He's Obviously Not Mentally Fit-- What Do We Do?

Friday Arnold Schwarzenegger told Empire he won't be signing on for another season of Celebrity Apprentice because the show is drowning in Trump's stench, although he put it more politely. "I learned a lot, I had a great time, it was a really great opportunity. But under the circumstances I don't want to do it again... [The loss of advertisers] is not about the show, because everyone I ran into came up to me and said 'I love the show... but I turned it off because as soon as I read Trump's name I'm outta there!'... When people found out that Trump was still involved as executive producer and was still receiving money from the show, then half the people [started] boycotting it... With Trump being involved in the show people have a bad taste and don't want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show. It's a very divisive period now and I think this show got caught up in all that division."

Early this morning, strung out on Adderall, the psychopath in the White House tweeted "Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show."

Trump was up at 5AM tweeting his bizarre attacks on President Obama, but he grabbed a minute to babble his nonsense about Schwarzenegger. People should be wondering why Paul Ryan has bottled up Ted Lieu's legislation requiring that a psychiatrist be available at the White House. After all, Lieu told Amy Goodman last week that "in 1928, Congress passed a law requiring that doctors be at the White House, because Congress concluded that presidents are human beings, and like all human beings, we have our own frailties. Because of how people viewed mental health at the time, there was no psychiatrist or psychologist that was required. In the 21st century, we know that mental health is just as important as physical health, so it seemed to make sense that the White House should also have a psychiatrist or a psychologist available. I am not the first to bring this up. Republican Chairman Jason Chaffetz told the Washington Post earlier this year that he thought the president should have an independent mental health exam. And I also know that in 2015 the National Defense Authorization Act, which was supported by over 300 members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, required incoming military recruits to get a mental health exam. Keep in mind, the president is also the commander-in-chief of our armed forces, and he can launch 4,000 nuclear weapons in a matter of minutes. So that’s what we’re looking at... [T]he demands of the presidency have increased significantly, especially since the advent of nuclear weapons, and the president should have the best treatment available. In terms of this bill, we’re trying to see if this is the best way to go about it. Clearly, to me, when you have a president that lies pathologically, that believes in alternative facts, it suggests to me there is a problem. I don’t know the extent of that problem. I don’t know what the best solution is. But I do think that this issue should be raised. And so I raised the issue. It is a bipartisan issue. And we’re trying to get more information and to see what’s a good next step."

A few days later David Cay Johnson was on Democracy Now too, saying that Trump lies as easily as you and I breathe. He is, by becoming president of the United States, the number one con artist in the history of the world. He has spent his entire adult life deeply in the embrace of violent felons, Russian mobsters, American mobsters, assorted swindlers and crooks. He has cheated his own workers out of their pay. He has cheated small business people out of their fees. He has swindled investors in properties that were branded with the Trump name. And so, it’s absolutely critical to understand that you can’t rely on anything that Donald Trump says as president of the United States, but especially when he knows that he’s got stuff in his closet to hide."

In this morning's NY Times, Maggie Haberman tried getting into what hiding all that stuff-- less and less successfully-- is doing to Trump's psyche.

President Trump was still upbeat Wednesday night, as he settled into dinner in the White House residence with his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, some 24 hours after giving the most consequential speech of his brief presidency.

But not long afterward, the glow from Mr. Trump’s best day in office began to fade with the breaking news that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had met with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Sessions failed to mention those conversations in his Senate confirmation hearing, or, according to presidential advisers, to tell Mr. Trump at all.

The story overshadowed Mr. Trump’s visit the next day to the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, a classic presidential opportunity to highlight his role as commander in chief. And by the time he got back to the White House on Thursday night, the president let his frustration show.

In a statement repeating a familiar critique that Democrats were on a “witch hunt” over the administration’s ties with Russia, Mr. Trump offered a passing but pointed public jab at how Mr. Sessions had handled the matter. “He could have stated his response more accurately,” Mr. Trump said.

For Mr. Trump, it was the latest unforeseen obstacle preventing him from gaining traction after a historically bumpy first month in office that has been marked by massive national protests, the dismissal of his national security adviser, and historically low approval ratings.

The president was irritated that Mr. Sessions did not more carefully answer the questions he was asked under oath, according to people who spoke with him. His larger frustration, however, was not with Mr. Sessions, but with whoever revealed the meetings to reporters for the Washington Post.

Mr. Trump, according to his advisers inside and outside of the White House, has felt besieged by what he regards as a mostly hostile bureaucracy, consisting in part of Democrats and people who opposed his election who are now undermining his presidency with leaks. He believes that they are behind the stories about confusion and dysfunction in his administration and, most of all, that they have made his relationship with Russia a recurring issue.

“That is the real story,” said Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, when asked for comment on how the White House views the constant string of stories based on what they have called leaks. Several of those stories have raised questions about ties between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials.

Allies of Mr. Trump say his sense of being surrounded by hostile forces will be relieved once his own appointments fill the thousands of political jobs that have not yet been filled. But people close to Mr. Trump concede that the White House’s sluggish hiring process, in which insufficient work was done to tap people for key deputy roles at major agencies during the transition process, is a large part of the problem.

...Trump is not one to spare the blame when he has hit difficult patches in the past, and his rebuke of Mr. Sessions reflected that. So did his public jab at his press secretary, Sean Spicer, for his attempt to trace leaks from his communications staff members by examining their cellphones. Mr. Trump told Fox News that he personally would have done that type of search “differently.”

But the stories related to Russia are of a different order of magnitude.

During the transition he publicly called out the intelligence community for being behind the leaks and at one point, he compared them to smears conducted by the Nazis in the 1940s. More recently, he has blamed Democrats bitter over the defeat of Hillary Clinton.

But while Mr. Trump puts the blame on leakers for his administration’s rough start, it has not helped that the White House has been distracted by internecine skirmishes, partly dictated by lingering tensions between long-serving advisers and aides to the Republican National Committee, who came to work for the president after he tapped the committee’s chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff.

In the midst of it, Mr. Trump, who has a famously short attention span, has at times had trouble staying on course. He is pondering a broader response to the Russia issue, people close to him say, but he is so far stymied by opponents he can’t see, but who have clearly knocked him off track.

On Friday, Mr. Trump tried to go back on the offensive with two Twitter messages, one about Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and the other about Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and their meetings with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Instead of the intemperate messages that Mr. Trump has often deployed, he had help from the White House social media team in crafting the Twitter posts. But in doing it, he ended the week by breathing more oxygen into the Russia issue.

Such daily skirmishes might satisfy the need to fight back, but Republicans who want him to succeed caution that Mr. Trump’s fate as president will lie in his actual accomplishments.

“If they get some legislative successes, they’ll be fine,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, “and if they don’t, that’s when the real trouble begins.”

So what now? Is there any way to get out from under this without triggering a constitutional crisis on the level not seen since the Civil War? Is the Deep State trying to undermine Trump for their own reasons? Can the country muddle through this for 4 years?

Would The Republicans Really Run Presidential Candidates Who Aren't Natural Born Citizens?

