Kyl, Kavanaugh And The Slaveholder Religion

Politically, Arizona may be headed in a good direction... but it may be a very long time before it gets there. Democrats in the state-- guided by Chuck Schumer-- picked the single most conservative Trump-supporting Democrat in Congress, as their Senate nominee, Kyrsten Sinema, head of the Blue Dog Caucus. But the Republicans in Arizona are worse; all of them. And that includes Trump-hating Jeff Flake, who was originally elected to the Senate because he was the most conservative Arizona congressman.

Governor Doug Ducey is mandated to pick a Republican for John McCain's seat because McCain was a Republican. He's not mandated to pick someone like McCain though. He's appointing lobbyist-turned-senator-turned-lobbyist Jon Kyl, who will only commit to staying on for a few months because he's eager to enhance his lobbyist clout as a senator again before going back to his lobbyist career. As wretched and horrible as Kyl is-- and, believe me, he is--Ducey could have picked someone even worse: Kelli Ward, Joe Arpaio, Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon, John Shadegg... all of whom were banging on his door and all of whom are even further right than Kyl.

Complicating Ducey's decision had to have been that Kirk Adams, the Arizona House's former speaker and now Ducey's chief of staff, wants to run for the Senate seat in 2020 and if Kyl resigns before 2020, there will be huge pressure on Ducey to appoint Martha McSally-- likely to lose to Sinema in November. That will end Adams' hopes to win that seat. A whole other scenario would be that Ducey simply appoints himself to the Senate after the November election-- whether he wins or loses to Democrat David Garcia.

Kyl's first vote is likely to be on confirming Brett Kavanaugh-- an obvious conflict of interest, since he has been Kavanaugh's "sherpa" for the confirmation process. Obviously Ducey wasn't looking for a maverick, just someone to vote to confirm Kavanaugh and kill Obamacare. And a bonus in case anything comes up for Kyl's lobbying clients, Merck, Northrop Grumman, PHARMA, Raytheon and Walmart.

Miss the NY Times OpEd from Monday, The Evangelical Case Against Judge Kavanaugh? Rev Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a Baptist minister in Durham, N.C. and author of Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion, wrote that his faith compels him "to challenge the way reactionary conservatives have hijacked our faith to serve their narrow interests.

Conservative evangelicals were at the White House last week for an event the Rev. Robert Jeffress described as “a half state dinner and a half campaign rally.” Evangelicals like Mr. Jeffress are ebullient as the Senate prepares to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh next week, praising President Trump as “the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-conservative judiciary president of any president in history... [E]vangelicals who toe the line that the religious right has laid out for decades lift their hands in prayer to thank God for a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that now seems just weeks away."

As an evangelical who cut my teeth in politics during the heyday of the Moral Majority movement in the 1980s, I know the enthusiasm many conservatives feel at the prospect of culture war victories at the Supreme Court. But I join many other faith leaders to oppose Judge Kavanaugh not in spite of our faith commitments, but because of them. As we read the Bible alongside Judge Kavanaugh’s record, we find his nomination a threat to the Christian ethic we are called to preach and pursue in public life.

Leading the evangelical challenge to an extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a group of evangelical women has issued a “call to pause,” asking fellow believers to step back from the rhetoric of “life” to examine how decisions before the court would impact the vulnerable people we claim to care about, even the unborn. “The way to reduce abortion is not through escalating culture wars but by reducing poverty,” they argue, noting studies that show abortion rates at an all-time low, though they remain highest among poor women who lack access to health care.

Lisa Sharon Harper, an African-American evangelical who has been a principal organizer of the “call to pause,” notes that a “right to life” is about more than abortion. “Majority conservative rulings have already whittled back civil rights protections, leaving this generation’s children as vulnerable to a new Jim Crow as my great-grandparents, who fled for their lives from the terror of the Jim Crow South.”

For many nonwhite evangelicals, the life issues that matter most are voting rights, living wages, environmental protection, access to health care and public education. The experience of many of those evangelicals illuminates how life issues have been narrowly defined by conservative evangelicals over the last 40 years.

Following the civil rights movement in the South, many white evangelicals felt threatened by political and cultural changes that challenged their assumptions about the natural order of the world. Leaning on the logic of slaveholder religion-- which, as the historian H. Shelton Smith showed, justified human bondage by arguing that white control of society was in keeping with God’s design-- religious conservatives rallied the faithful for moral resistance to the “unnatural” expansion of 14th Amendment protections to women and minorities. Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” in 1954, Southern preachers like Jerry Falwell had preached against liberal “activist judges.” But the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision offered Mr. Falwell’s Moral Majority a rallying cry that appeared selfless: defense of the unborn.

Despite an incredible investment in outreach to them, a vast majority of African-American evangelicals never got on board with the conservative rhetoric of the culture wars. Many black evangelicals understood that a reactionary movement against “activist judges” wasn’t rooted in godly concern for unborn children but in a fear of change, even if they, too, valued every child as a person created in God’s image. Across the Sunbelt and the Rust Belt, African-American evangelicals-- who represent as much as three-fourths of the black population-- leaned Democratic.

The enthusiasm of older white men who still control mainly white evangelical organizations like the Family Research Council and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association that thrived on the culture wars should give all Americans pause, especially as we pay attention to what Judge Kavanaugh himself has said. In a lecture to the American Enterprise Institute last year, he celebrated the legacy of Chief Justice William Rehnquist by noting how Chief Justice Rehnquist had led the Supreme Court’s turn “away from its 1960s Warren court approach, where the court in some cases had seemed to be simply enshrining its policy views into the Constitution, or so the critics charged.”

...Whether we have any experience in reading the law, evangelicals are familiar with Judge Kavanaugh’s way of reading authoritative texts. This is precisely how fundamentalists read Scripture in the early 20th century, when evolutionary science challenged their reading of Genesis and social science confronted narrow corporate interests during the Gilded Age. Fundamentalism taught reactionary religious voices to dig in their heels and claim final authority about what the text “actually says.” But evangelicals should know better: Our movement in America was founded in an attempt to maintain a commitment to Jesus and the Bible while rejecting reactionary extremism.

As proponents of “Christian nationalism” continue to be the most consistent base of support for President Trump, my evangelical faith compels me to challenge the way reactionary conservatives have hijacked our faith to serve their narrow interests. With Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, their 40-year effort to overturn expansions of 14th Amendment protections by the Warren court may be in reach. This will not necessarily save unborn children, but it will make life more difficult for minorities, workers, poor people and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

When Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” in John 10:10, he wasn’t thinking about a victory for those who have used religion to fight back against the gains of the civil rights movement. Jesus was inviting all of us to work together for the vision at the heart of that movement-- a beloved community where all people created in God’s image can thrive.

