even very rich people, and that women should pay attention to their health.

At ten, I thought that her choice made sense and was an honorable thing to do. Unfortunately, it makes sense that Laura Bush wouldn't make the same decision, honor not being a strong suit with that bunch. The real reason she didn't use the opportunity to educate people was probably because Rove and company couldn't find a way to politicize cancer and blame the democrats for it.

[About the photo: Breast-cancer survivor Happy Rockefeller is seen this past February (more than 30 years after her cancer surgery) with her brother-in-law David Rockefeller and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, at a Waldorf-Astoria gala dinner celebrating the Asia Society's 50th anniversary, which honored the Rockefellers. (Ambassador Holbrooke is the society's chairman.)]


IT TURNS OUT THERE'S A DIRECT LINK BETWEEN BETTY FORD'S EXAMPLE AND HAPPY ROCKEFELLER'S CANCER TREATMENT

"When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines. But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person--maybe more."
--Mrs. Betty Ford, to Time magazine correspondent Bonnie Angelo in 1974, responding to a question about the many other women (including Happy Rockefeller) who sought treatment after hearing about her case

This quote comes from the Nov. 4, 1974, issue of Time magazine, which we found while rummaging around the Internet. The piece begins:

Breast Cancer: Fear and Facts

Vice President-designate Nelson Rockefeller and his wife Happy waved at reporters in the lobby of Manhattan's Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, where only eight days before, Happy had undergone surgery for breast cancer. "We're very grateful to Betty Ford for her example to all of us," said Rockefeller. "I would like to say that self-examination and courage on the part of women throughout the world can do for them--in case they need it--what it did for Happy."

The Rockefellers had good reason to be grateful. Two weeks earlier, after reading about First Lady Betty Ford's well-publicized operation for breast cancer, Happy decided to do what doctors urge all women to do regularly: examine her breasts for suspicious growths. To her dismay, she found a small lump in her left breast. Happy wasted no time asking for an appointment with her gynecologist, who found several more lumps. Then she checked into the hospital for a biopsy to determine if the growths were in fact cancerous. When the tests proved positive, doctors immediately performed a mastectomy. They amputated her breast and removed much of the underlying tissue as well as the lymph nodes under her left armpit.

Happy's quick action may well have saved her life. Doctors reported that the cancer had been discovered before it had a chance to infiltrate the lymph nodes and then begin spreading throughout her body. They pronounced her prospects for long-term survival "excellent."

Waiting List. With their admirable courage and frankness, Happy Rockefeller and Betty Ford have effected a profound change in the general attitude toward a dread disease. Women are showing a new willingness to discuss breast cancer openly, to face it directly. Across the nation they are besieging hospitals and doctors' offices, seeking examinations and information.

Manhattan's Guttman Clinic, which screens women for breast cancer, until recently received 30 to 40 telephone calls a day. It is now receiving as many as 400 calls, and has placed women seeking examinations on a waiting list that extends to January. The American Cancer Society's division in Atlanta has been overwhelmed by phone calls from women inquiring about breast cancer, and two local hospitals offering free breast checks are now booked through next July. Dr. Robert Olson, a Chicago gynecologist, reports that his patient load has doubled. The publicity surrounding the Ford and Rockefeller operations has also had an impact overseas. In London, for example, the "Well Woman Clinic" at Royal Marsden Hospital has been so swamped with calls that it has appealed to women not to turn up without referral by a doctor.

That her lack of reticence about her illness has helped to produce so massive a reaction has been particularly gratifying to Mrs. Ford. "When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines," she told TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo last week. "But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person--maybe more."

Indeed, both Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller faced their terrifying illnesses with remarkable poise. Their examples should help thousands of others to overcome quite natural fears, and to learn the facts about a serious and little understood disease that once was discussed only in whispers. . . .

Quote of the day: Paul Krugman argues (sadly) against reviving Rubinomics, as deficit reduction may "play into the hands" of the next Chimpy

"[Robert] Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries in American history. But it's now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.

"And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending. . . .

"By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans' lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government."

--Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column today, "Democrats and the Deficit"

Krugman explains:

Since the 1990s were an era of peace, prosperity and favorable demographics (the baby boomers were still in the work force, not collecting Social Security and Medicare), it should have been a good time to put the federal budget in the black. And under Mr. Rubin, the huge deficits of the Reagan-Bush years were transformed into an impressive surplus.

But the realities of American politics ensured that it was all for naught. The second President Bush quickly squandered the surplus on tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy, then plunged the budget deep into deficit by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains even as he took the country into a disastrous war. And you can even argue that Mr. Rubin's surplus was a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush's irresponsibility.

December 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Democrats and the Deficit
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Now that the Democrats have regained some power, they have to decide what to do. One of the biggest questions is whether the party should return to Rubinomics--the doctrine, associated with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that placed a very high priority on reducing the budget deficit.

The answer, I believe, is no. Mr. Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries in American history. But it's now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.

And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending.

In a saner political environment, the economic logic behind Rubinomics would have been compelling. Basic fiscal principles tell us that the government should run budget deficits only when it faces unusually high expenses, mainly during wartime. In other periods it should try to run a surplus, paying down its debt.

Since the 1990s were an era of peace, prosperity and favorable demographics (the baby boomers were still in the work force, not collecting Social Security and Medicare), it should have been a good time to put the federal budget in the black. And under Mr. Rubin, the huge deficits of the Reagan-Bush years were transformed into an impressive surplus.

But the realities of American politics ensured that it was all for naught. The second President Bush quickly squandered the surplus on tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy, then plunged the budget deep into deficit by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains even as he took the country into a disastrous war. And you can even argue that Mr. Rubin's surplus was a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush's irresponsibility.

As Brad DeLong, a Berkeley economist who served in the Clinton administration, recently wrote on his influential blog: "Rubin and us spearcarriers moved heaven and earth to restore fiscal balance to the American government in order to raise the rate of economic growth. But what we turned out to have done, in the end, was to enable George W. Bush's right-wing class war: his push for greater after-tax income inequality."

My only quibble with Mr. DeLong's characterization is that this wasn't just one man's class war: the whole conservative movement shared Mr. Bush's squanderlust, his urge to run off with the money so carefully saved under Mr. Rubin's leadership.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that conservatives who claimed to care about deficits when Democrats were in power never meant it. Let's not forget how Alan Greenspan, who posed as the high priest of fiscal rectitude as long as Bill Clinton was in the White House, became an apologist for tax cuts--even in the face of budget deficits--once a Republican took up residence.

Now the Democrats are back in control of Congress. They've pledged not to be as irresponsible as their predecessors: Nancy Pelosi, the incoming House speaker, has promised to restore the "pay-as-you-go" rule that the Republicans tossed aside in the Bush years. This rule would basically prevent Congress from passing budgets that increase the deficit.

I'm for pay-as-you-go. The question, however, is whether to go further. Suppose the Democrats can free up some money by fixing the Medicare drug program, by ending the Iraq war and/or clamping down on war profiteering, or by rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts. Should they use the reclaimed revenue to reduce the deficit, or spend it on other things?

The answer, I now think, is to spend the money--while taking great care to ensure that it is spent well, not squandered--and let the deficit be. By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans' lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president.

In the long run, something will have to be done about the deficit. But given the state of our politics, now is not the time.

BACK IN BUENOS AIRES, HOWIE TRIES OUT--AND FLEES--THE BEST HOTEL IN TOWN

Back from "the rigors of Tierra del Fuego," Howie reports in hIs Around the World blog on his (brief) stay in "a temple of conspicuous consumption."



AND IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS FINAL NOTE
FROM TIERRA DEL FUEGO--

Howie added this comment to the post about AOL's "Give Bush a Grade" poll:

Today's my last day in Tierra del Fuego before heading back up to Buenos Aires. Ushuaia has one main street, San Martin, and it is lined with gawdy tourist shops selling junk--like all tourist streets anywhere in the world.

Did you ever wonder who the hell buys this stuff? T-shirts that say "Ushuaia" with a photo of a drunken penguin sipping a yerba mate? Well, I met them on the hotel shuttle into town today. They were just salivating over the crap I can't imagine anyone bothering with--the kind of stuff that would go right into a trashbag if someone gave it to me.

Maybe there's some correlation between people who buy this kind of crap and people who give Bush an "A" or a "B," although, to be honest, how could anyone even give him a "C"? I mean what does someone have to do to merit an "F" from these people? Lose a major American city? Oh, scratch that. Um . . . start a thermonuclear war?

AHA! SO THIS IS WHO DONATES TO THE GOP!!

[Howie passed along this item with the above note.]

Iraqi Fugitive Donated to Bush Campaigns and the GOP

--He Contributed Before and After He was Appointed Iraqi Govt. Minister

Robert Y. Pelton, Iraq Slogger, December 21, 2006

IraqSlogger has learned that the ex-Iraqi government minister who is the subject of a nationwide manhunt in Iraq contributed to George W. Bush's presidential campaigns before and after being appointed by U.S. authorities as Iraq's minister of electricity.

Aiham Alsammarae, an Iraqi-American who considered the Chicago area home for 27 years until 2003, escaped his Baghdad Green Zone jail Sunday in an effort to avoid facing prosecution on corruption charges.

