Another Republican Legislator Is In Prison Today For Selling At Least A Pound Of Meth To Montana Trump Supporting Zombies

Before Z Nation stepped up its game and started concentrating on character development, it was pretty silly. In one ancient episode, they're traveling through South Dakota on the way to California and they come upon a pharmaceutical storage facility. The zombies have somehow-- makes no sense-- discovered the joys of meth (and other drugs) and are not just behaving like brain-eating zombies but also like annoying speed freaks.

Even visit Jus' Chillin' in Billings, Montana? It used to be the smoothie shop run by right-wing nut Mike Lange. But it wasn't Lange's main occupation-- maybe not even his second most important occupation. He was best known for being Montana's Republican House Majority Leader-- until House Republicans fired him for being too crazy even for them-- and now he's best known for his meth-selling business. The feds say he sold at least a pound of meth in a 6month period between April and October of 2016. He can't attend sessions now because the judge has ordered that he remain in prison without bail.

You know a TV newscast is going to be bad when the anchor warns you to quickly get your children out of the room. That clip up top was the GOP Majority Leader/freak screaming during a GOP caucus meeting that then-Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer should stick his budget proposal up his ass. (As you can see, most Republican legislators encouraged him by applauding... like trained seals. But they fired him as Majority Leader over it anyway.) The following year he tried running for U.S. Senate against Max Baucus and the Montana Republican Party chairman, Chris Wilcox, said the party stands behind Lange. "As far as we’re concerned at the state party office, he’s a Republican officeholder, and we support our Republican officeholders and Republican candidates." He lost the primary.

Not every Trump voter in Montana is a meth-freak. Some prefer oxycodone or fentanyl

Jus' Chillin' was foreclosed on and Lange was forced to refinance his home to pay the bank $77,000 in defaulted loans. That may have been when he decided going into the drug-selling business was a good idea. No one at the Yellowstone County jail will confirm that the judge didn't grant bail because Lange was in a deep dark meth-hole and a danger to himself and everyone around him. Like many Trumpists, Lange needs to look closely and honestly into his relationship to illicit pharmaceuticals.

Mike Lange (56) pleaded not guilty. And state Senator Mike Lang (no "e") pleaded with Montanans to remember that he's not Lange and not a meth-freak and never called Brian Schweitzer a "son of a bitch." Trump beat Hillary in Montana 279,240 (55.6%) to 177,709 (35.4%) and won all but 6 counties in the state, including Lange's Yellowstone County, Montana's most populous, where Trump beat her nearly two to one. The ballot measure to expand medical marijuana in the state got more votes than Trump, winning with 284,531 (57.6%).

Will Z Nation Offer President-Elect Trump Equal Time?

Sunday morning, El Presidente-elect Señor Trumpanzee was whining on Twitter how he wants "equal time" because Alec Baldwin's portrayal of him of SNL was "one-sided" and-- even more unforgivable-- not funny. Does the thin-skinned Trump still think he was elected to be Entertainer-in-Chief? Ironically-- when you look at who voted for him-- maybe he actually was.

Trumpanzee may never have watched it but I bet more Trump voters are also Z Nation fans than SNL viewers, let alone Hamilton fans. Just before the election they ran one of the craziest episodes in their three crazy, whacked-out seasons on the Sci-Fi Network-- Wall vs. Holes-- featuring not one, but two Trump-like characters vying to rip off everyone left after the apocalypse. The "premise" is that President Sketchy is driving around the country in Bill Clinton's old limo asking for donations from the isolated, collapsing little towns they find so that President Sketchy can make zombies build a wall to keep out zombies. He wants to make America great again. But he's challenged by another Trump-- this one with short stubby fingers and a bad wig-- who wants to dig a deep moat instead of a wall and lure zombies into it by throwing in prisoners who the zombies can eat and then get trapped in the moat-- a kind of two for one proposition he calls it. Here'a clip:



So why isn't the President-elect tweeting about Z-Nation the way he's been howling about Hamilton and Saturday Night Live? Too low brow for him? How we actually found something even beneath Trump's sense of dignity? It's not too low brow or undignified for the people who voted for him last week. Isn't that who watches this kind TV? Them and-- I admit it-- me.

