Thoughts on the CIA's Senate spying booboo: Does anyone have any idea wtf is going on here?

Remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey astronauts Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) thought they had evaded HAL's all-watchful eye so they could talk about their suddenly glitchy computer's, er, problems? But HAL wasn't to be messed with so easily! Kind of like our own CIA, maybe?

"The inspector general’s account of how the C.I.A. secretly monitored a congressional committee charged with supervising its activities touched off angry criticism from members of the Senate and amounted to vindication for Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s Democratic chairwoman, who excoriated the C.I.A. in March when the agency’s monitoring of committee investigators became public."

-- from "Inquiry by C.I.A. Affirms It Spied on Senate Panel,"
by the NYT's Mark Mazzetti and Carl Hulse (7/31)

by Ken

It's not that Howie hasn't already covered the matter of the CIA's big "oopsie" moment (in "Obama Hasn't Fired John Brennan Yet -- Let Alone Had Him Arrested" and a follow-up piece), when the agency fessed up last week -- a half-step ahead of a CIA inspector general's report that was going to blow the whistle -- that Director John Brennan may have misspoken last March when he called Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a crazy old coot (or words to that effect) for daring to suggest that the CIA had hacked and eavesdropped on her committee in the course of its work on a report, five years in the making, on CIA screwing up.

In March, you'll recall, Director Brennan spoke so derisively of Senator Feinstein, voicing indignation that anyone could dare suggest something so idiotic, that one had to feel sympathy for her -- which is pretty remarkable in itself. So it was pretty awkward for Director Brennan to have to own up to the discovered truth, which is that not only was the senator right but she may not have known the half of it.

Which nevertheless was apparently considerably more than Director Brennan knew. (Unless he was just kidding in March.) Now, however, he has apologized to both Senator Feinstein and, rather remarkably, to the Intelligence Committee's ranking member, retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The apology to Senator Chambliss is one of my favorite touches. Am I misremembering that he sat by chuckling quietly while Senator Feinstein was being ridiculed? Is there any reason to suppose he would have cared if he had known that the CIA was spying on the committee? Hadn't the committee Republicans long since dissociated themselves from, and denounced, the CIA report-in-progress?

At the same time, when you put yourself in the position of owing Saxby Chambliss an apology, you have to know you've sunk pretty low.

Now all of this, as I say, Howie has already covered. And naturally he took proper note of the ironies involved: first, that the CIA had managed to find itself in a feud with Senator Feinstein, who has hardly ever been known to utter an unkind word over anything that comes stamped "National Security," and second that the now-"vindicated" members of the Intelligence Committee, reveling in their unaccustomed role as Wronged Avengers, don't seem terribly concerned about government intelligence overstepping except insofar as they themselves are the oversteppees.

Again, already duly noted in this space. So why have I been nursing this sense that the subject needs to be revisited?

Maybe it's all the focus on Director Brennan. Maybe it's just me, but when I first heard the latest installment of this story reported, I hardly thought about him at all. Well, that's not quite right. I thought quite a lot about his role for his really vicious March assault on Senator Feinstein, and the deliciousness of his now having to eat every one of those astonishing words. So I was thinking of him as an important player in this little DC comedy-drama, but I didn't find myself thinking of him as anything more -- not the drama's writer or director or producer or even dramaturg, just the guy who spoke those silly speeches in March and now has to make silly apologies in August.

But that so much outrage and animosity should be directed at Director Brennan? What is he, like in charge of the CIA or something? Okay, technically. However, I think it's a lot more important that we find out what his -- and everybody else at the CIA's -- role was in this astonishing sequence of events. After all, it's not as if there was some little slip-up. You know, where after Senator Feinstein did her wicked-witch comedy routine in March, somebody discovered that oops, a switch had inadvertently been left on and a bunch of committee phone calls had been recorded, isn't that a riot?

No, what we've learned about the pending IG report is that there was some serious surveillance of the committee, or at least the committee Democrats, the ones who were doing the investigating. And I think it's pretty important that we find out what the hell was going on, and what the hell else might have been and might still be going on.

I think Senator Feinstein's own reaction, or rather reactions, is/are interesting. This is from the July 31 Mazzetti-Hulse NYT report:

When the C.I.A.’s monitoring of the committee became public in March, after months of private meetings and growing bitterness, Ms. Feinstein took to the Senate floor to deliver a blistering speech accusing the agency of infringing on the committee’s role as overseer.

Calling it a “defining moment” in the committee’s history, Ms. Feinstein said that how the matter was resolved “will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.”

Last week, however, as the Times-men reported, Senator Feinstein "called Mr. Brennan's apology and decision to set up an accountability board 'positive first steps,' and said the inspector general report 'corrects the record.' " And you know, I think the senator has this about right. We just need to know what the second and third and fourth steps are going to be.

Not that what we know so far is encouraging. In addition to the pending release of the CIA IG's report, there is an investigation in progress by the Senate sergeant-at-arms. I suppose it's possible that some light may shed on what the fuck was going on here. Then of course there's this "internal accountability board" that Director Brennan has impaneled, which could go so far as to suggest "potential disciplinary measures" and "steps to address systemic issues."

Bear in mind, after all, that it was Director Brennan who turned the matter over to the CIA IG's office in March. It's true that at the time the director opined that “when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong." As the Times-men reported last week, "Mr. Brennan said at the time that he had referred the matter to the agency's inspector general 'to make sure that he was able to look honestly and objectively at what the C.I.A. did.' "

Well, Director B, surprise!

And maybe -- assuming he's still around when it reports -- this board will surprise him too! After all, it's to be led by no less august a personage than, um, former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh! Who's kind of Dianne Feinstein in reverse-drag. About the most you can say in his behalf is that he's not likely to be accused of being a rock-the-boat type anti-CIA crusader.

Okay, that kind of leadership does suggest that what we're in for is kind of bureaucratic call for an investigation whose primary purpose is to create a "cooling off" period -- long enough, it's hoped, for most everyone to have moved on to other matters, pretty well ensuring that nobody will even read the report except the unfortunate media drones whose assignment editors make them produce sure-to-be-ignored reports about the report.

Unless Senator Bayh's accountability board unaccountably produces the kind of blistering report that none of us expect it will. Oh, in that case yes, you can assume that Republicans, starting with the Senate Intelligence Committee lapdogs, will undoubtedly dismiss it as partisan nattering.