Holy Joe Lieberman finds the perfect vehicle for his accumulated, er, talents

Isn't it about time we had some phony bipartisan foreign policy?

by Ken

What's most exciting about this headline reproduced from a press release from the American Enterprise Institute?



Is it the thrilling news itself? (Stop the presses!)

Is it the thrill-inducing tension of the head itself? (Can't you just tell they've got a pile-up of J-school grads there at AEI?)

No, what I like best is the pretense that what's nothing more than a boilerplate press release is in fact a think piece by former AZ Sen. Jon Kyl. Why, there's even a phony-baloney "About the Author" photo:

Wouldn't you buy used foreign-policy "ideas" from this man?

And here's what Senator Jon, er, didn't write:

Washington, DC (March 11, 2013) – American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur Brooks announced today that former Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman will join AEI Visiting Fellow Jon Kyl as co-chair of the American Internationalism Project, an important new effort from AEI's Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies. The Project's focus will be to rebuild and reshape a bipartisan consensus around American global leadership and engagement.

"Senator Joseph Lieberman’s knowledge, deep commitment and vision for American greatness is all too rare in Washington," said AEI president Arthur C. Brooks. "The American Internationalism Project, under the leadership of Senator Lieberman and Senator Jon Kyl, is critical to opening a discussion about the challenges facing America in the coming decades--and strategizing about how to meet them."

"Opinion leaders in both political parties seem much less willing to support US involvement around the world and the military requirements of an engaged United States," said Kyl. "This project will help us persuasively make the case for such a role and concomitant military strength to keep the United States positioned to protect our vital interests."

"There is an urgent need to rebuild a bipartisan -- indeed non-political -- consensus for American diplomatic, economic, and military leadership in the world," said Lieberman. "That's why I am grateful to AEI for initiating and sponsoring this project and why I look forward to leading it with my friend Jon Kyl."

The world is as complex and dangerous as it has been in many decades, but fiscal constraints, weariness with war and isolationism are eroding the American will to lead. The American Internationalism Project will - through a series of working groups, reports and conferences - work to renew the foundations of American internationalism and the commitment to political and economic freedom that has been the hallmark of U.S. leadership for more than half a century.

For additional information on the American Internationalism Project or other media inquiries please contact AEI Media Services at mediaservices@aei.org or 202-862-5829

TO BE SERIOUS FOR A MOMENT . . .

What kind of world would this be if the establishment didn't take care of its own? If, after a political lifetime's worth of dishonorable service, a past-his-prime servant couldn't count on finding a cushy ass-parking place amidst the exploded pantheon of government sinecures and butt-cushioning NGOs?

For "Holy Joe" Lieberman, the far-right-wing zealot who made such a notable career pretending to be a merely-near-right-wing avatar of "nonpartisanship," where better to land than in the bosom of the merely-moderately-extremist think tank the American Enterprise Institute? Oh, they're by and large pretty far right at AEI. They just don't let it get in the way of business.

The new AEI gig for Holy Joe is, well, everything we could hope for. It combines his familiar expertise at foreign policy (cf. His Holiness on Iraq) and his renowned fluency with bipartisanship (cf. His Holiness as a lap-stooge of the Senate Republicans). Probably Joe and his pal Jon won't actually have "tip jars" on their sidewalk foreign-policy stand, but when you're dealing with AEI folk, everyone knows where to deposit the shekels. And for the Lieberman share, the lovely Hadassah will as usual be manning the back seat of the get-away vehicle.

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On Immigration, Ian Altman- 1, Antonin Scalia- 0

Monday night Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show took top awards for best explaining the Supreme Court decision on Arizona's heinous SB 1079 (above). And, like many Americans, he wondered aloud if it wasn't time to nudge a clearly senile and angry Justice Scalia into retirement. His bizarre and unrelated attack against President Obama's handling of the Dream students-- which was unrelated to the case at hand unless looked at purely through the prism of partisan politics and vile racism-- is what tripped Scalia up and made people wonder about the ridiculous Inside-the-Beltway trope that clearly states, "Even liberals have to admit he's brilliant." I know liberals. None of them admit that. None of them have ever admitted that. He's canny and sly and sometimes witty... but brilliant? I must be missing something. A far more enlightening view of how President Obama handled the Dream students was penned by Ian Altman, a high school teacher in Athens, Georgia. Ian asked a simple question that I think many teachers and students at Clarke Central High-- and schools all over America-- were wondering about: how would President Obama's announcement impact their lives.

President Obama’s announcement on June 15 sent shockwaves through those of us who are concerned with immigration policy, and especially those of us who have been pushing for the DREAM Act. 

The Department of Homeland Security will now exercise prosecutorial discretion to spare deportation to somewhere between 800,000 and 2.1 million undocumented young people. To be eligible, these students must have been here for at least five years continuously and must have been brought here before they were sixteen.

 I have enough opinions, arguments, and speculations about this new situation to fill a few volumes, but will limit myself to the perspective I know best: that of a public high school English teacher. 

The Duties of a Teacher

Public school teachers have a duty to help undocumented students navigate the difficult straits they face. That is especially true of high school teachers, as our students deal with the college application process and attempt to find employment. 

As we get to know our students over the years, the teacher-student relationship evolves. Obviously, we are first and foremost their academic teachers, but we also become their advisors, tutors, mentors, counselors, advocates, confidants, sometimes confessors, couples therapists, and, in some cases, their friends.  That is as it should be. Helping an undocumented student fits right in as part of the package, especially if she or he comes to me with the gift of trust in telling me that she is undocumented. 

From my perspective, therefore, one of the effects of President Obama’s new directive is that it officially sanctions my respect and care for these students as human beings not fundamentally different from any of my other students.  Suddenly it feels as if my neck isn’t stuck out quite as far as it was before. 

We have an ethical obligation to teach, advise, and care for every student who walks through our doors, no matter what they look like, where they come from, what languages they speak at home, and whether they have Social Security numbers. It is not our job to know who is documented and who isn’t, and the only reason we would know is if the students themselves tell us. When that happens, I have to make a choice. 

Am I going to support this student, try to make sure she is well cared for, find out what particular obstacles she faces and how to navigate those obstacles, let her know that she has an ally who will stand up for her so that she doesn’t have to deal with the problem alone?  Or am I going to say, “I’m sorry; I wish there were something I could do?” 

The first response treats her with the respect she is due as a human being; the second, in essence, politely tells her that I wash my hands of the situation and says, “Please get to the back of the bus so that I can help everyone else.” 

I believe that no person in my profession can rightly choose the second response.

The Push for the DREAM Act and the Influence of ALEC

The need for support leads to another crucial and related issue. Since President Obama’s policy is really just a directive from a memo, it only underscores the need to continue pushing for the DREAM Act.  Those of us who are willing and able must be engaged and informed.