The UK Agrees To Pardon Dead Gay People, But NOT Living Gay People-- What About Gay Zombies?

Here in America, Republican closet case-- door half ajar-- is back on Instagram. "After relinquishing his seat, Schock’s once very active social media accounts went completely dark. He stopped posting daily updates about his life on Twitter or sharing half-naked pictures of himself on Instagram. He also stopped posing shirtless on Men’s magazine covers, making public appearances, or granting interviews to media outlets. In fact, one of the only times Schock has been seen in recent months was back in April when he was spotted sipping a fruity cocktail by candlelight with an attractive male companion at a romantic D.C. waterfront restaurant. Other than that, he and his turquoise belt have been totally M.I.A. Until now. On Tuesday, Mr. Schock made his hotly anticipated return to Instagram after 83 long weeks away." Another crackpot Republican, Peter LaBarbera, head of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, hasn't commented yet. He's been too concerned worrying that "the Homosexual/Transgender revolution and how it is crushing religious freedom and endangering our youth. Poor thing! And this kind of primitive psychosis isn't limited to the U.S.

In the U.K., Parliament is coping with how to cope with men who were once convicted on buggery charges from before buggery became completely legal. The Conservatives have agreed to pardon 40,000 dead men convicted of same-sex sex-- like Oscar Wilde, I assume-- but not men who are still living. The crazy right-wing Justice Minister, Sam Gyimah, filibustered a bill by John Nicholson, a Scottish Nationalist Party MP, that pardons the living.

The Guardian is helping hold the Conservatives' feet to the fire, pointing out that Gyimah "has scuppered the progress of a new law to pardon all gay and bisexual men in England and Wales historically convicted of sexual offences that are no longer criminal. The legislation, put forward by John Nicolson of the SNP, failed to pass to its next stage in the House of Commons after an emotional debate that brought former Labour minister Chris Bryant close to tears." Something tells me Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, wouldn't agree with either side in this debate.

Nicolson’s bill would have given an automatic pardon to men convicted under the obsolete laws relating to gross indecency with other men. It would go further than an amendment to the policing and crime bill proposed by the government, which only pardons the thousands of men who are already dead, while the living will have to apply to the Home Office to get their convictions overturned.

However, Sam Gyimah, a justice minister, ensured the bill could not go forward on Friday because he spoke for so long that it ran out of time. He argued that the bill did not give strong enough protections against men being accidentally pardoned for sex with a minor or non-consensual sex.

An attempt by the SNP to force a vote was unsuccessful because there were not the requisite 100 MPs in the House of Commons. Debate on the bill is set to resume on 16 December but it is unlikely to progress without the support of the government.

...[O]ut of the 65,000 men convicted under the abolished laws, about 15,000 are still alive and will have to go through an administrative process in order to obtain a pardon.

Bryant, the former shadow leader of the House of Commons, fought back tears in parliament as he said it was not good enough for the government to automatically pardon those who are deceased while requiring the living to apply to the Home Office.

“Why on earth would you want to write to the home secretary and say, ‘Please can I be pardoned’?” he asked. “Why on earth would you want to go through a process all over again? Why on earth would you want someone to analyse whether or not you were guilty at all way back when?”

Speaking in parliament, Bryant recalled a group of gay and bisexual MPs who opposed the appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, but were bullied by the government of the day and branded the “glamour boys.” He said they and others should receive “something that feels like an apology.”

...Wes Streeting, a Labour MP, shouted “outrageous” as Gyimah made his arguments and later tweeted that the minister had “come to work to block a bill to deliver justice for people imprisoned and chemically castrated for being gay-- what a guy.”

Nicolson said his bill would “provide a blanket pardon for any gay man convicted of a crime which is no longer a crime.”

