"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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)
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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.
A couple days ago we reported on the smoldering controversy over hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, seeping into most cities' drinking water in serious enough quantities to make the water carcinogenic. Yesterday California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein asked the EPA to set national safety standards for chromium-6.
Meanwhile, concern is mounting across the country that drinking tap water regularly will increase the chances of getting stomach cancer and leukemia, while also increasing the risk of potentially fatal liver and kidney damage. The chemical industry and their Republican allies have vowed to fight any attempts to pass legislation taking away the freedom to pollute and the liberty of water consumers to poison themselves and their families if they decide to. That kind of Freedom and Liberty is very important to Republicans. In their universe, it's the heart and soul of the free market. You see, in GOP-land, those who can't afford bottled water deserve to die anyway-- and if enough people do die from drinking tap water, the survivors will drink something else instead... like Coca-Cola, beer... even urine is less toxic. Industries say it would be too expensive for them to keep chromium-6 out of the drinking water and they need it for tanning leather and making some stainless-steel products. You know what they say about the bottom line!
Let's take rubber-stamp Republican Congressman Lee Terry of Omaha, for example. Terry almost never varies from John Boehner. Their voting records are nearly indistinguishable, and both are committed to defending the freedom of chemical companies to poison the population. Omaha, alas, is one of the cities badly hit by the chromium-6 disaster. While the proposed limit in the state of California is .06 parts per billion, Omaha's water tested at 1.07 ppb-- not nearly as bad as Norman, Oklahoma's 12.90 ppb, but enough to kill plenty of Omaha's poor people in a variety of very unpleasant ways.
The chemical industry has given Rep. Terry $36,000 in thinly veiled bribes to keep him on the reservation and not have him do anything crazy-- like look out for his constituents back in Nebraska. In 2008, his constituents nearly threw him out of office; he beat Democrat Jim Esch by a mere 10,000 votes out of over 273,000 cast-- 52-48%. This year he did much better against Tom White, whom he beat 61-39%. Terry isn't doing anything about safe drinking water standards at all. Perhaps he thinks his seat will be safer if more working people just die.
Arsonists Prosecuting Firefighters
Krugman was talking about the fact that the the rating agencies, in sucking up to the pooh-bahs of finance, brought the current financial crisis on the world. He makes a great point, but I jumped right to Tom Coburn and his crazy right-wing Republican allies, particularly Mike Enzi (R-WY), selfishly and obstinately blocking health care for 9-11 first responders. Most of the Senate just stared at Coburn like the freak he is and then voted to pass the widely popular legislation. In fact, by the end of the day support was so overwhelming that Coburn was pressured by relatively saner Republicans to just back down and let it pass by unanimous consent.
The increasingly deranged and stubborn Coburn insisted the reimbursements for the firefighters and other first responders are "an entitlement," a bad word, not related in his mind to the fact that they actually are entitled to this help from society for the job they did on the front lines after the 9-11 disaster that Coburn did nothing to prevent. Coburn is also pissed off that the costs of the bill are being covered by closing foreign corporate tax loopholes, loopholes that Coburn favors.
And The Senate Ratifies START By A Landslide
After all that sturm und drang from Kyl and his cronies looking for another Waterloo for Obama, the Senate overwhelmingly ignored the dominant obstructionist faction of the Senate GOP caucus and approved the nonpartisan treaty between the U.S. and Russia that mandates new reductions in both nations' deployed strategic nuclear weapons. The final vote was 71-26, with 13 Republicans ignoring McConnell, McCain and DeMint and their hysterical politicization of national security. All the adult types among the Republicans voted for ratification.
And that was the end of the 111th Congress. Both houses adjourned. Here's a video montage of some of what was accomplished, although that Obama bullshit about Afghanistan and his and McConnell's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires kind of spoils the whole thing:
GOP Front Groups Still Hope To Milk Homophobia For Donations
Yesterday President Obama signed the repeal of DADT, which passed by a wider margin in the Senate than anyone expected, even far right Republicans like Richard Burr (NC) and John Ensign (NV) abandoning Miss McConnell and the Mean Sisters, McCain and Graham-- two closet queens and a bitter, nasty old man-- to be party to history instead of getting run over by it.