After escaping, Alsammarae, in telephone interviews with U.S. newspaper correspondents, taunted Iraqi authorities, said he was fleeing death threats in Iraq, and claimed he had already left the country.

Campaign contribution records show Alsammarae donated $1,000 to the Bush campaign in 1999 and, after being appointed by U.S. Iraq administrator Paul Bremer as Iraq's electricity minister in August 2003, donated $250 to the Bush campaign in April 2004.

Also while serving as Iraq's minister of electricity, he donated $1,500 to the U.S. Republican National Committee and $250 to the Illinois Republican Party.

Prior to his appointment as an Iraqi government minister, and separate from his Bush presidential campaign and RNC contributions, Alsammarae donated nearly $5,000 to the Illinois Republican party and to Republican U.S. senate candidates.

After being appointed by Bremer in 2003, Alsammarae stayed on as the electricity minister in the government of Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi until May 2005.

Alsammarae and the Iraqi minister of public works met President Bush at the White House September 22, 2003.

Alsammarae was arrested on corruption charges this August and in October was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. That verdict was overturned last week, but he faced further corruption charges when he fled jail.

Washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza takes a first look at the most vulnerable House seats in 2008

Speaking of legendary NC wingnut Robin Hayes, washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza takes his first look at the 2008 House race in today's "The Fix." (And on this subject, don't forget our friend Dan Drasin's two-part analysis, "Keeping the House," focusing in Part 1 on the formidable hurdle the Democrats will face, and in Part 2 on what they can do about it.)

The Friday Line: Endangered House Freshmen

Welcome to the last Line of 2006!

Today The Fix takes a look at the 10 House seats most likely to change party control come November 2008.

Yes, we know it's way early to be talking about House races--heck the winners in last month's midterms haven't even been sworn into the 110th Congress yet. But politics never stops. Like it or not, incumbents are already preparing campaigns for 2008 and challengers are getting geared up.

In that spirit, let's get to to the Line. The seats are listed alphabetically (even The Fix isn't ready to rank them numerically) and as always your thoughts are welcome in the comments section below.

* California's 11th District (Currently D): After getting just 39 percent in 2004, Rep.-elect Jerry McNerney (D) took 53 percent two years later to knock off Rep. Richard Pombo (R). McNerney benefited from the general anti-Republican mood in the country as well as the years-long assault on Pombo from national environmental groups. Pombo didn't help his cause by running a decidedly lackluster campaign. The best news for McNerney when it comes to 2008 is that Pombo is considering a return engagement. If Pombo takes a pass, this will almost certainly be a tougher race for McNerney as it will be more about him and his record in his first two years in office rather than about Pombo. The district gave President Bush 54 percent of the vote in 2004.

* Florida's 13th District (R): At some point, Democrat Christine Jennings's unwillingness to concede this race could damage her party's chances of winning the seat in 2008. Jennings continues to pursue her legal fight about undervotes in Sarasota County. She has sued the state in hopes of being declared the winner of the race or having a re-vote scheduled. Jennings has also asked the House Administration Committee to look into the voting irregularities when the 110th Congress convenes Jan. 4. The chances of success are slim. Meanwhile, Rep.-elect Vern Buchanan (R) is moving forward to claim the seat. His 369-vote margin should ensure a serious challenge in 2008 when Florida is certain to--again--be a prime battleground in the presidential race.

* Florida's 16th District (D): Everything that could go wrong did go wrong for Republicans here in 2006. Rep. Mark Foley (R) resigns amid a national scandal over his relationship with House pages. Republicans are unable to replace his name on the ballot -- requiring voters to cast a vote for Foley if they wanted to elect state Rep. Joe Negron (R), who ran in his place. Despite ALL of that, Rep.-elect Tim Mahoney (D) won narrowly, 49 percent to 48 percent. That should be worrisome to national Democratic strategists who aren't likely to enjoy that same perfect storm in 2008. It will be a very tough hold in a district where Bush won 54 percent vote in 2004.

* Georgia's 8th District (D): Until Rep. Jim Marshall (D) makes a decision on whether to run against Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) in 2008, it's hard to handicap the race for this seat. Marshall once again proved his mettle this year by defeating former Rep. Mac Collins (R) in a redrawn district that, as now drawn, gave Bush 61 percent of its vote in 2004. If Marshall decides to stay put, he is far from a sure thing for reelection given that Georgia appears to be getting more and more Republican with each passing election--a trend likely to be heightened in a year with a presidential election at the top of the ballot.

* New York's 20th District (D): Like several other Democratic freshmen on this list, Rep.-elect Kirstin Gillibrand must prove in 2008 that she can win without the benefit of having a damaged Republican incumbent to run against. Rep. John Sweeney (R) did almost everything wrong in his reelection race this year, including making an ill-fated decision to stop attacking Gillibrand and run a series of positive commercials toward the end of the contest. Gillibrand's reelection chances are complicated by the strongly Republican nature of the district. As of Nov. 1, there were 197,473 registered Republicans to 114,736 Democrats in the 20th. Of course, Gillibrand could get a nice boost if a certain New York senator was leading the Democrats' national ticket.

* North Carolina's 8th District (Currently R): The fact that Rep. Robin Hayes (R) beat Larry Kissell (D) by just 329 votes in 2006 and that Kissell has already announced he will run again should make this seat competitive in two years. But we've been down this road before in this central North Carolina seat. In 1998, Hayes beat unheralded Democrat Mike Taylor 51 percent to 48 percent despite the fact that Taylor got almost no support from the national party. Taylor immediately began running against Hayes in 2000 -- this time with the support and financial backing of national Democrats. But the element of surprise was gone; Hayes won by a comfortable 55 percent to 44 percent margin in 2002. Kissell clearly captured lightning in a bottle in 2006. Can he recreate it in 2008?

* Ohio's 2nd District (R): Rep. Jean Schmidt's (R) demonstrated weaknesses as a candidate should counteract the Republican nature of this Cincinnati-area seat and make it a top target for Democrats in 2008. Dare we raise the possibility of a return run by Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett? Hackett ran surprisingly strongly against Schmidt in an August 2005 special election and was courted to run for the seat this past cycle after national party heavies talked him out of challenging Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown in the Democratic primary. Hackett rejected a 2006 House run but left the door open for a bid for political office down the line. Could 2008 be that next race? Vic Wulsin, who nearly beat Schmidt last month, is also mentioned as a potential challenger.

* Ohio's 18th District (D): If Rep.-elect Zack Space (D) hasn't sent a "thank you" card to former Rep. Bob Ney (R), he should. Ney's entanglement with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the congressman's decision to drag out his resignation for months made it almost impossible for Republicans to win a district that, by the numbers--Bush won 57 percent here in 2004--should be theirs. Republicans didn't help their cause by nominating a replacement candidate with ethical baggage of her own in state Sen. Joy Padgett (R). With Ney likely to be just a memory in 2008, Space must prove he can win a race on his own merits.

* Pennsylvania's 10th District (D): Rep. Don Sherwood (R) spent his entire campaign against Democrat Chris Carney arguing that while he did have an extramarital affair, he did not choke his mistress. Not exactly a winning message. And yet Carney won this year by only a 53 percent to 47 percent margin--a sign of the deep Republican nature of a district where President Bush took 60 percent of the vote in 2004. Assuming Republicans don't nominate Sherwood or someone with similar ethical problems, this seat should be one of their top targets in 2008.

* Texas's 22nd District (D): In a presidential year, Republicans would likely have kept this seat despite the resignation of former Rep. Tom DeLay (R) and the ballot problems that forced the GOP to run a write-in candidate in the general election. As it was, Rep.-elect Nick Lampson (D) beat Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula Gibbs (R) 52 percent to 42 percent. Sekula Gibbs and any number of other Republicans are eyeing the race in 2008. President Bush carried the district by 22 points in 2004, and it should perform up to its Republican roots in 2008 with the presidential race on the ballot. A very tough hold for Lampson.

The comments are open for discussion.

ONE OF DWT'S FAVORITE HOUSE WINGNUTS HAS A PLAN FOR "SPREADING THE MESSAGE OF JESUS CHRIST" IN IRAQ

[Howie passes this morsel along with the note: "I knew we should have gotten Larry Kissell elected."]

Representative Hayes (R-NC) says we will win in Iraq by "spreading the message of Jesus Christ" there

BlueNC, December 21, 2006

Robin Hayes has the solution to the Iraq war: have our soldiers convert all Muslims to Christianity.

Having won the election by only a hair’s width and almost getting himself kicked out of Congress seems to have had some profound psychological effects on poor Mr. Hayes. A speech that flip-floppin’ Robin gave last week at the Concord Rotary Club seems to prove he has finally gone off the deep end.

Our local weekly newspaper the “Concord Standard and Mount Pleasant Times” reported on Mr. Hayes speech in his hometown:

First there’s the usual talk of how we’re “winning” over there:

“The war in Iraq has got to be won; it’s being won.”

(A couple of months ago Hayes said that the rise in violence in Iraq was an indication that we’re winning.)

Then comes the real kicker:

“Stability in Iraq ultimately depends on spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior.”

So if we just turn our soldiers into missionaries everything will be okay, Mr. Hayes?