We need to know, for example, about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is the group that provided the anti-immigration conceptual framework and actually wrote most of Arizona’s SB 1070 and Georgia’s HB 87. 

We need to know that these efforts were bankrolled by the private prison industry, which stands to gain billions because of the privately owned and managed immigration detention centers in this state and many others. 

In addition to the private prison industry, ALEC is funded by the Koch brothers, the National Rifle Association, the pharmaceutical industry, private health insurance companies, some national charter school companies, and many other nefarious entities that fix our laws to keep themselves out of trouble while behaving like wanton gangsters.

The most charitable thing I can call that is a perversion of democratic governance. That troubling reality is a still relatively hidden part of what undocumented students (not to mention the rest of us) wake up to every day, and I believe we should expose it. 

To counteract that reality, we furthermore need to be directly engaged in the legislative process and to know, for example, that the DREAM Act is currently in the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security. 

We need to know which legislators are on that committee and to look into the demographics of the districts they represent in order to figure out how best to convince them to support the DREAM Act.  That is the direction President Obama’s announcement should prod us to go, and some of us are indeed working for that change.  President Obama’s announcement said to these students, in essence, “I know you’ve done nothing wrong.  I know you want to be American citizens and for most of you, I see no reason you shouldn’t be.  This is temporary, and we need a permanent solution.” 

As things currently stand in Congress, we are not likely to get that solution, but that is no reason we cannot make the necessary changes more palatable and politically feasible for the opposition.

The last and most complicated thing I want to bring to your attention is the language and rhetoric surrounding undocumented students. 

The Rhetoric about the Undocumented

Obviously, language is relevant in the presidential campaign, but I’m talking about the language on the street, the words people use every day to talk about undocumented students and the implications of those words.  Most teachers become acutely aware of the language used by and about our students, but as a teacher of English language and rhetoric, I have become especially sensitive to it. 

President Obama’s new policy allows certain of these students to apply for work permits, and it has implications for college admissions.  We’ve long heard from objectors that undocumented immigrants take American jobs and that they take places in colleges from citizens, even though everyone in the entire world is allowed to apply to Georgia’s universities except undocumented students actually living in the U.S. 

I should also point out that last year, Governor Deal tried to implement a program for parolees to work the farming jobs in central and south Georgia that had largely been worked by migrant workers, and they couldn’t do it.  They walked off the job in some cases after an hour.  The crops rotted in the fields, costing farmers millions, and therefore also costing the state millions in tax revenues. 

We need those workers here, although I shudder to think what would happen if a Cesar Chavez or a Dolores Huerta stepped up in this state to try to guarantee good wages for them as happened in California.  I can almost guarantee that you would start hearing ugly phrases like “uppity Mexicans” and talk of “agitators” and “communists.”  That brings me to the real importance of language here. 

Another report that has still gone largely unnoticed is that for the first time in recent decades, immigration from other regions of the world has outpaced immigration from Mexico and Central and South America.  Those immigrants are also looking for jobs and for places in our universities, and since they are, the objection should be the same. 

My guess is that the objections will be different, though, and that will reveal another and more insidious reason people object to Latino immigrants here.  It shows up already in the way we talk about them.  Since we know the objection that Latino immigrants take jobs and university spaces from American citizens is specious, it shows that most if not all the arguments people brandish against them are window dressing for racism, which according to philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is ultimately only fear of oneself and of the mutability of the world one lives in.

Although the overtly eugenics-based hatred of the Nazis or the Klan is no longer fashionable, a complex, subtle, and pervasive fear of difference and change is still at the root of anti-Latino sentiment. 

That feeling is the cause of the snide, whispered comments I hear sometimes in my classroom, “They smell like burritos,” and the like.  It is also at the root of statements such as, “If they’re going to be here, they need to learn our language,” which completely ignores the facts that although “we” (whoever “we” are) do primarily speak English, we nonetheless have no legally official language, that Spanish and other languages can be “ours” just as much as English can be “theirs,” that most if not all immigrants try desperately try to learn English, and that most of them succeed at least adequately.

It may seem that this kind of racism would also apply to other immigrants, and in some ways it does, but there is a supervening consideration which softens it: classism.

Generally, and notwithstanding the many exceptions, Latino immigrants tend to be poor, and most other immigrants tend to be middle class, and that makes those other immigrants’ presence here more acceptable to the public eye.  This classism is an integral part of the text of the world that we read every time we look at it. 

A pervasive stereotype of Latino immigrants is that they are all construction workers, chicken plant workers, or vegetable pickers.  That makes them, in the public eye, part of what in the past was the servant class whom we expected to accept servitude in silence, the sharecroppers who were so easy to exploit and terrorize, and before that the slaves. 

That history did not merely transpire; it accumulated.  Those perceptions, whether or not we want to admit it, are ingrained into the very words we use to talk about Latinos.  We see this “text” inscribed onto their very bodies when we look at them and in their words when we hear their accents.  That is also why middle class African American families still seem out of place to so many people.  At the broadest of levels, the power of this linguistic matrix is why racism of all types persists despite the general insistence on an abstract, intellectual belief in the equality of all people.
  
Teachers have a duty, first, to know about these things, and second, to make students aware of them.  That may sound like political advocacy, which of course is disallowed in the classroom, but it is not. 

It can go against the interest of both liberals and conservatives, and it comes from a fairly straightforward analysis of our language and usage.  That is why teaching and thinking can be such dangerous activities, why tyrants always try to restrict what is taught and what is read. 

And that is why, for example, I consider it a kind of crime that the Tea Party administration of Arizona has banned Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed from that state’s classrooms, and that the Mexican-American studies program is now disallowed from the Tucson school district where more than half of students are Mexican-American.  They have taken from teachers and students the means to define and say for themselves on their own terms what and who they are.
 
Thanking President Obama

The issues I have considered here may seem only distantly related to President Obama’s June 15 directive.  They are not.  They should be the first kinds of things we think about when any public figure says something as important as what he said.

 I can’t thank him enough for taking this first step, because I know these kids and I know President Obama is right about them.  Every time an undocumented student walks into my classroom and participates and helps other students learn something, I know that supporting their efforts to go to college, find gainful employment, and gain citizenship is the right thing to do and should be part of my job. 

These students know what they have to lose and therefore often work twice as hard as others, and it is Georgia’s loss and shame that our leaders have not been more welcoming.
President Obama has stepped up and tried to do right by kids who have become as American as any of us, and for that he deserves our gratitude.

Pitifully partisan hack Jon Kyl (R-AZ), an obstructionist Senate leader, on the other hand, is ranting and raving that President Obama should be impeached for what he's done. A virulent racist, he's the worst of what the political system has degenerated into. I'm guessing the DREAMers who put this video together don't know Mr. Altman and probably hadn't read his essay. I hope they do. And I hope he sees their video:

Jon Kyl threatens to quit the supercommittee in a huff? Well, boo-hoo!

