Trouble For The Republican Party On Its Far Right Flank

There's a crackpot version of this video courtesy of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)


This isn't the kind of video meant to give right-wing ideologues a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's scary to think about what does though. Morning Joe may be ground zero in the non-Fox corporate media world's anti-Hillary jihad, but their Mark Halperin pointed out in a Bloomberg column yesterday that there are even more deranged Hillary-phobes than the ones he spends his mornings with. "A virulent strain of Clinton Derangement Syndrome," he wrote, "which scientists and Republicans thought had been wiped out at the end of the last century, is now inflicting millions of conservative Americans. Some Republicans so detest Hillary Clinton they are badly underestimating how likely she is, at this point in the campaign, to be America’s 45th president. Their denial is just as strong now as it was a month ago, before Clinton began a run of political victories that have enhanced her prospects, all while the roller derby/demolition derby that is the Republican nomination contest has continued to harm the GOP’s chances of winning back the White House... Republicans are erroneously convinced they can beat Clinton solely with talk of Benghazi, e-mails, and other controversies that have nothing to do with the economy and the real lives of real people. Nowhere does the Fox News-Rush Limbaugh echo chamber more hurt Republican chances of beating Clinton than in the politics of scandal and controversy. To paraphrase the famous line attributed to Pauline Kael: everyone who conservatives know think the Clintons should be in prison. The problem is that swing voters don’t share that view in sufficient numbers to actually warrant banking a victory on placing those arguments front and center. Kevin McCarthy’s acknowledgement that the Benghazi committee was set up to damage Clinton politically has not just polluted the select committee’s efforts; it also means that one of the most effectively tried-and-true Team Clinton defenses (that any controversy that swirls around her is a ginned up political attack because Republicans don’t want to talk about real issues) has got legs straight through next November."

Yeah... when the GOP is counting on their presumed opponent to spend election day in jail-- or are already bragging about impeaching her on Day-one of her presidency-- the party establishment might as well save themselves the trouble of fighting off Trump or Carson (as of this morning, leading Trump nationally, at least according to the new CBS poll) or Cruz and just let them have the worthless nomination.

Yesterday South Carolina closet case Lindsey Graham was on Morning Joe wondering how he could possibly be losing to the sociopaths running for the Republican nomination. "The number two guy [Carson] tried to kill somebody at 14 and the number one guy [Trump] is high energy and crazy as hell. How am I losing to these guys?"



Of course, Lindsey Graham isn't the only one noticing that the far right fringe has dragged his party off the rails. Yesterday, reporting for the Washington Post, Mike DeBonis was talking about the civil war starting up within the fringe. They're already going after each other, basically because the right-wing sell-outs gave Ryan a pass-- despite his horrible record of establishment corruption. They weren't far right enough for the psychopaths they helped give voice to over the last year or two!

“You should all be replaced,” a critic told Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). Another called Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), one of the most persistent thorns in Boehner’s side, “a RINO establishment lap dog” and “another go-along to get along phony who will GLADLY step on the throats of the Conservative electorate.”

...“Look, I imagine that there’s theoretically a chance that [we] all went from being radical extremist crazies to Washington sellouts in 12 hours,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus leader. “But maybe a more likely narrative is that we really think that this is a good step for the conservative movement. And it’s up to us to try to explain that to people, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

They would seem to have a lot of explaining to do.

The anger over Ryan’s ascent has been fueled by voices across the conservative media landscape. On the Internet, sites such as Breitbart.com and the Drudge Report have pumped out a steady stream of anti-Ryan stories casting doubt on his record, while such prominent commentators as Erick Erickson, Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus have sharpened their teeth and urged conservatives to contact lawmakers and tell them to spurn Ryan.

Particularly brutal have been the syndicated talk-radio hosts who have helped foment the anti-establishment outrage that has kept Donald Trump atop the GOP presidential race and forced Jeb Bush, a well-financed mainstream conservative, to undertake a campaign shake-up.

Laura Ingraham last week called Ryan “basically John Boehner with better abs” and featured segment after segment attacking Ryan’s positions on trade and immigration. She also mocked his desire to spend his weekends with his family.

Another influential host, Mark Levin, lambasted Ryan as a creature of the establishment elite. “I think it’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to choose a speaker from outside the House of Representatives,” he told his audience Wednesday. “This is the best the Republican establishment can do; it’s just not good enough.”

And the biggest conservative talker of them all, Rush Limbaugh, on Thursday called Ryan a favorite of the Republican “donor class” and “the new Cantor”-- a reference to former House majority leader Eric Cantor, who was ousted last year in a GOP primary.

...[North Carolina extremist Mark] Meadows said Thursday that he and like-minded members were more concerned that Ryan might have made contradictory pledges to different groups while courting support last week. And he suggested that Ryan might be at risk of fraying the House GOP anew if he didn’t make a clearer statement before Thursday’s speaker vote.

“It’s important that a down payment be made in order to keep that supermajority intact,” he said.

A handful of House hard-liners, perhaps 10 to 15, remain proudly outside the pro-Ryan camp; most continue to back Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), a backbencher who has emphasized procedural reforms.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking, really,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a Webster backer, said of the Freedom Caucus.

“If you’ve got problems with a man today, and the man tells you, ‘Tomorrow, I’ll be a different person’-- it doesn’t happen,” said Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who said he has received more than 100 calls over two days from constituents opposing Ryan.

Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of lunatics in the North Carolina suburbs of Wilmington, New Bern, Greenville and Elizabeth City and in Jacksonville and all along the state's coast. But if you really want to know what happens when right-wing ideologues and purists take over, just look to Kansas, where a neo-fascist senator, Sam Brownback, was elected governor and implemented all the policies the far right is always whining about. Kansas is one of the most Republican states in the country. After voting for FDR in 1932 and 1936, they abandoned him and the Democratic Party until Goldwater was nominated in 1964-- and never again since then. Their state Senate has 31 Republicans and 9 Democrats and the state House has 97 Republicans and 28 Democrats. Every state officer from Insurance Commissioner to Governor-- plus ever Member of Congress from Kansas-- is a Republican. Romney beat Obama 678,719 (60%) to 427,918 (38%). Of Kansas' 105 counties, Obama won just 2-- Wyandotte and Douglas. Gove, Sheridan, Scott and Rawlins counties gave him just 13% of their votes-- and Wallace county outdid them all, handing Romney an 90-9% victory over the president! But Kansans aren't happy as the real-life laboratory for far right theories of governance now. A new local poll from the Docking Institute shows that only 18% of the voters are happy with Brownback's performance and 61% of them rate his vaunted tax policies as either a "failure" or a "tremendous failure." The same percentage want him to expand Medicare and 84% oppose his insistence that colleges allow guns on campuses. In fact 82% of the voters now see through the GOP ruse that voters fraud is a significant enough problem to warrant the Secretary of State's war against voting and against democracy.

Like a similar poll conducted this spring, the fall poll portrays a much more moderate adult population than is reflected in the Legislature. That's likely due to the fact that the Fort Hays State poll surveys "adults," as opposed to "registered voters," or even "likely voters."