The right-wing activists who vote in the CPAC saw poll-- there were around 3,000 of them this year-- included enough libertarian and Paul family fan boys to give Rand Paul the win (again). He came away with 25.7%. No one is especially impressed-- and no one thinks it means much of anything in terms of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Second place was more interesting-- Koch puppet and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker came in with 21.4%. Third place went to Ted Cruz-- CPAC is his kind of crowd and he should have done a lot better than the 11.5% he took. But, then again, some Republicans don't consider Cruz constitutionally eligible to be president. Not Cruz, not Marco Rubio (who took a sad 3.7%) and not Bobby Jindal, who couldn't even manage to round up 1% of the vote.

About a month ago one of the crazy birthers, Tracy A. Fair, seems to have ended her endless whining about Obama being a foreigner and ineligible to be president and turned it into a new crusade against Cruz, Jindal and Rubio. She sent petition to the Supreme Court February 4 conceding that Obama's eligibility is now moot and instead wants to litigate whether or not probably Republican Party contenders Cruz, Jindal and Rubio are "natural born citizens."

Fair: "Rubio and Jindal were born in the United States to parents who were not United States citizens at the time of their respective births. Ted Cruz was born in Canada to parents only one of whom (his mother) was a United States citizen. Under the law existing at the time of their birth, each became a 'citizen' of the United States at birth. Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal by the 14th Amendment, Ted Cruz by statute."

Birthers base their claims on Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution which reads "No person except a natural born Citizen . . ., shall be eligible to the Office of President" and Fair insists: "That phrase 'natural born Citizen' has yet to be defined by the Supreme Court. So are they "natural born Citizens" eligible to be President? I think the People deserve to know the answer to that question before the next Presidential Campaign starts in earnest... My efforts were never about Mr. Obama as a person or a politician. Instead, my efforts were about insuring that the Constitution was respected and enforced by those charged with those duties. Where a phrase in the Constitution-- such as 'natural born Citizen'-- is undefined, it is the duty of the Supreme Court to interpret such a phrase. As the Supreme Court itself said in the 1922 case of Fairchild v. Hughes, I have: 'the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law.' By repeatedly refusing to 'say what the law is' regarding 'natural born Citizen', the Supreme Court would abolish the rule of law and replace it with the rule of their whim and caprice to whatever political ends that super-legislature may possess."

By any reasonable and widely accepted definition Jindal and Rubio are certainly natural born citizens-- even if some fringe teabaggers would describe them as "anchor babies." Ted Cruz is another case and, of course, he takes this very seriously. In 2013 he finally-- at 43-- renounced his Canadian citizenship. Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger fanboys wanted to change the law to allow Schwarzenegger-- who, after all did kill The Predator-- to run for president. A movie industry p.r. firm got this placed in the New York Post at the same time Ted Cruz was renouncing his Canadian citizenship:

Action star and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been lobbying for support to change the law to allow him to run for president in 2016, Page Six has exclusively learned.

We’re told Ahnold has been openly talking about his political ambitions while in New York to promote his new movie with Sylvester Stallone, Escape Plan.

One source said: “Schwarzenegger has been talking openly about working on getting the constitutional rules changed so he can run for president in 2016. He is ready to file legal paperwork to challenge the rules.”

Arnie was born in Austria, and the US Constitution prevents foreign-born citizens from holding the nation’s top job. Any amendment to the Constitution must be approved by two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate.

But Arnold, who became a US citizen in 1983, still could mount a legal challenge. In 2010, he appeared on the Tonight Show, and was asked by Jay Leno if he would make a White House run if the law were changed.

Schwarzenegger replied, “Without any doubt.” With America becoming more diverse, it is not clear what would happen if Arnie or any other foreign-born naturalized citizen decided to run.

Columbia University Law School professor Michael Dorf, an expert in constitutional law, said about the Governator’s case in 2007, “The law is very clear, but it’s not 100 percent clear that the courts would enforce that law rather than leave it to the political process.”

While Arnold’s rep didn’t respond to us, even Mayor Mike Bloomberg has spoken playfully about forming a presidential ticket with Schwarzenegger.

“There would be a fight to see who would be the presidential candidate and who would be the vice presidential candidate,” Bloomberg quipped a few years back. “He would want to arm-wrestle for the top spot; I would want to check the Constitution.”

If it does happen, an arm wrestle between Arnold and fellow 2016 contender Hillary Clinton would be a spectacle, although our bets are on Hillary.

Cruz, who was born and raised in Canada to a virulently anti-American Cuban fascist dad and an American mother, seems to have snowed U.S. conventional wisdom into thinking the Constitution doesn't apply to him. At least those 11.5% of CPAC straw vote participants don't mind all that constitutional stuff.

Is Schwarzenegger A Stalking Horse For Ted Cruz? Or Does He Really Think He Can Run For President (Of The United States)?

The celebrity gossip section of the NY Post has floated a silly story about Arnold Swarzenegger, a Republican actor who managed to become governor of California when the state wasn't paying any attention, may run for president in 2016. And, no, this is neither from The Onion nor from Andy Borowitz. It could be from a desperate movie p.r. firm though.

Action star and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been lobbying for support to change the law to allow him to run for president in 2016, Page Six has exclusively learned.

We’re told Ahnold has been openly talking about his political ambitions while in New York to promote his new movie with Sylvester Stallone, Escape Plan.

One source said: “Schwarzenegger has been talking openly about working on getting the constitutional rules changed so he can run for president in 2016. He is ready to file legal paperwork to challenge the rules.”

Arnie was born in Austria, and the US Constitution prevents foreign-born citizens from holding the nation’s top job. Any amendment to the Constitution must be approved by two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate.

But Arnold, who became a US citizen in 1983, still could mount a legal challenge. In 2010, he appeared on the Tonight Show, and was asked by Jay Leno if he would make a White House run if the law were changed.

Schwarzenegger replied, “Without any doubt.” With America becoming more diverse, it is not clear what would happen if Arnie or any other foreign-born naturalized citizen decided to run.

Columbia University Law School professor Michael Dorf, an expert in constitutional law, said about the Governator’s case in 2007, “The law is very clear, but it’s not 100 percent clear that the courts would enforce that law rather than leave it to the political process.”

While Arnold’s rep didn’t respond to us, even Mayor Mike Bloomberg has spoken playfully about forming a presidential ticket with Schwarzenegger.

“There would be a fight to see who would be the presidential candidate and who would be the vice presidential candidate,” Bloomberg quipped a few years back. “He would want to arm-wrestle for the top spot; I would want to check the Constitution.”

If it does happen, an arm wrestle between Arnold and fellow 2016 contender Hillary Clinton would be a spectacle, although our bets are on Hillary.

Ted Cruz, who was born and raised in Canada to a virulently anti-American Cuban fascist dad and an American mother, seems to have snowed U.S. conventional wisdom into thinking the Constitution doesn't apply to him. And what about Chris Christie? He was born in Newark and is currently using foolish Democrats in New Jersey as a prop for his presidential run:

Will The Cavemen Win In Indiana Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is primary day in North Carolina and concern is great that the Republicans will manage to pass their hate-filled Amendment One. Aside from that, Blue America is most concerned with the election in the western part of the state where two progressives, Cecil Bothwell (NC-11) and state Rep. Patsy Keever (NC-10) face off against two bigoted conservatives recruited against them by DCCC's chairman Steve Israel, respectively, Hayden Rogers and Terry Bellamy. Blue America has endorsed both Bothwell and Keever and late polling shows both of them with leads although each is being heavily outspent with DC lobbyist money pouring into North Carolina at the direction of Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel and their Blue Dog caucus. But there's another state going to the polls tomorrow as well, Indiana. And there the focus is on the Republican primary for the Senate seat Richard Lugar has held since... believe it or not, 1976!