First we sent our men over there to take out the WMD’s, then it was to “spread democracy”, now you want them there to “spread the message of Jesus Christ”?

It so happens that people in Iraq already have a savior but unfortunately for Mr. Hayes it’s Muhammed, not Jesus.

If we can’t keep Muslims from killing each other over there, I don’t think that trying to make them all Christian is going to be any easier.

With this kind of talk Hayes just plays into the hands of Al-Qaeda by confirming what their leaders have always been saying: those American soldiers are just modern Crusaders. He is thereby strengthening the beliefs of terrorists that want to kill every American soldier they come across.

"Bush has rejected doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility"--proving "his superiority over lesser mortals" (Blumenthal)

"Bush has rejected doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing the AEI [American Enterprise Institute] manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance and resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and doubt. Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser mortals. . . .

"The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any admission of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. . . .

"Winning means not ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind, so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win. Then only his successor can be a loser. , , ,"

--from Sidney Blumenthal's "Behind Bush's 'New Way Forward,'" in the Dec. 20 Salon

The "A" team of neoconservatives who played such an overwhelming role in dragging us into the nightmare of Iraq, Blumenthal (left) points out, are long since dispersed. They were, of course, a pack of fools. Not stupid, alas for them and for us (not to mention the Iraqis and everyone else who has been swept into the path of their destruction). If they had been truly stupid, they never could have caused anywhere near the havoc they have.

The problem is the gap between how smart they are and how smart they think they are, which could fill a universe's worth of galaxies--a gap jumped by their arrogance, megalomania, and delusions of grandeur and manhood. (Could all this trouble have been a simple result of these dorks trying desperately to compensate for really, really tiny penises? Or, more accurately, penises that they blamed for their manifestly inadequate manhood?)

They were intellectual garbage. And they were the smart ones. As Blumenthal notes, what George W. Bush in his inadequate-penis panic has turned to for intellectual support against those Poppy's boys the cut-and-run ISG-niks is the neocon "B" team.

It's too easy to note the pathetic irony of having a man pretend to such warriorlike studliness when his entire history is one of supreme physical cowardice and personal gutlessness. He had his chance to fight, after all--in a war that he professed to believe in with all the fervor of his loudmouthed belicosity. (And by most accounts, while he may have been all mouth, he had plenty of that.)

But maybe it isn't irony at all. Maybe it's just another of the personal inadequacies he's spent his life trying to hide. Maybe now every regiment of American soldiers he sends to face the horrors of war makes him feel a little less like the draft-dodging coward he knows he is.

Incredibly, his life has been so garishly overprivileged that he now has the luxury of imagining himself as Churchill and Napoleon rolled into one. Of course these crumbs of "history" he has taken to spewing probably come from a set of "History for Morons" Cocktail Napkins. Take this little episode recounted by Blumenthal:

[O]n Dec. 8, in a meeting with senators, he compared himself to an embattled Harry Truman, unpopular as he forged the early policies of the Cold War. When Sen. Dick Durbin (left), D-Ill., offered that Truman had created the NATO alliance, worked through the U.N. and conducted diplomacy with enemies, and that Bush could follow his example by endorsing the recommendations of the ISG, Bush rejected Durbin's fine-tuning of the historical analogy and replied that he was "the commander in chief."

This could be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic for Bush personally and tragic for the rest of us inhabiting the planet.

The final irony, as Blumenthal point out, is that Chimpy's reinvention of himself as a "commander in chief," as the heroic warrior who can't be defeated, may be his grandest delusion of all:

Bush's idea of himself as personifying martial virtues, however, is based on a vision that would be unrecognizable to all modern theorists of warfare. According to Carl von Clausewitz, war is the most uncertain of human enterprises, difficult to understand, hardest to control and demanding the highest degree of adaptability. It was Clausewitz who first applied the metaphor of "fog" to war. In his classic work, "On War," he warned, "We only wish to represent things as they are, and to expose the error of believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself distinguished in war."

When this loser thug faced the U.S. electorate for the second time, in 2004, it was still possible for all those snooty "centrist" media types to denounce "Bush-bashing" and, of course, us Bush-bashers. It seemed to me then and now that anyone who wasn't a Bush-basher either wasn't paying attention, or wasn't smart enough to get it, or--more ominously--was profiting personally in one way or another from the con. Even now earnest commentators occasionally wonder why it is that Chimpy inspires such intense feelings among his detractors.

How do you explain to them the affront to human dignity and decency of such a debased specimen of the human race being installed--by about as unholy a coalition of the forces of evil and ignorance as could be assembled, or even imagined--for eight years in the most powerful position on the planet, in a country that professes to be governed by the will of the people?

Believe it or not, that's all I have to say--for the moment. But as I mention frequently, I'm a "detail" kind of person, and the whole of the Blumenthal piece is worth reading for the liberal filling in of the creepy phenomenon that is Chimpy the Prez.

Behind Bush's "new way forward"

A battered group of neocons delivered the president his latest war plan, letting him reject the grave warnings of the Iraq Study Group and deny that we're losing the war.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Dec. 20, 2006 | "We're going to win," President Bush told a guest at a White House Christmas party. Another guest, ingratiating himself with his host, urged him to ignore the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker, the former secretary of state and his father's close associate, which described the crisis in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating," and offered 79 recommendations for diplomacy, transferring responsibility to the Iraqi government and withdrawing nearly all U.S. troops by 2008. "The president chuckled," according to an account in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, "and said he'd made his position clear when he appeared with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The report had never mentioned the possibility of American victory. Bush's goal in Iraq, he said at the photo op with Blair, is 'victory.'" Bush reasserted his belief that "victory in Iraq is achievable" at his Wednesday press conference.

Two members of the ISG were responsible for George W. Bush's becoming president. Baker had maneuvered through the thicket of the 2000 Florida contest, finally bringing Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court, where Sandra Day O'Connor was the deciding vote. (Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker reported that she had complained before hearing the case that she wanted to retire but did not want a Democrat to appoint her replacement.) Through the Iraq Study Group Baker and O'Connor were attempting to salvage what they had made possible in Bush v. Gore. Upon Bush's receipt of the report, a White House spokesman told the press, "Jim Baker can go back to his day job."

The day after the report was submitted, on Dec. 8, Tony Blair appeared at the White House. He had testified before the Baker Commission, and supported its main proposals, but now stood beside Bush as the president tossed them aside, talking instead of "victory." "The president isn't standing alone," explained White House press secretary Tony Snow. Blair left to pursue a vain mission for Middle East peace, emphasizing by his presence the U.S. absence. His predetermined failure outlined the dimensions of the vacuum that only the U.S. could fill. On Dec. 18, Chatham House, the former Royal Institute of International Affairs, issued a report on Blair's foreign policy: "The root failure of Tony Blair's foreign policy has been its inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice -- military, political and financial -- that the United Kingdom has made."

The day before the Chatham House report was released former Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared on CBS News' "Face the Nation" to announce his support for the rejected Iraq Study Group and declare, "We are not winning, we are losing." He made plain his opposition to any new "surge" of troops in Baghdad, a tactic he said had already been tried and failed. Powell added that Bush had not explained "the mission" and that "we are a little less safe."

The Chatham House report describes Blair and Powell as partners before the invasion of Iraq who had concluded that Bush was set on war and decided to lend their voices to its defense. "The British role was therefore to provide diplomatic cover," the report states. Powell, of course, delivered the most important speech of his career justifying the invasion before the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, which was later disclosed to have been a tissue of falsehoods and which he called a "blot" on his record. Since the time of the Reagan administration, when he was national security advisor, Powell had been aligned with Baker, the elder Bush and other foreign policy realists. But during his tenure as secretary of state he had suppressed his skepticism and obligations as a constitutional officer in favor of his loyalty as a "good soldier" to his commander in chief. Now, his reputation in tatters, he is trying to restore himself as a member of his original team and speaking for the unanimous opposition to Bush's new plans from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of which he was once chairman.

Bush's touted but unexplained "new way forward" (his version of the ISG's "the way forward") may be the first order of battle, complete with details of units, maps and timetables, ever posted on the Web site of a think tank. "I will not be rushed," said Bush. But apparently he has already accepted the latest neoconservative program, artfully titled with catchphrases appealing to his desperation--"Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq"--and available for reading on the site of the American Enterprise Institute.

The author of this plan is Frederick W. Kagan, a neoconservative at the AEI and the author of a new book, "Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy," replete with up-to-date neocon scorn of Bush as "simplistic," Donald Rumsfeld as "fatuous," and even erstwhile neocon icon Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense and currently president of the World Bank, as "self-serving." Among the others listed as "participants" in drawing up the plan are various marginal and obscure figures including, notably, Danielle Pletka, a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms; Michael Rubin, an aide to the catastrophic Coalition Provisional Authority; and retired Maj. Gen. Jack Keane, the former deputy Army chief of staff.