SO WHAT AM I GETTING AT HERE?
WHAT IS DIRECTOR BRENNAN'S ROLE?

I guess what I'm suggesting is that Director Brennan may not have much of a role, or his successor either. I imagine he shows up at the office occasionally, and has a heavy speech-giving schedule. But I for one am perfectly prepared to believe that he really didn't know about the Intelligence Committee surveillance, and it may not necessarily even be because he wouldn't have cared. I'm just not sure that knowing what the CIA is doing is in the current CIA director's job description.

Which is a little bit ironic. You remember that until 2005 the title of the person who was in charge of the CIA was "director of Central Intelligence," which merely included the CIA. The title sounded a lot fancier than it actually was, since the charge excluded an intelligence behemoth like the Defense Intelligence Agency, not to mention a host of other federal intelligence entities, and in general outside the CIA the DCI mostly did "coordinating" -- among agencies that would sooner be called sissified wimps than be coordinated. Still, in 2005 it was understood that this was way too large a brief for one mere mortal, and the job was split into a "director of national intelligence" and a director of the CIA.

Maybe it had already happened (does anyone believe that, say, George H.W. Bush was firmly at the controls as DCI?), or maybe it was at that point that the "CIA director" turned into somebody who's just on the job without actually having much of a job to do, as the CIA just goes its merry way doing whatever the heck it thinks it does. From news accounts, it seems clear that the Obama administration has turned to it for active activity on a series of specific issues, and gotten decent enough work to justify White House press secretary Josh Earnest's widely derided presidential vote of confidence in Director Brennan's leadership, as the account manager who coordinates his intelligence consulting firm's services with its principal client, the president of the United States.

The image of the CIA that I'm harboring, however, possibly under the influence of having only just seen 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time in a long while in a lovely 70mm print at the Museum of the Moving Image, is like HAL the computer: an entity that knows its mission, believes unflinchingly in the importance of its mission, and does whatever it feels it has to do to protect that mission. Against that certainty and that kind of control, in the end all poor astronaut Dave can do, after HAL has disposed of astronaut Frank, is to disconnect the damned thing.

Can we disconnect the CIA? I don't think so.

As to what "mission" it might be pursuing HAL-like, I'm afraid I have to refer back once again to the great 2010 Washington Post investigative series on the National Security establishment that has come into existence in recent decades as a sort of public-private partnership -- with an accent on the "private," there being a minimum of coherent public oversight -- that now controls a significant chunk of the U.S. economy and more or less directs its own political ship, as long as it can keep its share of the federal budget flowing in. It's a mission so crucial, at least to the people who are in on it, that it would be worth a suitably heroic computer's dying for.

I know I should dig out a link to the Post series, as I've done a couple of times before, but really, what's the point? [Nevertheless, see the 'Postscript' below. -- Ed.] The series got so much (utterly deserved) attention as it was rolling out, only to suffer almost immediately the fate that was, well, fated for it: oblivion. Partly, of course, for the very good reason that the series made pretty clear that there isn't a damned thing we can do about it.

Still, one thing we can't say is that we weren't warned.

AS FOR SENATOR FEINSTEIN'S ORIGINAL CONCERN --

You know, about this "defining moment" that "will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation's intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee." Come on now, was there ever really any question about this?


POSTSCRIPT: Okay, I dug up a link for the 2010
WaPo series "Top Secret America" -- happy now?

The link is to my January 2011 follow-up post, "Say, whatever did happen to 'Top Secret America'?," which along with some blowing off of steam contains all the relevant links. You gonna do something about it? Huh? Huh?

#

Republican Party Doomsday Clock: Default Countdown

Although Pelosi said on Tuesday that Boehner apparently needs to humor his troops, she claimed that the chances of a deal to prevent a default tomorrow are good-- even if poor McConnell is being pilloried by DeMint, Cruz and the crackpot suicide caucus for "leading the surrender." In case yours got stuck in the spam folder, his is from the letter DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund sent out to their supporters claiming McConnell "has made winning virtually impossible" for the far right, while McConnell and Reid were trying to hammer out a compromise that both sides could live with and that would prevent a default:

McConnell has consistently worked to sabotage the effort to defund Obamacare. He pressured senators to withdraw their support, he falsely accused conservatives of wanting a government shutdown, and he voted to give the Democrats the power to fund Obamacare.

Now Mitch McConnell is working with the Democrats on a plan to fund Obamacare AND raise the debt limit. Not only will his plan force Americans to pay for a law they oppose, it will force them to borrow more money to do it.

Yesterday, minutes after Heritage said they would ecore the vote-- and that a vote for Boehner's proposal would be a bad vote, Boehner and Cantor, tails between their legs, pulled the bill… just when Fitch declared the U.S. is on a negative downgrade watch. This is clearly a reflection of intense right-wing anger and hatred a changing America. The GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning was, by all accounts, just dreadful. The extremists were demanding Boehner and Cantor commit to rejecting the Senate deal regardless of the consequences. They were "furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading tea-party congressman calls a 'mushy piece of shit.' Another House conservative warns, 'If Boehner backs this, as is, he’s in trouble'… [And, said one GOP House aide] the activists are still calling offices pushing for the full defund of Obamacare. The message has not been relayed to the grassroots that the defund option isn’t going to happen no matter how long we hold our breath or how much we wish it would happen."

And not all the animus is going in one direction. The House extremists in safe little rural red districts mostly in the South and Mormon Empire, can heap vituperatives on all the Senate Republicans they want, but the feeling is mutual. Yesterday Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told his state's top political journalist that the House extremists are preventing a compromise. He says the compromise has nothing in it for Republicans-- all they got out of this mess are a lot of toxic polling numbers. But he isn't blaming McConnell for a bad deal. He knows who fucked up-- his state's whole House delegation was a big part of it too.

Chambliss said the blame for the bad spot Republicans are in lies with the arch-conservatives in the party who pushed defunding the new health care law as part of a deal to keep the government open. He did not name names, but Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has managed to anger many in his own caucus over the issue. The government shut down Oct. 1 when Democrats refused any concessions related to the law, and now the debt ceiling and "continuing resolution" fights have merged and Republicans are taking a beating in the polls. Said Chambliss:

"The president’s made it pretty plain that [Obamacare is] non-negotiable. And what are you going to get that’s of any substance at this point? In my opinion, that was not a very good strategy to start with and folks got backed into a corner on that-- 'By God, it’s got to be this!'-- and now I think folks are starting to realize, well, that wasn’t a very strong position to be in, because we didn’t have leverage on that. We had leverage on the debt ceiling, but we’re fast losing that."