“The meaning of that is patently obvious,” he said. “If the crime for which you were convicted is still a crime, by definition you are not pardoned,” he said. “So let nobody be confused about that. The aim of this simple measure is, I hope, obvious.

“The pardon confers no immediate advantage except this: it will, I hope, bring closure to those men who have had those monstrous, unfair criminal convictions for decades.”

The Kochs Have Chosen The GOP Nominee: Scott Walker

The Koch brothers have settled on their ultimate puppet for the GOP nomination, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. (They seem to have made a deal with Adelson to put Rubio in as his running mate.) That's how a plutocracy works. The billionaire class Bernie Sanders has been railing against calls the shots and the rest is just bread and circuses for the masses. 

Last week, we saw how Walker's poor personal financial choices and his record of criminality have been completely overlooked by the Koch network, eager to get a craven lapdog of their own into the White House. They're also overlooking Walker's horrible record as governor-- not just the social divisiveness, but the failure on every economic front as well.

Walker's ideology-driven policies and agenda have put Wisconsin's GDP growth and personal income growth way below the national average, and job growth in Wisconsin has been anemic. In 2013 Walker's economic policies dragged his state down to 49th among the states in growth. Forbes, far from a progressive bastion, made it clear that Walker's Wisconsin is one of the worst states to do business in and projected that Wisconsin would be second worst in the country through 2016, and the cost of doing business is 0.7% above national average.

They based their ranking on the following criteria and ranked Wisconsin as follows:

• #35 in Business Costs
• #39 in Labor Supply
• #30 in Regulatory Environment
• #29 in Economic Climate
• #43 in Growth Prospects
• #10 in Quality of Life

So, according to Forbes, Wisconsin is at #43 for "growth" prospects... Walker gave $2.3 billion in new tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, while cutting the pay of teachers and union members because it would "create jobs."

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Wisconsin's biggest newspaper, endorsed Walker and is often sympathetic to his policies and willing to overlook his failures. Back in March, though, a column in the paper by Marc Levine, a professor of history, economic development and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin, ripped Walker's economic dysfunction to shreds. The performance of the Wisconsin economy," he wrote, "has been the subject of some truly outrageous political spinning over the past four years."

Who can forget when Gov. Scott Walker deceptively claimed, on the basis of preliminary and ultimately revised data, that Wisconsin was responsible for half the entire nation's employment growth in a particular month-- an especially ironic episode since Wisconsin's rate of job growth significantly trailed the national rate during all four years of Walker's first term.

Wisconsin has consistently ranked in the 30s and 40s among states in the rate of annual employment growth since Scott Walker became governor in 2010, a major fall-off from the last year of the much-maligned Doyle administration, when Wisconsin ranked 14th. As I documented last year in a study, not only has Wisconsin's rate of employment growth consistently ranked toward the bottom of states since 2010, but all of the net job growth in Wisconsin since the end of the Great Recession has been in low-wage occupations, in jobs paying less than $12.50 an hour.

Over the past four years, the state's economy has consistently lagged behind the national economy on key economic indicators. Since 2010, both Wisconsin's GDP growth and personal income growth have trailed the national rate. And employment growth in Wisconsin has underperformed the national rate by a staggering 50%.

It has not always been this way. Between 1990 and 2010, employment growth in Wisconsin (19%) closely tracked the national rate (19.6%). In 2010, the year before Scott Walker took office, the rate of employment growth in Wisconsin was 40% higher than the national rate, thanks to an infusion of federal funds and the effects of the national macroeconomic stimulus.

And now, while the Wisconsin economy continues to stagnate, the national economy is accelerating, with job growth during the final months of 2014 and early 2015 approaching the impressive rates of the 1990s. Wisconsin's pace of job growth continues to lag far behind the national rate; in 2014, according to the latest BLS numbers, employment grew in Wisconsin at less than three-quarters of the national rate.