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl: If he quits the supercommittee, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

by Ken

Jon Kyl: I'd quit supercommittee over defense cuts

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | 9/8/11 1:42 PM EDT Updated: 9/8/11 4:27 PM EDT

It has only met once, but Sen. Jon Kyl is already threatening to quit the deficit busting supercommittee if the panel pushes more defense cuts.
“I’m off the committee” if there are deeper cuts to the military, Kyl warned at a forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks, including AEI, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Heritage Foundation.

The supercommittee met for the first time Thursday but made little progress other than giving opening statements and passing its own internal rules.

Kyl, an Arizona Republican, who is speaking for many defense hawks in trying to stave off deep cuts to national security, told the forum Thursday that “my point of view is that defense should not have any more cuts.”

Kyl and others are also deeply worried about the so-called trigger in the debt-limit law passed last month. If the supercommittee fails to reach between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, there will be automatic cuts in defense spending and Medicare.

The trigger was built into the debt-limit deal in order to force serious action from the supercommittee, but Kyl and others are already promising to rewrite the law to water down the trigger if the deficit panel fails to reach a deal by Thanksgiving.

If the “trigger” is pulled, “I would do my best to see to it that it never took effect,” Kyl said.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but Jon Kyl threatening to quit the supercommittee in a huff (or a minute and a huff), this is excellent news, isn't it? Shouldn't someone be trying to persuade him that merely quitting the supercommittee isn't enough, he should quit the Senate, if not this earthly vale of tears altogether?

You have to feel for the senator -- well, just a little. After all, it wasn't that long ago that he could stand tall as a political primitive, confident that there was no one, or hardly anyone, in the Senate of a more knee-merk reactionary bent than his sad self. Now when you look at the kind of right-wing riffraff they're letting in the joint, he must feel like not much more than an ancient dung beetle staggering that last lap to the finish line. (Oh, I don't suppose dung beetles do laps, or have a finish line. So maybe it's not the world's most accurate, let alone elegant, metaphor.)

Still, when it comes to threatening to do his best to prevent laws from taking effect, aren't there some laws on the books to cover the situation? I can't think of a more fitting way for a useless turd like Senator Kyl to crown his career in public life than by dying in prison.


MAY WE GUESS THAT THE PRINCIPAL BUSINESS OF THE
SUPERCOMMITTEE IS BUSINESS -- CAMPAIGN BUSINESS?

Fanfare, please: The supercommittee is now in business, co-chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Aren't these the 12 people you would pick to right the government's budgetary course?

I've lost the link, but this morning I had one to a piece about bonanza-like fund-raising activities of the Super 12, the senators and representatives their respective leaderships deemed their supergiant repositories of budgetary wisdom to solve the impasse that even a less lily-livered manner of congressional Democrats probably couldn't have finessed over the conspiracy of the criminality and cretinousness that now constitutes Your Republican Party.

Meanwhile, as the Christian Science Monitor's Gail Russell Chaddock reported today:

Unlike any other congressional committee, the deficit reduction panel's mandate potentially covers every aspect of federal taxing and spending. That’s why public interest groups – and the protesters evicted from Thursday’s first meeting – are pushing so hard for public access to committee deliberations.

So far, the panel has committed only to Thursday’s public organizing session and a public hearing on Sept. 13 on “the history and drivers of our nation’s debt and its threats.” The co-chairs of the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R) of Texas both noted in their opening statements that many deliberations will be closed to the press and public.

I think it's safe to say that if there's anything the Super 12 don't want to know, we're not going to know it -- unless some enterprising journalistic sleuths are the beneficiaries of hostile leaks, or until people start writing their memoirs.

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So Many Retirements... But Still No Clarity From Lynn Woolsey

About a week ago I got a fundraising letter from Lynn Woolsey. I didn't realize at the time that she might be concerned because one of her patrons, well-connected conservative Big Business shill Jane Harman, was getting ready to announce her retirement from Congress. And I was surprised because since Christmas Eve we've had reason to believe that Woolsey might be retiring herself. At the time, I wrote:

Bye-bye, Lynn Woolsey?

Lynn Woolsey has done more to retard the effective development of the Congressional Progressive Caucus than anyone else in Congress. As the caucus's co-chair, she sowed the kind of dissension and discord that have marked her entire political career. Long before she made herself famous by undermining the efforts of Raúl Grijalva to forge the CPC into an effective fighting force and long before she backed Blue Dog and warmonger Jane Harman against progressive activist Marcy Winograd-- and long before becoming addled by her addiction to painkillers-- Woolsey had become such a divisive figure in Sonoma County politics that the Petaluma City Council did everything it could to "kick her upstairs" into an open congressional seat and get her out of their hair. It looks like she may actually retire now and get out of the way of real progressive change at a time it is most needed. It won't happen fast enough! (Imagine Norman Solomon replacing her!)

Since then we've seen a spate of resignation announcements, even besides Harman's high-handed-- albeit long overdue-- departure to the Woodrow Wilson Center. Another GOP hypocrite and pervert, this time Family Values imbecile, Chris Lee from the suburbs between Buffalo and Rochester, got caught trying to lure young women on Craig's List and possibly other social networking sites. Boehner, who has his own problems with adulterous relationships (yes, plural), forced him to resign within hours. Zero Tolerance (for freshmen). Yesterday, Arizona right-wing fanatic Jon Kyle announced, as many expected, he wouldn't be running for reelection to the Senate on 2012. The vultures are circling-- in DC and AZ.

Before that, conservative Virginia Democrat Jim Webb also said he wouldn't be running again, probably handing the Senate seat to his former political party and ideological brethren and now there's Mubarak... maybe. Aside from offering Harold Ford a veritable buffet of relocation opportunities, all these resignations are potentially extremely healthy. But not necessarily. Omar Suleiman would mean an extension of the illegitimate tyrannical regime in Egypt with an even worse overlord than Mubarak. Yes, worse; much worse. Arizona's Neo-Nazi state Senate President Russell Pearce, could wind up as a U.S. Senator; even Dirk Diggler could in that screwed up, dysfunctional state. And the Democrats who might run are mostly anti-immigrant conservatives whose most endearing features are that they're not as bad as the Republicans. Blue Dog Gabby Giffords was planning on running against Kyl before she was gunned down by a teabag terrorist. (Exceptions-- in a good way-- are progressives Andrei Cherny and Kyrsten Sinema.) Nothing good will come of Webb's retirement.