But the high level of dissatisfaction with Brownback and his policies may be important for Republican candidates running in the 2016 elections. They will likely have to ask themselves how closely they want to be identified with a governor who is personally unpopular, and who cannot run again himself because he is term limited.

Not surprisingly, the poll showed a wide partisan divide on most questions. But when it came to assessing Brownback, even among those who identified themselves as "strong Republicans," 45 percent said they were either somewhat or very dissatisfied with his performance. Only 9 percent said they were very satisfied.

Thirty-eight percent of "strong Republicans" said they believe his tax policies have failed to stimulate economic growth.

As we mentioned the other day, the GOP Establishment has its hands full with full-on crackpot and neo-fascist candidates wanting to run-- across the whole country-- as Republicans. The establishment is worrying that, as Politico put it yesterday, looney candidates like Sharon Angle "could again jeopardize the party's chances," not just for winning a specific seat, but for holding onto the Senate majority. And in Angle's case, "[t]he GOP in Nevada and Washington is trying to chase her out of another campaign."

Angle’s very public flirtation with a primary bid against Rep. Joe Heck, the party favorite to take on Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, is reviving Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares from the 2010 election. Angle — along with lackluster candidates Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck — blew a winnable race for the GOP, and her name still causes eyerolls among Republicans of all stripes.

And now that Republicans finally control the Senate, they aren’t about to let Angle screw things up.

"[Heck] can win. It is about winning elections after all," said Texas Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during Angle’s run. Angle "had a shot and has been unsuccessful. So my money is with him."

...A divisive GOP food fight in Nevada would unquestioningly aid Democratic efforts to win the four or five Senate seats the party needs (depending on the result of the presidential election) to win back control of the chamber. Republicans already are defending seven seats in states President Barack Obama won in both presidential elections, six of which are very competitive.

Republicans view Nevada as much-needed insurance to preserve their majority. Democrats know that losing Nevada makes the math that much harder for a party that already has little margin for error... Still, some activists remain wary of Heck, who has lower ratings on scorecards from conservative groups-- even if those votes could help Heck in a general election in a blue-leaning state.

Wall Street Democrats vs Real Democrats-- In South Carolina?

Hutto with deranged teabagger Lee Bright-- 2 ineffectual Lindsey Graham opponents

South Carolina state Senator Brad Hutto announced yesterday-- just before the filing deadline-- that he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination to oppose Lindsey Graham. A conservative, Big Business-friendly Democrat, he will be up against Jay Stamper who has been endorsed by Blue America but is not a favorite of the party Establishment. Last year, Hutto was rated 100% by the Chamber of Commerce, one of only two Democrats in the state legislature willing too suck up to Big Business to that extent.

Unlike Stamper, who has chosen to draw a clear line of distinction between himself and the conservative Graham, Hutto takes pains to paint himself as the kind of Republican-lite candidate that depresses Democratic turnout.

Hutto, 56, said he thinks he can woo Republicans dissatisfied with Graham with a pitch "that I’m a practical middle-of-the-road guy."

“I have no aversions to working with Republicans,” Hutto said.

Hutto said South Carolinians liked having U.S. senators from different parties, Republican Strom Thurmond and Democrat Fritz Hollings, for nearly 40 years. “They’d say, ‘We always had somebody to go to,’ ” he said. “Sometimes having people on both sides helps.”

The only way a Democrat is going to win this seat is by offering a real alternative to the slick conservative claptrap Graham has used his entire career to win every election he's run in since 1992. Last night, a reporter on MSNBC explained how Graham had taken a $15,000 campaign "contribution" from mobster casino billionaire and Chinese government agent Sheldon Adelson just before introducing legislation to ban internet gambling, Adelson's #1 domestic agenda item. Stamper will be far better equipped to capitalize on that kind of behavior than the tepid Hutto. But Hutto is hardly the only Wall Street Democrat blurring the lines between what it means to be a Republican and what it means to be a Democrat. In an essay yesterday, Richard Eskow talked about the struggle inside the Democratic party that pits those who serve the interests of ordinary families and those who serve Wall Street and are generally considered the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. "If progressive and populist ideas resonate with most voters, some people have asked, why isn’t the Democratic Party doing better in the polls? Here’s one reason: Some of the party’s most prominent leaders are still pushing Wall Street’s unpopular and discredited economic platform." And he wasn't just talking about little known corporate shills like Brad Hutto.

Recent speeches by former President Bill Clinton and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer showed that Wall Street continues to hold considerable sway in their party, despite the fact that its austerity agenda has failed. Its “deficits over growth” ideology has wounded both Europe and the United States. To hear Clinton and Hoyer speak, you’d think we’d learned nothing from the economic experience of the last five years.

…It’s rather stunning: A former president addresses members of a generation that has been saddled with record student debt and which faces the worst job market for graduates in modern history, and he talks, not of jobs or debt or decent wages, but about deficit reduction.

What’s more, this generation’s woes were caused in large part by the Clinton Administration’s eager collaboration with Republicans and Wall Street executives on deregulation. That collaboration also led to the accumulation of enormous wealth by a number of former administration officials. (Mr. Clinton did pretty well himself.)

And people wonder why Gallup reports that millennials are at or near record levels of alienation from both political parties? When leaders of both parties emphasize deficits over jobs, their disaffection becomes easier to understand… It’s impossible to look into the soul of another person. But it feels breathtakingly cynical for President Clinton to speak to a student crowd about deficit reduction when they, and the rest of the nation, desperately need government programs for jobs and growth-- programs that have been strangled by Washington’s wrongheaded fixation on deficit reduction.

As for Hoyer: Austerity-lite advocates have offered a shifting set of rationales for their deficit fixation, using everything from disproven inflation fears to discredited economic spreadsheets. But Hoyer’s come up with a new one: Cutting the deficit, he says, is the best way for “America to get its swagger back.”

The minority whip was addressing the discredited Wall Street front group that calls itself “Third Way.” While he, too, was careful not to mention his support for Social Security cuts, Hoyer expressed disappointment that the Simpson-Bowles plan was never enacted. That’s saying the same thing.

Hoyer also called for a “big and balanced” budget agreement. “Big and balanced” is a euphemism for the kind of deal that hurts the middle class through Social Security and Medicare cuts, but which also includes tax hikes that Republicans have historically opposed. Fortunately for Wall Street, the increases promoted by Peterson funded groups go easy on the millionaire and billionaire crowd.

In fact, Simpson-Bowles and similar proposals actually offer tax decreases for the highest earners, coupled with reductions in “tax expenditures”-- a phrase often used to describe tax breaks the middle class relies upon, like the home mortgage interest deduction and the employer health insurance deduction.

For years the deficit crowd has tried to create a false sense of panic about government debt. So it was especially ironic to hear Hoyer say that “it’s at this moment, when we don’t have a crisis breathing down our necks, that we have the best chance to lay the groundwork for the hard decisions we will need to make.”

There’s a struggle underway over the future of the Democratic Party. The populist movement has scored some significant recent wins, including the electoral victories of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Its ideas resonate with the public, and are in sync with mainstream economic thought.