But as Right Wing Watch pointed out, the Family Research Council, a Republican Party hate group, is already threatening to sue to prevent repeal from being enacted. They're in cahoots with McCain in trying to undermine implementation of the new law. And then there's this:
President Obama, after signing the bill yesterday, had something very different to say, something that will probably resonate more forcefully with normal Americans:
Sixty-six years ago, in the dense, snow-covered forests of Western Europe, Allied Forces were beating back a massive assault in what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge. And in the final days of fighting, a regiment in the 80th Division of Patton’s Third Army came under fire. The men were traveling along a narrow trail. They were exposed and they were vulnerable. Hundreds of soldiers were cut down by the enemy.
And during the firefight, a private named Lloyd Corwin tumbled 40 feet down the deep side of a ravine. And dazed and trapped, he was as good as dead. But one soldier, a friend, turned back. And with shells landing around him, amid smoke and chaos and the screams of wounded men, this soldier, this friend, scaled down the icy slope, risking his own life to bring Private Corwin to safer ground.
For the rest of his years, Lloyd credited this soldier, this friend, named Andy Lee, with saving his life, knowing he would never have made it out alone. It was a full four decades after the war, when the two friends reunited in their golden years, that Lloyd learned that the man who saved his life, his friend Andy, was gay. He had no idea. And he didn’t much care. Lloyd knew what mattered. He knew what had kept him alive; what made it possible for him to come home and start a family and live the rest of his life. It was his friend.
And Lloyd’s son is with us today. And he knew that valor and sacrifice are no more limited by sexual orientation than they are by race or by gender or by religion or by creed; that what made it possible for him to survive the battlefields of Europe is the reason that we are here today. That's the reason we are here today.
So this morning, I am proud to sign a law that will bring an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It is a law-- this law I’m about to sign will strengthen our national security and uphold the ideals that our fighting men and women risk their lives to defend.
No longer will our country be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans who were forced to leave the military-- regardless of their skills, no matter their bravery or their zeal, no matter their years of exemplary performance-- because they happen to be gay. No longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie, or look over their shoulder, in order to serve the country that they love.
As Admiral Mike Mullen has said, “Our people sacrifice a lot for their country, including their lives. None of them should have to sacrifice their integrity as well.”
They do have their partisan agenda, and they certainly put it ahead of the nation's safety-- at least most of the ones in DC do. Jim DeMint has been tweeting hysterically about stopping the very bipartisan-- even nonpartisan-- START agreement with Russia, and he and some other hard-core lunatics on the fringes of the right have been trying to bully weak-willed Republican colleagues to help filibuster it.
Why? Just to hand Obama a stinging international defeat that would make him a less effective leader among nations and damage his political cred here. DeMint is more a nihilist than a conservative, and even mainstream conservatives are starting to worry about his motives. Many in the Senate, the latest being Georgia's far-right Johnny Isakson, are abandoning his dangerous leadership, even if this particular lunacy was embraced by a panic-striken Miss McConnell, desperate to appear to be leading the clown parade, a clown parade that wants to spend its time reenforcing bigotry, allowing free-floating nukes to threaten the safety of the planet, deny health care compensation to 9/11 first responders and poison the whole country's drinking water in the pursuit of "free market" ideological insanity.
Poison everyone's drinking water? Republicans? Sure... well, maybe not everyone's. Rich people, after all, drink expensive bottled water, and on the bright side there are four cities in the U.S., of the 35 tested, whose drinking water isn't carcinogenic. In L.A. and Atlanta there's enough chromium-6 in the tap water to worry experts that stomach cancer rates will rise. Chicago and NYC have rates nearly as high and just as dangerous-- enough to increase the risk of liver and kidney damage as well as leukemia. Levels are even worse in Norman, OK; Honolulu; Riverside, CA; Madison; and San Jose.
A potentially cancer-causing metal made famous by the movie Erin Brockovich has turned up in the tap water of 31 out of 35 American cities tested, according to a study that urges the government to adopt tougher standards for the nation's drinking water.
The Environmental Working Group, an independent, Washington-based research organization, conducted the first nationwide analysis of hexavalent chromium, otherwise known as chromium-6, in drinking water. The substance was regularly used as an industrial chemical until the early 1990s and still appears in some plastics factories. It can also seep into groundwater from natural ores.
The metal has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals, and the National Institutes of Health defined it as a "probable carcinogen" in 2008. Last year, California proposed limiting the amount of chromium-6 in its drinking water to 0.06 parts per billion. It's still being debated, but if the measure passes, California would be the first state to set such a limit.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn't set a limit and doesn't regularly test for chromium-6.
In the EWG study released today, 25 U.S. cities' water tested positive for levels of chromium-6 that are above California's proposed limit. The highest levels were found in Honolulu, Riverside, Calif., and Norman, Okla., where the water tested at 200 times the California target.