The two brightest spots would be to replace the warmonger and conservative Harman with Marcy Winograd or Debra Bowen in southern California and replace Lynn Woolsey, speaking of dysfunctional, with Norman Solomon. Norman looks like a perfect Blue America candidate but he won't be the only Democrat running for that Marin/Sonoma County seat-- which went to Obama in 2008 with a staggering 76%. Conservative Democrat Joe Nation probably is salivating at the prospect and it looks like Assemblyman Jared Huffman will see this as a lovely career opportunity. Ditto for Assemblywoman Noreen Evans. She and Huffman are both decent Democrats-- but would either provide the strong progressive leadership the district could offer (and deserves)? Solomon sure could.

Is It Fair To Blame Palin, Beck And Other Violent Rightists For Inciting Murder?

Right-wing terrorist, assassin and mass murderer Jared Loughner

Early Sunday morning author David Swanson, perhaps in response to the mainstream media's and Republican Party's concerted efforts to paint yesterday's incident as a result of violent rhetoric on both sides, posted the above tweet. Earlier, Palin, who spent Saturday frantically scrubbing all her calls to violence from her websites, had a spokesperson, Rebecca Mansour, try to turn her violent and incendiary rhetoric against Giffords and other Democrats on it's head, positioning her as a martyr, one of her favorite poses.

In fact, she said that the "target list" was not intended to allude to guns.

"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said.

"It's surveyor's symbols," the interviewer Tammy Bruce suggested. Bruce, a Palin supporter, describes herself as "a gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, Tea Party Independent Conservative. " Her show is promoted as a "chick with a gun and a microphone."

Mansour agreed. She said that the graphic was contracted out to a professional. They approved it quickly without thinking about it. "We never imagined, it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent," she said. Rather, she said, that it was simply "crosshairs that you would see on a map."

There is "nothing irresponsible about our graphic," she said.

She did not, however, mention the "don't retreat, instead- RELOAD!" Palin tweet that went out shortly after the graphic was posted on both her Facebook page and SarahPac's website, directing them to the graphic. The tweet turned quickly into a Palin mantra. Many, even then, urged her to stop using such violent rhetoric. If she heard them, she did not retreat.

Nor did she mention Palin's tweet right after the election gloating how 18 of her 20 House targets were eliminated. Giffords was one of the two who wasn't. And there were lots and lots of retweets. The one below mentions ScopedByLarry. That's how Palin's sociopathic illness goes viral. The term "bullseye," indicates that Palin knew exactly what her scope sites were-- as much as her tweet about re-loading (which no one thought referred to a mechanical pencil).


The push back from the GOP about accepting any of the blame for what happened in Tucson Saturday goes far beyond Sarah Palin's ridiculous amateurish efforts to coverup her own sedition. Paul Broun, a violent John Bircher from rural Georgia routinely incites his audiences towards gun violence and revolution, giving permission to "crazy" angry people to go shoot up the government. At an Open Carry rally in Alexandria, Virginia on April 19 he was a real crowd pleaser exhorting the gathering of gun nuts that "We must declare war against oppression and against Socialism, and you are the people to do that." I guess he meant "declare war" in the sense that doing a good survey is like fighting a war. Media Matters put together a stellar report on Republicans fanning the flames of violence. Here are a few examples from some of the worst crackpot Republican leaders:

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)

These people decided to cast their votes on the Lord's day. He is taking notes and paying attention. We foot our heels on him as our fore fathers did. We will wait and see his deliverance. But you and I, we will solemnly resolve here to do everything in our power to restore freedom and to send that cart of socialists down to where they belong in the river down there. We will see freedom once more restored, and Washington, DC taken apart so that it no longer is a threat on American freedom and liberty.

Sharron Angle, Nevada Republican/Tea Party candidate

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.

I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Right now I'm a member of Congress. And I believe that my job here is to be a foreign correspondent, reporting from enemy lines. And people need to understand, this isn't a game. this isn't just a political talk show that's happening right now. This is our very freedom, and we have 230 years, a continuous link of freedom that every generation has ceded to the next generation. This may be the time when that link breaks. And I'm going to do everything I can, I know you are, to make sure that we keep that link secure. We cannot allow that link to break, because as Reagan said, America is the last great hope of mankind. Where do we go...

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people-- we the people-- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

John Boehner (R-OH)

Boehner says there will be major political consequences for pro-life Democrats who break from the Stupak bloc. "Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, for example," he says. "He may be a dead man. He can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town."

Catherine Crabill, failed GOP candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates

We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that's the beauty of our Second Amendment right.

Brad Goehring, candidate (R-CA)

If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for  liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to "thin" the herd.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS)

We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.

Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I wanna say that I'm a proud right-wing terrorist. ...

HERGER: Amen. God bless you. There's a great American.

Mike Huckabee (R-AR)

Every member of Congress knows in his gut what's in the people's interest and what's in K Street's interest. If you think your real boss is some smug guy sitting in a corner office with his Gucci loafers up on a mahogany desk and not those folks back home, those folks who voted for you, who gave you 25 or 50 hard-earned bucks, who put up the yard signs and made calls for you, then you deserve to lose. Shame on you, Mr. Congressman. You shouldn't just be fired, you ought to be tarred and feathered as the original tea partiers would have done. That's my view and I welcome yours.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

If I could start a country with a bunch of people it would be the folks standing out here the last few days. Let's hope we don't have to do that. Let's beat that other side to a pulp. Let's take them out, let's chase them down. There's going to be a reckoning!

Rep. Allen West, (R-FL)

Talking about his opponent, Congressman Ron Klein, "Let me tell you what you've got to do. You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That's the only way that you're going to win. That's the only way you're going to get these people's attention."

Despite what Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been saying-- "I think that when the rhetoric about hatrid, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, has impact on people especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with" (already under attack from far right extremist Jon Kyl and even more deranged reactionary closet queen Trent Franks)-- and even despite what Fox News is reporting, delusional right-wingers-- let along the culprits at Fox-- refuse to take any responsibility for the mayhem and insist that the anti-Semitic Tea Party terrorist was either "just crazy" or a leftist.

According to a law enforcement memo based on information provided by DHS and obtained by Fox News, Jared Loughner, the alleged shooter of Congressman Gabrielle Giffords, may have been influenced by a pro-white racist organization that publishes an anti-immigration newsletter.

No direct connection, but strong suspicion is being directed at American Renaissance, an organization that Loughner mentioned in some of his internet postings and federal law enforcement officials are investigating Loughner's possible links to the organization. The organization is a monthly publication that promotes a variety of white racial positions.

"The group's ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic," according to the memo which goes on to point out that Congressman Giffords is the first Jewish female elected to high office in Arizona. A recent posting on American Renaissance's website on January 7 begins with an article entitled: "Exit poll: Whites are Different." The site goes on to list anti-immigration articles. Investigators are also pursuing Loughner's alleged anti-Semitism.