Chambliss' position matches that of delegation mate Johnny Isakson, who called the shutdown "a dumb idea." It also squares with the original position of House Speaker John Boehner, one of Chambliss' closest friends, who wanted to extend government spending without too much fuss and then seek a deficit-reducing deal attached to a debt-ceiling increase.

I asked Chambliss if a Senate deal puts Boehner in a jam with little time to go until Thursday's debt ceiling deadline. His reply:

"Well, he’s in no more of a jam today than he was last Friday when they said, 'Have at it, Senate.' You know, he hasn’t been able to get anything passed on his side, basically. We know what he sent over. But basically he’s got some hard-liners that are making it very difficult to get the government back open again and much less the debt ceiling. But John’s goal, I know, has been to put some separation between the CR and the debt ceiling, and let’s get some agreement on the CR that gets the government reopened, and let’s have a fight on the debt ceiling."

The "hard-liners," needless to say, include some of those Georgians competing to take Chambliss' spot in the Senate.

Some? How about all?  Meanwhile, back in the House, this morning's NY Times describes the sordid scene through the eyes of Georgian senior wingnut Tom Price: Boehner was herding cats.

"It was yet another moment of decision for Mr. Boehner, who finally finds himself at the crossroads he has been marching toward for weeks: an imminent financial default on the one hand, and on the other an unyielding conservative rank and file that persists with the futile effort to take down President Obama's health care law even if they also take down the speaker in the process."

"While his colleagues sang about how what once was lost had now been found, Mr. Boehner did not tell them a more dispiriting truth: With less than 48 hours left before the nation is set to exhaust its authority to borrow money, he and his lieutenants were running out of ideas-- a fact made starkly evident by the mad and fruitless scramble on Tuesday to come up with a measure that could win enough support from his members. Around 7 p.m., he sent the House home and canceled all votes for the day."

“He’s herding cats,” said Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia.

Mr. Boehner initially tried to unite his conference around a plan that had a little bit for everyone. For his hard-line conservative members, Mr. Boehner’s proposal would have eliminated government contributions for the purchase of health insurance on the new exchanges for lawmakers, White House officials and their staffs, as well as forbidden the Treasury Department to use “extraordinary measures” to extend its borrowing capabilities. For his more moderate members, Mr. Boehner offered a simple appeal-- his plan would have reopened the government through Dec. 15, and extended the nation’s borrowing authority through Feb. 7.

But conservatives and their advocacy groups balked, and Mr. Boehner was forced to set his plan aside.

UPDATE: Appommattox Court House Revisited

Not quite 150 years ago treason-minded Confederates surrendered at Appomattox and this morning the white flags of surrender were unfurled by the same right-wing idiots again. This time their whole shut down the government escapades accomplished nothing-- except to make the GOP even less trusted by normal Americans.

With a deal to reopen the government apparently imminent Wednesday, it's worth taking stock of what it was all for—the two and a half weeks without a fully functioning federal government, the nonstop chaos on Capitol Hill, the tiptoeing to the brink of default.

For Republicans, it was basically for nothing.

The GOP will actually get less out of the final deal being brokered than the party would have gotten had House conservatives never staged their revolt on Obamacare. In fact, the drama is likely to end with Republicans ceding policy concessions to Democrats.

Let's review: Had the House passed the "clean" continuing resolution it was offered on September 30, the government would have remained open only until November 15, at the reduced funding levels determined by the "sequestration" cuts imposed by the 2011 debt-limit deal. Republicans still would have had the debt-ceiling deadline Thursday, plus another budget fight on the horizon a month later, as perceived points of leverage. (Democrats insist this leverage is illusory as the White House would refuse to negotiate, but to Republicans, that's what these deadlines are: valuable bargaining chips.)

Instead, the House is poised to pass a measure that funds the government through January 15 and lifts the debt ceiling until February 7-- taking the heat off Congress for months and eliminating three pressure points (the September 30 funding expiration, the October 17 debt-ceiling target, and the hypothetical November 15 funding expiration) in one go. The proposed deal negotiated by Senate leaders also would force the two houses to convene a budget committee, something Democrats have been demanding since the Senate passed a budget in March-- and conservative Republicans have repeatedly blocked, for fear that any compromise negotiated between the two houses would mean selling out their principles.

The "concession" extracted by the GOP in the deal, the sole change to the health-care law, is purely cosmetic: a reinstatement of the requirement that people seeking subsidies under the Affordable Care Act furnish proof that they qualify. That requirement was in the original law, but the administration delayed it when implementation hit snags in July.

Obamacare will not be repealed. Obamacare will not be defunded. Obamacare will not be delayed. The individual mandate will not be delayed. The medical-device tax will not be repealed. The health-insurance subsidies given to members of Congress and their staffs will not be taken away.

  Democrats will get the government funded at levels they (grudgingly) sought in the first place, for longer than they originally sought, and without the looming threat of default.

So what did Republicans get for shutting down the government for 17 days? Their poll numbers tanked. Their gubernatorial candidate in Virginia appears headed for defeat in next month's election. The business community is rethinking its support. Veterans and the elderly are pissed. And any leverage they ever had to push their goals of reducing the size of government and chipping away at health-care reform is gone. All in all, it's been a worthwhile exercise for the GOP.

At least they didn't murder people this time. Of course, now we have to see if Obama and Boehner have a side-deal a couple weeks down the road on a Chanied CPI-fueled Grand Bargain, which is what I expect. Check back.

How Fast Is The GOP Running Down The Road To Extinction?

I suspect most regular readers of this blog care more how much collateral damage the Republican Party will cause to normal Americans and to our country in the process than how soon they'll go the way of The Whigs... and the Dodo bird. In the video above, for example, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes discuss how the rest of the world, cognizant of how dysfunctional Republicans have now become that, U.S. international commitments are now looked at askance. Hillary Clinton, on her last day in office, referred to these Republicans and their supporters in the right-wing propaganda machine when she said, "There are some people in politics and in the media who can't be confused by the facts. They just will not live in an evidence-based world." It's now virtually impossible to be a Republican elected official and live in an evidence-based world. They have their own evidence... and they pull it right out of their asses and repeat it to each other until they all believe it.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Cynthia Tucker discussed how the rabid right is leading their party down the road to ruin. She decries the example of arch-conservative Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss who is being hounded out of office for not being conservative enough.