"I was expecting to find hexavalent chromium in some of the cities we checked, but I didn't expect it to be so widespread," Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist with the EWG and the lead author of the study, told CNN.
The movie Erin Brockovich chronicles the true story of how the water supply of Hinkley, Calif., was poisoned with chromium-6, which was used in a nearby factory belonging to a utility company. Pacific Gas & Electric ended up paying more than $330 million in damages as part of a 1996 lawsuit.
...The American Chemistry Council, a lobby group representing chemical companies, opposes California's efforts to limit chromium-6, accusing the state of setting unrealistic goals. Some water has a naturally occurring level of chromium-6 that's above 0.06 parts per billion, it said. In a statement to the Post, the group said that "even the most sophisticated analytical methods used by EPA are not able to detect the extremely low levels that California wants to establish."
The president of the EWG, Ken Cook, responded by saying it's understandable that water utilities and chemical industrial groups are opposed to the idea of limits.
"If a limit is set, it's going to be extraordinarily expensive for them to clean this up," Cook told the Post. "The problem in all of this is that we lose sight of the water drinkers, of the people at the end of the tap. There is tremendous push-back from polluters and from water utilities. The real focus has to be on public health."
Since 1990 the chemical industry has contributed $44,209,443 to federal candidates, $30,691,489 of it to Republicans, most of the rest to corrupt conservative Democrats who vote with the Republicans to protect the "freedom" of Big Business to exploit the rest of society. The biggest all-time bribe-taker from the chemical industry is John McCain (R-AZ)-- $595,313-- who may be viewed as an erratic nutbag on most things but has been very consistent in his support of the chemical companies' right to poison our drinking water. Other big-time champions of freedom-to-poison action are:
Dave Camp (R-MI)- $430,633 Joe Barton (R-TX)- $329,340 Joe Lieberman (I-CT)- $324,200 Rob Portman (R-OH)- $290,412 Lamar Alexander (R-TN)- $261,450 Miss McConnell (R-KY)- $227,455
Ken Calvert, an extraordinarily corrupt Republican representing one of the most toxic and endangered counties in America, California's Riverside, was bought off for far cheaper-- just $28,375. And Oklahoma's chemical-industry senatorial champion, Jim Inhofe, is far less interested in the danger the families of his constituents are in than in the $137,110 in thinly veiled bribes the industry has filtered into his disgraceful political career.
When Republicans talk about "freedom" and "liberty," it is always the freedom of the rich and powerful to do whatever they want, no matter how dangerous it is for the rest of society, and the liberty of pursuing the bottom line without regard for the consequences of the rest of us.
The Obama Administration definitely sees passage of the job-killing/Social Security-harming tax break for billionaires as a way station on the path to Obama's reelection. They're very much in tune with right-wing polemicist Charles Krauthammer, who has convinced himself that by turning sharply right and repeatedly spitting on the base that elected him in 2008, Obama is headed for a win in 2012. How anyone can fall for that in light of what happened in November to the House Democrats who played that game-- Blue Dogs like Bobby Bright (AL), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), Zach Space (OH), Gene Taylor (MS), Michael Arcuri (NY), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), Kathy Dahlkemper (PA), Lincoln Davis (TN), Glenn Nye (VA), Frank Kratovil (MD), Betsy Markey (CO), Earl Pomeroy (ND), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Walt Minnick (ID) and plenty of others, plus conservatove fellow-travelers like John Adler (NJ), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Tom Perriello (VA), Rick Boucher (VA), Michael McMahon (NY), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ike Skelton (MO), etc. Every one of them played that game-- voting for the anti-family Republican agenda and leaving Democratic voters high and dry-- and every one of them was defeated, some resoundingly, for the same reason: Democratic voters and left-leaning independents did not come out to vote. Republicans and right-leaning independents did-- but, of course, they voted for Republicans.
Idaho Blue Dog Walt Minnick, for example, has accrued one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in the House, voting far more frequently with John Boehner than with Nancy Pelosi on contentious and substantive issues. But it did him no good. Democrats were disgusted by him and refused to even show up to vote, and Republicans and independents flocked to an obscure and extreme teabagger, Raul Labador, who beat him decisively, 126,055 (51%) to 101,870 (41%) and destroyed him in 10 of the 11 counties in this district, including in Ada County-- the big one-- by 10,000 votes, and in Canyon-- the second-biggest-- by an even bigger margin!