But the remarks from Clinton and Hoyer demonstrate that the party’s Wall Street wing is still riding tall in the saddle, despite its discredited ideas and unpopular proposals.

There’s one sure-fire way to give a person, or a country, its “swagger” back: a good job at good wages will do it every time. Too bad these Wall Street Democrats aren’t talking about that.

Jay Stamper has made it clear that he's part of the populist wing of the party. The South Carolina Establishment-- both the political and the media establishment-- can't relate to it. They are much more comfortable with an advocate of the failed Austerity agenda like Brad Hutto.

Endorsements: South Carolina, Wyoming, California's Inland Empire

Here in Southern California, there's a little bit of controversy in CA-31 (San Bernardino and the 'burbs between Upland and Redlands) over the "unanimous" and coordinated endorsements by 4 Democratic Clubs of DCCC empty suit Pete Aguilar over three better-qualified Democratic candidates. One DCCC operative told me these kinds of phony club endorsements are standard procedure for the DCCC to help prop up weak candidates like Aguilar. Former Congressman Joe Baca, running for his old seat despite a vicious and determined campaign against him led by Steve Israel, told me this week that 2 of the clubs are in other districts and that the other two have 4 members each-- and that the 4 members don't even go to the "meetings." These were faked endorsements to try to stampede the California Democratic Party to go along with Steve Israel's terrible decision to endorse Aguilar, who already lost the very blue (D+5) district to TWO Republicans in 2012.

Normal people don't necessarily care about endorsements, but some endorsements-- though not from these fakes clubs-- come with resources. Certainly a California Democratic Party endorsement has immense value in a Democratic primary. Baca told me that Aguilar doesn't have the brains to manipulate the system that way but that Steve Israel sure does. And then there's Eric Bauman, the would-be Jesse Unruh of California's Democratic Party, who has also been working behind the scenes on behalf of Aguilar.

There are good reasons the Democratic Party has worked up rules about not interfering in viable primaries. Political careerists who undermine those rules should be fired. Then people will think twice about doing it again.

Nationally, though there are other stories in the endorsement game this week, namely South Carolina's junior appointed senator, Tim Scott going on CNN's Crossfire and pointedly refusing to endorse South Carolina's senior senator, Lindsay Graham, who's struggling for political survival against a bevy of blood-thirsty teabaggers. (See video up top.)

The endorsement/non-endorsement story that's captured the public's mind though is, of course, the ugly controversy roiling the Cheney family. Liz Cheney, an ambitious extremist, is trying to unseat very conservative senator Mike Enzi in Wyoming and has relocated there from her home in Virginia. Her polling numbers are dreadful-- 69-17% in the latest poll-- so she decided to brutally throw her sister's family under the bus to get some attention. People who don't even follow politics are sickened by Liz Cheney's ogre-like behavior, worse than anything one would ever even expect from her father!

Politico reported that Mary Cheney has now publicly asserted that she won't be endorsing the evil sister's campaign. Liz Cheney blames the whole mess on Enzi, of course.

Unbeknownst even to some of her closest friends and advisers, her newly announced opposition to gay marriage had caused a major rift in the famously close Cheney family, and she and Mary were no longer on speaking terms. Days after we talked it all became public, when, in a series of Facebook posts as devastating as they were surprising, Mary blasted her sister’s stance against marriage equality. “Liz’s position is to treat my family as second class citizens,” Mary wrote. “This isn't like a disagreement over grazing fees or what to do about Iran.” The public rebuke was the first communication between the sisters since August, and soon their parents, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, found themselves dragged into the imbroglio, issuing a statement defending Liz.

But Mary wasn’t done speaking out. In a series of emails to me this week, as the news of her break with her sister spread, Mary wrote, “I’m not supporting Liz’s candidacy.” She later clarified: “By supporting, I mean not working, not contributing, and not voting for (I’m registered in Virginia not Wyoming).” The best she could say of the sister who was once her close friend and confidante was a final postscript: “I am not saying I hope she loses to Enzi.”

For a family renowned for its togetherness and discipline-- “It’s very un-Cheney-like for one arm of the family to do something the other part doesn’t know about in the political sphere and cause any degree of heartburn,” says one former adviser to Dick Cheney—the public squabbling has been a shock. And what began as a race that seemed certain to tear apart the Republican Party in Wyoming has been transformed into something that once seemed unfathomable: the race that’s torn apart the Cheney family.

…Until this week’s very public disagreement, the Cheneys had succeeded for years in keeping the political and the personal in delicate balance when it came to the issue of Mary’s sexuality. Granted, that wasn’t always easy. When she came out to her parents as a high school junior, as she tells the story in Now It’s My Turn, her mother burst into tears and said, “Your life will be so hard.” (Dick, for his part, told her, “You’re my daughter and I love you and I just want you to be happy.”) By the time Bush offered Dick the vice presidency in 2000, one of his biggest hesitations, Mary writes, was about what such a move would mean for her. “Personally, I’d rather not be known as the vice president’s lesbian daughter,” Mary told him. “But, if you’re going to run, I think the country would be lucky to have you. I want to do whatever I can to help out on the campaign.” Help she did, along with Liz, and over the next eight years of the Bush administration, the two sisters, who were already close, grew even closer. To the extent Mary’s sexuality intruded into the world of politics, it only seemed to draw the sisters tighter together.

Never more so than in 2004. That year began with Mary contemplating quitting her job on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign because of the president’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which proposed to ban same-sex marriage. As Mary recalls in her memoir, when she asked to discuss the matter with her father at the White House, Lynne and Liz joined them, and all three urged her to remain on the campaign-- noting that they themselves disagreed with Bush on the issue. But they also told her they would understand and support her decision if she did resign. Mary chose to stay on and, later in that campaign, when Democratic nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, each separately raised the issue of her sexuality during the debates, the Cheneys were furious. Lynne declared Kerry was “not a good man” and denounced his “cheap and tawdry political trick.” When Edwards debated their father, Liz and Lynne went so far as to stick their tongues out at him, while Mary glared at the Democrat and, borrowing one of her father’s famous expressions, silently mouthed the words “Go fuck yourself.”

By the time Dick left office, it seemed clear that the Cheneys had navigated a complicated issue with no negative political consequences-- and family solidarity intact. And, in the years since, it appeared the family's balancing act would only get easier: While the Republican Party remained solidly against gay marriage, public opinion-- even inside the GOP-- was shifting rapidly toward more friendly views about homosexuality. The rest of the country looked like it was catching up with the Cheneys.

But living in Washington is different from living in Wyoming, a fact that Liz Cheney may not have fully reckoned with when she announced in July that she would take on Enzi in next year’s Republican primary. When Cheney jumped into the race, the assumption among the political cognoscenti was that the incumbent was in trouble. The low-key, at times lumbering 69-year-old former CPA-- a politician so square and old-fashioned that he carries a briefcase onto the Senate floor, where he seldom utters a word-- was presumed to be no match for the young, media-savvy, slashing-and-burning daughter of the former vice president. It was an impression Enzi himself reinforced when, upon hearing the news of Cheney’s entrance into the race, he lamented to reporters, “I thought we were friends.”