This rump group of neocons is the battered remnant left of the phalanx that once conjured up grandiose visions of conquest and blowtorched ideological ground for Bush. Although neocons are still entrenched in the Vice President's Office and on the National Security Council, they mostly feel that their perfect ideas have been the victims of imperfect execution. Rather than accepting any responsibility for the ideas themselves, they blame Rumsfeld and Bush. Meyrav Wurmser, a research fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, whose husband, David Wurmser, is a Middle East advisor on Dick Cheney's staff, recently vented the neocons' despair to an Israeli news outlet: "This administration is in its twilight days. Everyone is now looking for work, looking to make money . . . We all feel beaten after the past five years." But they are not so crushed that they cannot summon one last ragged Team B to provide a manifesto for a cornered president.

"Choosing Victory" is a prophetic document, a bugle call for an additional 30,000 troops to fight a decisive Napoleonic battle for Baghdad. (Its author, Kagan, has written a book on Napoleon.) It assumes that through this turning point the Shiite militias will melt away, the Sunni insurgents will suffer defeat and from the solid base of Baghdad security will radiate throughout the country. The plan also assumes that additional combat teams that actually take considerable time to assemble and train are instantly available for deployment. And it dismisses every diplomatic initiative proposed by the Iraq Study Group as dangerously softheaded. Foremost among the plan's assertions is that there is still a military solution in Iraq--"victory."

The strategic premise of the entire document rests on the incredulous disbelief that the U.S. cannot enforce its will through force. "Victory is still an option in Iraq," it states. "America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion." By these gross metrics, France should never have lost in Algeria and Vietnam. The U.S. experience in Vietnam goes unmentioned.

Bush's rejection of the Iraq Study Group report was presaged by a post-election speech delivered on Dec. 4 by Karl Rove at the Churchill dinner held by Hillsdale College, a citadel of conservative crankdom. Here Rove conflated Winston Churchill and George W. Bush, Neville Chamberlain and James Baker, and the Battle of Britain and the Iraq war. "Why would we want to pursue a policy that our enemies want?" demanded Rove. "We will either win or we will lose Winston Churchill showed us the way. And like Great Britain under its greatest leader, we in the United States will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail."

A week later, on Dec. 11, Bush met at the White House with Jack Keane, from the latest neocon Team B, and four other critics of the ISG. But even before, on Dec. 8, in a meeting with senators, he compared himself to an embattled Harry Truman, unpopular as he forged the early policies of the Cold War. When Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., offered that Truman had created the NATO alliance, worked through the U.N. and conducted diplomacy with enemies, and that Bush could follow his example by endorsing the recommendations of the ISG, Bush rejected Durbin's fine-tuning of the historical analogy and replied that he was "the commander in chief."

The opening section of the ISG report is a lengthy analysis of the dire situation in Iraq. But Bush has frantically brushed that analysis away just as he has rejected every objective assessment that had reached him before. He has assimilated no analysis whatsoever of what's gone wrong. For him, there's no past, especially his own. There's only the present. The war is detached from strategic purposes, the history of Iraq and the region, and political and social dynamics, and instead is grasped as a test of character. Ultimately, what's at stake is his willpower.

Repudiated in the midterm elections, Bush has elevated himself above politics, and repeatedly says, "I am the commander in chief." With the crash of Rove's game plan for using his presidency as an instrument to leverage a permanent Republican majority, Bush is abandoning the role of political leader. He can't disengage militarily from Iraq because that would abolish his identity as a military leader, his default identity and now his only one.

Unlike the political leader, the commander in chief doesn't require persuasion; he rules through orders, deference and the obedience of those beneath him. By discarding the ISG report, Bush has rejected doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing the AEI manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance and resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and doubt. Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser mortals. Even the Joint Chiefs have betrayed the martial virtues that he presumes to embody. He views those lacking his will with rising disdain. The more he stands up against those who tell him to change, the more virtuous he becomes. His ability to realize those qualities surpasses anyone else's and passes the character test.

The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any admission of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. Bush cannot entertain doubt and still function. He cannot keep two ideas in his head at the same time. Powell misunderstood when he said that the current war strategy lacks a clear mission. The war is Bush's mission.

No matter the setback it's always temporary, and the campaign can always be started from scratch in an endless series of new beginnings and offensives -- "the new way forward" -- just as in his earlier life no failure was irredeemable through his father's intervention. Now he has rejected his father's intervention in preference for the clean slate of a new scenario that depends only on his willpower.

"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told the Washington Post on Tuesday, a direct rebuke of Powell's formulation, saying he was citing Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and adding, "We're going to win." Winning means not ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind, so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win. Then only his successor can be a loser.

Bush's idea of himself as personifying martial virtues, however, is based on a vision that would be unrecognizable to all modern theorists of warfare. According to Carl von Clausewitz, war is the most uncertain of human enterprises, difficult to understand, hardest to control and demanding the highest degree of adaptability. It was Clausewitz who first applied the metaphor of "fog" to war. In his classic work, "On War," he warned, "We only wish to represent things as they are, and to expose the error of believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself distinguished in war."

Quote of the day: While Chimpy the Prez didn't become any smarter in 2006, unfortunately for him a growing number of other people did wise up

"The year 2006 started with President Bush firmly in denial about how terribly wrong his war in Iraq has gone. It ends that way, too."
--Dan Froomkin, in yesterday's washingtonpost.com column, "White House Year in Review: Bush Loses His Parade"

'But in between," Froomkin goes on to say, "something changed: Bush lost his parade."

Here's my first New Year's resolution: to keep closer track of Dan Froomkin's writing. I often miss his washingtonpost.com blog simply because it's posted after I've finished most of my Net rummaging, and I forget to check the column he posted yesterday. This item, for example, comes from yesterday's blog, and the elapsed day hasn't aged it at all.

You can read the whole item below (and then peruse Dan's "Look Back at 2006" via the link above), but I just have to pull out one more paragraph:

"[I]t wasn't until Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," came out in September that it was definitively established, to the full satisfaction of Washington's cocktail-party circles, that the president is not to be taken seriously on Iraq."

Washington cocktail-party circles. What a lovely phrase! How much government policy, not to mention media coverage thereof, do you suppose is formulated in that particular "no-think tank"?

White House Year in Review:
Bush Loses His Parade

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, December 20, 2006; 10:22 AM

The year 2006 started with President Bush firmly in denial about how terribly wrong his war in Iraq has gone. It ends that way, too.

But in between, something changed: Bush lost his parade.

Somehow, Bush had managed up until this year to lull voters--and seduce journalists--into complicity with a worldview that was simply not based in reality.

There's been plenty of evidence for years now that Bush was living in a self-imposed bubble of non-reality, particularly when it came to the situation in Iraq.

But it wasn't until Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," came out in September that it was definitively established, to the full satisfaction of Washington's cocktail-party circles, that the president is not to be taken seriously on Iraq.

It wasn't until November, when the voters resoundingly threw Bush's congressional enablers from power, that it became undeniably clear that Americans reject Bush's leadership.

And Bush's response to this month's report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group is making it manifestly obvious that, for all the White House's attempts to give the impression that Bush listens to people who disagree with him, he does not.

He appears to still listen pretty much only to two people--Vice President Cheney and political guru Karl Rove--even though both were proven catastrophically wrong in 2006.

The Iraq debacle, after all, is Cheney's doing almost more than it is Bush's. It was Cheney who whispered into Bush's ear that it would all work out just fine. Apparently, that continues.

And it is Rove who is responsible for Bush's aversion to finding common ground with his political enemies. That also appears to continue, even though this year's election proved quite conclusively that the politics of division have a limit.

These days, when Bush turns around to see who's marching behind him, he sees Cheney and Rove--and increasingly few others.

AOL SAYS: GIVE BUSH A GRADE--and 10% of the respondents give him an "A"! (Plus, a whopping 13% anticipate "A"-level work from him for 2007!)

Of course, most of the respondents went straight for the "F"--61% for 2006, 60% for 2007. (You have to love the optimism of that 1% among the F-raters who apparently look for an uptick in our George's performance for the coming year.) The results reported here are as of a bit after midnight (EST) Thursday morning.

And before you ask, no, there doesn't appear to be a grade lower than F.


Overall, what grade did Bush earn in 2006?

A--10%
B--10%
C--7%
D--12%
F--61%

Total votes: 284,278


Overall, what grade will Bush earn in 2007?

A--13%
B--9%
C--6%
D--12%
F--60%

Total votes: 280,917

HOWIE SAYS IT ISN'T JUST MASTER RAHM HE INTENDS TO GO AFTER WHEN HE GETS BACK TO THE STATES--HE'S GOT "TEAM BUSH" IN HIS SIGHTS

Ken, it isn't only Rahm Emanuel I hope to fuck up when I get back to America. In fact there are worse enemies to democracy than Emanuel. Let's start with Team Bush. Rove has come up with a plan for Bush to come out "in support" of raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour--or at least of a minimum wage bill loaded with poison pills devised by the GOP allies in Big Business.

George Miller is already all over this. Here's a statement from his office today:

REP. MILLER STATEMENT ON MINIMUM WAGE

WASHINGTON, D.C.--U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the Chairman-Designate of the Education and the Workforce Committee, issued the following statement today in response to comments from President Bush, delivered at his press conference this morning, about raising the national minimum wage:

"I am pleased to hear that President Bush supports a national minimum wage increase from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. But let's be clear: given that nearly a decade has passed since the last minimum wage increase, no one can seriously believe that the proposed increase will harm the small business sector. More than half the states already have laws setting their own minimum wages above $5.15 per hour. The states have been forced to act because Congress, for far too long, has failed to act.