This week Minnick said he wouldn't even bother to try to win his seat back. In a farewell interview with the NY Times, Minnick, like most of the defeated Blue Dogs, blames liberal policies for their political demise rather than their own shortcomings as political leaders. He whines about Democrats having voted for cap and trade but never explains why he couldn't even explain his "no" vote to his constituents back home.
"Very little went well in energy and the environment," the 68-year-old representative said in an interview last week. "That was an area where we had a particularly tin ear and where the solution to the biggest issue-- global warming-- proposed by the party ... got transformed by its opposition from cap and trade to cap and tax and became politically toxic almost every place in the country."
Minnick calls the political misjudgments that led to House passage of the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" and the inability to then message the bill or have a fallback position "equally disastrous" to the way the Nixon administration tried to message Watergate.
The process, Minnick said, was an "absolute total failure."
..."It was a failure of Democratic leadership," Minnick continued.
In part that was due to the fact that the solution was so partisan and that there was no buy-in from the Republicans, he said.
Minnick faults Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for running the House in a top-down style similar to that of one of her predecessors, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
Minnick is a former Republican-- who worked for Nixon in the '70s-- and although he changed his T-shirt color to blue after the Watergate scandal, in his heart he's always been a Republican, with a typically anti-egalitarian, authoritarian perspective that always puts Big Business ahead of society, ahead of individuals and ahead of liberty. He sees the Democrats as being driven by the extreme left, having little idea what that even means. Like his doofus colleagues in the decimated, clueless Blue Dog Coalition, America is far better off without him in Washington. Actually, he's keeping his place in DC-- and obviously hopes to get a job working for one of the corrupt lobbying firms he served so well while he was a Member of Congress.
Sorry for the tangent; back to the Obama-Krauthammer vision of a conservative consensus that is already a proven loser. "[W]ith his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama." Krauthammer slobberingly describes him as even shrewder and more nimble than the triangulating Bill Clinton.
Remember the question after Election Day: Can Obama move to the center to win back the independents who had abandoned the party in November? And if so, how long would it take? Answer: Five weeks. An indoor record, although an asterisk should denote that he had help-- Republicans clearing his path and sprinkling it with rose petals.
Obama's repositioning to the center was first symbolized by his joint appearance with Clinton, the quintessential centrist Democrat, and followed days later by the overwhelming 81 to 19 Senate majority that supported the tax deal. That bipartisan margin will go a long way toward erasing the partisan stigma of Obama's first two years, marked by Stimulus I, which passed without a single House Republican, and a health-care bill that garnered no congressional Republicans at all.
Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go?
They just showed America where they will go-- they'll stay home. But Krauthammer and other creatures of the Beltway think the whole country functions like their incestuous little tiny world. They don't understand that ordinary American families are hurting and that the billions McConnell and Obama just handed to Republicans was like pulling the scabs off their wounds and pouring tabasco sauce on.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid understand that. For although both did their jobs and helped Obama pass his dreadful tax giveaway, neither showed up for the signing ceremony yesterday. They left that for Obama, Tiny Tim Geithner and their new pal, Miss McConnell. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wasn't there-- probably wasn't invited-- and he sees the travesty as non-stumulative to the economy and embodying the essence of Reaganomics.
A disproportionate share of the $858 billion deal will go to people in the top 1 percent who spend only a fraction of what they earn and save the rest. Their savings are sent around the world to wherever they will earn the highest return. The only practical effect of adding $858 billion to the deficit will be to put more pressure on Democrats to reduce non-defense spending of all sorts, including Social Security and Medicare, as well as education and infrastructure.
It is nothing short of Ronald Reagan’s (and David Stockman’s) notorious “starve the beast” strategy. In 2012, an election year, when congressional Democrats have less power than they do now, the pressure to extend the Bush tax cuts further will be overwhelming. Worse yet, the deal adds to the underlying structural problem that caused the Great Recession in the first place.
Since Ronald Reagan was president, median hourly wages have barely budged, and America’s vast working and middle classes have taken home a steadily smaller share of the nation’s income (adjusted for inflation). The typical male worker today is earning less than the typical male worker thirty years ago.
Yet the richest 1 percent of Americans is now taking home a larger percentage of the nation’s income than at any time since 1928. And we recall what happened in 1929.
Unless the vast majority of Americans has enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without going ever more deeply into debt, the economy will eventually go over a cliff.
That’s what happened in 1929 and 2008.
START Stop?