For Wisconsinites, the imperative is to rectify the policy mistakes of the past four years-- excessive tax cuts for corporations and the rich, massive cuts to K-12 and higher education, and cuts in middle class purchasing power-- that have precluded our full participation in the national recovery. Pretending that the Wisconsin economy is surging, when all evidence is to the contrary, will not help move the state forward.

There is virtually no sensible reason for the Koch Empire to back Walker, other than to get control of the reins of power. Walker's zombie-like agenda-- cutting taxes on the most wealthy, saying disingenuously that it would spur job creation and innovation, dismantling collective bargaining for public employees, opposing a minimum-wage increase and equal-pay legislation, refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and passing a scam right-to-work law-- has left Wisconsin with a $2 billion shortfall and a 5.2% unemployment rate.

Republicans Still Eager To Shred The Social Safety Net

A few weeks ago Blue America endorsed Eric Kingson, co-founder of Social Security Works, for the Syracuse-based congressional seat (NY-24), just a few weeks after GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush started espousing raising the retirement age and a few weeks before he started calling for a phasing out of Medicare and an end to the American social safety net-- i.e., the Paul Ryan plan. Bush's agenda couldn't contrast more starkly with what Kingston has in mind. He told us that he wants "to continue the work of blocking cuts and laying the foundation for expanding Social Security as an instrument of social justice... Like a lot of us, I am fed up with political leaders whose allegiance is first and foremost to themselves and their campaign contributors. I share outrage that most Washington politicians are more interested in advancing the next tax-giveaway to special interests and the very rich than investing in infrastructure, jobs, alternative energy and environmental threats to our children’s, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s futures."

This morning, Eric added another thought: "Jeb Bush just told those of us getting Medicare today that he will protect our benefits but that he favors slashing and privatizing the benefits for those who follow. How remarkably insulting? Does he really believe that those of us over age 65 do not care about our younger brothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren? Working persons are facing a retirement income crisis. Rather than talking about cutting their Medicare and Social Security benefits, Mr. Bush should be advocating expansions in both." If you'd like to contribute to his congressional campaign, you can do it here through ActBlue.

Yesterday Paul Krugman's NYTimes column, Zombies Against Medicare, explains the Republican unending antipathy towards the social safety net.

Medicare turns 50 this week, and it has been a very good half-century. Before the program went into effect, Ronald Reagan warned that it would destroy American freedom; it didn’t, as far as anyone can tell. What it did do was provide a huge improvement in financial security for seniors and their families, and in many cases it has literally been a lifesaver as well.

But the right has never abandoned its dream of killing the program. So it’s really no surprise that Jeb Bush recently declared that while he wants to let those already on Medicare keep their benefits, “We need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others.”

...The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful. But when they make their case to the public they usually shy away from making their real case, and have even, incredibly, sometimes posed as the program’s defenders against liberals and their death panels.

What Medicare’s would-be killers usually argue, instead, is that the program as we know it is unaffordable-- that we must destroy the system in order to save it, that, as Mr. Bush put it, we must “move to a new system that allows [seniors] to have something-- because they’re not going to have anything.” And the new system they usually advocate is, as I said, vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

The underlying premise here is that Medicare as we know it is incapable of controlling costs, that only the only way to keep health care affordable going forward is to rely on the magic of privatization.

Now, this was always a dubious claim. It’s true that for most of Medicare’s history its spending has grown faster than the economy as a whole-- but this is true of health spending in general. In fact, Medicare costs per beneficiary have consistently grown more slowly than private insurance premiums, suggesting that Medicare is, if anything, better than private insurers at cost control. Furthermore, other wealthy countries with government-provided health insurance spend much less than we do, again suggesting that Medicare-type programs can indeed control costs.

Still, conservatives scoffed at the cost-control measures included in the Affordable Care Act, insisting that nothing short of privatization would work.

And then a funny thing happened: the act’s passage was immediately followed by an unprecedented pause in Medicare cost growth. Indeed, Medicare spending keeps coming in ever further below expectations, to an extent that has revolutionized our views about the sustainability of the program and of government spending as a whole.