Last year, Georgia blogger Erick Erickson, a leader of the right-wing faction, wrote: “Saxby has consistently stabbed conservatives in the back and it is time to take him out.” By the time Chambliss voted in the earliest hours of New Year’s Day to support a tax hike on Americans earning more than $400,000 a year-- a deal which, by the way, cemented in place George W. Bush’s tax cuts for everyone else-- he was doomed among the absolutists.

Chambliss has said publicly that he’s not running from a primary challenge, but instead leaving a Congress that he finds dysfunctional.

But he is disingenuous-- “The one thing I was totally confident of was my re-election,” he told reporters last week-- in suggesting that the prospect of a primary challenge didn’t factor into his plans. He might have won, but he would have been forced to defend his decision to employ negotiation and compromise with his Democratic colleagues, strategies Republican extremists despise. He would have encountered rabid challengers willing to accuse him of grotesque crimes against party dogma. And he may have been forced to renounce the statesmanlike image he has spent the last few years building.

The senator is right about this much: Politics has become ugly and ruinous, especially inside the Republican Party. He joins a list of towering conservative figures who have left office-- or been run out-- after encountering the lunatic ravings of the crazed ultra-right. That includes Bob Bennett of Utah and Richard Lugar of Indiana, GOP stalwarts who lost to challenges by ultraconservatives.

And who might replace Chambliss? Several Georgia Republicans are eyeing the race, including U.S. representative Paul Broun, who told a church audience last year: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.” Broun, by the way, is a physician who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Obama and other Democrats-- as well as many moderate Republicans-- have wondered how long it will be before the raging fever breaks on the rabid right. Well, by the time it does, the patient-- the Republican Party-- might be dead.

Since we started with Rachel, let's end with her as well-- and the future of the Republican Party. Let's hope it isn't all of our futures. I for one, am giving up Verizon as my telephone company. Watch the video and you'll know why:

It's Almost Inconceivable That Anyone Decent Will Even Run For Georgia's Open Senate Seat

Georgia politicians talk about Chambliss, now that he's been driven to retirement by the threat of a Tea Party primary, as though he were a normal, distinguished senator of high stature. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who is being touted as a possible Democratic nominee for the seat refused to say if he would run but instead asked people to focus on Chambliss’s “many contributions to our state and nation rather than to focus on politics.” His former campaign manager, Democratic Party strategist Tharon Johnson, was even more disgusting: “Democrats need to take some time and allow this great senator to retire gracefully.” The best summary of Chambliss' most memorable achievements in life are highlighted in the video above. Not that Georgia Democrats are the only hypocrites moaning about the political demise of the great Saxby Chambliss. When he ran his smear campaign against Democratic incumbent Max Cleland, John McCain had said, "I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield-- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible." Last week, when Chambliss fled the political battlefield to avoid chickens coming home to roost in the form of a challenge from the even further right than he is himself, McCain's response was a tweet:

Georgia Republicans, on the other hand, aren't wasting any time trampling Chambliss' stinking, still twitching body in their mad rush for the starting gate. Almost all the GOP House members say they'd like to run. Tom Price, a self-serving extremist ideologue who got caught up in an ethics investigation but got a get-out-of-jail-free pass in a deal that also let corrupt New York Democratic bribe taker Joe Crowley off the hook, told Chambliss he's running for sure. Price passes himself off as a medical doctor-- an anti-health care one-- but so do two other sociopathic Georgia congressmen determined to run for the seat, former drug addict and John Birch Society stalwart Paul Broun and pro-rape Republican Phil Gingrey. Already a guaranteed circus if it just stops there. But it doesn't.

Remember when Colbert used to do interviews with congressmen in a regular segment, Better Know A District? Back in 2008 he landed Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). It was easily the best in the series but Comedy Central removed it from YouTube and the only place you can view it is on their own website, which rarely works. Masterpiece wasted. Here's a small piece of it below, although maybe you'll get lucky at the Comedy Central link.



The Hill terms the GOP rush for Chambliss' seat "a mad scramble... with nearly every major Republican in the state mulling a bid to replace him." Many seem to believe that ex-governors Sonny Perdue (R) and Roy Barnes (D), with statewide name recognition, have a better shot than any of the pygmy congressmen drooling over the upgrade.

“No matter what happens it's going to be a 10-person race,” said Chris Crawford, a spokesman for Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “There are a lot of folks, not just in the House delegation, looking at the seat, but some people in the state and businessmen who are self-funders.”

Crawford said the open seat is “an opportunity [Kingston] is interested in taking a look at.”

“It's an open process. Primaries are good and healthy, a lot of people are taking a look at it, and we'll see how it shakes out.”

From the pit of Hell

Reps. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) were mulling bids before Chambliss decided to retire; now that the senator has made it official, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) is considering a run as well. Georgia Republicans who have talked to Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said he is eying the seat. Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) is interested in running statewide at some point, GOP sources say, though he may hold out for a later race.

“There are many experienced, conservative leaders in Georgia who would make a good U.S. Senator,” Westmoreland said in a statement. “Over the next several days and weeks my family, friends, supporters and I will determine if I am interested in being a part of that discussion."

"Dr. Price is thankful for the support and encouragement he has received,” said Price spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael. “He is speaking with a number of folks across the state of Georgia and listening to their observations and advice. He'll continue to listen and make a decision and announcement at the appropriate time.”

...Most of the potential candidates are solid fiscal and social conservatives, meaning the primary might hinge more on fundraising ability, name recognition and geography than Tea Party support.

Gingrey has the most campaign cash of the potential candidates from the House, with $1.9 million in the bank. Price has $1.6 million, Kingston has $1.1 million, Westmoreland has $450,000. Broun has less than $200,000, while Graves has less than $100,000 as of the last reporting period.

A crowded primary field will likely lead to a runoff election, as Georgia state law requires candidates to win 50 percent of the vote. Democrats believe they have a shot in the GOP-leaning state-- especially if the late-summer GOP primary turns bloody or nominates a weak candidate.