The Senate Republicans have the Democrats in a pickle again. There are enough votes to overcome the great homophobic filibuster against repealing the shameful Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and today is supposed to be the day. Susan Coleman, Ben Nelson, Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski and Olympia Snowe are grudgingly on board with the Democrats. But don't start the big coming-out party just yet. Obama is far more-- like way far more-- concerned with the START treaty, and die-hard anti-gay Republicans are now saying, in a last-ditch attempt to screw the gays (or screw the Democrats with that part of their base) that if they repeal DADT, the GOP will defeat START. This strategy has been thought up by two Republicans in trouble with their own reactionary bases back home: desperate closet queen Lindsey Graham and quasi-once-in-a-blue-moon-maninstream conservative Bob Corker. Apparently it smells sweeter in Lindsey's closet, but he and Corker are determined to show the yahoos in South Carolina and Tennessee that they can be hostage-taking assholes too, national security be damned.
"I felt like momentum was growing for START," Corker said, adding that since Reid announced he was holding votes on DADT and DREAM, it has had a "chilling effect."
"I'm watching support for the treaty erode, because of highly partisan political issues being brought up solely because activist groups in the Democratic Party want this done," he continued.
Corker said he wasn't issuing a personal threat, and was merely commenting on the reaction of his Senate GOP colleagues. When I pressed Senator Corker on whether Republican Senators would really base their decision on START on whether Reid held a vote on DADT, Corker didn't answer directly.
"That being thrown into the middle of this debate is causing many Republicans to want to see START pushed back and candidly is causing them to oppose it," Corker said. "This is hardening them against passage of this treaty at this time."
The House Took Other Votes This Week Too
On Thursday evening, the House took up S. 987, a widely popular bill meant to help protect girls in developing countries through the prevention of child marriage. It failed to pass under suspension (two-thirds needed), the 241-166 majority in favor falling short. Although a dozen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with all but 9 (reactionary) Democrats, a baseless whisper campaign that discouraging underage girls from being forced into marriages would somehow increase abortions killed the bill. Anti-choice fanatics on both sides of the aisle did their worst, the repulsive likes of Lipinski Jr, Gene Taylor, Travis Childers and Rick Boucher joining forces with Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert and John Boehner to make sure the world is a far more miserable place in the future.
Fortunately, not even Boehner's best efforts were enough to kill S. 3874, the bill to reduce the level of lead in drinking water. Hard to imagine anyone would vote against this? Some industries want to keep polluting-- and they pay their congressional supporters well-- and besides, rich Republicans drink bottled water. The bill passed, on suspension, 226-109, only one scumbag Blue Dog, brine-taking champ Collin Peterson (MN), joining Boehner and his 109 GOP poisoners. Shockingly 31 Republicans just did not have the stomach to vote to kill their own constituents outright and crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats and against Boehner and Cantor. Even knee-jerk right-wing kooks who never veer from the party line like David Dreier (CA), Frank Wolf (VA), Paul Ryan (WI) and Aaron Schock (IL) found this one too tough to vote against.
None of those Republicans, on the other hand, found it distasteful enough to vote against H.R. 5510, Marcy Kaptur's bill to aid families facing foreclosure. It needed two-thirds and only managed to win 210-145, not quite enough. Interestingly, 4 House Republicans from Boehner's own state of Ohio were among the half-dozen Republicans crossing the aisle on this one. But they were offset by 5 reactionary Democrats, conservative slobs John Adler (NJ), Dan Boren (OK), Jim Marshall (GA), Michael McMahon (NY) and Scott Owens (NY).
Oh, and there was this: Even if the House approved keeping more lead out of our drinking water, the Senate decided to make it eat-at-your-own-risk when it comes to food safety. Very sad that this is the quality of what passes for political leadership in our disintegrating nation:
Live-Blogging The Repeal Of DADT From Marrakech
Ron Wyden was on the Senate floor early this morning-- next week he gets the prostate cancer surgery-- and he said, quite sensibly, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell is wrong. I don't care who you love, if you love this country enough to risk your life for it. You shouldn't have to hide who you are. You ought to be able to serve. (Now there's a concept Miss McConnell, who was booted out of the Army after 10 days for groping a private's privates, Mark Kirk and Lindsey Graham will never understand. All three sickening, hypocritical closet queens are expected to vote no today.) "The history of our wonderful nation, continued Wyden, "is spotted with wrongs, but this institution is at its best when it corrects them. That's the opportunity we will have today." Speaking for the 3 closet cases, a nasty and bitter old John McCain grumbled on the floor of the Senate, "I'm aware that this vote will probably pass today... and there will be high fives all over the liberal bastions of America, and we'll see the talk shows tomorrow, a bunch of people talking about how great it is. Most of them never have served in the military or maybe not even known someone in the military."