The dynamics of the race are such that the populist right is trying to knock off Lugar for being "too mainstream." (By way of comparison, his crucial vote ProgressivePunch lifetime score is 7.11-- neatly between Alabama reactionary Richard Shelby's 7.29 and Kentucky teabagger Rand Paul's 7.06; in the current session, Lugar has moved way right and his score is 3.49, more extreme right than Mike Lee, David Vitter, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss or Pat Roberts.) They're running a far right teabagger against him, Richard Mourdock, Indiana's deranged Treasurer. The latest polling has Mourdock beating Lugar by 10-- 48-38%. The radical right's gripe with Lugar, aside from having been in office forever, is that voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court and that he favors the START Treaty, the DREAM Act and a rational approach to immigration and gun control. In yesterday's Washington Post Dana Milbank put the race in near apocalyptic terms, claiming tomorrow's voters will be choosing between party and country! Milbank wants to talk about Lugar's record in foreign policy but the only way to talk about the Indiana Republican primary is through the lens of Chris Moody's two latest books, The Republican Brain and The Republican War On Science.

On one side is a man who has made it his life’s work to build a cross-aisle consensus for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states. On the other side is a man who mocks his opponent for such efforts and who talks more about fighting Democrats than fighting America’s enemies.

For years Dick Lugar has been the leading Senate Republican on foreign policy, shaping post-Cold War strategy, securing sanctions to end South African apartheid and bringing democracy to the Philippines, among other things. His signature achievement, drafted with Democrat Sam Nunn, was the 1992 Nunn-Lugar Act, which has disarmed thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads once aimed at the United States.

Enter Richard Mourdock, a tea party hothead attempting to defeat Lugar in the GOP primary. A cornerstone of his effort to oust Lugar is the six-term senator’s bad habit of bipartisanship-- never mind that Lugar’s bipartisanship was in the service of protecting millions of Americans from nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism.

See that Mourdock ad up top. It isn't untrue... it's just misleading. Even Republican lizard brains might stop and think if they knew that the bill President Obama was talking about when he said he worked with Dick Lugar was a bill to, in Obama's own words, conveniently cut off by the Mourlocks, "pass a law that will secure and destroy some of the world’s deadliest, unguarded weapons" [and] "to help lock down loose nuclear weapons.” Mourdock's whole campaign is based on the right-wing premise that "the time for being collegial is past. It's time for confrontation." The GOP lizard brains like that. It's the kind of thinking that led to the Civil War... and that's just where the new GOP, basically a Confederate Party with reactionary opportunists like Mourdock, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum and Rick Snyder in tow, would like to lead the country. "There is a great deal to dislike in Mourdock’s message," explains Milbank, "but the most egregious part is his underlying contention that Lugar should be punished for cooperating with the other party-- even though such cooperation protects the country against unimaginable destruction. That’s not just wrong; it’s unpatriotic."

As Mourdock piles up support from the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Grover Norquist, Lugar is still clinging to the notion that substance matters; this week, his office issued a news release titled “Lugar Announces Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction through Nunn-Lugar.”

Some Democrats hope that Mourdock beats Lugar because it would increase the likelihood that Democrat Joe Donnelly will win the seat in November.

But Donnelly is hardly a Democrat. An extreme right-wing Blue Dog, Donnelly is basically running for Senate in the hope that Mourdock beats Lugar and independent and even mainstream Republican voters decide they'd rather vote for a conservative Democrat than a deranged neo-fascist sociopath. Donnelly is an anti-gay, anti-Choice, anti-healthcare fanatic who, in the current session, has voted far more frequently with Boehner and Cantor than with the Democrats. His ProgressivePunch crucial votes score is a dismal 26.07, one of the half dozen most GOP-supporting Democrats. If he wins, Miss McConnell will be have more to be happy about than anyone who cares about passing progressive legislation.

Yesterday former Republican hero and governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger penned an OpEd for the L.A. Times that GOP lizard brains will reject out-of-hand. It's a shame Indiana primary voters won't have an opportunity to read it before they vote tomorrow. Schwarzenegger is distraught by the GOP's "recent loss of two up-and-coming Republicans: San Diego mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher, currently a state assemblyman, and former assemblyman and current Congressional candidate Anthony Adams, both of whom left the party to become independents. On the one hand, I respect their standing up for principle. On the other, I hate to see them go."

I'm sure they would have preferred to remain Republicans, but in the current climate, the extreme right wing of the party is targeting anyone who doesn't meet its strict criteria. Its new and narrow litmus test for party membership doesn't allow compromise.

I bumped up against that rigidity many times as governor. Not surprisingly, the party wasn't always too happy with me. But I had taken an oath to serve the people, not my party. Some advisors whose opinions I respect urged me to consider leaving the party and instead identify myself as a "decline to state" voter. But I'm too stubborn to leave a party I believe in.

...We need to remind the Republicans who want to enforce ideological purity that if they succeed, they will undo Reagan's work to create an inclusive party that could fit many different views.

An inclusive party would welcome the party's most conservative activists right alongside its most liberal activists. There is room for those whose views, I think, make them sound like cavemen. And there is also room for us in the center, with views the traditionalists probably think make us sound like progressive softies. What's important is our shared belief in the broad Republican principles of free enterprise and small government. If we continue to fight one another without being willing to compromise, we will keep losing to big-government advocates.

We need to welcome young leaders into the party and invite them to participate in a robust debate. Republicans love the free market, so it should seem like a no-brainer that the more views we have at the table, the better our final product will be.

To succeed, Republicans need to embrace true Reaganism, and that means embracing the true Reagan, a brave and independent leader who believed in solutions and compromise.

As governor, Reagan was never afraid to buck his party. He raised taxes when he saw no other way to get California out of the red, and he created the California Environmental Protection Agency because, as strongly as he believed in eliminating unnecessary government regulation, he also saw wisdom in protecting our natural resources.

As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary. In 1983, he doubled the gas tax to pay for highway infrastructure improvements.

Today, that would be enough for some of the ideological enforcers to start looking for a "real" conservative to challenge him in a primary.

Some Republicans today aren't even willing to have conversations about protecting the environment, investing in the infrastructure America needs or improving healthcare. By holding their fingers in their ears when those topics arise, these Republicans aren't just denying themselves a seat at the table; in a state such as California, they also deny a seat to every other Republican.

The GOP's history is filled with leaders who rejected ideology in favor of seeking solutions.

Teddy Roosevelt is still a hero among environmentalists for his conservationist policies. Dwight Eisenhower believed in the value of investing in infrastructure, and we can thank him for our highway system. Nixon, who originally attracted me to the party, nearly passed universal healthcare. He also created the national Environmental Protection Agency, which some modern Republicans want to close down.

Being a Republican used to mean finding solutions for the American people that worked for everyone. It used to mean having big ideas that moved the country forward.

It can mean that again, but big ideas don't often come from small tents.

It's time to stop thinking of the Republican Party as an exclusive club where your ideological card is checked at the door, and start thinking about how we can attract more solution-based leaders like Nathan Fletcher and Anthony Adams.

Joe Schwarz Running Against Walberg... But As A Fake "Democrat" This Time?