Stand up comic Herman Cain and notorious Georgia grifter Newt Gingrich has each already taken himself out of the race. So have reactionary Blue Dogs John Barrow and Jim Marshall. Funny how quiet Harold Ford, Jr. has been lately. My favorite thanks but no thanks came from Jimmy Carter's grandson, James Carter IV: "If nominated, I shall run to Mexico. If elected, I shall fight extradition." Blue America's favoite candidate is Michael Stipe, although I suspect he hasn't lived in Athens in a very long time.

Who's Got Georgia On Their Mind?

How about that for a nice Hobson's choice?

Yesterday even quintessential corporate whore and reactionary dinosaur Roy Blunt (R-MO) admits he may have no choice but to vote to increase taxes on the very rich (the GOP's financial base). Yeah, Blunt told a KTRS Missouri radio audience he's considering raising the marginal tax rates on the rich as part of the Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain-- as long as it's "balanced" with lots of pain and suffering for working families. John Thune (R-SD), a non-Mormon version of Romney with presidential ambitions, is on the same page.



Blunt isn't up for reelection in 2014. Neither is Thune. I'm more impressed when I hear right-wing Senate incumbents who are up for reelection say they're open to making the rich pay a fairer share of the tax burden. ("Fairer"... but never fair, of course; fair would be going back to the Eisenhower era rates. And Republicans don't quite word it that way anyway.) So that's why I'm more interested when Tea Party primary targets like Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) make noises in that direction. There's is some degree of political courage-- not much, but some-- when they take a position that even hints at increasing rates on the rich (and on tossing the Grover Norquist pledge that more and more Republicans have come to regret).

Let's talk about the Republican senator who, aside from high profile notorious closet case Lindsey Graham, has put himself in the gravest jeopardy in terms of losing a primary contest to a teabagger: Saxby Chambliss. As I pointed out a few days ago, Chambliss is a rock bottom right-wing loon with a putrid voting record by any rational standards.

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.

And it's not just Broun, who is actually so far right of either Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock that even "a liberal" like Chambliss could whoop his ass. Right-wing blogger and clownish crackpot Erick Erickson has backed away from primarying Chambliss but that leaves two very serious right-wing contenders who could beat him: former Secretary of State Karen Handel (an anti-Choice icon) and corrupt right-wing ideologue Rep. Tom Price. Aaron Blake at the Washington Post lists the reasons Chambliss could be even more vulnerable than Lindsey Graham in 2014:

1. While it’s not clear who might have the wherewithal to challenge Graham, there are plenty of candidates ready to challenge Chambliss. Price and Broun both have very conservative records, and Handel, of course, has a statewide resume.

2. Chambliss had a weak showing in 2008. Despite being an incumbent, he ran a few points behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at the top of the ticket and actually needed to go to a runoff to keep his seat against Democrat Jim Martin, who wasn’t seen as a top-tier opponent. (Chambliss did beat Martin by double-digits in the runoff, for what it’s worth.)

3. He’s from South Georgia. Chambliss is from Moultrie, which is very far from Atlanta and from most of the state’s population centers. Thus, it seems logical that a candidate from the Atlanta area could beat him by regionalizing the race.

4. He’s got a tone problem. While Chambliss has got a largely conservative record, he’s hardly a conservative favorite. In fact, when it comes to the National Journal vote ratings, Chambliss has scored more conservative than Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) the last two years, and he was tied for the most conservative senator in 2010.

Chambliss’s problem is he doesn’t talk the conservative talk. He likes to instead talk about compromise, and he has flirted with middle ground on issues like immigration and now the “fiscal cliff.” He was a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Six” during 2011 debt ceiling negotiations and is on the current bipartisan “Gang of Eight” for the “fiscal cliff” talks.

The fact that he was the first big-name Republicans to break with Norquist over the holiday weekend is exactly the kind of thing that makes some Georgia conservatives wary of him.

“He does not know how to talk to Georgia Republicans,” said one neutral Georgia GOP strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the race candidly. “This whole thing with Norquist-- why bother? You’re just kicking sand at people who already hate you.”

Teabaggers see him as the next mainstream conservative they can beat, the way they used Richard Mourdock to beat Richard Lugar in a primary this year. But they're comparing him to a victory they had which had more fortuitous results, ousting Senator Robert Bennett in 2010 and replacing him with lunatic fringe Mike Lee. But that was Utah, a right-wing bastion where no Democrats are going to win a Senate seat no matter who the GOP pukes up as their candidate. Georgia isn't Utah. Obama lost Utah with 24.9% of the vote, easily his worst showing anywhere. Georgia, on the other hand, gave Obama his best showing (45.5%) in any Confederate state other than the two he won--Florida (50.0%) and Virginia (51.1%)-- and the other one he contested, North Carolina (48.3%). He actually won 3 dozen counties outright, while next door, Alabama gave Obama a dismal 38.4% and Tennessee coughed up a grudging 39.1%.

It may be inconceivable that any Democratic politician in the state could beat Chambliss but one finds himself in an almost identical position today that now-Senator-elect Joe Donnelly (D-IN) found himself last year. The Republican-controlled Indiana legislature tweaked Donnelly's district in such a way to make it impossible for him to win reelection. Jackie Walorsky had nearly beat him under the old lines in 2010-- 91,341 (48%) to 88,803 (47%)-- and by swapping out a few Democratic areas for a few Republican areas, IN-02 became a pretty red bastion. With Kosciusko and Miami Counties added to the district, not even a hard core right-wing Blue Dog like Donnelly (or, as it turned out, Brendan Mullen) was going to have a shot there. If Steve Israel was too stupid to see that (and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Mullen's impossible race), Donnelly at least read the handwriting on the wall. He declared he would run-- a Hail Mary pass that he figured would precede a lucrative career on K Street-- against Richard Lugar. Polling showed he'd have no chance whatsoever to beat Lugar. But then along came the teabaggers and Mourdock. Donnelly won the seat 1,268,407 (50%) to 1,126,832 (44%)-- at the same time Romney was creaming Obama 1,412,620 (54%) to 1,140,425 (44%). Yes, you're reading those numbers right-- not only did Romney voters cross over and vote for Donnelly, plenty of Donnelly voters crossed over and voted for Romney... or against the Kenyan.