"A minimum wage increase should not and need not be conditional on other legislation or policy changes. Increasing the minimum wage is the right thing to do; it is long overdue; it has the overwhelming support of the American people; and when Congress returns in January, it is what we will do."

Remember how the Republican neo-fascist scum used to warn their automoton supporters that if Democrats won a majority in Congress, committee chairmen would do scary things? They were right. Instead of a corrupt lowlife like "Buck" McKeon chairing the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, we have George Miller, a real patriot fighting for the interests of working families.

The Daily Show's John Oliver, reporting "live from Baghdad," concludes that "the Iraqis are to blame for the mess we've got themselves into"

JON STEWART: All right, Iraq is broken. But here's the good news: It's not our fault.

Fox News's CRAZY JOHN GIBSON, "My Words" (Dec. 17):
"Whose fault is the trouble in Iraq? Bush's fault? No, it's the Iraqis' fault."

Michigan Sen. CARL LEVIN (Nov. 16):
"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves."

The unspeakable CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER on Fox News (Dec. 8):
"The Iraqis are more interested in having a civil war than actually fighting with us."

California Sen. BARBARA BOXER on MSNBC (Nov. 16):
"What are they doing with this freedom? They're killing each other."

[title of segment displayed: THEY-A-CULPA]

JON STEWART: Those ungrateful bastards!

Correspondent John Oliver joins us live from Baghdad. John, thank you so much. An interesting twist, John. What do you make of these comments that the Iraqis themselves are to blame for their deteriorating situation?

JOHN OLIVER: Well, to me, I think that any shrewd observer will come to the conclusion that the Iraqis are to blame for the mess we've got themselves into. And the truth is, I don't get the sense that they seem to care what it's doing to us.

JON S [confused]: What . . . what it's doing to us?

JOHN O: We've spent a lot of time, money and ammunition in Iraq, and they've just taken it all. And what have they given us in return? Some of the ammunition. [laughter] Americans have been torn apart by this war, and the Iraqis don't seem to have a single empathetic bone in their body. And I've seen a lot of their bodies. [pointing at "Baghdad" behind him] The place is literally littered with them. [laughter, changing to moans] Actually, that's another problem: the litter. It's embarrassing.

JON S: But John, why do you think that this is?

JOHN O: I blame the Iraqi media--criticizing from high up in their ivory bunker. You know, Jon, it's six days till Christmas, and I've yet to see a story here in Iraq on how Americans are traveling less due to high oil prices. I'll be honest with you. A lot of the people here, I'm not sure they want us to win this thing.

JON S [after a pause]: That's the insurgency. They're actually actively fighting against us.

JOHN O: Yeah, exactly! Not very patriotic. [laughter]

JON S: John, do you foresee a way out of this?

JOHN O: Absolutely. It's time for the Iraqis to submit to America's will that they be self-reliant, to yank themselves up by their bootstraps. And no more self-pity. [in falsetto, while shaking his hands in "fear"] "Oh, look at me, the Great Satan took my bootstraps." Stiff upper lip! Well, just look at Iran. That's a shining example in the region of democratic reform. [laughter]

JON S: So that's our strategy? For Iraq to become like Iran?

JOHN O: Absolutely! It's what our military strategists have always called "the worst-case scenario." [laughter--John has the fingers of both hands crossed] Happy holidays.

JON S: Thank you very much, John. John Oliver, from Baghdad.


AFTERNOTE ABOUT THE JOHN OLIVER ILLUSTRATIONS

No, you haven't gone blind, and your ISP hasn't suddenly started censoring your DWT feed. There aren't any John Oliver illustrations here. I just wasn't willing to inflict on you--once again--the few decent shots of him from the burgeoning British comedy career out of which The Daily Show snatched him so suddenly--and so happily.

I spent a full hour trying to hunt down a current shot. I'm pleased, I guess, to see that there's now video of John's dazzling Daily Show segments all over the damned Internet. But I do my TV-watching on TV, not on the computer. My point in offering these occasional transcripts, in addition to (yes) being able to share them, is--for all that we lose by not having the visual and performance elements--to be able to take our time and really appreciate the language, the writing, the words. Still, I would like to be able to supplement those wonderful words with at least a suggestion of the visual context, and you'd think it would be simple enough to "capture" a still image from the video clips. But I even had this very segment up and running, or rather up and running and paused, but I'll be damned if I could figure out how to preserve that image.

At least in the course of my search, futile though it was in terms of the actual objective, I got to read bits of interviews and behind-the-scenes rapportage and viewer commentary, and I see that a lot of folks have been similarly delighted by the stuff John's been doing on the show. In one interview--from early in his Daily Show experience--he expresses great pleasure at the remarkable creative freedom he has on it, while also noting astutely that it isn't a "springboard" to anything. This strikes me as sadly true. It's hard to think of any performance format in either the U.S. or the U.K. that he could now just "walk into." Instead, it looks as if he's going to have to invent for himself whatever it is that he does next.

Meanwhile, it would be hard to imagine a talent and a vehicle more perfectly suited to each other.--Ken

As Mel Brooks suggested: "Hope for the best" (the new Rahm is hardly a Rahm clone); "expect the worst" (however, he's been a Rahm lieutenant)

And of course Master Rahm is firmly ensconced now in the House leadership that has tapped his sidekick, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, to take over as chair of the DCCC.


Van Hollen To Oversee Recruiting, Fundraising

By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006; B02

Congressional leaders tapped Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen yesterday to be the Democrats' chief recruiter, fundraiser and protector of the House majority for the 2008 elections, an acknowledgment of his role in helping the party win control last month and his rising stature on Capitol Hill.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Van Hollen would succeed Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a high-profile position for the tenacious, detail-oriented lawyer and former legislative staffer, who was first elected four years ago.

Emanuel, who will chair the Democratic Caucus, praised his successor yesterday as a "political strategist and thinker of the first order" and said Van Hollen's recruitment of House candidates helped create the first Democratic majority elected in 12 years.

"Throughout this election, I sought his advice and counsel in every critical decision I had to make," Emanuel said in a statement.

Under Van Hollen, who represents Montgomery County and a sliver of Prince George's County, House Democrats will try to secure their 233 seats. The announcement follows his appointment by Pelosi last week to the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which sets tax policy.

After Democratic victories in 30 districts held by Republicans, political analysts say, Van Hollen faces a significant challenge.

"This is a campaign committee that lost no seats in 2006, and that's virtually impossible to duplicate," said Amy Walter, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report who tracks House races.

Van Hollen, 47, has overcome long odds before. He emerged from a field of nine candidates to join the Maryland House of Delegates in 1990 and defeated an incumbent four years later to move up to the state Senate. His election to the U.S. House in 2002 came after two grueling, costly election battles.

That year, Van Hollen, who lives in Kensington, won a four-way primary contest that included early favorite Mark K. Shriver of the Kennedy family. He went on to defeat Rep. Constance A. Morella, a popular Republican.

Maryland Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) called Van Hollen a hard-working go-getter who should never be underestimated.

"He doesn't take no for an answer. He pursues his goals tenaciously," Miller said yesterday, recalling Van Hollen's anti-tobacco and anti-gun legislation in Annapolis. "We'd try to get him to moderate his views, and he'd just go busting forward with a Chevy Chase, Kensington agenda, and we'd have to adjust."

In the past year, Van Hollen worked closely with Emanuel as a leader of the campaign committee's effort to pick up seats in Republican strongholds. He spent months traveling from Pennsylvania to Ohio and Indiana to identify and mentor candidates, then helped build fledgling campaign and fundraising operations.

Van Hollen said he drew on his experience from 2002 and worked to convince potential candidates that running against "incumbent members who hadn't faced challenges in a long time was doable, that they could win."

The challenge now, he said, is "to continue recruiting to make sure we're in a position to continue the momentum to change direction in Washington."

On the Hill, Van Hollen is considered part of a younger generation of Democrats whom Pelosi is grooming through leadership opportunities. He is a member of the 30-Something Working Group, an informal team that helped spread the party's message from the House floor during the campaign. He is considered a reliable liberal and has voted against Bush tax cuts, a ban on "partial birth" abortion and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said Van Hollen's appointment is a vote of confidence by Pelosi in his political judgment, ability to recruit candidates and raise money. He's one of "our bright young stars," Daly said.

Although Pelosi's selection of an Emanuel lieutenant signals an interest in continuity in the party's campaign strategy, Van Hollen's low-key, cerebral style contrasts with that of his high-wattage, profanity-prone predecessor, colleagues say.

"Rahm is Type-A on steroids, and Chris is very even-keeled, very levelheaded, so you couldn't get two people more opposite personality-wise," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who co-chaired the so-called Red to Blue project with Van Hollen. "But the most important similarity is they both have an incredibly strong work ethic and a devotion to detail."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: OUR FRIEND NOAH ASKS, WHO IS THE PRESS WORKING FOR?

