Month: December 2007

When Hairy Met Sally

by digby

Did everyone hear that orgasmic moan coming from somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region this afternoon?

Democratic and Republican sources say that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut and fierce supporter of the war in Iraq, will formally endorse Sen. John McCain tomorrow in New Hampshire.

The entire Village will be smoking cigarettes tomorrow morning, blissed out, completely sated. Their most cherished fantasy is coming true — a bipartisan lovefest between bloodthirsty, warmongering, straight talking mavericks. Yes! Yes! Yes!

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Update On Junior Huck

by digby

There was some question the other night if I had enough information to post this story about Mike Huckabees son’s alleged cruelty to animals or whether it was even relevant. As I wrote at the time, I don’t normally write about the candidates’ kids, but as an animal lover this was a particularly ugly tale to me and there was some evidence that Huckabee had covered up for him.

Newsweek was evidently working on the story and they have published it today, here. It certainly does appear that Huck tried to shut down an investigation into the thing.

Meanwhile, Lambert over at Corrente wire did a little digging into the assertion that Huckster Jr was really putting the dog “out of his misery” or not. It doesn’t look good for Junior.

Anyway, that’s the story. I really don’t like people who are cruel to animals. And if I had a 17 year old kid who was cruel to animals he would immediately be in serious therapy — it’s a bad, bad sign. There is no evidence that Huckabee thought there was anything wrong with what his son did, so I suppose it’s not surprising that he’s running around packing heat in airports these days. I’d keep my distance from this guy.

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Digging Through The Rubble

by digby

Joseph Stiglitz writes in the new issue of Vanity Fair:

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

[…]

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Read it and weep. It goes on to lay it all out in excruciating (and depressing) detail culminating with this:

Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.

The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economy’s metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. While such an increase would be good for the long-term health of America’s economy, the short-term consequences would be painful. Money saved is money not spent. If people don’t spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly—as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market—this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse before they get better. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.

And in any case there’s more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.

When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. Finally, we’ll be a lot better off if we work with other countries to create fair and efficient global trade and financial systems. We’ll have a better chance of getting others to open up their markets if we ourselves act less hypocritically—that is, if we open our own markets to their goods and stop subsidizing American agriculture.

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix—and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

In short, there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I’m guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.

*sigh*

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How Things Work

by digby

What Atrios says here is absolutely true. A Democratic president, no matter who it is, is going to pay for the Republicans’ sins. But it won’t be just because the Republicans and Blue Dogs in congress suddenly “realize” they have co-equal power. I predict that the right wing noise machine will shout far and wide that the election was stolen (probably with the help of “illegal aliens.”) The new president will not be allowed to weed out even one right wing plant anywhere in the executive branch without being accused of politicizing it. There will be no executive privilege as the courts rediscover their “responsibilities.” Scientists and experts will all be accused of being shills for the liberal special interests. The president will be accused of violating Americans’ civil liberties and destroying the constitution. There will be widespread accusations of fraud and corruption and non-stop investigations.

In other words the Republicans are going to accuse the Democratic president of everything we know the Bush administration did. And because it was never fully investigated or even fully discussed, people will lay the sins at the feet of the Democratic president and feel a sense of relief that the balance of power is being restored and Washington is finally being cleaned up.

The media, who know the real story (they helped cover it up, after all) will lead the charge. The GOP will feed them juicy stories with just the right amount of sexy detail and they will rush to tell the American people, gravely intoning their deep concern for the integrity of the office and “their town.” (And the children…)

Atrios says this is better than the alternative, which is sadly true. The country can’t survive another GOP administration right now. But Democratic presidents are going to have to learn that their most important and difficult job will be dealing with relentless baseless political attacks from the Republicans and the media. It’s the way our politics are currently constructed. Republicans accrue vast amounts of power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the taxpayers, and the Democrats are expected to clean things up by paying the debts for them. The Dems don’t do it out of altruism or commitment. They do it because they are held to standards of integrity and effectiveness that aren’t expected of Republicans — and they refuse to effectively fight them, even when they have the advantage.

Since the Democrats have shown no appetite for educating the public about what the Republicans have done these past seven years (and now time is running out) I expect they will squeak through the election by promising to move beyond the politics of division and pledging to move forward, not look backwards. (As the media keeps telling us ad nauseam: now that the Republicans are temporarily weakened by their own corruption and malfeasance, it’s a known fact that the entire country wants to stop the partisan bickering and let bygones be bygones.)