Republicans Joe Scwarz & John McCain, Steve Israel's kind of guys

Just over a month ago we warned that the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic congressional elite-- no less a part of Washington's toxic Conservative Consensus than the Inside-the-Beltway Republican elite-- was in the process of recruiting another GOP retread to run as a "Democratic" for a Michigan House seat. Last night-- just before Pennsylvania Democrats were getting ready to line up to deal the corrupt party Machine a severe blow by taking out one of their most despicable cronies, Tim Holden, Schwarz almost announced he is now some kind of a Democrat. Schwarz addressed the Eaton County Democratic Party at the Charlotte Library. The 74 year old Schwarz, hoping to build excitement, said he'll make a formal announcement later in the week.

The DCCC chair, "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, is behind the bizarre recruitment and Schwarz isn't the only Republican trying to pass himself off as a Democrat this cycle. Wealthy rich kid Patrick Murphy is a lifelong Republican who has contributed campaign funds to Mitt Romney. But now he's saying whatever it takes to sound like a Democrat. The DCCC endorsed him today. The last time this part of Florida was treated to this kind of a spectacle it was when Rahm Emanuel-- Israel's mentor-- passed off Republican Tim Mahoney as a Democrat. The DCCC managed to get Mahoney into Congress, where he proceeded to vote with the GOP on everything important, get into a sex scandal and then lose the seat to a wingnut. So what's Israel thinking? That was fun, let's do it again?

As Eclectablog said Sunday, "It’s a sad statement about the state of the Michigan Democratic Party that they have sunk to recruiting Republicans to run on their behalf. There are probably zero important votes that Schwartz would vote differently than Walberg so I can’t think of a single reason to support him... this will make us the laughing stock of the entire country."

The actual Democratic candidate in the district is Kurt Haskell, a pro-union attorney from Pinconning, who plans to beat the DCCC shill in a Democratic primary. Now watch Steny Hoyer and Steve Israel and their band of cutthroats move into action to try to "clear the field" for the Republican.

Class War, California's Prop 23 And The Education Of Arnold Schwarzenegger

A few weeks ago we took a look at the preview of Inside Job, the riveting new film by Charles Ferguson which opens Friday in NYC and in L.A. the following week. It concentrates on the financial meltdown-- and makes the case very convincingly, that it was an inside job-- here in the U.S. But the film starts in pristine, scenic Iceland and may startle some viewers by drawing the straight line between greed-driven sociopaths in the financial sector destroying the environment for the sake of fatter bonus packages. One person who wouldn't be startled by that, at least not now, a few days short of his 7th anniversary of being elected governor of California, is Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. A few days ago Schwarzenegger gave what was probably the most cogent and profound speech of his political career. In the video below Keith Olbermann put it into context. Believe me, it's worth listening to:



As Olbermann explains, "the Citizens United ruling, unleashing private groups to pour millions of dollars into political campaigns has benefited Republicans by a ratio of six to one. The outpouring of money leading to last night's extraordinary outpouring from the Republican governor of California, talking about a political campaign now underway there to, in essence, take over the state with cash in order to undo the legislation he signed 4 years ago to reduce carbon emissions there by 30% by the year 2020..." Arnold:

Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black, oil hearts and spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? This is like Eva Braun writing a kosher cookbook... I want to talk about the corruption of the democratic process and about forces willing to sabotage the country's economic future for private gain. I want to talk about the Texas oil interests that have descended upon California to overturn a California environmental law, and then, as soon as they've done their dirty work thanks to millions of dollars of scare-tactic advertising, they intend, in the words of their own spokesperson, to fold up their tents and go home... Oil companies like Valero and Tesero and Frontier and Koch Industries are blatantly trying to manipulate the will of the people and the public good... The motivate is... self-serving greed.

Well, right now, polls show self-serving greed-- well financed self-serving greed-- is all tied up with the public interest. Are the public morons? Judge for yourself.

California voters believe global warming is a significant issue and are inclined to trust scientific views on the subject, but they remain closely divided on a November ballot measure that would suspend the state's global warming statute, according to a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll.

California’s global warming law, passed in 2006, is aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions by power plants, factories and vehicles.

The ballot initiative, Proposition 23, would delay implementation of the law until California unemployment drops to 5.5% and stays at that level for a year. Unemployment is now over 12%, and a sustained level at or below 5.5% has rarely been achieved, so environmental advocates argue that the initiative would in effect put the law on indefinite hold.

More than two-thirds of likely voters in the survey said that global warming is a “very important” or “somewhat important” issue to them. And more than four in 10  likely voters said they have “complete” or “a lot” of trust in what scientists say on the subject, with more than two in 10 saying they have a “moderate” amount of trust.

On the ballot measure itself, the survey showed that about one-fifth of likely voters had not yet taken a position. Forty percent favor the initiative and 38% oppose it, essentially a dead heat.

And Big Business, protected by an out-of-whack reactionary Supreme Court, specifically designed to represent corporate interests, has all the money they need to persuade voters-- otherwise occupied with their own difficult struggles-- that whatever serves their bottom lines in truth, even when it is clearly anti-truth.

Framing Prop 23 as the "California Jobs Initiative" is a clever bait-and-switch by out of state oil tycoons like David Koch to halt any and all efforts at the state level to address the climate crisis and save California's already slumping economy.

Voters in California-- and every other state-- need to realize that failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions risks destroying millions of jobs and grinding California's economy to a halt. The effects of climate change need to be thought of as a "negative stimulus" to the economy, leading to reduced profitability, decreased investment, job loss, and falling wages... [T]here are no jobs on a dead planet.

There's Only One Answer To Destructive Oily Politics-- And Democratic Congressional Candidates Are Speaking Up

While David Diapers Vitter runs around coastal Louisiana like one of Sue Lowden's chickens without a head, pleading with Lousianans who see their livelihoods going up in smoke because of his bought-and-paid-for ($766,535 in bribes) "Drill, Baby, Drill" posture to not turn him out of office, he's increasingly alone in his slavish pro-Big Oil stance. The Republican Governor of California, who has always been a Drill, Baby, Drill backer, has now backed away. "You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, 'Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?'" he said at a news conference near Sacramento. Vitter is still chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill" and I'm waiting to hear him agree, out loud, with Rush Limbaugh, that Obama caused the catastrophe... and on purpose.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, citing the damage caused to the environment by the massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast, said Monday he is yanking from his state budget plan proposed new drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara.

The governor had been a proponent of the Tranquillon Ridge project, which he'd said could generate $140 million for the upcoming budget year to help prevent cutbacks in state parks. Despite the governor's support, the project has stalled amid opposition from lawmakers and the state Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over such oil leases.

Schwarzenegger said Monday he will not include the project in his revised budget plan, to be unveiled  May 14. He said the environmental risk is too great.

Schwarzenegger's announcement means there'll be no new drilling off California's coastline any time soon. Obama should do the same thing, and overturn the Dick Cheney oil policies that brought such lavish bribes into GOP coffers since 2000. Every environmental group in the country is demanding a moratorium and telling John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to stick their "compromise" up their heavily-bribed asses.

As the environmental threat of the disaster grows by the day, green groups have become more explicit in demanding that any drilling provisions be removed from the bill. 

“Expanding exploration and drilling into previously protected and remote areas is unacceptable when it is clear that we are not capable of responding to oil spills in a timely manner,” several dozen groups wrote senators on Monday. 