Few, if any of the early accounts of Cheney’s candidacy even mentioned the matter of her sister, and at first it seemed her biggest problem would be dismissing the carpetbagger label. Although Cheney claims to be a fourth-generation Wyomingite, she did not live in the state-- save for two years as a young girl-- until 2012, when she moved her family from northern Virginia into a $1.6 million home in the tony resort town of Jackson Hole.

Did Kerry And His Clique Plot An End Run Around Obama On Syria?

Susan Rice is as much a hawk and a creature of the Military-Industrial Complex as John Kerry ever was. But McCain and Lindsey Graham, America's two most preeminent warmongers, sandbagged and sabotaged Rice and demanded that Obama appoint Kerry Secretary of State. Policy-wise there is no difference between Rice and Kerry and today she serves as National Security Advisor and he serves, thanks to McCain and Graham, as Secretary of State. The difference is that her loyalty is unquestionably to Obama. Kerry doesn't give a crap about Obama.

In fact, impeccable Beltway sources have told me that Kerry sees himself as the "President of Foreign Policy." He tried-- and failed-- to pull off a virtual coup in Washington over the Syria crisis. A very dominant, transpartisan and self-serving National Security clique in Washington was determined to railroad Obama, who's concerns are more about domestic affairs than foreign affairs to begin with, into a war with Syria and-- in their fondest dreams-- Iran. John Stewart looked at it with a sense of humor the other night on The Daily Show, outing Lindsey Graham for the whole nation.



Gene Lyons made many of the same points-- without pointing out Lindsey Graham's bizarre sexual dysfunctions-- at the National Memo yesterday. He starts with a quote from a Graham hero, Winston Churchill: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

Before you make the mistake of taking President Obama’s most strident critics regarding the Syrian deal too seriously, ponder this: With few exceptions, those calling the Russian-American agreement to eliminate Bashar al-Assad’s nerve gas arsenal a capitulation, a sellout, and a shameful retreat also think bombing Damascus wouldn’t have been nearly enough.

Nothing short of a boots-on American invasion of Syria would have satisfied these jokers. Prominent among them is Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who views the diplomatic breakthrough as “an act of provocative weakness on America’s part.”

McCain, who has vigorously supported all nine of the nation’s last three wars on about 316 TV talk shows, is never happy unless the U.S. is attacking somebody. Only violent solutions strike him as realistic. That’s probably the single biggest reason he never became president.

Then there’s Eliot A. Cohen, founding father of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct Washington pressure group whose messianic schemes for a U.S. empire stretching from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan inspired the Iraq War. Featuring such luminaries as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, to these geniuses, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was only the beginning. Next on their agenda was Iran, in case you wonder why the mad ayatollahs have been tinkering with nukes.

So anyway, just as President Obama was getting ready to ask Congress to endorse a punitive strike against Syrian chemical weapon sites, Cohen published a Washington Post column scolding Americans for their cowardice. The families of the war dead, he allowed, were entitled to their sorrow.

“But for the great mass of the American public,” he wrote “for their leaders and the elites who shape public opinion, ‘war-weariness’ is unearned cant, unworthy of a serious nation and dangerous in a violent world…Americans can change the channel if they find the images too disturbing.”

Got that citizens? Shut up, pay your taxes and avert your eyes.

Next the Obama administration pulled a large Russian rabbit out of its hat, leaving the neocons feeling foolish. For all the hugger-mugger about “red lines” and the White House’s odd decision to position a naval task force within striking range of Damascus before deciding to ask congressional permission, the end result was nevertheless remarkable.

Clumsy? Definitely. But it’s not a Bruce Willis movie; it’s a foreign policy.

“By hook or by crook,” Kevin Drum writes “Obama (a) raised the issue of Assad’s chemical weapons to an international level, (b) got Vladimir Putin (!) to take a lead role in reining them in, (c) got Assad to join the chemical weapons ban and agree to give up his stockpiles, and (d) [did] it all while keeping military pressure as an active option, but without ever firing a shot.”

In other words, for all the nonsensical talk of “appeasement,” the very crafty President Putin and the Syrian dictator now own this deal. Meanwhile, U.S. military options remain unchanged. President Obama has bought himself considerable freedom of action.

Mike Tomasky has it right: “If Assad is mad enough to use [chemical weapons] again, Obama won’t mess with Congress or even Russia. He’ll be credited by most observers…for having shown restraint the first time, and more people will agree at that point that Assad must be punished.”

Then there’s Charles Krauthammer, the Post columnist who accuses Obama of “epic incompetence,” complaining that the Russians prefer to keep Bashar al-Assad in power. He worries that “Assad is the key link in the anti-Western Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Damascus and Beirut to the Mediterranean.”

Hmm… Isn’t something missing here? Let’s go to the maps. It’s roughly 900 miles from Tehran to Damascus via, oh yeah… Baghdad. See, it’s precisely the U.S. invasion of Iraq championed by Krauthammer and his chums that created this supposedly scary alliance. Sectarian strife among Sunni and Shiite Muslims has erupted there at irregular intervals for almost 1,400 years. Shouldn’t these brilliant thinkers have thought of that before now?

So what do the Russians want? In a word, stability. Unlike the U.S., Russia has a large Muslim minority. Roughly 1 in 6 Russians is Muslim. Like the Tsarnaev bothers of Boston, MA, nearly all are Sunni. What Putin definitely doesn’t want is Chechen separatists getting their hands on nerve gas. Driving overland, Syria’s roughly as close to Chechnya as to Iran.

Can Putin be trusted? To do what’s good for Russia, yes. As President Obama explained to George Stephanopoulos, the Cold War is over. “I don’t think that Mr. Putin has the same values that we do,” he said. “But what I’ve also said to him directly is that we both have an interest in preventing chaos, we both have an interest in preventing terrorism. The situation in Syria right now is untenable.”

And he also quoted Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”

And when I mentioned a "transpartisan and self-serving National Security clique," it wasn't by chance. The War Party isn't just McCain, Eliot Cohen, Lindsey and Krauthammer. Many of us watched with dismay as Bronx New Dem Eliot Engel, the congressional spokesperson for AIPAC and Israel's Likud Party, cheer-led for war for the last month. House Dems have him slated to become Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee if they ever take back control of Congress. And then there's Obama's last Defense Secretary, Republican-turned-Democrat ex-congressman and neo-liberal shithead Leon Panetta. Like most of the War Party, he was furious that Obama went to Congress. Panetta sounds like McCain is writing his lines for him: "When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word."

Panetta's a clown and Obama's first Defense Secretary, Republican Robert Gates, was happy to point out why.

Gates said a strike would be like "throwing gasoline on an extremely complex fire in the Middle East." He brought up past interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as examples of how American military action can lead to unintended consequences.

He also dismissed attacking Syria to enforce a red line.

"I believe to blow a bunch of stuff up over a couple of days to underscore or validate a point or principle is not a strategy," he said.

...Gates, who was appointed secretary of defense by former President George W. Bush and retained by Obama, said he thought America's most recent presidents "have become too quick to reach for a gun to solve an international problem."