One thing is certain-- if an American Muslim had posted a map of the country with gun sights on 20 Members of Congress and then started ranting and raving about "reloading," and then seen an assassination attempt against one of those targets (with half a dozen deaths in the process)... well, you tell me, where would that Muslim be about now? Not sitting in his comfy living room counting his pieces of gold in Wasilla.

UPDATE: A Hero... And American False Equivalency

Daniel Hernandez, a gay University of Arizona student who had been an intern in Giffords' office for 5 days, most likely saved her life when, upon hearing the gunfire, ran towards it, found her on the ground and applied pressure to her wound until paramedics arrived. I wonder if deranged gun fanatic Jon Kyl, who was about to be challenged by Giffords for his Senate seat, is asking the INS to investigate Hernandez as a possible candidate for deportation. Hernandez's bravery and selflessness is not the same, is not equivalent, to Jon Kyl's self-serving exploitation. They're fundamentally different. And the role of the left and the right in the creation of a climate that inculcates domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Glenn Beck, Joe Stack, Scott Roeder (and his sponsor, Bill O'Reilly) and, most recently of course, Jared Loughner is very, very different. An editorial in yesterday's NY Times, after a full day of braindead TV talk show hosts getting it all wrong, captured the essence:

Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Ms. Giffords, killing a federal judge and five other people, and wounding 13 others, appears to be mentally ill. His paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control place him well beyond usual ideological categories.

But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare.

Last spring, Capitol security officials said threats against members of Congress had tripled over the previous year, almost all from opponents of health care reform. An effigy of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Maryland Democrat, was hung from a gallows outside his district office. Ms. Giffords’s district office door was smashed after the health vote, possibly by a bullet.

The federal judge who was killed, John Roll, had received hundreds of menacing phone calls and death threats, especially after he allowed a case to proceed against a rancher accused of assaulting 16 Mexicans as they tried to cross his land. This rage, stirred by talk-radio hosts, required marshals to give the judge and his family 24-hour protection for a month. Around the nation, threats to federal judges have soared for a decade.

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of “the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country.” Anti-immigrant sentiment in the state, firmly opposed by Ms. Giffords, has reached the point where Latino studies programs that advocate ethnic solidarity have actually been made illegal.

And Krugman was even more eloquent in his own column:

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening: the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

Remember when Bill Frist (R-TN) remotely diagnosed a brain-dead Teri Schiavo as ready for a picnic? Now we have a failed, self-certified ophthalmologist, Rand Paul (R-KY) diagnosing the right-wing terrorist as a paranoid schizophrenic. Most people who have read Loughner's writing would have diagnosed him as having ingested an overdose of Ron Paul.

Paul has a medical degree from Duke University. However, he was trained as an ophthalmologist and not a psychiatrist. Paranoid schizophrenia is a mental disorder.

“I looked at some of the writings of this young man, and from a medical point of view there’s a lot to suggest paranoid schizophrenia and a really sick individual,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday.

And speaking of politicians creating an atmosphere of violence and giving their craziest partisans permission...



And, yes, even a few Republicans understood the dangers inherent in pushing the whole violence thing. This was one of the winning ads in the Alaska Senate campaign that helped voters there step back and realize what Sarah Palin's Teatard Joe Miller really was all about-- something more to do with pre-War Germany than where most of us would like to see our country go (including most Alaskans... even if by a narrow margin).

Republicans in Their Own Words -- Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version: Part 1, The Unemployed

Rachel Maddow on Newt Gingrich: "Just because he doesn't have a real job does not mean that Newt Gingrich isn't making a lot of money in politics." (See No. 3.)

by Noah

It’s hard to understand the Republican mind. If you try too hard, you may end up catching a case of their insanity, or at least being plagued by nightmares, or your psyche might end up so wounded by the assault that you need to go for counseling or maybe just a prescription for some valium. My suggestion: Just let their own words do most of the talking. It is what it is. They reveal the inner workings of their twisted minds just fine. The only cure for Republicanism is complete derision and dismissal. Herewith some classic examples of Republican Mental Illness, or RMI as we call it at the Down With Tyranny Medical Center.

1. The first is a true dialog between former House Repug leader Tom DeLay and CNN’s Candy Crowley. On-air, DeLay said to Crowley:

There is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits, keep people from going and finding [a] job. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.

Naturally, DeLay didn’t happen to have any of those studies he mentioned available for reference. Crowley then asked, “People are unemployed because they want to be?” DeLay’s answer: “Well, it is the truth. And people in the real world know it.”

This was a Republican talking point for much of the year, with similar utterances from the likes of Sen. John Kyl and senator-wannabe Sharron Angle.

2. And speaking of Sharron Angle:

We have put in so much entitlement into our government that we have spoiled our citizenry and said, "You don’t want the jobs that are available.”

Next thing ya know, “our citizenry” will want at least a minimum wage! And a less than 80-hour work week! And health benefits! And no whippings! Damn spoiled middle class! For more on the wisdom of Angle, just click on this.

3. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, explaining why he, like virtually all his Republican brethren, is against the concept of paying unemployment benefits. Keep in mind that this was said by a guy who, as Rachel Maddow points out in the clip above, has been “earning” his money for 12 years or so as a scam artist. Newt, if you wanna do some honest work, maybe you should just do a deal with Jenny Craig. Sooner or later, though, Newt will be sending out his own version of those infamous direct-mail scam “letters from Nigeria.”

4. “Is the government now creating hobos?”

-- Nevada Congresscretin Dean Heller

Hey, Heller, why not just call them winos!

5. “If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment is a disincentive for them to seek new work."

-- Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl

Yeah, Kyl, people just enjoy being out of work. One would think that by now if the people of Arizona had any brains at all, they would ship Kyl to China along with the jobs he voted to send there.

6. “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment , people are just going to sit there."

-- Pennsylvania candidate for governor Tom Corbett

The sad punch line is that Corbett won, despite the fact that Pennsylvania is a state that is rife with extreme rust-belt poverty. The state is also well above the national average of having six applicants for every job. Now there’s a guy who really knows his constituents. “The jobs are there.” I guess that just depends on what the meaning of "there" is.

7. “We should not be giving cash to people who are basically just going to blow it on drugs.”

-- Utah Sen. Orin Hatch

This puss-for-brains loon should have been put out to pasture when he held up a copy of The Exorcist at the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991.

8. “Have you heard of the 99-ers? Some of these people, I bet you’d be ashamed to call them Americans.”

-- Glenn Beck, discussing the 1.4 million (and growing in number) Americans who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks in a country whose jobs have been shipped to China and India

9. “The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say ‘generally’ because there are exceptions. But in general as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or do not know how to do a days work."

-- former Nixon speechwriter and game-show host Ben Stein

Stein unwittingly went a long way in describing himself. He also works as an advertising pitchman of sorts. Personally, I make a point of not buying anything he’s selling. Not only that, but when I see it on the shelves, I push it to the back behind competing products. It makes me feel good. Everyone has to do their bit in some way, you know.