Noah sends along this THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

1. A full naval battle group is headed to Iran.

2. So-called President Bush held a press conference today.

3. Not one so-called reporter asked him about the battle group.

[About the photo: If you don't happen to have a naval battle group of your own to play with, check out these nifty models on the Motion Models website.]

Say, before all hell broke loose, did anyone even know who Miss USA was?

(1) TV'S CRAIG FERGUSON GETS "AMERICA'S CREEPY UNCLE" TO SEND TARA TO "TRUMP'S TRAMP REHAB"

From last night's, er this morning's, Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson:

It's a great day for America, everybody. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why. Actually, this is good news. Donald Trump--you know, America's . . . Trump . . . [laughter] . . . uh, I don't know what the hell he is, actually. What is he? America's creepy uncle, Donald Trump [laughter] is allowing Miss USA to keep her crown, because last night we were talking about this, we speculated Trump was going to fire Miss USA for underage drinking and making out with Miss Teen USA [laughter]. That actually happened. Not just in my dreams, it really happened. [laughter]

Anyway, Miss USA got into an awful lot of trouble. I don't know what, Miss Teen USA seems to have skated. She's getting off with it. [laughter] I can't say a thing here. [laughter] Anyway, Miss USA got in a lot of trouble, and we suggested another option, that rather than fire her, we said, why not send her to Trump's Tramp Rehab? [laughter] Send her. And Trump obviously watches the show, because that's what he's doing. He's sending her to rehab.

[We don't want to name names, but Katie Blair (Miss Montana) is Miss Teen USA 2006. Hmm, we did just kind of name names, didn't we? No, we don't have any photos of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA together. And we wouldn't print them if we did. Okay, maybe we would print them if we had them. But we don't.--Ed.]

So I think underneath that threadbare comb-over, there's [laughter] . . . underneath that strange mat-like hat, there is a heart of gold--a heart of gold with "Trump" written on it. He's like a five-year-old, this guy, has to write his name on everything. [imitating] "That's mine, "Trump!"


(2) JON STEWART WONDERS: "WHO HAS THE MORAL AUTHORITY TO ABSOLVE THIS WOMAN OF HER SINS?"

From last night's Daily Show:

JON STEWART: Everyone knows I'm a bit of a news junkie, but here's something you might not know about me: I'm also a bit of a pageant queen. What can I say? I love the glamour, the sequins, the baton-twirling, the violence. [laughter] So you can imagine my concern this week . . .

[NBC's David Gregory reporting]
Last April 20-year-old Tara Conner, who is from the tiny town of Russell Springs, Kentucky, became the first woman from her state to win the coveted Miss USA title. But word on the street is that her tiara is now tarnished. There have been reports of drug use, drinking, scandalous behavior, allegedly with men and women . . .

JON STEWART [making a facial gesture of "whoo!" as audience whoops]: Clearly the crowd disapproves. [laughter] I mean, they'd expect behavior like that with a whore like Miss Illinois. But Miss Kentucky? Whew, well, you'll never make it to Miss Universe with bisexuality. [laughter]

So the media was in a dilemma. How breast . . . I'm sorry, how best to show their outrage--how best to show their outrage?

[FOX & FRIENDS: "TIARA TAKE-AWAY?"--voiceover, over collage of video of Tara skimpily clad]
Today she may actually lose her crown because of what they've called her bad-girl behavior. Claims of alcohol use, and testing positively for cocaine.

MAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: Obviously she's overstepped the line.

FEMALE VOICEOVER: She was caught smooching with Miss Teen USA.

JON STEWART: Yes, apparently not only is Miss Kentucky an out-of-control party whore. Apparently she's never been filmed clothed. [laughter] So what do you, [barely able to get words out for the excitement] hot woman who likes to make out with other hot women, have to say for yourself?

TARA: We all have personal demons that we have to face at some point or other. My personal demons are my personal demons.

JON STEWART: "My personal demons are my personal demons. I . . . get hammered and make out with hot chicks." Wait a minute, you know what's so weird? My personal demons . . . pay to see your personal demons. [laughter]

But who has the moral authority to absolve this woman of her sins?

DONALD TRUMP: I've always been a believer in second chances. Tara is a good person. Tara has tried hard. Tara is going to be given a second chance.

JON STEWART [doing a sort of impersonation of The Donald that's more than vaguely reminiscent of his impersonation of Chimpy the Prez]: "To help me milk all the extra publicity and exposure I can out of this second-rate pageant that I bought ten years ago as an excuse to nail girls like Tara." [applause] This is . . . I mean, anybody who makes out wid hot chicks, I think deserves to be rehabilitated. [laughter]

Yes, in the end Tara Conner was given a reprieve, and it was quite emotional. She's keeping her crown. I think Tara said it best . . .

TARA [in a hoarse voice, emotional]: I want to thank all of the people that have been behind me."

JON STEWART [looking surprised, audience is whooping it up]: Adding, "time permitting."

Quote of the day: The crazy-ish guy in my subway car was concerned about Mary Cheney's baby

"Who's the father of Mary Cheney's baby? Does anybody know? It's probably Condoleezza Rice."
--a guy on the uptown No. 1 subway train last night, talking to no one in particular, or possibly everyone

You're probably going to say, "Oh, you just made that up." (Hey, do I criticize your work?) Well, it actually happened, about 9:53pm in the last car of the Broadway local heading from 50th Streeet to 59th Street. You find someone else who was there, they'll tell you.

(By the way, is it my imagination, or are we just not getting as many subway crazies as we used to? I'm thinking maybe they've all gotten cell phones--which mostly don't work in the subways anyway.)


COMING UP TODAY ON DOWNWITHTYRANNY:

It's a big day over in the DWT TV Transcription Unit, which has already spit out all the following and passed it on to the Encrypted Scrawl Deciphering Desk in preparation for keyboarding of the barely legible scribbling:

• The top breaking news: A "second chance" for Miss USA

We've got both TV's Craig Ferguson and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart on the job.

• In other news: The scandal of the ungrateful Iraqis

In a Daily Show exposé ("THEY-A-CULPA"), Jon Stewart and John Oliver lay the blame for the mess in Iraq where it properly belongs: on the Iraqis.

No, the news in Part 2 of Tom Tomorrow's 2006 in review doesn't get a whole lot better

Last week we brought you Part 1 of Tom Tomorrow's 2006 Year in Review. Here's Part 2 (click on it to enlarge):

IF YOU'VE BEEN WONDERING, "WHY TIERRA DEL FUEGO, HOWIE?," WONDER NO LONGER--YOU'LL FIND THE ANSWER JUST A MOUSE CLICK AWAY

With the average tourist stay in Tierra del Fuego running two nights, even the locals wonder why Howie chose to make his way there and spend a whole week. To find out the answer--and also where to eat when you go (hint: take lots of money)--visit his Around the World blog.

AND HOWIE HIMSELF ADDS THIS NOTE

Next week when I'm home I'll post my photos, but let me tell you, the chance to walk with the penguins on a remote island in the Beagle Channel was worth it all (whatever "it all" was). The Argentines have made it possible for small groups of about a dozen people to make the eight-hour excursion out to a tiny island to visit a colony of penguins. The penguins made the island a rookery in the 60s and have been returning there every year. It was pretty mind-blowing. Visitors have very strict rules to obey about where they can and can't go. You're only allowed to whisper, and at all times peguins have the right of way (should they wander onto the fenced-off humans-permitted walkways, as they constantly do).

It's summer here, but that didn't stop a quick hailstorm, nor did it mean the temperture got above 40. The Argentines are still determined to enjoy the summer, and some even wear shorts (while I was bundled up in my layers of winterest clothes).

Anyway, now that I've been able to spend a day walking with the penguins, it's time to come home and see if there's anything that can be done about Rahm Emanuel turning the Democratic congressional caucus into another arm of the Greater International Corporate Empire (or the Borg).

It's pretty much a straight-up "quid pro quo": We swipe funny stuff from Harry Shearer, we give him a book plug. Isn't that how it's suppposed to go?

We jumped on the story of News Corp.'s O.J. book-and-TV project, but we've been less gung-ho about the aftermath--notably the firing on Friday, supposedly ordered by News Corp. boss of bosses Rupert Murdoch himself, of project guru Judith Regan from her post as publisher of her ReganBooks imprint. (Isn't that a great scene: the security guards ushering Ms. R out of the office of her own imprint? Or at any rate what she had foolishly come to think of as "her own" imprint, simply because it bore her name. I assume Mr. Murdoch owns that now.)

As I was saying, we've steered clear of this aftermath, because of the strong sense that it no longer has much to do with the O.J. project but is the playing out of seismic factors within the News Corp. empire, presumably centered around the invariably cited animosity between Ms. R and her food-chain superior, HarperCollins Books head honcho Jane Friedman.

And now we see, from what I read in that gossip rag the New York Times, that the allegedly "anti-Semitic" remarks that supposedly triggered her firing were in fact accusations she made of a cabal against her consisting of people who are (a) Jewish and (b) gunning for her. These accusations were apparently promptly pumped into Mr. Murdoch's ear by those people who are (a) Jewish and (b) gunning for her.

Of course I can't speak for the entire World Jewish Conspiracy, but it strikes me that as charges of anti-Semitism go, this one is just plain pathetic.