What Does The Cordray Confirmation Mean?

Tuesday saw two very important Senate votes. First came Harry Reid's cloture vote to end the nearly two year-long GOP filibuster of Richard Cordray's nomination to be Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The Republicans and their Wall Street masters don't want consumers protected from banksters and they oppose the Bureau itself and have blocked Cordray's appointment for that reason rather than because they found anything wrong with Cordray himself. Wednesday Lindsey Graham-- mostly preoccupied with grandstanding about boycotting the 2014 Olympics in Moscow-- admitted the GOP was holding up the nomination as a political tactic. “Cordray was being filibustered because we don’t like the law... That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong.” He was one of 17 Republicans who broke with McConnell and the radical obstructionists to break the GOP/Wall Street filibuster. Reid needed 60 votes and got 71-- with 29 still acting like spoiled children.

A few hours later, Reid brought up the nomination, which only needed 51 votes, and it passed 66-34. The impact on ordinary American families is likely to be much greater than the confirmation of most nominees. Elizabeth Warren came up with the idea of the CFPB and was gratified to see the Senate finally move on Cordray's nomination. "After more than 700 days of waiting, Rich Cordray will finally get the confirmation vote he deserves from the U.S. Senate.  Director Cordray has won praise from consumer and industry groups, and from Republicans and Democrats, for his fair and effective approach. With Director Cordray's confirmation, we will be able to say loudly, clearly, and with confidence:  the consumer agency is the law of the land and is here to stay.  We fought hard for the agency, and we proved that big change is still possible in Washington.  Now we have the watchdog that the American people deserve-- a watchdog looking out for middle class families, getting rid of tricks, traps, and fine print, and holding financial institutions accountable when they break the law."

Banks and financial firms opposed creation of the bureau, which was established with the explicit aim of regulating the kind of risky consumer financial products that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. Isaac Boltansky, an analyst with Compass Point Research & Trading LLC in Washington, said he expects the agency to remain a lightning rod for controversy.

“Cordray’s confirmation will remove a meaningful operational cloud that has hovered over the CFPB for three years, but there is no reason to believe that the political rhetoric surrounding the agency will subside,” Boltansky said in an e-mail.

Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said he would still push for changes to the consumer bureau’s structure that he said could come when his party is in the majority. The next round of Senate elections are in November 2014.

“There wasn’t any way to make it happen prior to this nomination coming up,” Corker said in an interview. “There’s a possibility that some additional structural changes take place.”

Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said the Senate deal ensures that the consumer bureau will take shape as the authors of Dodd-Frank intended.

“For two years, since it was formed, there has been a battle over whether it would be fully formed and become a part of the landscape, the executive branch landscape, defending the rights of Americans against predatory practices,” Merkley told reporters. “That question is answered today.”

Republican senators refused for more than two years to permit a confirmation vote on Cordray, demanding that the bureau be restructured to put more curbs on the director’s power and impose congressional controls over the agency’s budget.

“They don’t like the fact that this first-ever financial watchdog with the explicit mission of protecting consumers instead of bankers is doing exactly what it is supposed to,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella group of labor unions, civil rights groups and consumer advocates.

Over the last three years, Republicans accused the agency of being unaccountable and overly powerful, spending too much money, and collecting too much data on American consumers.

All the same, the agency remained popular with the public, and Warren’s role in setting it up heightened the bureau’s profile. Its positive image was in part a function of the unpopularity of the large banks that got federal bailouts during the financial crisis, according to a new poll by Washington-based Lake Research Partners. 

Eight in 10 voters support the work of the CFPB, according to the poll, which was conducted among 1,004 likely voters from July 8 to 11, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Public support cuts across party lines, the poll found, with 91 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of independents backing the agency.

Through enforcement actions against companies including Capital One Financial Corp. (COF), American Express Co. (AXP) and U.S. Bancorp, the consumer bureau has returned more than $432 million to defrauded consumers. It has also set up a system for registering complaints with banks, student lenders, credit bureaus and debt collectors, a tool that at least 125,000 people have used since its inception in July 2012.

The agency has also written rules aimed at cleaning up the mortgage market that was at the heart of the financial crisis. The new regulations cover underwriting, servicing and loan officer incentives.

Cordray, the agency’s first enforcement chief, was nominated twice and waited more than 700 days for a Senate confirmation vote. In exchange for proceeding with Cordray’s confirmation, Obama agreed to nominate two new candidates to the National Labor Relations Board.

With the confirmation, the consumer bureau will be able to exercise its full authority over large banks and a range of non-bank financial firms, including payday lenders and mortgage originators, without any legal threat to its authority.

Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, said having a director in place for the five-year term envisioned by Dodd-Frank means that “nothing stops the agency” from doing what it wants.

“There is potential to overreach here, and it has nothing to do with Cordray,” Hunt said in an interview.

Dodd-Frank gave the bureau authority to supervise banks with more than $10 billion in assets, a group that includes JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Lafayette, Louisiana-based Iberiabank Corp. (IBKC) It can also write regulations and enforce laws to protect consumers from abusive practices.

Michael Thurman, an attorney with Loeb & Loeb LLP in Los Angeles, said confirmation would “eliminate any doubts” about the agency’s authority. Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, will use it, he said.

“Given that the CFPB has an extensive enforcement staff, including numerous experienced regulatory attorneys and paralegals, companies subject to CFPB jurisdiction should expect that CFPB enforcement activity will substantially increase in the immediate future,” Thurman said in an e-mail.

Amazing how fast the Republicans move to confirm nominees when Obama puts up putrid Wall Street lackeys like Penny Pritzker. The only person with the good sense top vote against her was Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders. Her confirmation vote was 97-1, even the worst, most obstructionist shitheads like Miss McConnell, Ted Cruz, Vitter, Burr, Sessions, Scott... the whole Hate-America crew, moving fast before someone could talk some sense into Obama. Judging by how long it took the Republicans to move on Cordray, there's every reason to believe he'll be Obama's best nominee so far.Yesterday President Obama took a victory lap around the Rose Garden, decrying the right-wing's winner-take-all philosophy that led directly to the Bush Recession that he walked right into as president.

[F]our years ago, even as we were working on restoring the economy and dealing with the immediate crisis, we also wanted to figure out how do we set new rules for the road to make sure that a few bad apples in the financial sector couldn't break the law, or cheat consumers, or put the entire economy at risk.

And I was fortunate even when I was running for President to have some friends like Elizabeth Warren, who had already done a lot of academic work on this and had a whole series of ideas about how we might start making sure that consumers were treated better, and as a consequence, take some of the risk out of the system. And because of those conversations and that work, and because of some terrific efforts by other members in Congress, we were able, for the time in history, to get a consumer watchdog on the job-- to look out for the interests of everyday Americans. And I am very proud to say that last night, Rich Cordray was finally confirmed by the United States Senate to keep serving as America’s consumer watchdog and as the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So we’re very pleased about that.