10. “Let them eat cake.”

-- French queen Marie Antoinette, proposing an alternative for peasants who couldn't afford bread

Now we know that Marie Antoinette was expressing the modern-day Republican philosophy centuries in advance. And what happened to her?

#

Is this any way to ratify a treaty? (In case you were wondering what it takes to get a 2/3 vote in today's Senate)

Speaking at a START-theme press conference Tuesday, AZ Sen. Jon Kyl earns a hearty smile from that much-loved though unfortunately now-deceased comic actor Henry Gibson. Oh wait, some sources are claiming that the smiler happy-go-lucky AL Sen. (and Henry Gibson look-alike) "Just Jeff" Sessions.

by Ken

This looks to me like one of those cases where the problem is the old newspaper one of a lazy and/or ax-grinding headline-writer rather than the reporting that follows.

On washingtonpost.com today reporter Mary Beth Sheridan (with credited contributions from the paper's Walter Pincus and Anne Kornblut -- some pretty high-powered helpers there!) has a piece headlined "Arms treaty approval a win for Obama, but GOP critics are gaining momentum." It just struck me as odd, and distinctly against the grain, to see reporting about "GOP critics gaining momentum" at a time when the media's traditionally horse-race-fixated vantage point (who gains? who loses?) is singing hymns of praise to the president. To what extent those hymns are deserved is an interesting but separate question. Isn't that what the Village media types are all saying? Oh, sure, the Village gadflies aren't giving up on the attack, so for example WaPo pundit Dana Milbank warns the president about getting too big for his britches. But generally the pundits are giving the prez Full Village Credit for his rip-roaring "comeback" of the last couple of weeks. That's the kind of performance that gets their attention and respect.

As far as I can tell, though, the Post headline-writer is just grinding his/her own ax with regard to those GOP critics and their momentum. What the piece turns out to be is a sort of behind-the-scenes look at What It Took to get the new START treaty ratified. And I'm sorry though not surprised to find that it wasn't pretty, and had less to do than one might have supposed with "principle." I'm thinking the making of legislative action distinctly recalls the old wisdom about the making of sausage: You don't want to know what goes into it, because if you find out, you may not be able to swallow the damned thing.

Here are the sorts of questions that are raised in the piece:

* Can Arizona GOP old-style hard-right Sen. John Kyl be bought? (A: Seriously do you have to ask?)

* How high a price would you have to pay for Senator Kyl's thumbs-up? (A: Pretty high, but apparently not unaffordable, and again maybe not the kind of price you might expect, ideologically speaking.)

* If you and Senator Kyl agree on terms for the purchase, you can trust that he'll deliver, right? (A: Ha ha!)

Now the piece does note that President Obama faced some challenge from foreign leaders regarding his status in the wake of the crushing midterm elections. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, that noted authority on American democracy, did take the opportunity of seeing our president in Yokohama after an economic summit to ask whether the election results were likely to jeopardize ratification of the new START. And the anonymous source -- the Post now being an acknowledged world leader in its use of anonymous sources -- tipped off the reporters that the Russian's concern "had an impression" on Obama.

As far as I know, though, President Medvedev doesn't qualify as a "GOP critic" of the president.

As for Senator Kyl, well, this you're going to enjoy, I think:

There had always been what another White House official called a "healthy skepticism" about whether Kyl, the second-ranking Republican, had been negotiating in good faith. A savvy conservative steeped in arms-control issues, Kyl had helped defeat the 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, dealing a blow to the Clinton administration.

But Kyl's main concern this time hadn't seemed to be the treaty's central issues, such as the number of warheads allowed, but instead modernization of the remaining nuclear weapons.

While the president was in Asia, we've learned,

the administration had secretly sent a high-level team including Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. nuclear forces, to Arizona to tell Kyl the administration would commit an extra $4.1 billion for nuclear modernization, on top of an earlier pledge of $10 billion.

Kyl seemed happy with the offer, officials said.

But three days after Obama's meeting with Medvedev, White House aides were astonished to learn from a news release by Kyl that he believed there wasn't enough time to consider the treaty during the lame-duck session.

"That was one of the lowest moments of our time in government," said the senior official.

Oops!

Officials believed that pushing the treaty into the next Congress would jeopardize its passage, since Republicans had picked up six seats in the midterm elections.

Now, the administration had to decide whether to proceed without Kyl.

The Kyl statement arrived as Biden was meeting with senior officials in the White House Situation Room to discuss Iraq. Talk turned immediately to New START. Later, senior aides huddled with Obama in the Oval Office.

"Both the president and vice president said to us, 'Look, this is too important to let die like this,' " Rhodes said.

The next day, Obama called Kyl to say he would push for New START.

The ensuing White House crusade for ratification stressed that the new START is a continuation of policies not only championed but in fact negotiated by previous Republican administrations. Still, I guess you never know what you're going to find when you start turning these rocks over. Retiring Ohio Sen. George Voinovich --

stunned the White House on Nov. 17 by declaring he couldn't support the treaty until he had assurances it wouldn't harm U.S. allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

Within days, Obama used a NATO summit in Lisbon to highlight international support for the pact - including from a group of Eastern European and Baltic leaders who called for treaty passage at a news conference.

Voinovich's concerns were assuaged by the speeches, as well as by a vow by Obama to consider allowing Poles to travel visa-free to the United States.

Which is certainly good news for traveling Poles. And, apparently, a clinching reason for . . . um, for supporting a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty with Russia?

OK, sorry, I'm still not finding the part in the article about those GOP critics of the president gaining momentum. But I don't hold that against the reporter or her journalistic A-team helpers. She hasn't really gathered that much behind-the-scenes dirt, but what she has gathered makes for an interesting read. And while I try not to let those apprehensions about the stuff that goes into the making of sausage don't usually deter me from eating the end product, even this small glimpse into what it takes to ratify a treaty these days makes my gut kind of queasy.

#

...But We Can't Get By On Nothin'

If one of these people killed a dozen Republican senators and you were on the jury what would you do? Would you take the rightist position and convict him or her? Or the leftist position and give him or her an award for extraordinary service to the country and to humanity? Or would you just sort of take the middle road and call it even and ask everyone to go home and think about the direction our country is taking? I don't think Inside the Beltway politicians, most of whom are millionaires, understand the issue. If some of them passed a few of their colleagues hanging from lamp posts on the way to work, it would come into clearer focus. I'm not advocating that; it's illegal. But the prosecutor wouldn't want me on the jury.