No matter how bad much of a disappointment Obama has been, the only choice was between him and the bitter, nasty, bigoted creature quoted above. Bigoted conservatives have already defeated the DREAM Act. The only Republicans with the guts to do the right thing were William Bennett (UT), Richard Lugar (IN), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Democrats running across the aisle in the other direction to vote with the GOP were Ben Nelson (NE), Max Baucus (MT), Jon Tester (MT-- big disappointment, but he's up for reelection and scared), Mark Pryor (AR), and Kay Hagan (NC). Gun-totin' macho man Joe Manchin (D-WV) hid under his, confused and desk trembling, and couldn't work up the courage to vote at all.
The repulsive Republican filibuster of equality for gay men and women in the armed forces was just defeated 63-33. George Voinovich (R-OH) and closet case Mark Kirk (R-IL) were the last minute GOP aisle crossers in favor. Now it will only take 51 votes to pass the bill and whoever is afraid to voted for equality can avoid it. The cowards afraid to vote on this one were Manchin again, plus Republicans who were expected to vote NO, Jim Bunning, Judd Gregg, and Orrin Hatch. I guess we should thank all 4 of them in a way. DNC Chair Tim Kaine, in an elegant slap at bitter old bigot John McCain, included the term "high-fives all around" in his congratulations statement. After the vote President Obama issued this statement:
Today, the Senate has taken an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security while violating the very ideals that our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives to defend. By ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay. And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love.
As Commander-in-Chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known. And I join the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the overwhelming majority of service members asked by the Pentagon, in knowing that we can responsibly transition to a new policy while ensuring our military strength and readiness.
I want to thank Majority Leader Reid, Senators Lieberman and Collins and the countless others who have worked so hard to get this done. It is time to close this chapter in our history. It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed. It is time to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country openly. I urge the Senate to send this bill to my desk so that I can sign it into law.
And they did. The final vote to repeal the heinous DADT was 65-31, two more than the vote to pass cloture and shut down the McCain hate-filled filibuster. Burr and Ensign were the two Republicans who switched sides and voted for LBGT equality at the last minute and once repeal was assured. More than Joe Manchin, still frozen in fear under his desk, did!
Earmarker Jon Kyl Wants His Cake... And Wants Tea Partiers To Eat Shit
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Chances are if you've thought about Jon Kyl for a moment in the last several months, it was about his planned obstructionist agenda regarding putting National Security at risk-- via the START Treaty-- for narrow partisan gain. But that's an Inside-the-Beltway game and even Kyl, who faces a reelection battle back in crazy Arizona in 2012, has to "take care" of the rubes back home. So... remember hearing about how Republicans-- Kyl included-- oppose earmarks? That was waaaaaaayyy back over a week ago almost.
Senate Republicans' ban on earmarks-- money included in a bill by a lawmaker to benefit a home-state project or interest-- was short-lived.
Only three days after GOP senators and senators-elect renounced earmarks, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, got himself a whopping $200 million to settle an Arizona Indian tribe's water rights claim against the government.
Kyl slipped the measure into a larger bill sought by President Barack Obama and passed by the Senate on Friday to settle claims by black farmers and American Indians against the federal government.
...Earmarking allows lawmakers to steer federal spending to pet projects in their states and districts. Earmarks take many forms, including road projects, improvements to home district military bases, sewer projects, economic development projects. A key trait is that they are projects that haven't been sought by the administration in power.
The money for the 15,000-member White Mountain Apache Tribe was one of four tribal water rights claims totaling almost $570 million that was added to the $5 billion-plus bill. Black farmers will get about $1.2 billion to settle claims that the Agriculture Department's local offices discriminated against them in awarding loans and other aid. Another $3.4 billion goes to American Indians who say the Interior Department swindled them out of oil, gas and other royalties.
The House still has to act on the total package, and likely will after Congress reconvenes Nov. 29 for the continuation of a postelection, lame duck session.
Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., also got in on the bargain, adding measures benefiting their states to the black farmers-tribal royalty settlements. The two senators obtained almost $370 million for projects in their states to implement water settlements.