Right now is, in other words, a very odd time to be going on about the impossibility of preserving Medicare, a program whose finances will be strained by an aging population but no longer look disastrous. One can only guess that Mr. Bush is unaware of all this, that he’s living inside the conservative information bubble, whose impervious shield blocks all positive news about health reform.

Meanwhile, what the rest of us need to know is that Medicare at 50 still looks very good. It needs to keep working on costs, it will need some additional resources, but it looks eminently sustainable. The only real threat it faces is that of attack by right-wing zombies.

Fall On Your Sword

Except for the members of the Velvet Underground, the employees of the Dom on St Marks Place and Gerald Malanga, I doubt anyone saw Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable more frequently than I did. I'm pretty certain I went to every show, just bowled over by the music, particularly Heroin, and the way that Warhol projected his songs onto the band. I was just a teenager, a very stoned one, and 1966 is a kind of blur... except for those shows. Since then-- 45 years ago next month-- I've seen lots of bands use film and lights, pretty much all of them basing it on Warhol's vision. Until tonight.

My friend Steve, who I knew from when I worked at Sire and he was the star of a band we had called the Ocean Blue, called me the other day to say he was coming to L.A. with a band he's managing now... well, kind of a band. They're a studio outfit that doesn't make records or do concerts. They're called Fall On Your Sword and they make advertisements and soundtracks. And would I like to come see them play? My excuse for this kind of thing is that I go to sleep at 9 so it's always too late to see anything. It always works. But they played at 6. I guess I could have come up with some other excuse, but am I glad I didn't.

The integration between film and music I saw tonight was the inevitable post-Warhol quantum leap. I felt so lucky to have seen it. Other than half a dozen club shows in hometown NYC, these 2 English multi-media composers (+ a drummer) normally only do museum openings-- although Steve said they have a gig coming up at Madison Square Garden soon. And they win advertising awards-- loads of them, like a Clio for their work on the Nomis Damn Boots campaign and a Cannes Gold Lion Award.

They won me over right away with their zombie scenes from Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, chillingly reminiscent of delegates gathering for a Republican National Convention, and their cover of Bauhaus' spectacular "Bela Lugosi's Dead." But what had me flipping out was the live interaction on stage between the band and the short clip they made for "I'd Do Anything" (below), an achievement Warhol just never got to. I see filmmaker Jason Reitman, who caught them live at Sundance, had the same reaction I did.

"They were performing at the Another Earth party, a movie for which they wrote the original score. I was just about to leave for some much-needed sleep when live from the stage, I heard an (I-shit-you-not) electronic version of “I’d Do Anything” from the musical Oliver. It was accompanied by visuals of Battlestar Galactica robots seemingly singing the song with the band.  It was dark, strange, cool, moving, and absolutely hypnotic... Consider Yourself Awesome. Consider Me A Fan."

Yeah, me too.

Is Sharron Angle A Zombie?

Hearing Rand Paul and Dino Rossi "debate" on the same night is a little too much for me. Even braving a Maureen Dowd NY Times column on the "Republican Mean Girls" seemed like it might work as a palliative. 

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women-- Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine-- have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

Seated next to Brewer at the bridge dedication was Harry Reid, the slight, mild-mannered, 70-year-old Senate majority leader who has wandered into the surprise fight of his career-- a race where the fur is flying.

“Man up, Harry Reid,” Sharron Angle taunted him at their Las Vegas debate here Thursday night. That’s not an idle insult, coming from a woman who campaigns at times with a .44 Magnum revolver in her 1989 GMC pickup.

With casino red suit and lipstick, Angle played the Red Queen of the Mad Hatter tea party, denouncing career politicians and ordering “Off with your head!” and “Down with government benefits!” Even sober and smiling beneath her girlish bangs, the 61-year-old Angle had the slightly threatening air of the inebriated lady in a country club bar, tossing off outrageous statements and daring anyone to call her on them.