There is, however, fun to be extracted from Ms. Regan's misery on HuffingtonPost, where Harry Shearer, with a "comic novel" to sell, Not Enough Indians, which he swears "stubbornly remains available, and, yes, it does make a splendid Christmas-Chanukkah-Kwanzaa gift" (and hey, if we can't trust the author on this, whom can we trust?), reports on a phone interview he did with our Judith for her Sirius Radio show.

("My motive was clear, if not clouded by doubt about hanging telephonically with the woman who was this close to publishing the O.J. 'hypothetical' murder memoir: when you're trying to sell a book, you'll talk to anybody willing to promote it. . . . Good Morning America rejected me, for example, as 'too highbrow'--apparently somebody had leaked word about my secret consulting with Stephen Hawking.")

The first ten minutes or so go great, in Harry's estimation, "although . . . every few minutes, some little wisp of steam escapes that warns of the eruption to come, some little comment about 'They're always gunning for successful women in this country'--which has nothing to do with anything we've been talking about." But eventually, sure enough, "Mt. Judith erupts." Eventually that leads to this truly bizarre exchange:

She kept on the subject of the drive against successful women, until I finally pointed out that nobody seems to be gunning for Oprah. "Not yet," she replied. Frankly, she seemed so at sea for an answer to the question of the shitstorm that had rained down on her, I finally offered one: "I think one reason people may have reacted so angrily and energetically against this project was because it was an opportunity to attack Rupert Murdoch."

"Why would they want to do that?" she asked. She really did.

I decided to be comedically blunt: "Because he's evil."

That really set her off. "You take his money. You're like all the Hollywood hypocrites, you criticize him but you're happy to take his money."

"Judith," I said, trying to get her back into a mood which might allow for mentioning my book again, "a good friend once told me that the only way to really hurt Rupert Murdoch is to take as much of his money as humanly possible."

"That's demented," she replied.

"I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a saint in the media-mogul business these days," I finished up.

Now if that doesn't earn a book plug, I don't know what does. I haven't bought the book, or read it, but I have it on excellent authority that it makes a splendid gift.

When the chips are down, you can always count on a Bush to . . . well, act like a Bush

"First lady Laura Bush had a skin cancer tumor removed from her right shin in early November but decided it was a private matter and did not reveal it publicly.

"The White House acknowledged the procedure Monday night after Mrs. Bush was noticed with a bandage below her right knee. . . .

"Explaining why the procedure was not disclosed until now, [the First Lady's press secretary Susan] Whitson said, 'This medical procedure was a private matter for Mrs. Bush, but when asked by the media today, we answered the question.'"

--from Terence Hunt's AP report


The first thing to say about Laura Bush's judgment is that . . . well, look what she married.

The second thing to say is that she certainly has a right to privacy in private matters, which certainly include medical ones. (Out of respect for her privacy, in fact, we're not going to pass on the dopey photo of the Band-Aid on Mrs. Bush's shin. Or maybe we just have a little self-respect.)

The third thing to say is that, hey, she didn't lie. She could have said she fell off her mountain bike, or a pretzel went down the wrong way, or something.

But the really important thing to say is that, while it may be only by marriage, our Laura sure is a Bush. (Except for the not-lying part, admittedly. A real Bush would have had no compunction about lying.) When a Bush approaches a decision, the first thing he or she needs to know is:

* What is the absolute most selfish choice I can make?

The second thing he or she needs to know is:

* What choice could I make that would cause the absolute maximum benefit to "my people" (family, friends, cronies, investors), while extracting the maximum price from everybody else--all those other people I don't give a flying fig about?


I apologize for trotting out yet again the classic examples, but what are you going to do as long as the lessons are out there, and apparently still unlearned?


FIRST LADY BETTY FORD--

faced the same "privacy" decision with regard to both her cancer and her substance-abuse problem. Maybe she only went public because she knew people would find out anyway; maybe she understood how much good she could do by offering herself as an example of someone seeking help.

Either way, it's impossible to even guess how many lives were improved or saved by her going on the record, and thereby injecting into the popular consciousness the ideas that both of these (very different) afflictions are:

* things that can be thought about (for people in denial who don't believe they can even do that),

* are things that can be talked about (it still astonishes me that even cancer is something that many people feel ashamed about, but this is clearly the case),

* and above all are things that happen to many people, including famous ones, and are things for which it is possible to seek help.


PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN--

apparently because of the same vanity that (admittedly less damagingly) caused him to lie repeatedly about not coloring his hair--refused to wear a hearing aid, no matter how advanced his hearing difficulties became. Of course to him it may not have been much more than a minor inconvenience, since after all he mostly didn't give a damn what anyone except his Nancy said, and in any case he had plenty of people to make sure he found out about anything he actually needed to know.

However, in the process, he did everything in his power to doom the large number of people with treatable or assistable hearing problems to permanent, and almost always progressive, impairment. Mr. Macho sent the message that--

• hearing loss is something to be ashamed of,

• and only pussies do anything about it--you sure wouldn't catch a real man wearing a hearing aid.


We all get to make a certain number of actual choices in life. One of these people became, by chance or choice, a genuine hero. The other was just plain worthless pondscum, through and through.

The AP report on Mrs. Bush's skin cancer notes:

More than 1 million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancers are diagnosed annually, according to the American Cancer Society, which says that most but not all of these forms of skin cancer are highly curable.

As I understand it, early detection is especially important in treating skin cancers, meaning that there is an extreme urgency to patients' seeking help. In addition, the figure of 1 million cases "diagnosed" leaves open the number of cases that aren't diagnosed--for example, among people who think it's such a "private matter" that they don't even reach out for help. (That's one problem Bushes don't have. They expect help always to be offered, but if and when it isn't, they have no problem demanding it.)

Because the First Lady was "outed" as a skin-cancer victim, she actually gets a chance to do some small good in this life, no thanks to her own judgment. It's fascinating to me how, given the choice, Bushes always seem to pull the lever in the "pondscum" column.

THE READERS' POST for Tuesday, December 19: What's on your mind? What subject(s) would you like to see talked about here?

I hope everybody has read the really interesting discussion about impeachment that took off from our friend shirt's raising of the subject. (We also had the excellent subject of Al Gore's political future, if any raised from THE READERS' POST.)

I also hope anyone who has something to add to the subject of impeachment will do so, either there or in today's READERS' POST. (More Gore comments are welcome too, of course. They'll probably be seen by more people if you add them here.)

As you can see, I'm still trying to figure out whether this is worth doing, and if so, how to do it. Again, the forum is open for everyone to vent--with the usual stipulation that I reserve the right to delete any comment that seems to me inappropriate to the concerns of DWT readers.

The floor is yours.

Quote of the day: "Thinking big" gets most columnists in trouble, but when E. J. Dionne Jr. talks about a changed America, we'll listen

"In 1984 three exit polls pegged Ronald Reagan's share of the ballots cast by Americans under 30 at between 57 and 60 percent. Reagan-style conservatism seemed fresh, optimistic and innovative. In 2006 voters under 30 gave 60 percent of their votes to Democratic House candidates, according to the shared media exit poll. Conservatism now looks old, tired and ineffectual."
--E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today, "'The Real America,' Redefined" (you'll find the complete column text down below, following the ranting)

AND WHEN DIONNE TALKS ABOUT JON STEWART'S AND
STEPHEN COLBERT'S YOUTH APPEAL, WE REALLY HEAR HIM

I really don't want to attempt to paraphrase Dionne's argument, which I think we should let him make. But I do want to add one note, with regard to his point about the role played in this new "Real America" he sees by today's "cool commentators," Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Speaking personally, I don't know how I would have gotten through the Bush nightmare without The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (to give the show its proper full title for once). I would say the same thing about the intrepid New York Times trio of (in alphabetical order!) Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, who could always be counted on to cut through the blanket of bullshit, even when their employer's news coverage couldn't. And eventually there was Air America Radio, and in particular (again, for me, at least) its brilliant and tragically short-lived morning show, Morning Sedition.

But what gave me heart especially about The Daily Show was the clear evidence that it was reaching a young audience, which struck me as desperately important. As Dionne puts it, "Stewart and Colbert speak especially to young Americans who rely on their sensible take on the madness that surrounds us. The young helped drive their popularity, and the Droll Duo in turn shaped a new, anti-conservative skepticism."

I raise the point now because it was utterly lost on the chuckleheads at Air America Radio when they pulled the plug on the network's greatest (perhaps only) innovation, Morning Sedition. Now this is no knock on Al Franken or Randi Rhodes or Sam Seder or other people I'm probably forgetting. They're all great. And especially it's no knock on Rachel Maddow (left)--it's to Air America Radio programmers' credit that they allowed Rachel to figure out how to use the medium, to the point where she does the best progressive-information broadcast I can imagine. (At least I assume she's still doing it in her posh evening time slot--or afternoons out West, where I gather they didn't used to hear her at all. I'm happy that people who never got to hear her before are hearing her now. Unfortunately, it's just not a radio-friendlly time for me.)