“Provisions creating new incentives (such as state revenue sharing) or reduced safeguards for expanded offshore drilling are simply not acceptable.”

The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, National Audubon Society and others signed the letter.

Environmental advocates hope the oil crisis in the Gulf will lead lawmakers to provide stronger incentives for renewable energy and conservation programs to reduce the importance of fossil fuels and shift climate legislation that had been on a rightward track back to the left. 

Yesterday the two most progressive Democratic congressional challengers in California, Marcy Winograd and Bill Hedrick came out firmly against drilling off California's coast. Hedrick pointed out that his corrupt opponent has been clamoring for more drilling off Orange County's pristine beaches.

Said Calvert, author of the MORE Act that would allow drilling up to the beach “While (President Obama’s) plan opens up areas along the east coast and northern Alaska, it does not call for any exploration off the coast of California where ample oil and natural gas resources exist for development.”

Coastal Californians, indeed, I believe all Californians, value our state’s singular natural beauty. I will fight to preserve our coast and beaches, and I will NEVER support expansion of offshore drilling in California’s waters.

An ecological disaster of unprecedented scope is today striking the Gulf Coast. Oil from the explosion and blowout of the BP rig Deepwater Horizon will devastate the environmentally fragile region, perhaps for decades.

And oil company cheerleaders like Ken Calvert who have staked their careers on slogans such as “Drill, baby, drill,” are now seeing the consequences of their reckless policy and empty rhetoric. If Calvert has his way, California will be opened to the same type of drilling that is set to devastate the Gulf.

One explosion, blowout, or serious spill can cause decades of economic and environmental damage.  There is no such thing as a minor oil spill. It is shocking that our representative in Congress is the foremost proponent of a bill that would dangerously risk our future. 

When elected to Congress, I will support a real MORE Act-- more accountability for oil companies; more research dollars for alternative fuels, and more prosecution of environmental polluters like British Petroleum.

Marcy Winograd, fighting a tough battle against Blue Dog and shameless corporate shill Jane Harman, applauded President Obama's decision to put new off-shore oil leases on hold for now. She said, "May this be a wake-up call to Washington. The price of expanded coastal oil drilling comes at a terrible ecological price."

In an April 2nd statement responding to Obama’s decision to open new areas to drilling, Winograd said, “Our coast, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, is too precious to sacrifice for oil company profits and short-lived energy gains. We need a long-term vision for sustainability.”
Winograd authored the resolution that put the California Democratic Party on record opposing new off-shore and on-shore oil drilling off the California coast. Says Winograd, “The danger of off-shore oil drilling far outweighs the little oil that is harvested from these leases."

And it isn't just California Democrats putting their feet down on this. Natalie Mosher is running against one of the architects of the Republicans' "Drill, Baby, Drill" strategy. Thaddeus McCotter from a suburban district outside of Detroit. There is a very clear difference between Mosher's environmentally-friendly stand and McCotter's shilling for the Big Oil companies that have been so generous to his political career. "There are big differences in this race, but this is one that is crystal clear. Thaddeus McCotter may be able to look at himself in the mirror after choosing the side of Big Oil over the people-- but unfortunately for us, this time it has cost us more than dollars … it has cost us the heartbreak of damaging one of America’s natural treasures, our Gulf Coast & risking the livelihoods of those who depend on its beauty and bounty to earn a living."

The oil spill just off the coast of Louisiana is nothing short of a catastrophe and now threatens Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Entire industries are held hostage by an ever growing oil slick. Hard working Americans whose lives depend on the sea risk losing their jobs, and we all may see increased costs at the dinner table. While I trust that BP is working overtime to stop oil from gushing into our pristine waters of the Gulf, we cannot forget who favors expanding this type of drilling: Thaddeus McCotter.
 
In fact, McCotter even put his unflinching support of reckless offshore drilling into writing when he joined Newt Gingrich and other extremist Republicans in supporting the offshore drilling bill. And while I believe domestic drilling should be a part of our long-term energy strategy in America, reckless offshore drilling efforts need more precautions and oversight to prevent this from ever happening again. Just imagine the horror of a spill like this in our own Great Lakes.

If I were in Congress today, I would introduce legislation that put a moratorium on all new offshore drilling rigs until full planning and contingencies can be afforded to every rig off our coastlines. I’d also demand an immediate review of every offshore rig and their contingency plans in the event another spill occurs.

Late night comedians may think the BP catastrophe is worth joking about but most Florida politicians are freaking out as the oily slick gets closer and closer to that state's tourist and fishing industries, threatening to bankrupt an already tottering economy. Most-- but not all. Some hard-right corporate shills are sticking with Big Oil on this one.

The political rallying cry is no longer drill, baby, drill. It's spill, baby, spill.
Faster than oil slicks spreading on water, Florida's top politicians have spent the past few days jockeying for media attention, performing flyovers of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico and decrying the impact of the calamity on the Sunshine State.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the U.S. Senate as an independent, severed all ties to his previous statements extolling the virtues of oil drilling as a way to lower gas prices as long as it was done cleanly and safely. On Monday, he declared that any talk of drilling off Florida's coast should "cease and desist."

Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum, running for governor, traveled to Mobile, Ala., on Sunday to meet with other attorneys general to discuss legal steps necessary to lay blame for the massive oil leak.

And Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, also running for governor, headed to Pensacola on Monday for a briefing on the oil spill by emergency operations officials and recommendations of ways the state can better respond.

"Those proposals need to be totally off the table forevermore," Sink said of new drilling plans.
She called on the federal government to push BP PLC to create an immediate cash fund for local governments and small businesses and urged businesses to prepare their records to submit damage claims... U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, said she was disappointed she didn't get the entire Florida congressional delegation to sign a letter to President Barack Obama opposing oil drilling in the wake of the crisis.

In Tallahassee, Democratic candidate for agriculture commissioner Scott Maddox used the issue to take aim at his opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam.

"I think it's astounding that four days after the explosion, Adam Putnam was reaffirming his position in favor of offshore and near-shore oil drilling," Maddox said, asking all candidates for the Florida Cabinet to sign a pledge to oppose oil drilling off the coast.

Putnam, who had previously said he was "generally supportive of opening those areas'' to drilling, responded by saying he is "deeply concerned about the economic and ecological damage'' and accused Maddox of "complete ignorance of the issues in this race."

The two furthest right Florida politicians who give lip-service about being within the mainstream, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are both out there demanding more off-shore drilling. They're both certifiable crackpots. And the only member of Congress from a state starting with "F" who is still backing continued drilling off the state's fragile coastline is lunatic fringe John Mica. Everyone thought he voted for the "Drill, Baby, Drill" thing because of the lunatic fringe thing, but... it turns out his brother is a sleazy lobbyist for Big Oil. No conflict, he assures us.

As Arnold’s Political Career Dies, How Many Californians Will He And DiFi Sacrifice To His Three Big Lies?