And so the new Democratic president will be nearly paralyzed, standing there like a deer caught in the headlights when the Republican Semi bears down on him or her, horns honking and whistles blowing. If we’re lucky, he or she will be agile enough to survive it for a term or two and the country will at least have a little time to take a short breather from the worst of the Republican treasury pillaging, disasters and unnecessary wars.

It’s not a very uplifting or efficient way to run country, but it seems to be the way things work for the moment.

This post is written by digby. For unknown technical reasons, I’ve been unable to log on to my own name this morning…d

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It’s Over

by digby

Now we can all relax. Chris Matthews and his panel of Katy Kay, Norah O’Donnell, Dan Rather and Andrew Sullivan just spent the first 20 minutes of his half hour week-end show dissecting how Clinton lost Iowa and New Hampshire. Matthews ended the segment comparing her to “conceited, goody two shoes” Reese Witherspoon in “Election” who nobody can stand.

Although Matthews’ reflexive sexism and obsessive focus on “the bitch” works my nerves, I honestly don’t care if Hillary wins or loses the nomination. I’m truly not invested in any candidate. But it does annoy me greatly when these gasbags act like voters don’t matter. The polls are very close in Iowa right now. Nobody knows who is going to win. in fact, they never know who’s going to win that thing.

Here are the polls from the Pew Center, on December 8, 2003:

I wrote about this same phenomenon in the last round of primaries. At this point in that campaign, some people were even suggesting that all but the front runner should just concede now so the party could come together and pool its money to beat the Republicans. For some reason, an awful lot of people are like “the fella who couldn’t wait for Christmas” when the primaries come along.

It ain’t over til the fat caucus goers vote. At this point all the chattering speculation is just white noise. You can see some trends that might or might not be relevant. And if you’re on the ground you can probably sense some mojo that might or might not manifest itself at the caucuses and the voting booth. But one thing you can absolutely count on is that the media blowhards are making shit up to fill airtime and they have absolutely no idea about anything. Right now they are amusing themselves and each other by creating narratives and then claiming “it’s how the media will report it” and calling it “the expectations game” as if that’s something that exists organically outside their little world of echoing nothingness. (Jamison Foser has an interesting “anatomy of a storyline” this week.)

They’re always idiots, but never more than when they are handicapping “the horse race” in the few weeks before Iowa and New Hampshire. Caveat Emptor.

Btw: The panel all agreed that it’s a fact that the surge worked politically so nobody cares about Iraq anymore. Damn those polls that say otherwise.

This post is written by digby. For unknown technical reasons, I’ve been unable to log on to my own name this morning…d

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Manic Street Preacher

By Dennis Hartley

OK, Hullabaloo carolers, let’s get in the mood (c’mon, you know the words!)…

Deck the halls with advertising, Fa la la la la la la la la
‘Tis the time for merchandising, Fa la la la la la la la la
Profit never needs a reason, Fa la la la la la la la la
Get the money, it’s the season, Fa la la la la la la la la

-Stan Freberg, from “Green Chri$tma$”

Joy to the world!
In the form of goods.
Consume! Consume! Consume!

-Rev. Billy and his choir

This week I thought we’d take a respite from holiday shopping to check out a new documentary that sports the best marquee moniker of 2007: “What Would Jesus Buy?”

Produced by Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock (who I like to refer to as “Michael Moore Lite”) and directed by Rob VanAlkemade, the film documents the public antics of improv performer/anti-consumerism activist Bill Talen, better-known as his alter-ego, Reverend Billy, the “spiritual” leader of the “Church of Stop Shopping”.

Talen honed his act in San Francisco, originally creating the Reverend Billy as a sketch character, who dresses like a flashy, big-haired TV evangelist and performs with the fearless, in-your-face conviction of a sidewalk preacher. The Reverend doesn’t preach the traditional gospel, however. His “mission” is to rail against the evils of the corporate retail giants. Talen calls attention to corporate sanctioned sweat shops, abused and underpaid store employees, and the cradle-to-grave brainwashing of American consumers by the advertising media-to anyone who will listen. His favorite targets include Disney (Rev. Billy considers Mickey Mouse “the Antichrist”), Starbucks and Wal-Mart.