The debate between the former boxer and the former competitive weight lifter, the soft-spoken Mormon and the outspoken Christian, was a source of fascination because the rivals perfectly represent the two caricatures of the midterms: The Washington incumbent and master of back-room deals who’s been around forever and lost touch with people versus the wacky new-breed Tea Party challenger who’s hiding from and hating on the press, spouting a lot of weird stuff and vowing to do what Barack Obama didn’t: Shake up Washington.

It didn't work as a palliative. So I made the little Roky Erickson video above. That worked. Do you have a favorite zombie? I can't believe Maureen left out Virginia Foxx. I didn't.

Let's Hope Krugman Is Right And That Zombies Really Can't Kill Social Security

Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson & that guy on the right have a plan...

When the corporate plutocracy decided it was time for a slight tweaking to their "we've always been at war with eastasia" worldview, and that, in fact, it would prove profitable for them-- if devastating to American workers-- to embrace Red China, it was certainly not something some pinko Democrat could pull off for them. No, they had to find a good solid red-basher to fly over there and "open" China. Nixon was perfect. And that was the beginning of the end of the American middle class as cheap Chinese manufactured goods started flooding into the country, devastating entire industries and forcing middle class American workers to compete with Chinese workers making eighteen cents an hour-- with no overtime.

The 70 year top target-- well, maybe tied with abolishing the Estate Tax-- of our generationally greed-obsessed plutocrats has been the most popular entitlement program of all times-- Social Security. Conservatives have tried to kill it since before it was even enacted. But after Bush bungled it for them they decided to go the Nixon route-- find an unlikely politician, trusted as a champion of "the little people" and have him kill it. Enter-- Barack Obama and his deadly "deficit commission," to which has has appointed a "bipartisan" slew of committed foes of Social Security and social equality (after even the hidebound Senate rejected the notion), Among the two worst corporate shills are co-chairs Erskine Bowles of Morgan Stanley and senile reactionary Alan Simpson. Others ready to go even further than Reagan in destroying the safety net-- all in the name of preventing rich people from paying their fair share of taxes-- are ex-Honeywell CEO David Cote, ex-CEO of Young & Rubicam Ann Fudge, roadmap sociopath Paul Ryan, and Wall Street darling Jeb Hensarling, the recipient of $2,569,025 from the financial sector most eager for these changes.

This piece of shit is what Obama has working for him?



On his NY Times blog yesterday Paul Krugman made it clear that he thinks Simpson's outburst-- and the ideology and ignorance behind it-- has already killed Obama's chances to deliver for the plutocracy. That whole Serious People thing to tell working families they have to sacrifice for the good of the hardworking billionaires ain't gonna fly this time either.

[T]he commission is already dead-- and zombies did it.

OK, the immediate problem is the statements of Alan Simpson, the commission’s co-chairman. And what got reporters’ attention was the combination of incredible insensitivity-- the “lesser people”???-- and flat errors of fact.

But it’s actually much worse than that. On Social Security, Simpson is repeating a zombie lie-- that is, one of those misstatements that keeps being debunked, but keeps coming back.

Specifically, Simpson has resurrected the old nonsense about how Social Security will be bankrupt as soon as payroll tax revenues fall short of benefit payments, never mind the quarter century of surpluses that came first.

We went through all this at length back in 2005, but let me do this yet again.

Social Security is a government program funded by a dedicated tax. There are two ways to look at this. First, you can simply view the program as part of the general federal budget, with the the dedicated tax bit just a formality. And there’s a lot to be said for that point of view; if you take it, benefits are a federal cost, payroll taxes a source of revenue, and they don’t really have anything to do with each other.

Alternatively, you can look at Social Security on its own. And as a practical matter, this has considerable significance too; as long as Social Security still has funds in its trust fund, it doesn’t need new legislation to keep paying promised benefits.