-by Dr Kirk Murphy

As Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed political career flames out, he's demanding California sacrifice thousands of human lives for his Three Big Lies. Arnold's First Big Lie was the one he used to win office in 2003: he used all his celebrity star power to promise voters he could slash CA's revenues by $4 billion and everything would be great. In the real world, Arnold's cut did exactly what CA's budget analyst predicted: starve the state budget and grow deficits. Over the next years, the annual loss from Arnold's First Big Lie grew to $6 Billion. With the state's deficit now swollen to $24 billion (thanks to Prop 13 and Arnold's First Big Lie), in the May 19 California voters overwhelmingly rejected Arnold's special election, rejecting his stealth attempt to further destroy California's public sector. Arnold's Second Big Lie pretends that when CA voters refused the Rethugs' plan to smash public services for the future, they actually wanted to slash those services. Before that election, Arnold vetoed the Legislature's budget: a budget that partly restored the revenue cuts the Rethugs created to destroy public services. Arnold's Third Big Lie is to pretend he never vetoed non-lethal budget solutions, and to pretend the only solution for thirty years of the Rethugs' war on California's government is Shock Doctrine.

With a personal net worth somewhere between $100 and $800 million, Arnold's demanding the rest of us allow him to sacrifice thousands of Califonians' lives. Yep, when it comes to Grover Norquist's Chub Club For Growth, movie-hero Arnold shows his inner girly-man: he'd rather kill off sick people and seniors than stand up and fight. How many Californians will this real-life coward sacrifice to fan the embers of his dying career?

On Thursday a panel of California's legislators heard from one of Arnold's intended victims:

[T]hey heard from a woman named Lynnea Garbutt who has lived with AIDS all of her 24 years.

She has survived with the help of a state program that provides the expensive antiviral drugs she takes. Now, with that program facing elimination, she pleaded with lawmakers to save it -- and her life.

"If these cuts take place, you're not just cutting money from the program -- you're cutting my life," she told the panel, her voice shaking and tears falling. "I choose to live. Please don't make me die. My choice is life."

You see, unlike Arnold with his personal Gulfstream, the desperately poor patients who rely on California for the medications they require to stay alive can't just jet off to find better services in some other state. From working with those patients, I know most of them don't even have the money to pay for new substandard housing somewhere else, much less the funds to travel there.

But hey, why stop with killing off young people? To keep on the good side of the Rethug lunatics who've spent the last three decades waging open warfare on California, movie-hero Arnold also demands California kill off seniors. When hundreds of thousands of disabled folks and seniors rely on in home health workers (IHSS) to remain alive and to stay out of nursing homes (where their care would cost the state even more), Arnold will deny in home health assistance to most of California's disabled people:

Limit IHSS Domestic and Related Services To the Most Functionally "Impaired" - Governor proposes, effective October 1, 2009 (if Legislature approves), to limit the provision of domestic and related services to persons with the "highest level of need" in the IHSS Program.

Matthew Yi from the SF Chronicle's Sacramento bureau describes the real consequences:

Restrict the In Home Support Services program to the most severely disabled such as those who can't breathe on their own and are partially paralyzed.

What will this do to seniors and the disabled?

Gary Passmore, who represents the Congress of California Seniors, an advocacy group for the elderly, said the cuts would be life threatening.

"These cuts and the ones that were announced earlier this week are cruel, they are heartless, and they will literally kill people," he said. "It's no longer a question about whether these folks will end up in nursing homes. There aren't enough beds in nursing homes. They will end up on the streets and die."

While they're sacrificing seniors and the disabled, movie-hero Arnold and the deadly radicals who run CA's Rethug party also want to go after pregnant mothers. His Shock Doctrine attack demands

Elimination of remaining General Fund for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health

Rather than stand up to Grover Norquist's death cult, Arnold wants to sacrifice women with cancer...and people with kidney failure:

Cuts Medi-Cal coverage for breast and cervical cancer treatment and dialysis.

Arnold and the Rethugs' Cult For Death even want to destroy Californians' future:

Schwarzenegger's plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program - considered one of the nation's best programs to help poorer students cover full fees or tuition at public colleges - would make California the first US state to eliminate student financial aid while raising tuition....A CalWorks program providing medical, dental, and vision care to 90,000 children will be eliminated.

Why stop with killing off people and their futures? Arnold's death wish for California's budget includes special hell for our pets:

Kiska Icard, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said suspending the state requirement on animal shelters to hold strays at least six days to save the state $24.6 million would result in euthanizing more animals.

In order to kill off California's people and government with his Shock Doctrine on steroids, Arnold's frantically repeating his Second Big Lie: the voters made him do it. Brian Leubitz and his colleagues at Calitics explode the lie:

The people did not say anything about cuts. In fact, they spoke out strongly against cuts by rejecting Props 1D and 1E that cut social services for children and the mentally ill, respectively. The people are saying they want a functional government that is responsive, not demanding, of the people.

Brian Leubitz also spotlights how SF Gate's Carla Marinucci caught DiFi parroting Arnold's Second Big Lie

"And what [the voters] said is, in so many words, take the cuts, because that's the alternative. And nobody wants them, but people have to understand.''

Marlinucci also caught DiFi parroting Arnold's Third Big Lie: California's only choice is the Shock Doctrine.

And the hard part of it is where the cuts have to come from. People don't like it. But they didn't seem to know that when they voted no on these propositions, so it left the Governor and the State Legislature with really no alternative other than to make the cuts.

Hey, why should a California Democratic Senator remember California's Republican Governor vetoed the anti-Shock Doctrine budget her fellow Democrats passed out of the State's Legislature?

In the real world, a few months ago California's beleaguered Legislature did an end run around the Rethug's Cult For Death and passed a budget with choices that don't kill people: Arnold vetoed it. In the world where DiFi, Arnold and CA's Rethugs rush to please the Club For Growth's suicide cult, why bother with reality?

In the real world the rest of us live in, how many Californians' lives will Arnold sacrifice as his political career dies? And how many Democrats in Sacramento and Washington will spin the Big Lies required to make Shock Doctrine his weapon?

[h/t Calitics for their coverage, which this post uses extensively.]

UPDATE: A Rescue Plan

Aeolus has a great idea which is elucidated over at Daily Kos. President Obama needs to ask Schwarzenegger to resign as a condition for loan guarantees for short-term debt. The Governator has failed California and failed the nation.

California Congressman Devin Nunes Blames Schwarzenegger For The Drought And Demands He Resign

It varies from month to month which of the die-hard lunatic fringe members of the state's Republican congressional caucus is the most extremist congressmember from California-- and now that Tom McClintock and Duncan Hunter, Jr. are part of the delegation, all bets are off. But right now California's worst member of Congress-- as it often is-- is Inland Empire crook Gary Miller. In assessing every single vote since he was elected, Hunter's score, second worst in California, is identical to North Carolina sociopath Virginia Foxx, beaten out on the scale of lunatic fringeness only by Iowa freak Steve King, Miller and Texas secessionists Kenny Marchant, Mac Thornberry, Sam Johnson, Pete Sessions, and Randy Neugebauer. Other California congresskooks who have held the distinction as the most extreme right wing jerk in the state (judging only by House votes) have included Darrell Issa, Kevin McCarthy, George Radanovich, Dan Lungren, and, frequently, Devin Nunes.

But Nunes isn't in the news today because of his atrocious voting record or his penchant for selling out working families at the behest of his wealthy campaign donors. (Nunes, who scooped up $499,235 in legalized bribes from the financial/insurance/real estate sector, voted against the biggest tax cut for middle class families in history, against the Stimulus package, against health care for needy children, against equal pay for women, against mortgage relief for responsible homeowners... in fact, against every single solution President Obama has offered to solve the economic meltdown and the severe problems that were caused by Bush and rubber stamp ideologues like Nunes.)