Back in 2005, Talen and his troupe of musicians and “choir” members left their New York City home base to embark on a nationwide bus tour to spread the good word: “Stop shopping!” VanAlkemade and his film crew tagged along, as the Reverend and his troupe executed their blend of street theatre and social activism. The traveling church members stake out malls and retail chain stores, treating unsuspecting shoppers to impromptu sermons and Weird Al-style rewordings of well-known hymns and Christmas carols. They also rent local public halls, where they stage “church services” and “revivals”. In one particularly inspired and hilarious church service, Rev. Billy exhorts the attendees to come forward to have their credit cards exorcised; he collapses on cue for a grand finale.

As the group treks across the fruited plains, they make stops at the likes of the behemoth Mall of America (so huge that it houses a college campus!). We watch the performers repeat the same drill several times: Billy, armed with a megaphone and backed by his singing, hand-clapping choir members, plants himself squarely in center court and proceeds to call for an immediate cessation to mindless spending. Groups of shoppers, at first a little puzzled, eventually begin to gather, some clapping along and getting into the spirit of the performance, others watching but still blinking uncomprehendingly. By the time a crowd gathers, the ubiquitous teams of beer-gutted, walkie-talkie wielding mall security personnel converge to unceremoniously escort the group from the premises. The audience disperses, chuckling and shaking their heads on their way to the Orange Julius.

The final whistle stop is Anaheim, where the reverend and his flock descend on Disneyland. Just before he is (inevitably) escorted out by the Disney brown shirts (seriously-they are disturbingly fascistic in dress and demeanor), Billy delivers the best line in the film through his megaphone: “People! Main Street, U.S.A. is made in China!”

Mission accomplished? Hardly, but you do find yourself admiring Talen’s conviction and dedication to his activist principles, despite the fact that his message is apparently falling on deaf ears. When he is filmed making a purchase, it’s at an independently-owned, small town clothing store where he first checks labels to make sure his new sweater is “Made in the U.S.A.” You get a vibe that it isn’t a grandstanding gesture for the cameras, but a sincere effort on Talen’s part to practice what he preaches (literally!)

As I watched the film, I realized that Talen is the heir apparent to the tradition of guerilla theatre, as practiced by the likes of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Diggers back in the 1960s, with a pinch of Abbie Hoffman. One scene in particular, where Billy and his flock perform an “exorcism” on a huge Wal-Mart store, reminded me of Hoffman’s crowning moment of political theatre in 1967, when he joined forces with Allen Ginsberg and thousands of anti-war protestors in an attempt to “levitate” the Pentagon.

This film may not necessarily teach us anything new; the “Stop the presses! Christmas is crassly commercial!” revelation is at least as hoary as “Miracle on 34th Street” or “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. Also, there have already been several documentaries produced that frankly do a much better job covering the “corporate exploitation of workers” issues (“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” and “The Big One” come to mind); but still, I admire Talen’s adherence to his “mission” and it’s refreshing to see a “holiday film” that might actually make people snap out of their “Return of the Living Dead” mall stupor. One immediate revelation as I walked out of the theater: for two hours (counting previews) I didn’t charge one thing to my credit card. And that’s a good thing.

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Where’d He Come From?

by digby

Like John Cole and others in the blogosphere, I confess that I’m also a little bit gobsmacked by the conservative opinion leaders’ open hostility to Mike Huckabee. Kevin Drum thinks it’s because the bloggers and op-ed writers are all cosmopolitan, big city folk who prefer that aristocrats pander to the religious right, not actually, you know, be them. Atrios says it’s a class thing, and he’s right. The Village has never taken to hicks coming in and trashing the place — it’s not their place.

But, while I think there’s definitely something to all of those theories, I believe it’s fundamentally something much more prosaic: they know he can’t win. And what’s really funny about that is that it implies that they think somebody in the rest of their field actually could.

The money people obviously believed that in their weakened position the best thing to do was hire some east coast technocrat or tough guy (preferably both, but you can’t have everything) who would wink and nod at the rubes in the primary and then run as Arnold Schwarzenneger in the general. Rudy McRomney has none of the Bushlike, born-again, regional signifiers that they think are independent/swing voter killers in this election. Huckabee, bless his heart, just oozes them.

Remember this choice quote of last month from the increasingly delusional William Kristol, suggesting that the nominee choose Lieberman as a running mate?

It’s true, given the behavior of the congressional Democrats, the GOP nominee might well win with a more conventional running mate. But why settle for a victory if you can have a realignment?

He’s actually still thinking realignment.

I quoted from this excellent Noah Millman post yesterday in another context. He is commenting on a post by Ross Douthat at the Atlantic which posits that none of the GOP candidates can win the nomination for a variety of different reason. Millman writes:

I completely understand Ross’s point, but I don’t agree that the current crop of nominees is a bad ideological fit for the GOP. They are only a bad ideological fit if your ideological straightjacket fits really, really tight.