I first nominated Rich for this position two years ago this week. He was eminently qualified. He had the support of Democrats and Republicans from across the country. A majority of state attorneys general from both parties-- Rich’s former colleagues-- called on him to be confirmed. And for two years, Republicans in the Senate refused to give Rich a simple yes-or-no vote-- not because they didn’t think he was the right person for the job, but because they didn’t like the law that set up the consumer watchdog in the first place.

But without a director in place, the CFPB would have been severely hampered. And the CFPB wasn’t able to give consumers the information they needed to make good, informed decisions. Folks in the financial system who were doing the right thing didn’t have much certainty or clear rules of the road. And the CFPB didn’t have all the tools it needed to protect consumers against mortgage brokers, or credit reporting agencies, or debt collectors who were taking advantage of ordinary Americans.

As a consequence, last year, I took steps on my own to temporarily appoint Richard so he could get to work on their behalf. And Americans everywhere are better off because he did. And thanks to not only Rich, but his terrific team-- I know many are represented here-- we’ve made real strides, even despite the fact that the agency was hampered by the confirmation process.

...[Y]esterday, Richard was officially confirmed. I want to thank Senators from both parties, including Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Senator McCain, for coming together to help get Rich confirmed.  And obviously, Elizabeth, who wasn’t a senator when she thought this up, but is now a senator-- she was poking and prodding people for a long time to help make it happen.

...Today, if you want to take out a mortgage or a student loan or a payday loan, or you’ve got a credit reporting agency or debt collector who’s causing you problems-- maybe they're not playing by the rules, maybe they're taking advantage of you-- you have somewhere to go. The CFPB has already addressed more than 175,000 complaints from all across the nation, giving people an advocate who is working with them when they're dealing with these financial institutions that may not always be thinking about consumers first... And thanks to the hard work of folks at the CFPB, so far 6 million Americans have gotten more than $400 million in refunds from companies that engaged in unscrupulous practices.

So this is not just some abstract, theoretical exercise. Families, many of them hard-pressed, have money in their pockets, maybe, in some cases, saved a home or were able to send their kids to college, because of the work that Rich and his team is doing right now. And that’s money that oftentimes families didn’t have the power to recover before.

Even Ann Coulter Knows The Teabaggers Demanding The GOP Move Further Right Are, In Her Words, "Moron Showoffs"

Even a crackpot right-wing publicity hound like Ann Coulter can smell a delusional moron on the far right when she's confronted with one. In her column for some lunatic fringe website yesterday, Coulter castigated Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots as a "small mind" for blaming Romney for the big Republican Party electoral defeats across the nation this month. She objected to Martin's statement about Romney's unsuitability as a Republican candidate in statements like this: "What we got was a weak, moderate candidate handpicked by the Beltway elites and country club establishment wing of the Republican Party. The presidential loss is unequivocally on them." Coulter points to Romney's success in 7 months of Republican primaries that included notable far right extremists like Tea Party Queen Michele Bachmann, Texas Know Nothing Rick Perry, and neo-fascist religionist fanatic Rick Santorum.

The idea that Romney failed to present a clear contrast with Obama or was too "nice" is also nonsense. If Republicans continue to tell themselves comforting myths about our candidate being the problem, they better get used to losing a lot more elections.

...To the extent Republicans have a problem with their candidates, it's not that they're not conservative enough. Where are today's Nelson Rockefellers, Arlen Specters or George H.W. Bushes? Happily, they have gone the way of leprosy.

Having vanquished liberal Republicans, the party's problem now runs more along the lines of moron showoffs, trying to impress tea partiers like Jenny Beth Martin by taking insane positions on rape exceptions for abortion-- as 2 million babies are killed every year from pregnancies having nothing to do with rape.

Romney lost because he was running against an incumbent, was beaten up during a long and vicious primary fight, and ran in a year with a very different electorate from 1980. At least one of those won't be true next time. But we're not going to win any elections by telling ourselves fairy tales about a candidate who lost because he wasn't conservative enough, articulate enough or mean enough.

Romney, Coulter claimed, is much further right than Ronald Reagan ever was. And the Tea Party, clearly dragged down Romney and the GOP's chances in the Senate. Key House teabaggers, including Allen West (R-FL), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), Sandy Adams (R-FL), Joe Walsh (R-IL) and Quico Conseco (R-TX) were defeated in their reelection bids and even Bachmann barely made it through-- and only because Steve Israel of the DCCC decided to not target her. In the Senate races, all the key Tea Party candidates-- Todd Akin (MO), Richard Mourdock (IN), Connie Mack (FL), Kurt Bills (MN), George Allen (VA), Josh Mandel (OH), Tom Smith (PA), Charles Summers (ME), Joe Kyrillos (NJ) and Linda McMahon (CT)-- were badly beaten. In fact, in every race where the Tea Party forced the GOP to pick a more extreme right candidate instead of a more mainstream conservative, the Republicans lost. Not that that will stop them from trying the same stunt again. They should look closely at how the extreme right lunatic they forced on Orlando Republicans, Todd Long, gave Alan Grayson the biggest congressional comeback landslide in contemporary electoral history; but they won't.

The tea-party movement is trying to regroup after taking some licks in this month’s elections. Several groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative.

...Conservative groups also are considering potential challenges to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee and Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, whom some activists view as not conservative enough.

Although none of the 3 are known members of the Nazi Party, all are considered extremely right-wing, Chambliss may have angered the lunatic fringe this week by disavowing his Grover Norquist pledge on a Georgia TV station. Chambliss, whose career-long ProgressivePunch score is a shocking 2.04-- even more far right than secessionist freak shows Jim DeMint (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS) or Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL) or Tea Party darlings Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT)-- says he knows Norquist and the teabaggers will come after him in 2014 with a primary challenge from an outright John Bircher like Paul Broun but is confident he made the right decision.

“I don't worry about that because I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist,” said Chambliss.

“I'm willing to do the right thing and let the political consequences take care of themselves,” the Georgia senator added.

This is the perfect scenario for a replication of what happened in Indiana, where a weak reactionary Blue Dog, Joe Donnelly, had virtually no chance to be reelected to his House seat, threw a Hail Mary pass by running for Senate against Richard Lugar, only to bee the teabaggers defeat Lugar and replace him with the unelectable Mourdock. In Georgia an even more reactionary and even weaker Blue Dog, John Barrow, will be facing certain defeat in the House in 2014 and has been making noises about running against Chambliss. He'd have no chance against Chambliss but against someone as over the cliff as Broun or potential primary challenger Karen Handel ... Stranger things have happened.

As for Lamar Alexander, he has an even more right-wing voting record than Chambliss (1.92) and is even more popular in his homestate. And even Lindsey Graham's score (5.17) is hard to describe as anything but "right-wing extreme," falling halfway between Rand Paul (6.25) and David Vitter (4.61). The teabaggers will have a rough time making a case than any of these senators aren't right-wing enough-- not that anything like that would even begin to stop them.

They'll have mighty slim pickings in the House, where almost all the moderate Republicans are long gone. Walter Jones (R-NC) might be vulnerable in a primary but that would hand the district over to a Democrat-- same goes for Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Fred Upton (R-MI), Tom Petri (R-WI), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) or Peter King (R-NY). But I'd love to see them try. I'll even help them!