Back to Georgia. The Republican-controlled legislature there sliced Savannah out of the 12th CD. (Barrow lived in Savannah, just as he had once lived in Athens when the GOP sliced that out of his district; now he's moved to Augusta.) It made the district a lot whiter (so more safe for Blue Dog John Barrow in the primary-- and remember he lost Savannah to Regina Thomas in the last primary-- but much less likely for a Democrat to hold, even one with as far right a voting record as Barrow, who votes with Boehner and Cantor far more frequently than he does with Pelosi and Hoyer). Barrow actually managed to win against a weak, primary-scarred Republican, Lee Anderson, 138,965 (54%) to 119,857 (46%). Next year the GOP won't give Barrow such a weak opponent... and he knows it. They will probably run Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams-- unless Barrow flips and becomes a Republican, a distinct possibility. The other possibility is for him to run for the Senate seat in the hope that the teabaggers knock off Chambliss and give him a real fringe loon like Broun or Handel to run against.

As a postscript, let me just say that Donnelly and Barrow have almost identical ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores for the 112th Congress. Barrow is Congress' 193rd "most progressive" member (24.31) and Donnelly is the 194th "most progressive" (23.54), two truly abysmal scores when it comes to working families' interests. Five Republicans have voted more frequently with progressives than either Barrow or Donnelly. And Donnelly's first news as a Senator-elect was to make himself a problem in terms of filibuster reform, already arguing for a more Republican-friendly resolution. Yeah, Dems!

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.”

Another Anti-Gay Fanatic Gets His Share Of (Young) Man Meat

Chances are more than good that if you hear a politician railing against gays or if you hear a preacher singling gays out for hell and damnation, the speaker is petrified of being found out for being gay himself. Yesterday two notorious closet queens, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) helped lead a GOP filibuster against abolishing Don't Ask Don't Tell, favored by a majority of Americans and a majority of senators. Each man is racked with fear that he will be exposed as a homosexual.

And this week, another prominent gay-basher, a so-called "bishop" in an Atlanta Baptist megachurch, Eddie Long was exposed for someone coercing young men into having sex with him. Just as an investigation gets underway about why Georgia Senator-- a homophobe-- Saxby Chambliss has staffers running around leaving Internet messages that "All gays must die," the NY Times reports that lawsuits have been filed against "Bishop" Long for molesting two men.

In two lawsuits filed in DeKalb County, the men said that Bishop Long, a prominent minister and television personality, had used his position as a spiritual counselor to take them on trips out of state and perform sexual acts on them.

Bishop Long is the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, an Atlanta suburb. It is one of the largest churches in the country.

“Defendant Long has a pattern and practice of singling out a select group of young male church members and using his authority as bishop over them to ultimately bring them to a point of engaging in a sexual relationship,” said a suit filed by one of the men, Maurice Robinson, 20. The other man who filed suit is Anthony Flagg, 21...

Bishop Long is an outspoken critic of homosexuality and has been called by the Southern Poverty Law Center “one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement.” He is the author of a book titled “What A Man Wants, What A Woman Needs: The Secret To Successful, Fulfilling Relationships.”

2008: A YEAR ON STEROIDS, Part 2

December 2006: Time's (in)famous "You" Person of

the Year cover. What a difference two years makes!

Random observations, thoughts, and rants on 2008,
Part 2 (of 3)


by Noah


1. PARDONS, PARDONS, WHO'S GETTING PARDONS?

There has been justifiable concern about who so-called President Bush might pardon before he says "My work is done here" and smirks, slithers, and slinks off into the rest of his life of failure. There's even speculation as to whether he might try to pardon himself along with the rest of the sleazoids in his administration. Not much talk about it at all in the MSM, though, and even less talk about the pardons Bush issued for Thanksgiving.

That's right. Although Dubya has been stingier with pardons than any president in memory, he quietly issued several you may not have heard about, among them five issued to people convicted of crimes related to the mid-1980s S&L scandal, including John Smith (if that's his real name), a former Dallas banker; David McCall Jr. from Plano, Texas; Mark Hale of Henderson, Texas, who went for the gold to the tune of $5 million; and one William Hoyle McCright Jr. of Midland, Texas. The last one there just happened to be a McCain donor. Gee, look at all these guys from Texas. What a coincidence!

Of course, the MSM's blanket of secrecy continues to protect the Bush Crime Family. It's like the S&L crimes never happened. No mention of Neil Bush's role, and still no mention of Jeb Bush's default on a $4.5 million "loan" from Broward Federal Savings. Some guys took a fall. Smaller fish, perhaps. Now they get pardons for keeping silent, I suppose. That's the way it works. The Bush Crime Family sure knows how to get its hands on money, especially our money. Still lots of mention about Clinton's seedy pardon of Marc Rich, but these? Not so much.


2. SPEAKING OF MOVING MONEY AROUND: HANK THE GRIFTER

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is pulling off what those bankers who plotted to overthrow FDR back in the '30s wanted to do. Everyone wants a crack at Bernie Madoff for making $50 billion disappear. Why not Hank the Grifter for making who-knows-how-many-times that disappear? (And I mean that as a question. Does anyone have any idea how many billions have vanished down the Grifter's rathole?) He is turning over a major percentage of our GDP to a few cigar-chomping, meth-snorting fat cats. He is the master enabler. It's thievery that any two-bit Middle Eastern or Latin American dictator can only dream about, all being done before our eyes while politicians and media whores call it something else.

I remember when Saddam Hussein was being shocked and awed, he took a couple of trailer trucks to the bank and loaded up the cash and gold. What's the difference? Where'd the "bailout" money go? It was sold to us as money that would go to people looking for loans to purchase homes and cars. In reality, it went to buy up smaller banks, pay bonuses for bankers (over $1.6 billion to date), and pay stockholder dividends. Understand this: They took our tax dollars and redistributed them -- to themselves. Car and home loans? Nope. The new bank mantra is "Just Say NO."

With the S&L scandal, the participants in the scam took out loans from banks which they had no intention of repaying. Investors and depositors be damned. This time they take it from the U.S. Treasury and hand it over to their slimy buddies. Poppy Bush once described the goal as to get more money into the hands of fewer people. Saddam was known to give the contents of his country's treasury and foreign aid to himself, his family, and a small circle of friends. He created a class of the superwealthy. The Bush Crime Family has aimed at the same goal for decades, across generations. Strip away all the "he tried to kill my daddy nonsense," and you're left with this: Saddam was merely a very nasty rival -- they didn't hate Saddam, they envied him. He wasn't an enemy, he was a role model.