OK, so two views, both of some use. But here’s what you can’t do: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that for the last 25 years, when Social Security ran surpluses, well, that didn’t mean anything, because it’s just part of the federal government-- but when payroll taxes fall short of benefits, even though there’s lots of money in the trust fund, Social Security is broke.

And bear in mind what happens when payroll receipts fall short of benefits: NOTHING. No new action is required; the checks just keep going out.

So what does it mean that the co-chair of the commission is resurrecting this zombie lie? It means that at even the most basic level of discussion, either (a) he isn’t willing to deal in good faith or (b) the zombies have eaten his brain. And in either case, there’s no point going on with this farce.

Maybe Obama can bring back Leona Helmsley for the next go-round-- or appoint Tony Hayward; he's going to be needing something to do soon. But if you want to ponder a bit further what Krugman was talking about above, re-read it in the context of his column of a few days earlier, "That '30s Feeling," in which he points out that "suddenly, creating jobs is out, inflicting pain is in. Condemning deficits and refusing to help a still-struggling economy has become the new fashion everywhere, including the United States, where 52 senators voted against extending aid to the unemployed despite the highest rate of long-term joblessness since the 1930s."

Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession. And here in Germany, a few scholars see parallels to the policies of Heinrich Brüning, the chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose devotion to financial orthodoxy ended up sealing the doom of the Weimar Republic.

FISA: TELECOMS WRITING THE RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY PROVISIONS FOR HOYER WHILE BLUE DOGS TIE THEMSELVES TO BUSH & CHENEY

Bush and his cronies don't care if national security is jeopardized or not. Unless they get retroactive immunity for criminal acts they committed they will not allow Congress' work on FISA to go forward. They have Miss McConnell in the Senate to do his usual obstructionist tactics should the Democrats there grow a spine-- totally unlikely, of course-- and in the House they have enough filthy, flea-ridden Blue Dogs to team up with the Republicans and overturn Democratic caucus insistence that there be no retroactive immunity for any Bush Regime cronies for any criminal behavior.

This evening I picked up Senator Lincoln Chafee's book again-- Against The Tide-- How A Compliant Congress Empowered A Reckless President-- and I was reminded how very little ever changes. "When Senator Jeffords quit the Republican Party and threw control of the Senate back to the Democrats," writes Chafee (a Republican himself, you will recall), "I thought he might have gained us a little time to do our jobs, to deliberate and slow down the president's rush to war."

But the Democrats were not about to exercise that kind of leadership, so it did not matter that they controlled the Senate. Far from wanting to slow things down, they were throwing elbows in the rush to climb aboard the war train.

Yes, they were-- and it helps explain why Hillary Clinton isn't going to be the candidate for the presidency, anymore than other Democratic hopefuls who voted with Bush and the Republicans to go to war on October 10, 2002-- from Joe Biden and Chris Dodd to John Edwards and even John Kerry.

And now the battle has shifted to the House-- which "the Democrats" now control-- and the issue isn't unprovoked aggressive war against Iraq, but the further shredding of the Constitution of the United States of America. There is no acceptable excuse for any member of Congress to vote for retroactive immunity. The public doesn't want it and the Constitution doesn't merit it. Yes, the big bad (despised) Republicans will attack you for it and call you a pansy. If you can't stand up and defend America and defend American values, go get a job on K Street.

Today we hear that corporate toady Steny Hoyer is brokering a deal that will give Bush what he wants. And, as if it weren't enough that the credit card companies were allowed to write the hated bankruptcy legislation that so many Democrats rolled over and played dead on, now we find out that the telecoms are being allowed to write their own immunity clauses.

Telecom companies have presented congressional Democrats with a set of proposals on how to provide immunity to the businesses that participated in a controversial government electronic surveillance program, a House Democratic aide said Wednesday.

Congress has been wrestling for months with an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with the immunity issue the primary sticking point.