But these are all, essentially, programs for those of us who know what we believe and what to hear it reflected on the air waves. Morning Sedition, thanks to its lucky mix of producers and writers and performers and especially the explosive presence of Marc Maron (right) was a wild and often wicked melange of progressive rant and belly-flopping comedy, offering entertainment and politics, not separately, but as a single package, with real potential for listener outreach. When the suits pulled the plug on it, they were thumbing their noses at their one programming initiative with real potential to reach young audiences.

I should add that I'm really curious about the latest morning-slot occupants, The Young Turks (left), especially since the morning is when I desperately need a radio show. The problem is that we don't get The Young Turks here in New York City, where--as of the last time the local station was downgraded--we are stuck with some freak show featuring, of all people, right-wing dunderhead "Army" Williams. (I know I've asked this question before, and I know other people have asked it as well, but isn't he part of the right-wing media circus that Air America Radio is supposed to be doing battle against?)

Radio is a cutthroat business. I understand that. And a heavily politicized cutthroat business at that, with its dominant player, Clear Channel, as interested in its political agenda as its bottom line. (The two are closely connected, after all. And while I believe it's possible for an AAR-affiliated station to make money, it's probably not possible to rake in the kind of profits that would move the Clear Channel brass to let those stations be.) But is it really not possible for all those famously powerful and connected media and business liberals we're always hearing about to do something to help find decent, stable, audible stations around the country to form a real progressive network? The fact is that, especially considering its short history, Air America Radio is overflowing with high-quality programming

The New York experience is shameful. However the strategy was conceived, the effect was to go after first one, and then another, of the city's most marginal AM stations, which were serving some of the city's least-served population groups. How well or badly they were being served, I can't say, but is it really the role of progressive radio to squeeze out what little radio coverage is aimed at local Caribbean and African-American communities? And they're crappy stations to boot. As far as I can tell, even fewer people in the metropolitan area can even receive the current AAR affiliate, WWRL, than could receive its predecessor, WLIB.

I understand that these are all high-pressured economic issues only properly understood by real radio people. Doesn't anybody in the progressive community know any real radio people?

P.S.: I'll bet even now, if somebody tried to reassemble a lot of the old Morning Sedition team, with a mandate to go back to what they were doing, and do it more and better, and this time we'll really promote the heck out of that sucker, so that everyone who might enjoy it finds about it, why, I'll bet a lot of them could be lured back from whatever they're doing. Because one of the secrets of that show, I suspect, was that those people were by golly having fun!

Well, that's what I wanted to say. We have possibly drifted off the topic of E. J. Dionne Jr.'s column. Or then again, maybe we haven't. Anyway, here it is for you to read:

'The Real America,' Redefined

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; A29

When a nation alters its philosophical direction and changes its assumptions, there is no press release to announce the shift, no news conference where The People declare that they have decided to move down a different path.

Yet 2006 is looking more and more like one of history's hinge years, a moment when old ideas are cast aside, new leaders emerge and old leaders decide to speak in new ways. The changes in politics and culture are visible in the many sudden and outright reversals of the conventional wisdom.

Nowhere is the evidence of change more striking than among the young, whose attitudes and behavior are usually leading indicators of social transformation.

In 1984 three exit polls pegged Ronald Reagan's share of the ballots cast by Americans under 30 at between 57 and 60 percent. Reagan-style conservatism seemed fresh, optimistic and innovative. In 2006 voters under 30 gave 60 percent of their votes to Democratic House candidates, according to the shared media exit poll. Conservatism now looks old, tired and ineffectual.

When the right seemed headed to dominance in the early 1990s, the hot political media trend was talk radio and the star was Rush Limbaugh, a smart entrepreneur who spawned imitators around the country and all across the AM dial.

Now the chic medium is televised political comedy and the cool commentators are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their brilliant ridicule of the Bush administration and conservative bloviators satisfies a political craving at least as great as the one Limbaugh once fed. Stewart and Colbert speak especially to young Americans who rely on their sensible take on the madness that surrounds us. The young helped drive their popularity, and the Droll Duo in turn shaped a new, anti-conservative skepticism.

It wasn't all that long ago that Democrats and liberals were said to be out of touch with "the real America," which was defined as encompassing the states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including the entire South. Democrats seemed to accept this definition of reality, and they struggled--often looking ridiculous in the process--to become fluent in NASCAR talk and to discuss religion with the inflections of a white Southern evangelicalism foreign to so many of them.

Now the conventional wisdom sees Republicans in danger of becoming merely a Southern regional party. Isn't it amazing how quickly the supposedly "real America" was transformed into a besieged conservative enclave out of touch with the rest of the country? Now religious moderates and liberals are speaking in their own tongues, and the free-thinking, down-to-earth citizens in the Rocky Mountain states are, in large numbers, fed up with right-wing ideology.

Only a few months ago, it was widely thought that accusing opponents of wanting to "cut and run" in Iraq would be enough to cast political enemies into an unpatriotic netherworld of wimps and "defeatocrats."

Now the burden of proof is on those who claim that fighting in Iraq was a good idea and that the situation can be turned around. The Iraq Study Group's grim description of what's going on is the accepted definition of reality. Polls show majorities embracing the report not, I suspect, because most Americans are conversant with its every detail but because they see its take as closer to the truth than the president's accounts over the past three years, and because it appears to point toward disengagement.

Since the 1970s, supply-side conservatives have been brilliantly successful in redefining economic thinking. They shifted the popular focus from workers to entrepreneurs, from incomes to wealth, from job creation to share-price increases, and from government policy innovation to private-sector autonomy.

Suddenly economic inequality is a problem even conservatives are taking seriously. Corporate America is looked upon, let us say, in less heroic terms. Economic security is no longer a dirty phrase, and staunch capitalists aren't quite so eager to preach the virtues of "creative destruction" to displaced industrial workers. Government--with some wariness, to be sure--is being invited back into the economic story to redress grievances and to right imbalances.

How durable are these changes? In both politics and culture, the side that thinks it's losing usually accommodates itself to the ascendant order. My hunch is that we will be seeing many new claims to moderation and social concern on the right and many fewer fake NASCAR fans on the left.

Colin Powell's questions about any new military plan for Iraq may sound obvious, but they've never been asked--honestly--by the Bush White House

"If somebody proposes that additional troops be sent, if I was still chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my first question . . . is what mission is it these troops are supposed to accomplish? . . . Is it something that is really accomplishable? . . . Do we have enough troops to accomplish it?"
--former Secretary of State (and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman) Colin Powell, yesterday on Face the Nation"

The lead to Karen DeYoung's Washington Post account actually strikes me as more predictable and less interesting:

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the United States is losing what he described as a "civil war" in Iraq and that he is not persuaded that an increase in U.S. troops there would reverse the situation. Instead, he called for a new strategy that would relinquish responsibility for Iraqi security to the government in Baghdad sooner rather than later, with a U.S. drawdown to begin by the middle of next year.

I have no doubt that Powell was asking questions like those above, or trying to, during his rocky service inside the Bush administration. And much as I think he did both the country and himself a disservice by going along with what he must have known was a bogus policy, and for not resigning on principle when he understood that the administration was irrevocably committed to an invasion of Iraq without reference to any facts, at the same time I have to respect what must have been his conviction that it was his obligation to fight the fight from within to the best of his ability, even if he ended up losing both the fight and his reputation.

Still, in his reemergence from the shadows, he may have done the country another service. Every time Chimpy the Prez or one of his fellow stooges talks about "staying the course," or (now) "finishing the job," you want to grab hold of them and . . . well, fill in your own fantasy. What the f--- is the "job"? you want to scream into their itsy-bitsy brains.

Fugitives from the Bush administration like John Di Iulio and Paul O'Neill have described their horror at the discovery that in the decision-making process there was no process at all. So, obvious as the questions Secretary Powell proposed yesterday are, it's extremely useful to be reminded that decision-making, at least of the rational kind, truly is a process. When you do it the other way around--starting with deeply entrenched dogma and then trying to clothe it in policy--the results usually aren't so terrific, as witness the catastrophic mess we've made of Iraq.

READER UPDATE ON THE IMPEACHMENT ISSUE: THINKING ABOUT WHETHER IT'S A GOOD IDEA, AND WHAT IT WOULD ACCOMPLISH

By reader "shirt"

[DWT reader shirt is still thinking about whether impeachment, as a practical matter, should be pursued in the new Congress--and also considers what it would--and wouldn't--accomplish.]

As I wrote at DWT 12/12/06:

According to Pelosi and Reid "impeachment is off the table." I beg to differ: impeachment is a constitutional process and you do not arbitrarily discard the constitution.’ Followed by some cheesy snark.

HuffPo poster Joseph A. Palermo felt somewhat the same, but:

. . . If the full House passed one or more of the articles there would be a trial in the Senate that could last for weeks or months. Removing Bush from office would require 67 Senate votes, which is admittedly a tall order. Yet however unlikely such an outcome might be, it would be an exercise in democracy and show the Chief Executive that he can no longer ignore the powers and prerogatives of the Judicial and Legislative branches of our government. It would send a clear message to Bush that he must stop this nonsense about "unitary executives," "signing statements," and "inherent powers."

Palermo seems to indicate that impeachment, even if failing to convict would reign in this monarch. I disagree with that notion: If this Caligula from Crawford regards a 51% majority as a mandate, then he’d view a failed conviction as an affirmation from God and country.

Shirt