Romney and Giuliani would have been “moderate Democrats” anywhere but in their respective hyper-liberal homes? Really? Romney got elected by running as a clean-government technocrat. So did George W. Bush when he ran his first race for governor of Texas. He ran a competent, business-oriented administration, and also became a vociferous culture warrior on religious-right issues. Giuliani, meanwhile, ran as the enemy of crime and welfare dependency, and governed as (depending on who you ask, and both views could be true) a forceful and notably successful conservative or a narcissistic megalomaniac. Calling these guys “moderate Democrats” effectively means: if you operate in any way within the context of the politics of your time and region, you are tainted. By that standard, Ronald Reagan, who signed a huge tax increase, cut and ran in Lebanon, preserved middle-class entitlements, appointed Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, and signed the only Cold War agreement with the Soviet Union to actually scrap a class of weapons, was a moderate Democrat, too.

Romney, plainly, is a business conservative. If he had been running for governor of Arizona, he would have fitted his cultural identity to suit that state, and would have prioritized pro-business technocratic governance just as he did in Massachusetts. Giuliani, plainly, is a law-and-order conservative. If he had grown up in South Carolina, he would have been just as much of a pro-lifer, and just as much of a philanderer, as, say, Strom Thurmond. If being very solid on some issues, and trying to make nice with other parts of the coalition on other issues, makes someone a bad ideological fit, then something has gone very wrong with the party.

Yes it has. The conservative evangelicals have always wanted one of their own, a real life conservative southern preacher, and damned if they didn’t just wake up and realize that they have one. Rudy McRomney can’t compete with that. The big money boyz insist that the Republicans nominate somebody who knows exactly who the boss really is, the racists want a mean bastard and the operatives desperately require somebody who can win over swing voters. Unless the Christian Right decides to take one for the team, the Republicans have quite a dilemma.

It’s especially enjoyable watching the pundit class having the vapors over this usurper. Peggy Noonan laments that even Ronald Reagan (dear me!)wouldn’t be good enough for the “nuts” as she called them last week. But she backed the Schiavo circus to the hilt, calling those who objected to the federal government meddling in one families business, “in love with death.” And she certainly didn’t seem to think there was any problem at all with the majority leaders of both the House and the Senate joining in this:

Noonan writes:

The Republican race looks–at the moment–to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential politics, but not the sole determinative one. Is that changing? If it is, it is not progress.

Did she think these people were joking at those rallies when they said this?

As evangelical Christians, our main concern is the citizenship that is ours in heaven that has been purchased by our Savior. But we also understand that we have a responsibility here on this earth, so long as we are alive, until the Lord returns, to show God’s love and to contend for God’s righteousness — and to tell this world that through His Law, and through His Word, God is trying to tell us something for our good, for our health, for our holiness. And we, as Christians, need to be active in the public sphere, not just to impose some kind of worldview or ideology, but to be salt and light, because that’s not my idea — that’s how we were commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to speak as Christian citizens

The religious right may just have finally tuned in to the fact that there was a candidate who spoke that language and they have decided to defy their betters in the salons of New York and DC (and TV Ministries too) to vote for the guy they feel represents them. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, my friends.

Not that it matters. Even if the GOP establishment manages to take out Huckabee, the wild-eyed blue state nutballs and robots they have competing against him won’t fare any better. The only people who are deeply attached to the GOP at this point are hedge fund managers, denizens of the Village and the conservative evangelicals. Putting up Rudy McRomney won’t change that.

update: It looks like the establishment Republicans have cranked up the old Arkansas Project to use against old Huck. Makes you feel young again…

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Heads I Win Tails You Lose

by digby

Mukasey’s Justice Department is working overtime to keep the scandal contained:

The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

Sure, that makes sense. Except in the same article we see this:

The administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. On Friday, the Justice Department urged Congress to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government’s investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.

So, basically the Justice Department lied to the judge. They don’t want congress asking any questions either.

I wish I could get outraged by all this, but I just can’t sunmmon up the requisite energy. I feel the same way I felt when Roberts and Alito handed down their first opinions and, by golly, they turned out to be rabid wingnuts after all. Whoddathunk?