No, today Congressman Nunes, who represents Tulare County and the part of Fresno County that doesn't include Fresno, had a hissy fit on his official congressional website demanding that the governor of his state resign. The governor of his state is Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican like himself. I mentioned above that Nunes has gobbled up nearly half a million dollars in bribes from the banksters. His agricultural district is almost totally devoid of family farms and completely dominated by the worst kinds of corporate farming anywhere on earth. Needless to say, they pay their congressman well. Nunes has raked in a massive $1,449,107 from AgriBusiness, more than any other member of Congress other than the equally corrupt and venal Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and, like Nunes, an implacable enemy of family farms and of the environment.

It's Nunes' contention that Schwarzenegger is the cause of California's drought; it's "due to the Governor's failure to respond to the ongoing California water crisis," he hissed. "San Joaquin Valley communities are drying up and they are dying. Communities have withered away, families have been left with nothing and people are literally starving." Schwarzenegger is fully aware that Nunes is a kook and he had an aide brush him off like a fly:

"Congressman Nunes' attempt to grab headlines with finger pointing will not solve this problem and will only lead to the same gridlock that has paralyzed the water debate in this state for the last 50 years. We encourage Congressman Nunes to be part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem."

I think Schwarenegger has been active in the Republican Party long enough to know that extremists like Nunes are never party of the solution and always part of the problem-- a big part.


UPDATE: Nunes Tells The Truth About Tax Breaks For The Wealthy

July 29, 2010- Nunes seems to have slipped up, admitting what Republicans are loathe to ever address, that Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans has been an economic catastrophe for the country-- and for most of the other 98% of Americans.

Lunatic Fringe Republican Attempting To Recall Schwarzenegger-- Should Anyone Care?

I've been trying to figure out who Edwin T. Snell is. He hit the big time today-- a story about himself in the L.A. Times, Edwin T. Snell launches recall of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has a rough website, RecallsCalifornia.com which seeks to recall a gaggle of California politicians Snell doesn't like. It appears Snell doesn't like paying taxes. The Politicians he's targeting are Republican Assemblyman Jeff Miller, who represents the Inland Empire's 71st AD (Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, Corona and Norco in Riverside and Orange Counties); Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, the San Bernardino Republican who represents the 1st district; state Senator Abel Maldanado of San Luis Obispo, also a Republican; Assemblyman Anthony Adams, a Republican representing the 59th AD in San Bernardino and L.A. Counties (Apple Valley, Hesperia, Lake Arrowhead, Crestline, San Bernardino, Highland, Mentone, Claremont, LaVerne, Glendora, San Dimas, Monrovia, Bradbury, Arcadia and LaCrescenta); and now Schwarzenegger.

His campaign skills may not be as slick or well-funded as the governor’s. But the San Bernardino County resident has garnered the 50 necessary signatures for a notice of intent to circulate a recall petition against the governor.

According to Snell’s filing with the state, complete with errors in grammar and punctuation, “Arnold Schwarzenegger does no longer represent the interest of the people and has betrayed the trust of the voters. Schwarzenegger initiatives on prisons, water and the environment has been a complete disaster.”

Schwarzenegger has until Monday to answer Snell, who really doesn't seem to like Republicans who want to make government work. Maybe he should consider moving to South Carolina or Louisiana.

Something Schwarzenegger Never Learned On His Trips To China-- Dealing With Political Corruption

One of the things I've admired about China in recent years is that when public officials get too corrupt and greedy and allow poisoned milk or defective drugs into the "free" market, they get the death penalty. I like it. I recall reading the NY Times piece about one such case a couple years ago.

For the second time in three months, a former high-ranking official at China’s top food and drug watchdog agency has been sentenced to death for corruption and approving counterfeit drugs, the state-run news media said on Friday.

Cao Wenzhuang, who until 2005 was in charge of drug registration approvals at the State Food and Drug Administration, was accused of accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from two pharmaceutical companies and helping undermine the public’s confidence in an agency that is supposed to be safeguarding the nation’s health.

Mr. Cao’s sentence was handed down by the No. 1 Intermediate Court in Beijing, less than two months after the same court sentenced Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration to death for accepting $850,000 in bribes to help steer drug companies through various approval processes.

I was so disappointed to learn that all these nasty little Chinese Republicans have been getting their death sentences reprieved. China has been pressured by western do-gooders to not execute non-violent criminals. What a shame; we should be executing them here too. But at least in China they do rot in prisons for good long sentences, unlike in the U.S. where corrupt officials are rarely prosecuted and even when fond guilty almost never serve any serious time. Tom DeLay, for example, is still loose. Karl Rove refuses to even show up to answer questions. Katherine Harris stole an American presidential election and no one even said "boo."

Today's L.A. Times has a story of government corruption that is especially disturbing in light of Schwarzenegger's insistence that thousands of state employees be laid off because of the state budget deficits. While he was plotting to hand out pink slips to teachers and hard working career civil servants, his political cronies were stealing the taxpayers blind. "Over the last two years, as California has slashed services and scrambled to pay bills, top administration officials have made free use of government expense accounts with little oversight and, in some cases, no documentation."

Carrie Lopez, director of the Department of Consumer Affairs, charged taxpayers to fly from Sacramento, where she works, to Los Angeles, where she lives, to attend a Justin Timberlake concert with her daughter. She listed the trip on her expense report as a meeting with the energy company that paid for the concert tickets. Lopez also billed the state for meals on days she received those meals for free from corporations, according to state records.

And there are lots like Ms Lopez. I'm not calling for the death penalty here. It isn't like killing babies who drink tainted milk. But unless corrupt government officials are severely punished-- and in a way that is made very public-- ripping off the public will always be a profitable gamble with great odds.

Looks Like Arnold Schwarzenegger Isn't Being Invited To CPAC, The Extreme Right's Big Annual Powwow

Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner???

Next week hard core extremists and obstructionists from around the Beltway will descend on Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel again for their annual ritualistic embrace of a kind of uniquely American fascism. Today's Washington Post features a dizzy, if not delusional, preview by GOP media shill S.E. Cupp. She fights back against the conventional wisdom that this year's get together will be a bust because of the lack of star power, many respectable conservatives distancing themselves from the fanatics, Know Nothings and radicals-- the Ann Coulter wing of the Republican Party-- who dominate the conclave. But Cupp, who will be signing her childish book, Why You're Wrong About the Right next Saturday, disagrees completely: "See, in my world," she writes, "stars don't come any bigger than Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and Mike Pence (if there were a congressional version of Teen Beat, the Indiana congressman would be on its cover every month). Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner are the Jonas Brothers of conservative celebrity."

Am I the only one who gets excited at the thought of a two-hour discussion on "Protecting the Secret Ballot" or "Taking Action Through Citizen-Led Reform" in the Regency Ballroom? When I see such clever lecture titles as "Will Congress Take Your Guns?" and "Are We All Socialists Now?" I start salivating. Will it? Are we? I can't wait to find out.

Just announced-- Mario Lopez is speaking! Okay, it's Mario Lopez of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, and not the hunky headliner of Saved By the Bell and Dancing With the Stars, but still-- he's going to be great, I just know it.

And doesn't everyone want to have "Breakfast With Phyllis Schlafly"? Just me?