Meanwhile, Norquist has already struck back at Chambliss for abandoning The Pledge: "Senator Chambliss promised the people of Georgia he would go to Washington and reform government rather than raise taxes to pay for bigger government. He made that commitment in writing to the people of Georgia. If he plans to vote for higher taxes to pay for Obama-sized government he should address the people of Georgia and let them know that he plans to break his promise to them. Sen. Chambliss mentions his fear of losing a primary if he breaks his word to Georgians and votes to raise their taxes,. History reminds us that when President George H.W. Bush raised taxes in a deal that promised (and did not deliver) spending cuts he was defeated not in the primary, but in the general.”

A Pervasive Culture Of Corruption Determines The GOP Agenda

This week Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released it's list of the 10 worst corrupt Members of Congress for 2011. New Hampshire only has two congressmen, corporate shills Frank Guinta and Charlie Bass... and they're both on the list! Ann McLane Kuster, who's running for the seat Bass managed to worm his way back into last year, threaded the needle, pointing out last night that it's "bad enough that Congressman Bass is under the thumb of Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor and the Far Right wing of this Republican Congress. But today CREW confirmed that he is using his position as a Member of Congress to financially benefit his family. Corruption of our politics is what drives Republicans like Congressman Bass to focus on tax loopholes for big-money donors instead of investment in jobs here at home. This is not acceptable."

Not acceptable? Not acceptable to whom? To Republicans it's part of the weird way they define "freedom" and liberty and it's the alter so many of them worship at. Rarely does a day pass by when some preachy Republican asshat doesn't get caught with his greasy fingers in something it shouldn't be in. This week we all found out about a different kind of Dong scandal haunting right-wing hypocrite Lindsey Graham, for example. Lindsay got all the initial blame for the scandal, but, as it turns out, the Dongs have been funneling large amounts of their stolen money into the South Carolina Republican Party and to other Republicans warchests as well, including Joe "You Lie" Wilson and hypocritical campaign finance "reformer" John McCain, long one of the Senate's most corrupt members and, of course, one of Graham's closest conspirators in all things (except, presumably dongs, small "d"). This Dong, in fine GOP "freedom" style, defrauded at least $3.6 million in taxpayer money giving Graham regular hefty cuts-- and quite illegally, to boot. He managed to load up Lindsay Graham's campaign treasury with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal foreign bribes.

Jian-Yun "John" Dong, the president of the South Carolina-based biotechnology firm GenPhar, and his estranged wife are accused of making at least $31,000 in illegal campaign contributions to Graham and his political action committee. GenPhar was Graham's sixth largest contributor between 2005 and 2010, with $46,269 in donations coming from GenPhar employees.

The indictments came down in April, but federal authorities didn't unseal the charges until Monday. Federal prosecutors allege Dong took $30,000 from a German national and funneled that money to support Graham's reelection. Graham's treasurer said that they were cooperating with federal authorities.

...The indictment alleges that Dong and an unnamed co-defendant falsified grant applications, progress reports, time sheets and other documents sent to federal agencies. They then used federal money for construction costs, lobbying fees, and travel and personal expenses not allowed under the grant program, the indictment states.

Dong reportedly created another company, Vaxima Inc., to help him divert federal cash for his own use, authorities said.

The newspaper reports that Dong allegedly had a German shareholder in his company transfer $36,000 from an overseas bank account to him, his wife and a worker at the company. They allegedly routed their donations to Graham through their minor daughter, family members and GenPhar employees.
"This is your money at work," Dong allegedly wrote in a Sept. 2007 email to his German investor, referring to obtaining government funds for a GenPhar project.

Graham was quoted in a press release touting one GenPhar grant.

"Once again, South Carolina is demonstrating that we are on the forefront of military technology," Graham said in a statement related on the GenPhar website.

"Military facilities in South Carolina are the tip of the spear for our nation's armed forces. I am proud to be from a state that is invaluable to America's fighting force. We provide the human assets and support systems that make the U.S. military the world's premier fighting force," Graham said.

The lobbyist who sought the money for GenPhar was American Defense International, Inc. The former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Van Hipp, Jr., now chairs ADI.

Look at all those threads. Woven together, they help define a Republican systemic culture of corruption. And the mentality of self-entitlement and greed that pervades the political system in general and the Republican hierarchal elites in particular is now a defining characteristic of U.S. governance. Millionaires, many of whom-- like Rick Perry, the likely GOP presidential nominee-- have made vast fortunes based solely on accepting bribes while in public office. Millionaires-- Fred Upton in western Michigan is a perfect example-- buy their offices and then relentlessly rig the system against their own constituents. Now a pack of selfish millionaires in Congress are sitting in judgement over Obama's proposal that millionaires' tax rates go up to that of ordinary working families' rates. It isn't asking half what should be asked, but these self-serving crooks and, in some cases-- California Congressman Darrell Issa comes right to mind-- career criminals, are screaming like stuck pigs. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) is hysterically opposed to making the tax rate fairer for millionaires. He's among the three richest Members of the House-- and, according to the new report from CREW, the most corrupt member of Congress.

Witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and bribery are all in a day’s work for the ethically challenged Rep. Vern Buchanan. 

The Sarasota congressman orchestrated an elaborate scheme that forced his employees to contribute to his campaign, ensuring they would be illegally reimbursed with corporate money. 

Doubling down on the criminal behavior, he attempted to bribe a former business partner with almost $3 million in hush money in a clumsy attempt to cover up the conspiracy.

In fact of the 20 richest Members of Congress, 10 are Republicans and, lo and behold, all ten are adamantly opposed to making the tax rate on millionaires fairer. That would be the aforementioned Issa (R-CA) and Buchanan (R-FL) plus Mike McCaul (R-TX), James Risch (R-ID), Gary Miller (R-CA), Bob Corker (R-TN), Diane Black (R-TN), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Richard Berg (R-ND) and Kenny Marchant (R-TX), each "worth" somewhere between $13 million and $451 million, though it is likely that even the most impoverished of this group is worth well over $50 million. And they uniformly-- and adamantly-- oppose a fair tax rate. Is it a form of corruption? You're damn straight it is! And a creeping moral rot that pervades our entire political class.

This week, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported on another grotesque political scandal at the heart of the Republican Party power structure.

Late last week, FBI agents raided Jim Brulte’s home and lobbying office in connection to a corruption probe regarding the $102 million legal settlement between Rancho Cucamonga developer Colonies Partners LP and San Bernardino County in 2006. Prosecutors have been investigating the settlement, which they say was obtained through a conspiracy of bribery and extortion. Brulte, one of the most influential Republicans in Southern California and currently a lobbyist with the firm California Strategies, is also a former assemblyman and state senator who led both GOP caucuses while in office.

Already, former Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Postmus [long touted as the political heir to San Berdoo GOP capo Jerry Lewis] admitted accepting a $100,000 bribe from Colonies executive Jeff Burum. Prosecutors allege that the Colonies Partners’ lobbying strategy manipulated the San Bernardino County Taxpayers Association, the San Bernardino Young Republicans, and other bribes were made in connection to the settlement.