Baucus and Bingaman make no bones about their support for earmarks, but Kyl is a recent convert to the anti-earmark crusade of home state GOP colleague Sen. John McCain, who's railed against them for years. The Interior Department sought only $46 million for Indian land and water claims in Obama's proposed budget for this year and no money for Kyle's project, or those wanted by Baucus and Bingaman.
...Kyl's office declined a request for an interview with the senator.
Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate Republicans, supported an earmarks ban and voted to ban earmarks. But he knew there weren’t enough votes for it. Now that it looks like there are enough votes, McConnell is lobbying furiously behind the scenes to kill the earmarks ban.
In 2000 Kyl had no primary opponent and no general election opponent either. Last time he faced the voters, in 2006, he won with a respectable 53% of the vote after a lackluster campaign against Democrat Jim Pederson. Kyl spent $16,103,008 to Pederson's $14,709,241. There have been noses on the fringe right about a teabagger type primary challenge against Kyl but it's hard to imagine anyone being able to pull that off, especially if they weren't even able to take out a clown like McCain.
Disclaimer: I've never been a David Broder fan and his OMG! What happened! column in today's Washington Post doesn't make me anymore sympathetic to him. He comes across as some kind of a 1930's Weimar conservative who thought Hitler could be easily contained and guided by the adults. If he ever had any, Broder has long lost any kinds of sharp or worthwhile insights. He seems bewildered that the Miss McConnell and the resurgent congressional Republicans are not showing any signs of "willingness to compromise." Who'd a thunk?
And what seems to be really tearing the old hack apart is that the extremists he helped ascend to power aren't paying any attention to his Republican Establishment heroes, Henry Kissinger, James Baker III and Brent Snowcroft in the little matter of bipartisan foreign policy. I guess the red t-shirts psychopaths like Allen West (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Tom Marino (R-PA), Daniel Webster (R-FL), Lou Barletta (R-PA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Tim Griffin (R-AR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sandy Adams (R-FL), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Vicky Hartzler (MO), Allen Nunnelee (R-MS), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Ron Johnson (R-WI) were wearing confused people like him into thinking they were seeing Teddy Roosevelts, Dwight Eisenhowers and Bob Doles instead of Adolph Eichmenn, Joseph Goebbelses und Heinrich Himmlers. Broder worries that the Republicans are "feeling their oats and will be hard to deal with."
A central goal of American foreign policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations has been securing our ability to monitor and limit Russian missile development.
Intrusive examination of Russian facilities ended with the expiration last December of the START treaty negotiated by President George W. Bush. A follow-on agreement, reducing the number of missiles on both sides and guaranteeing the inspections will continue, was negotiated and signed by Obama and the Russians this year.
Obama has urged publicly and privately that the Senate ratify the treaty in the lame-duck session, rather than letting the unmonitored period extend into some point next year, when the new Senate may or may not get around to it.
At a White House event last week, his call for action was endorsed by former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III and by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.
But those three, representing the Republican foreign policy establishment of the past two administrations, are being countermanded by Jon Kyl, the senator from Arizona who is No. 2 to McConnell in the Senate.
McConnell has made it clear that he backs his partner in delaying the treaty, forcing Obama to seek at least nine Republican votes despite the opposition of the GOP leadership.
It is notable that McConnell bases his opposition on the claim that the Senate schedule does not allow sufficient time for debate on the treaty. That is normally a judgment that would be made by the majority leader, Harry Reid, who backs the president in calling for action by the lame-duck session.
It is typical of these Republicans to usurp that role, even if they did not reach their goal of claiming a Senate majority in the midterm elections.
Typical? Really? Funny how he never hinted at that during the election campaign.
Maybe Obama Just Mastered How To Do Well On Tests Or Something
Someone who was much more prescient than Broder during the campaign was Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist and professor who isn't considered as "serious" as the demented and dull WaPo drudge in the Village. It looks like he's pretty much giving up on Obama; how is there any way not to?
Some readers may recall that back during the Democratic primary Barack Obama shocked many progressives by praising Ronald Reagan as someone who brought America a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” I was among those who found this deeply troubling-- because the idea that Reagan brought a transfomation in American dynamism is a right-wing myth, not borne out by the facts. (There was a surge in productivity and innovation-- but it happened in the 90s, under Clinton, not under Reagan).
All the usual suspects pooh-poohed these concerns; it was ridiculous, they said, to think of Obama as a captive of right-wing mythology.
But are you so sure about that now?