...I'm also looking forward to drinking boxed wine with such friends and colleagues as Tucker Carlson, Stephen Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart during the forced socialization of conference happy hours. You'd be surprised how many big deals are done over pigs-in-a-blanket and cubed cheese. And yes, I just totally name-dropped.

Even Sarah Palin, "the Angela Jolie of the GOP," is staying away-- although she will address her adoring fans with a video especially for them. Instead of Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, John McCain, George Bush, Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist-- or even Arnold or chief House obstructionist Eric Cantor, the nuts and loons will have to make do with some sorry scrapings from the bottom of the barrel: Rush Limbaugh, Coulter, Rick Santorum, the 2 bizarre Micheles-- Bachmann and Malkin-- John Shadegg, Jim DeMint... and, fingers crossed, internationally acclaimed neo-Nazi, racist and right-wing posterboy Geert Wilders. And, in a nod towards Obama's sense of post-partisanship, there will be an award ceremony honoring doddering former progressive George McGovern for his anti-union rantings. (He isn't doddering enough to bother to show up in person though. Perhaps anti-labor lobbyist and Republican stalwart Rick Berman will accept the honor on his behalf.)

Rick Moran knows exactly what he is-- which is why he named the demented Republican Party blog he runs Rightwing Nuthouse. His essay on next week's CPAC convention appeared in another virtual nuthouse, though, The Next Right. "The theme of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)," he begins, "should be 'Cocooning our way to Irrelevancy' or perhaps 'How to lose the next 5 elections in 10 easy steps.'”

From my point of view, it really is that bad. With the exception of some effort to bring conservatism into the 21st century communications-wise, the program appears to be an excellent panacea for what ailed conservatism in about 1980. It’s as if the debacles of 2006 and 2008 never happened. Does it matter that the very same people who helped get us clobbered the last two election cycles are running seminars and roundtables at the conference? Not if you’re a movement still in denial that it will take more than “message tweaking” and better utilization of the internet to bring conservatism back and make it relevant to a large portion of Americans again.

...My idea of “reform” is probably a helluva lot different than most conservatives. But maybe we could start with the recognition that in elections, the way you win is by getting one more vote than the other side. And no matter how you want to add up the numbers, the 30% of so of the nation that identifies itself as “conservative” will always fall short of 50% + 1. I hate to break this news to my fellow conservatives; you can use any kind of mathematical hocus pocus you wish but there just aren’t enough of us to only allow “true conservatives” a place at the table. The absence of conservatives like David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and others who probably agree with 90% of conservative positions on the issues but have been driven from the movement for their apostasy-- real or imagined-- is as incomprehensible as it is depressing.

This is the way back? It’s not a question of being “moderate” or “true-blue” but rather how long does conservatism want to wander in the wilderness? Ideas on how to reform conservatism-- and I speak of real reform, not the cosmetic solutions that appear will be offered at CPAC-- must come from as many sources as possible. Some conservatives might not like the smell inside the “Big Tent” but turning up your nose at people who disagree with you on one or two issues is just plain nuts. “Litmus tests” and the like are all well and good unless you are a minority, getting smaller and less relevant, and don’t wish to find a way back in order to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Our dire situation doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet. This is evident by how many sessions are scheduled that appear to have been lifted from the agenda of a decade or more ago.

He goes on to bemoan speakers from the fringes of American politics like North Carolina neo-fascist Virginia Foxx, Illinois' two most extreme congressional wingnuts, Aaron Schock and Peter Roskam, Phyllis Schafly, and Ralph Reed and warns his fellow rightists that "fleeing the mindset that re-enforces the notion that there isn’t much really wrong with conservatism that a dab of message clarification here and a spot of renewed enthusiasm there won’t cure" isn't going to help them reach outside of their delusional drooling base. "Accepting the fact that there are fundamental problems is the first step toward recovery. Unfortunately, CPAC fails miserably in that regard."

Perhaps instead of a forward-looking strategy they can just cheer themselves up a little in preparation for the disaster that awaits them in 2010 when voters let them know what they think of obstructionism. They could probably start with a hissing session for-- in absentia, of course-- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the elected GOP politician with the most constituents anywhere in America. And do they hate him-- especially now that he's calling on Republicans to put partisanship aside and be team players with Obama! Friday he signed a state budget that includes $12.5 billion in tax hikes.

"Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, citing the unpopularity among most California voters of the party's conservative stands on abortion, illegal immigration and other touchstone issues. "It puts them in a very precarious position."

By repudiating the thrust of his candidacy in the 2003 recall-- "I will not raise taxes," Schwarzenegger stated flatly the day after he won-- the governor has also enraged the conservatives who dominate the party.

For Republicans convening at a state party convention this weekend in Sacramento, it is a wrenching moment. Schwarzenegger is skipping the event to attend a governors' conference in Washington. But his turnaround on taxes has darkened the mood of the hundreds of party loyalists venting their frustration in a hotel where the governor often stays in a penthouse suite.

To be sure, none of the GOP lawmakers who demanded that the state close its $42-billion shortfall without raising taxes detailed the doomsday cuts that approach would entail, nor did the activists who lobbied against the tax increases. If the state had laid off its entire workforce of 238,000-- every prison guard, firefighter and clerk-- it still would have fallen billions shy of a balanced budget.

Still, in a nod to the GOP's internal realities, two of the party's top contenders for Schwarzenegger's job in the June 2010 primary have split with the governor over the tax hikes.

One, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, said they will "kill jobs, hurt families and make future deficits even worse." The other, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, called the budget a "fiasco." The heavier tax burden, he warned, will increase unemployment.

...Like the governor, the six Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in approving the tax increases are also facing vitriol within the party. Chief targets include Sens. Dave Cogdill of Modesto, whose support of the budget led to his overthrow as Senate Republican leader, and Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, who cast the deciding vote.

Conservative blogger Matthew Cunningham has started a Facebook group, "Never Elect Abel Maldonado to Anything, Ever Again." More threatening, Ernie Konnyu, a former Bay Area congressman, has launched a campaign to recall Maldonado.

Efforts to recall other GOP lawmakers for their break with the party on taxes have sprouted. Conservative purists are pushing the state party to censure them Sunday.

The party's turmoil over taxes comes as Republicans nationwide are still reeling from their 2008 defeat. Their White House nominee, John McCain, lost California by more than 3 million votes in the party's worst presidential rout in the state since the 1930s.

S.E. Cupp has a bizarre imagination

And for Republicans in California-- and across most of the nation-- 1930's-era abhorrence is exactly what they can look forward to. Republican governors are in DC arguing amongst themselves whether or not to reject the Stimulus money that would help people who have lost their jobs, the "not" position being championed by right-wing maniacs like Bobby Jindal (LA), Haley Barbour (MS) and Mark Sanford (SC). The kind of last gasp obstructionism being put in place by these crazies plus your Jim DeMints, John Cornyns, Jim Bunnings, Richard Burrs, Johnny Isaksons, Tom Corburns, Eric Cantors and John Boehners-- and being cheered on and even demanded by the lunatic fringe CPAC core-- is exactly what led to the GOP with 16 members of the Senate in 1936 and jut 88 members of the House.


KEN ADDS --

Could I just underline the point made above by self-identified rightwing nut Rick Moran? The conservative movement has apparently become so loony that it has no room for people as loony as David Frum, Peggy Noonan, and David Brooks.

Okay, those may not be Rick's exact words. Still, that's some kind of loony!

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