...Notably, FBI agents only raided Brulte’s California Strategies office in Fontana, California. ThinkProgress has discovered that during the time of the allegedly corrupt Colonies Partners settlement, Brulte conducted his lobbying business out of a suite owned by a sitting member of the legislature. In 2004, Brulte founded the Inland Empire office of California Strategies. Until last year, that lobbying shop operated out of an office space owned by current Republican Senate Leader, state Sen. Bob Dutton.

According to documents obtained by ThinkProgress, Brulte’s lobbying business shared the same office owned by Dutton’s consulting businesses at 10681 Foothill Blvd. Suite 340 in Rancho Cucamonga, California. In December 2004, shortly after Brulte finished his last term in the legislature, he began work for California Strategies at Dutton’s business address. A representative from California Strategies told ThinkProgress that the firm moved its Inland Empire office from Dutton’s office to the current location in Fontana last year “in April or May.”

Dutton, who now occupies Brulte’s seat in the legislature, has an ownership stake in a number of companies operating out of the same office suite in Rancho Cucamonga

...According to disclosures, Dutton’s “West End Investments” and his other firms have generated over a million dollars in income for the senator, although it is not clear what the firms actually provide in terms of business other than “real estate.”

Since he left elected office for work at California Strategies, Brulte has been rated almost every year by Capitol Weekly as one of the top “influence peddlers” and “power brokers” in the state. With Postmus accepting a plea bargain and speaking openly with prosecutors about what he knows, and the FBI raid on Brulte’s office, Brulte’s lobbying connections may soon open a new front in the case.

Dutton, presently the most powerful elected Republican in California, has avoided taint from the scandal so far. Although he has accepted $25,000 from the allegedly crooked developers in the Colonies Partners deal, Dutton hasn’t been directly associated with the scandal. However, this new information that Brulte lobbied out of Dutton’s personal office may change all of that.

Dutton sounds like he's been taking wealth building lessons from Rick Perry.

Yes, the minority party in Congress tends to obstruct, but on a scale like this?

“Once you get in these battles where you break into camps, every vote is about the next election,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues. “As soon as the last election is over, those who lost are thinking, ‘What can I do to get back in power?’ and those who won are thinking, ‘What can I do to stay in power?’ When you try to solve problems from the perpetual campaign mind-set, it is very difficult.”

-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), "a South Carolina Republican who occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues," quoted by Carl Hulse in today's NYT

by Ken

So Lindsey Graham "occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues"? Do his Republican colleagues know about this? Like, say, his fellow South Carolina senator, Jim "Li'l Bug" DeMint? Boy, if word gets out . . .

The Hulse NYT piece is called "As Aisle Gets Wider, Arms Get Shorter," and some of it is actually interesting. If only Hulse didn't feel subscribe to the "On One Hand, On the Other Hand" Code of They All Do It, to make it seem as if the present Republican policy of across-the-board obstruction in Congresss is the same thing minoirty parties have always done.

So naturally Hulse starts out with a "startling admission" by "a top congressman" -- that he "demagogued," zz'voted against an administration priority as a way to score political points as his party battled to regain power" -- and the top congressman turns out to be (gasp) current House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. What Hulse brands "Mr. Hoyer's frank acknowledgement' is that he voted voting against Bush-era debt-limit hikes, and this is presented as equivalent to virtually every Republican congressman and senator voting against virtually every Democratic-supported bill in this entire session of Congress.

Is it any wonder polls aren't showing major backlash against Republicans for their scorched-earth policy of obstructionism? I mean, if this is how the liberal New York Times reports it?

Even Hulse has to retune his equivalences:

Republicans have dug in almost unanimously this year against legislation that at least some should have been able to vote for, whether it was the economic stimulus, health care changes or a crackdown on Wall Street. Democrats did the same thing in the run-up to the 2004 and 2006 elections, with a new Medicare drug benefit providing an example of a policy many backed but did not support with their votes.

Um, sorry, Carl, still not remotely equivalent. Not until we take into account the number of Democratic votes cast for Bush-regime-supported legislation. After all, most of us regard that as the disgrace of the Democrats in Congress under the Bush regime.

And really, the Medicare drug benefit as an example of something Democrats would have supported? That's something that was proposed primarily for political capital, to reposition the GOP from the traditional enemy of Social Security and Medicare to a champion -- well, that and as a big giveaway to the party's big drug-company sponsors. And it was such a dubious proposition that, if we remember, the GOP congressional leadership had to pull every trick in the book to get its own people to narrowly pass. Unfortunately for Mr. Hulse, he actually returns the Medicare drug benefit when, after citing uniquely Republican instances of minority obstructionism, he tells us:

Democrats drew their own stark lines in 2003 when Republicans and the Bush administration coalesced around adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, an expansion Democrats had sought for years. The plan, which Democrats criticized for its generous subsidies to health insurers, was endorsed by AARP, but House Democrats sought to keep their members from voting for it, though 16 did in the end.

Again, conveniently forgotten is how controversial the AARP's endorsement was, and how much anger this obvious sop to the Bush regime generated both within and without the organization. Isn't it the pits when history refuses to behave? (And ironically, today's Washington Post has a piece called "The not-so-sweet side of closing 'doughnut hole'" -- referring to the doughnut-hole gap in drug benefits created by the Bush regime's Medicare Part D.

Nevertheless, that said, the basic point under discussion is interesting and important, even if (or perhaps especially because) no one has any solutions for it:

"There is no question that partisan parity tends to raise the stakes of any particular election because of the potential for change in majority party control," said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional expert at the Brookings Institution.

While partisanship is a constant in Congress, the unwillingness of the parties to work together seems to be reaching new levels. Some trace the beginning of the current trend back to the early 1990s, when House Republicans were trying to break out of their virtually permanent minority status.

Much to the distress of more rebellious Republicans, House Republicans who had never tasted life in power tended to try to cooperate with Democrats as their best chance of getting things done. It was not uncommon for top Democrats and Republicans to have close and cordial relationships.

But former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies showed that drawing the sharpest possible contrasts with the opposition could pay political dividends as they gained control of the House, and the see-saw fight for the Congressional upper hand began.
At the same time, a political toll was being taken on the centrist Democrats and Republicans who were most prone to compromise. Many left Congress or were defeated.

Naturally, current Republicans deny their obstruction is political.

Republicans say their opposition is based on substantive differences. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Sunday that he expected the midterm elections to be driven in large part by the health care votes.
"It will be a huge political issue next year," Mr. McConnell said on the ABC program "This Week," predicting the issue would spill over into 2012 as well.

Immediately afterward, we return to our putatively bipartisan pal Lindsey Graham: "Even with partisan clashes likely to worsen in 2010, Mr. Graham said Congress needed to find a way to get past the mind-set that 'if the other guy wins, I lose' and find a way to deliver legislation more equivalent to a win-win."

No mention is made, of course, of how far the Obama administration, in its desperate quest for "bipartisanship," bent over backwards to make it possible for Republicans to vote with it. If Senator Graham has some magic way to produce this "win-win" result for the two parties, perhaps he'd like to share it?

#