And here’s this, from Thomas Ferguson: Obama saying:
We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
As Ferguson explains, this is a right-wing smear. What actually happened was that during the interregnum between the 1932 election and the 1933 inauguration-- which was much longer then, because the inauguration didn’t take place until March-- Herbert Hoover tried to rope FDR into maintaining his policies, including rigid adherence to the gold standard and fiscal austerity. FDR declined to be part of this.
But Obama buys the right-wing smear.
More and more, it’s becoming clear that progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion. Once you got past the soaring rhetoric you noticed, if you actually paid attention to what he said, that he largely accepted the conservative storyline, a view of the world, including a mythological history, that bears little resemblance to the facts.
And confronted with a situation utterly at odds with that storyline … he stayed with the myth.
Like Sharron Angle, Gingrich Will Only Participate In Debates If He Approves Of The Moderator
That lets out real journalists. On C-Span's Washington Journal this morning, the Beltway's biggest crybaby forswore being part of any debates that included Keith Olberman and or Chris Matthews. He didn't mention Rachel Maddow but maybe he mixed up Matthews and Maddow; he must have. In any case, I'm guessing most, if not all, of the Republicans planning on running only want softball questions from the Fox cocoon and will settle for nothing more than Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Chris Wallace, Bill O'Reilly... right-wing propagandists and hacks only.
“There's no possibility that I would ever go to a debate and have Olbermann or Chris Matthews asking questions," declared the money-grubbing faker from Georgia... I watched the debate a couple of years ago and it was an embarrassment because they were so relentlessly hostile and they were so left-wing that every question they asked of the Republicans was designed to embarrass and divide the Republicans. And every question they asked the Democrats was designed to make them look good. Well, why would we participate in that?”
This was in his mind, something that never actually happened in the real world, a world Gingrich doesn't inhabit anyway. There were no debates that either Olbermann, Matthews-- or for that matter, Maddow-- participated in that pitted Democrats and Republicans in 2008. But when has objective reality ever stopped Newt Gingrich? Jimmy Carter has a very different perspective on what fair and balanced is than Gingrich. Appearing on CNN's Reliable Souces the former president said aloud what everyone already knows but is seldom voiced on TV-- that “The talk shows with Glenn Beck and others on Fox News, I think, have deliberately distorted the news." He went on to draw the false equivalency by comparing them to MSNBC.
And speaking of Fox, Texas closet case Rick Perry was on Fox News Sunday this morning pushing the 1937 GOP line that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme.
"What I'm saying is that between Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid there's $106 trillion of unfunded liabilities and not one dime saved to pay for them," Perry said on Fox News Sunday. "My children who are in their 20s know that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme."
When challenged by host Chris Wallace, who pointed out that when Social Security started there were seven or eight workers for every retiree, Perry doubled down on his criticism by arguing the program would even shame Charles Ponzi, who inspired the term by paying returns to early investors using money from later investors.
"It probably is a program that even makes Mr. Ponzi feel pretty bad if he was still alive. The fact is our children know that the money that they're putting into Medicaid they'll never see," Perry said.
"And it is a Ponzi scheme. I don't know how you would explain it any other way than what you just did. There are fewer people paying into it and our kids are never going to see any benefit from it. Fix it and fix it today. "
Despite his criticism Perry didn't have any immediate ideas for how to put social security on stronger footing, but said giving states their Medicaid funds in the form of block grants would go a long way towards saving taxpayers dollars and balancing state and federal budgets.
"Medicaid, we think we can save substantial dollars for the federal government and for the states if they'll allow us to implement that program," Perry said, urging the administration to allow states to be the laboratories of innovation.
Perry also disagreed with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that this week's initial public offering from General Motors shows the government's bailout of the auto companies had been a success.
I know we're all mad at the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security this weekend, but let's not forget what asshats the DEA can be as well. A friend sent me this today:
DEA officer stops at a ranch in Texas, and talks with an old rancher. He tells the rancher, "I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown drugs." The rancher says, "Okay, but don't go in that field over there," as he points out the location.
The DEA officer verbally explodes saying, "Mister, I have the authority of the Federal Government with me." Reaching into his rear pants pocket, he removes his badge and proudly displays it to the rancher. "See this badge? This badge means I am allowed to go wherever I wish. On any land. No questions asked or answers given. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand?"
The rancher nods politely, apologizes, and goes about his chores.
A short time later, the old rancher hears loud screams and sees the DEA officer running for his life chased by the rancher's big Santa Gertrudis bull...
With every step the bull is gaining ground on the officer, and it seems likely that he'll get gored before he reaches safety. The officer is clearly terrified. The rancher throws down his tools, runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs...
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.