I consulted my pastor, who has just released a new book, Changing The Script, to see if I could get a read on the morality of this kind of action. He's a man of peace and a man of God and you kind of have to read between the lines:

It's been a rough week. Ireland got sold back into serfdom, unemployment benefits expired, and in a bid to bring the spirit of peace and generosity back to Christmas, Republicans threatened to filibuster the START treaty until tax cuts for the upper 2% of wealthy Americans were made permanent. Oh, and like a maraschino cherry high atop a lollapalooza of suck, we find out from Wikileaks that the Obama administration-- with GOP help-- basically has quashed the investigation into torture by slow-marching it to death.

...And where, might you ask, was the religious left (such as it is) during all of this? Begging for scraps, I'm afraid. They were "urging" Congress to pass the DREAM Act and "urging" them to ratify START and "asking"(!) the House to pass the Child Nutrition Act. These are all fine and worthy causes, to be sure. Yet somehow I don't think they're going to be effective. Put it to you this way, it's one thing to go up against a giant with a slingshot. It's quite another to take your rock out and replace it with a crumpled-up piece of paper.

I've been asked a lot over the course of this fall why we don't have a politically effective religious left in America. The short answer is that there's a significant trade-off between being nice (or engaging in "civil discourse," as it's called these days) and being potent. All the commitment to moral suasion, to building consensus, to reconciliation between political opponents, all the commitment in the world to "speaking out" about your values isn't going to accomplish squat.

What will? Identity politics. I'm afraid they’re everything these days. Simply put, the religious left is far less effective than the religious right because it won't turn political questions into us-versus-them. It's too divisive for them, to use one of the president's favorite terms.

Yet, as I seldom tire of pointing out, the God of the Bible is quite partisan and quite divisive. You can't read about camels and the eye of the needle, let alone the Magnificat, without understanding that God is on the side of the poor.

If the religious left (such as it is) wants to be effective on economic issues-- tax cuts, employment, child nutrition-- it's going to have to learn to take sides too. It's going to have to say:

My God is the God of the poor. Someday, that God is going to bring down the powerful and send the rich away hungry, but lift up the lowly and fill the hungry. I know which side I'm on. Which side are you on?

Or better:

My God is the God of the poor. He takes notes, and so do I.

Or:

My God is the God of the poor. A vote against [unemployment benefits, child nutrition] or a vote for tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy is a vote against that God, and it's a vote against those who follow him.

Or simplest and perhaps best:

My God is the God of the poor. You can be for the poor or you can go to hell.

There's nothing nice about that. But then there's nothing nice about the absurd, reactionary, vicious and apparently successful class war the rich and powerful are waging on the rest of the nation, either.

The was the most important part of this post. If you have a hockey game or something you can go now. Otherwise, here's the kinds of facts and figures about unemployment you're never going to find on TV or even in newspapers. It's a report from the Council of Economic Advisors, the entirety of which you can read here after the hockey game. Here's the summary:

Unemployment insurance (UI) provides a safety net for workers who have lost a job through no fault of their own, as long as they continue to search for new employment. During normal economic conditions, firms pay into state insurance systems that replace roughly half of the average individual’s lost earnings, up to 26 weeks. However, the federal government historically funds additional weeks of benefits in response to an economic downturn. The benefits allow recipients to continue to support their families while searching for their next job.

In response to the recession that began in December 2007, Congress expanded UI benefits by creating Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) and 100 percent federal funding of Extended Benefits (EB). These programs provide UI benefits after a worker exhausts state benefits, helping when it takes longer to find a job, such as in this severe downturn. These extensions began to expire on November 30, 2010. In this report, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) examines the effects of the extensions thus far and the potential impact on the economy if Congress fails to act soon to continue these emergency measures.

As a result of these emergency expansions to UI:

• EUC and EB have helped 14 million unemployed workers as of October 2010. As of that date, there were almost 5 million unemployed workers benefiting from these programs each week.

• In total, these programs have benefited about 40 million people who have received, or lived with a recipient of, EUC or EB. This total includes 10.5 million children.

If these measures are not extended, the maximum eligibility for benefits in most states will revert to the pre-recessionary level of 26 weeks. The Department of Labor estimates that, relative to a month-long extension, 2 million unemployed workers will lose coverage in December 2010. And, relative to a year-long extension, nearly 7 million unemployed workers in total will lose coverage by November 2011.

Further, EUC and EB make up a substantial portion of household income. Without EUC and EB, the typical household receiving these benefits will see their income fall by a third. In the 42 percent of households where the EUC or EB recipient is the sole wage-earner, 90 percent of income will be lost.

This important income replacement allows individuals that have suffered from job loss to avoid a dramatic drop in their spending levels. Research studies have documented that UI is an extremely effective form of support for the economy relative to other government programs, both in terms of bang-for-the-buck and timeliness. EUC and EB recipients spend their benefit checks, rather than saving them, and a drop in this income will translate into a sizeable drop in aggregate spending.
Specifically, CEA estimates that:

• Employment was about 800,000 higher, and the level of GDP 0.8 percent higher, in September 2010 than would have been the case without EUC and EB.

• Without an extension, employment would be about 600,000 lower, and GDP 0.6 percent lower, in December 2011 than if a year-long extension were passed.

Previously, Congress continued federal expansions of UI until the economy was much further along the road to recovery. With 10 consecutive months of private sector job growth and half a percentage point drop in the unemployment rate since its peak, the economy is beginning to recover. However, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high and there are still 5 job seekers for every job opening. For the last half-century, Congress has consistently extended UI benefits when economic circumstances substantially increased the difficulty of finding a job. Given the current labor market conditions, failing to continue UI extensions now would be unprecedented.

I live in California and if the Senate Republicans filibuster unemployment insurance to death 1,013,384 victims of corporate economic policies shoved down the public's throat by the Bush Administration and their GOP congressional allies will lose their unemployment insurance. That's the worst of any state in the Union. But even some of the Confederate states will be big losers. Florida will wind up with 531,029 unemployed people with no means of feeding their families. Texas will have 334,410, Georgia will have 301,688 and North Carolina will have 232,285. I know Republicans go no further than calculating that these people are mostly Democratic voters-- or not voters at all-- anyway. But you think God thinks that way too?

Maine just elected a teabagging imbecile for a governor and capped it off with Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature. There are 18,485 unemployed Mainers who will lose the meager benefits they have to keep their families from freezing to death this winter. I wonder what they'll tell Mr. LePage about that. People are less likely to wind up with frozen children in Arizona, but one has to wonder how the country's most clueless and unqualified governor-- working together with a heartless and venal state legislature-- will cope with 127,560 unemployed men and women who can't feed their children. Multimillionaires John McCain and Jon Kyl have vowed to filibuster any attempt to extend unemployment benefits. In fact, Kyl thinks unemployment benefits are counterproductive. They just keep people from working and insisting on getting paid at least the minimum wage.





Yeah, prosecutors better hope I'm not on the jury, especially if someone gets Kyl.