3. BUSH'S EXIT INTERVIEWS

When asked what he would miss most about not being (playing) president, El Heinisio replied wistfully that he would most miss riding on Air Force One and having the White House chef at his call. Oh well, maybe missing the opportunity to make the country and the world a better place finishes a close third. With most people on the way out, we'd say, "Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split ya," but in this case it might be nice if the door had some extra snap in its springs. He used to talk about catapulting the propaganda. Maybe there's an idea here.


4. TIME MAGAZINE'S PERSON OF THE YEAR

A few weeks ago, Time's Mark Halperin spoke out from his cuckoo-clock rest home about how some perceived "extreme pro-Obama bias" on the part of the mainstream media had -- shock, horror -- fooled the public into electing Senator "That One." That Halperin witnessed this imaginary bias may, in fact, be the long-sought proof of parallel universes and previously unknown dimensions that top physicists have theorized. However, on this planet, in this dimension, the 2008 election may just be the watershed moment where the public took a lead from the classic '70s movie Network and started to really scream, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," back at the MSM talking heads, jive-ass spinmeisters, and assorted foaming-at-the-mouth, rotating-head right-wing sideshow attractions.

Halperin must be totally beside himself with sputtering rage and frustration at the naming of President-elect Obama as Person of the Year by his obviously biased employer. His own employer! What a betrayal! Hopefully, someone at Time will film Halperin's near convulsions and upload it to YouTube asap.

Note to Mark Halperin: The tide may be moving the other way. You are obsolete, a caricature of the past. The MSM has always spewed little but the propaganda of the neocon artists, memos from the desk of Karl Rove, and the semicoherent mumblings of religious goons like Pat Robertson, who has become a multigazillionaire off of his "nonprofit" organization. Even when the MSM has a dreaded liberal on one of its political chat shows, they make sure to "balance" the token liberal with two to four screaming ditzbrains who start yelling every time the alleged liberal-commie-terrorist sympathizer tries to get a word in edgewise.

It's time to just turn these loons off. Hell, in my parallel universes I'd make them walk the plank off the lip of an active volcano. Now, that would be a reality show! Kudos to Ed Schultz for actually just getting up and walking off in the middle of one show (the execrable Fox and Friends) this year, leaving the shrieking, hooting, jumping-up-and-down, armpit-scratching righty monkeys to throw their monkey poop at each other in their mass confusion. It was a beautiful thing to behold.


5. GOP ELECTION-STEALING: A TICKING TIME BOMB

In all of the discussion of Barack Obama's victory, something has been ignored. It's a time bomb waiting to blow up in our faces on some future Election Day. It's a voting-machine time bomb. Diebold, a company so heinous, it had to change the name of its voting-machine division to Premier, is still in control of a huge percentage of our election tabulating. Diebold whistle-blower Christopher Hood has provided information as to how the Georgia 2002 Senate election was rigged in favor of Saxby Chambliss; more specifically, how he was ordered by Bob Urosevich, the president of Diebold, to secretly install software "patches" in clear violation of state law on voting machines in Democratic-leaning counties.

Stephen Spoonamore, a talented cyber expert who has done much work for our government (and who is a lifelong Republican) has stated publicly that he believes the 2002 Georgia election was rigged. "If you look at the case of Saxby Chmablis, that's ridiculous. The man was not elected. He lost that election by five points. Max Cleland won. They flipped the votes, clear as day." You can watch him say it on YouTube if you like.

Funny how YouTube provides us with more real information now than the so-called news networks. Was Georgia 2002 just a test for Ohio 2004? You decide. A RICO case is in motion in Ohio. Depositions have been taken, and the Georgia secretary of state was told to save everything -- every hard drive, every memory card, every document relating to Georgia's more recent runoff election. Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the case, has said, "Karl Rove has made a career out of rigging elections. Electronic voting machines like those being used in Georgia are his favorite tool."

Now, just last week, the key Rove IT guy, Mike Connell, who began testifying seven weeks ago in an Ohio vote-tampering case, died in a plane crash on a clear, good-weather night. Spoonamore called him "vital to uncovering the truth" about missing White House e-mails and related things, including the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys who held legal principle above Rovian politics. According to Spoonamore, Connell had asked him about ways to "permanently destroy hard drives." Connell also did IT work for the infamous Ohio secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, designing a program for him that enabled him to see the 2004 election results in real time, as they were counted.

Connell's other dubious accomplishments include being computer guy for the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, RNC.org and numerous House committees and building and managing congressional servers and George W. Bush's election websites and communication networks. This includes the nongovernment e-mail systems that Rove used for virtually all his important e-mail communication, much of which is now -- surprise, surprise! -- mysteriously missing. Connell was an extreme Bush loyalist and also a Christian extremist, an anti-choice zealot who, along with his wife, spoke of electing Bush as a mission from God which no law of man should get in the way of. He was doing God's work, after all!

This guy was the man who knew too much. Talk about knowing where the bodies were buried! But since he was forced to testify, he and his wife have been receiving threats, and now he has gone to his great reward, although it's probably not the one he was expecting. His death is a very convenient one, to say the least.

Remember how confident Rove was going into Election Day 2006? Then remember how completely shocked the White House was by the massive Democratic turnout? Even then, there were dozens of suspicious results, the most famous of which was in Katherine Harris's old congressional district in Florida. I guess the Repugs thought they had it all set up. Things would look close again, but they would prevail again and keep their majorities.

Sigh! There's only so much tampering you can do. Just like in November, the only way to beat machine tampering is with massive turnout. One wonders what the election results would be with no tampering! How one-sided could the Obama and congressional victories have been? There were reports of vote-flipping this time in West Virginia and upstate New York, to name two. What happens the next time there is a tight election, an election where vote-flipping in just one state can change who gets in the White House or who gets to be your Senator?

It's a time bomb, and it needs to be addressed and disarmed, now. It threatens democracy itself. The excuse often given for not acting on this matter runs something like this: "Well, the people might lose faith in their electoral system." Either Washington is the last to know, yet again, or they like things just fine the way they are.


6. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

Bush's final looting of the treasury, the Halliburton no-bid deals, the tax cuts for the wealthy, and bailouts to nowhere are all about starving the government while stealing as much as they can. The easiest way to starve out funds for things like education, health care, infrastructure, enforcement of environmental laws, etc. is to just take the money, all under the guise of fiscal conservatism. This is what "conservatism" is about now -- conserving your money for the few at the top, while we buy into media myths like "trickle-down economics."