Many [actual] Democrats want the companies held accountable for participating in the program, which was initiated in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The White House, however, has insisted that the participation of the telecoms is crucial to monitoring conversations between potential terrorists. President Bush has vowed to veto any bill that does not contain immunity.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) said Wednesday a FISA deal is "still in flux" but he described the latest developments as "promising" and said he hoped to have a solution soon.

House officials declined to discuss the specifics of the proposed immunity language by the telecoms.

Although it remains to be seen if congressional Democrats will accept the telecom companies' proposal, the communication between the two sides signifies that progress is being made.

Progress? Towards the destruction of constitutional law? A few month ago 21 of the treacherous, corrupt, bribe-taking Blue Dogs signed a letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding a chance to vote for retroactive immunity. The Democratic leadership was able to get that to back down, temporarily, with the promise that their day will come. Even with that promise half a dozen of the worst and most reactionary of the Bush Dog rubber stamps-- David Boren (OK), Chris Carney (PA), Jim Cooper (TN), Tim Holden (PA), Nick Lampson (TX) and Heath Shuler (NC)-- voted with the Republicans anyway. And now the bill that refuses to die is back. As Digby pointed out yesterday, when it comes to retroactive immunity Bush is a damn zombie.

"Bush wants this one very, very badly for some reason and he's going to push it right up until the day he leaves office," writes Digby. "It's a zombie. And it's not just about money. These are huge corporations that can easily afford to litigate these claims and since it is unlikely that any of the plaintiffs suffered huge damages they don't face outrageous financial liability. They don't even face much bad PR: if they lose, they just say they were trying to help the government fight terrorists and there won't be a whole lot of customers who will switch to other carriers when they find out they violated the fourth amendment. This is about the Bush administration and keeping civil liberties lawyers from having access to discovery documents."

Digby is smart-- one of the most astute political minds I have ever met. But there's more. Remember, retroactive immunity is also precedent-setting and it's not just for the telecom executives who have been sending millions and millions of dollars in legalized bribes to politicians (mostly Republicans but plenty of slimy Democrats too)-- between $400 million and half a billion since Bush first stole the White House in 2000. It's also for members of the Regime itself. This is just the beginning of  along battle Bush and Cheney will be fighting to offer retroactive immunity for all the crimes committed by these monstrosities for the 8 shameful years of crimes against humanity.

It's very hard to vote a Democrat out when you know a Republican-- always a worse Republican-- will take his or her place. But if ever there was a time to do it, that time is now, and this cause is right. David Boren, Chris Carney, Jim Cooper, Tim Holden, Nick Lampson and Heath Shuler should all be defeated in their re-election bids in November. They are willing to take legalized bribes from telecom lobbyists and sell out the constitution. Boren, Carney, Lampson and Shuler, particularly, come own on the side of the GOP on issue after issue. They have no primary opponents but if they are defeated now, a real Democrat can run against whatever hideous Republican goons take their places.

Among the other 15 Bush Dogs who signed the letter to Pelosi are Leonard Boswell (IA) and John Barrow (GA), each of whom does have a progressive Democratic primary opponent, Ed Fallon in Iowa and Regina Thomas in Georgia. Ed will be the Blue America guest at FDL Saturday afternoon. Regina will be our guest on May on May 24. Regina's Blue America page is already up and going and I urge you to give what you can to help her defeat Barrow.

The other signatories to the infamous letter are:

• Marion Berry (AR)
• Mike Ross (AR)
• Earl Pomeroy (ND)
• Bud Cramer (AL)
• Melissa Bean (IL)
• Allen Boyd (FL)
• Joe Baca (CA)
• John Tanner (TN)
• Jim Matheson (D-UT)
• Lincoln Davis (TN)
• Brad Ellsworth (IN)
• Charlie Melancon (LA)
• Dennis Moore (KS)
• Zack Space (OH)

And it will be interesting to see what newly elected conservative Democrats Bill Foster (IL) and Don Cazayoux (LA) do in their first showdown between Democrats and Blue Dogs (unless the Blue Dog attempt to sabotage the modernization of the GI Bill comes up first).