Your 401(k)? As if an evil worm like Bush even cares. Ten to one he had to ask what a 401(k) was when it came up in September during the market crash. Bush leaves office snickering and smirking, muttering "Let them eat rum cake" under his reeking-of-alcohol breath. The crashing economy is the end result of 30 years of deregulation, destruction of a balanced tax code, and destruction of a balanced tariff mechanism, which built the middle class and led to a prosperity that deprived the upper class of their favorite weapon against the rest of us, fear. To them, prosperity had to go. It was an anathema that stood in the way of greed. Too much was never enough. The needs of the greedy outweighed the needs of the needy.

Dems like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin shouldn't get off the hook either. He says he didn't know it was coming. He didn't see it. "I saw nothing. I see nothing." Drop the Sergeant Schultz act, bozo.


7. FINALLY, AN OPEN LETTER TO ALAN COLMES

Dear Alan,

I hate to think that you actually enjoyed your last job. The money must have been really good, but you were just a sideshow geek to the rest of the people (and I use the word "people" loosely) on the show. You were, at best, a professional patsy, a punching bag for total jerks. Maybe you could go on Dirty Jobs. I used to hope that just once you would go postal on-air, but you always disappointed me.

Then again, conspiracy buffs might notice the timing of the announcement of your leaving, matching up with word that Ann Coultergeist has a broken jaw. If that's what happened, you have redeemed yourself and taken The Man's money at the same time. Not bad!

Yours,
Noah


YESTERDAY IN PART 1: Sarah P and Joe the P, Gov. Spritzer, Keith and Rachel, the Repugs stuck in mid-20th century, and more

TOMORROW IN PART 3: CNN and the illusion of news, piggies everywhere, the Supremes who gave us Pres. Dubya, and more

#

Obama Keeps a Low Profile In Georgia And Louisiana Races-- Possibly Dooming Both Democratic Candidates

Woulda, shoulda, coulda... Palin did and Obama didn't

By wide margins, Americans approve of President-elect Obama and his cabinet choices. Almost 70% approve of his choice of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State and 80% approve of his decision to keep Robert Gates on at the Pentagon.

In the poll, Americans by more than 3-1 say they trust Obama more than Bush to handle the economy. By 58%-33%, they support Obama's promise of a huge spending package to stimulate the economy.

...There's little concern Obama is relying too much on veterans of President Clinton's administration. By nearly 4-1, those polled say the picks will make the new team more effective.

Numbers like that mean he's getting support across the board. Even 40% of Republicans approved of the Clinton choice (as did 89% of Democrats and 69% of independents). In fact, 78% of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling his presidential transition, with only 13% disapproving. A majority of Democrats (94%), independents (79%), and Republicans (57%) all say they approve. By way of comparison 66% approved of Bill Clinton's 1992 transition and 63% approved of Bush's right after he stole the 2000 election.

Still, Obama was unwilling to put any political capital on the line to try to win a veto proof Senate and defeat one of his most die-hard reactionary opponents, Saxby Chambliss, whose entire negative campaign is based on stopping Obama. Polls close at 7pm Eastern Time and short lines so far presage a win for Chambliss. The only way he could have been defeated would have been for Obama to go to Georgia and work it. He chose to stay above the fray, cutting a radio spot-- not even TV!-- and a robocall. And the DSCC sent around e-mails begging us to help by sending money! Screw them!

Polling stations across Georgia reported low to moderate voter turnout. At the Atlanta Public Library on Ponce de Leon Ave., where more than 1,600 people voted in the general election, only 400 people had voted by noon today.

But among those who did bother to get out to the polls, "many voters interviewed today said the balance of power was an important factor in their choice of a candidate."

But how important is this election if Obama is doing approximately the same thing for Jim Martin as he did for a backward, reactionary asshole, Paul Carmouche, running as a Democrat in Louisiana's 4th CD in an election this coming Saturday. Carmouche-- like Don Cazayoux, who was one of only 4 Democrats defeated last month (and unlike Jim Martin) is unlikely to support much of what Obama tried to do to change the direction of the country-- now has a radio ad from Obama, which is expected to appeal to progressives and African-Americans, two groups that have no logical reason to support Carmouche. In fact, Obama is either disingenuous or naive in his statement:

"To change America and to get Louisiana's economy back on track-- I need leaders like Paul Carmouche working with me in Washington. Paul Carmouche is the kind of leader we need in Washington...to make a difference for the people of Northwest Louisiana."

It was just a few weeks ago that enough African American and progressive voters abandoned Cazayoux-- basically cut from the same vile mold as Carmouche-- to throw his seat to a Republican. They had given him a chance and elected him but once he got into Congress he abandoned all pretense of serving working families and threw his lot in with the Republicans. On substantive matters that divided the two parties in the House, Cazayoux voted with the GOP far more frequently than with his fellow Democrats. And the voters back in Baton Rouge noticed and voted for a third party candidate. The only Democrats who voted more frequently with the Republicans than Cazayoux were Nick Lampson (TX), who was also defeated last month, Jim Marshall (GA) and Joe Donnelly (IN). African-Americans in LA-04 don't appear inclined to vote for Carmouche, which is why the DCCC implored Obama to cut the radio spot. Of all the people who took part in early voting, only 19% were African Americans, who make up almost a third of registered voters in the district. Paul Carmouche deserves to lose. Jim Martin doesn't.


UPDATE: POLLS ARE CLOSED IN GEORGIA

Votes are coming in and the Secretary of State's website seems to be getting the results up pretty fast. Tondee's Tavern is a good place to watch for fast interpretations and details. Atlanta Metro will probably come in late though-- that's what happened last time-- and if Martin has any chance of winning, it will be because of unexpectedly large margins in Fulton and Dekalb. So far, comparing early returns to returns from last month don't show any surprises at all (good news for the bad guys).

9:08 PM, Eastern: CNN projects Chambliss

UPDATE: RIGHT WING FANATIC, SENATOR CHAMBERPOT RE-ELECTED IN GEORGIA

Obama supporters didn't turn out in the same kinds of numbers that hysterical right-wingers did. African American participation was down drastically from last month.

Martin appeared to suffer mightily from a lack of African-American turnout, which dropped from 30 percent of early votes four weeks ago to around 20 percent in the runoff.

In Atlanta-based Fulton County, Chambliss was almost even with Martin with half the precincts reporting. Martin defeated him nearly two-to-one in the county in the general election.