Michael Mukasey is a Bush stooge. He wouldn’t have been nominated if he weren’t. His job is to provide cover until the Bush’s are out of office at which point he will join the cacophony of Villagers shrieking that the government must stop all the witch hunts and get on with more important business for the good of the country. And everyone who counts — from Newt Gingrich to Ben Nelson to David Broder — will agree that we’ve seen enough of this nasty partisan strife and it’s time to heal the nation’s wounds.

And America will live happily ever after.

Update: Emptywheel has more on this “request” to the court by the DOJ.

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Huckelberry’s Hobgoblins

by digby

It seems like only yesterday that we heard this from Huckleberry Graham:

Sen. Lindsay Graham is the lone Republican to blast Gonzales. His boyish face comes paired with a kindergartner’s hyperactivity, as he impatiently rocks his chair while waiting for his turn. During Gonzales’ answers to others’ questioning, Graham sometimes wears a look of confusion mingled with disgust. “I think we’ve dramatically undermined the war effort by getting on a slippery slope in terms of playing cute with the law,” Graham, a reserve Air Force JAG officer, says. He adds later, “And I think you weaken yourself as a nation when you try to play cute and become more like your enemy instead of like who you want to be.”

Gonzales senses that Graham has made a mistake and seizes on it. “We are nothing like our enemy, Senator,” he protests. They behead people, like Danny Pearl and Nick Berg. Graham notes that this is a pretty low moral standard for America to aspire to. I agree that we’re nothing like the enemy, he says. “But we’re not like who we want to be and who we have been.” (During Graham’s second round of questioning, Gonzales tells him that government lawyers did the very best they could when they wrote the memo. “Well that’s where you and I disagree,” Graham retorts. “I think they did a lousy job.”)

And this:

Mr. Graham: The Army Field Manual as a one-stop shop to guide the way we handle lawful combatants and enemy combatants is absolutely necessary if for no other reason than to protect our own troops. That is why we are doing this. That is one of the main reasons–to make sure that your own troops don’t get in trouble because they are confused.

[…]

The best thing we can do for anybody operating in the war on terror is give them clarity about what to do in very stressful situations. There is the combat role. What do you do with somebody who is captured? You do what the President says: You treat them humanely, you interrogate them by standards we can live by that will not erode our moral authority.

Where have those standards been in the last 50 or 60 years? The Army Field Manual. You can change the Army Field Manual to adapt techniques to the war on terror. There is a classified section of the Army Field Manual. There is nothing about its adoption that limits the ability to aggressively interrogate people to get good intelligence. But if you want to torture people, the Army Field Manual says no and the President says no. It is now time for Congress to say no, and that is what this amendment is about.

Today, not so much:

Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

The legislation, part of a measure authorizing the government’s intelligence activities for 2008, had been approved a day earlier by the House and sent to the Senate for what was supposed to be final action. The bill would require the CIA to adhere to the Army’s field manual on interrogation, which bans waterboarding, mock executions and other harsh interrogation methods.

[…]

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing the Senate from voting on it while the challenge goes forward.

“I think quite frankly applying the Army field manual to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think is lawful and helps the country,” Graham said in an interview.

And I assume Harry Reid will honor that hold, being a gentleman and all. He only refuses to honor the holds of his fellow Democrats.

Not that it matters. Aside from odd wide-stance scapegoat or a high school level spat about nothing, nobody in Washington is ever held accountable for anything they say or do.

I need a drink. A big one.

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Oh Shut Up

by digby

I can’t tell you how sick I already am of the latest incarnation of the angry, white male “star” as personified by Dobbs, Cafferty and lately (god help us) Matthews. It’s really just warmed over conservative talk radio ranting that people tend to confuse with ‘salt-of-the-earth’ regular Joe commentary which we’re supposed to think is excessively authentic because it’s rude and simple-minded.

Take this annoying knee jerk reaction from Jack Cafferty yesterday:

BLITZER: I want all of you to listen to the former vice president, Al Gore.

He was speaking at an international conference in Bali, in Indonesia, earlier today. The whole world — representatives of a lot of the countries around the world were there. And he — and he pinned the blame — most of the blame — on the global warming on the United States.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: All right. Now, that may or may not be true. But there’s a sense that, you know, they used to say politics stop at the water’s edge, Jack.

Was it appropriate or inappropriate for Gore to make that comment?

CAFFERTY: What a pompous jerk. Does he — I mean it’s time for Al Gore to get over himself.

Does he think there’s anybody at that conference in Bali that’s unaware of the U.S. opposition to the Kyoto Protocols?

I mean ever since he won the Oscar he thinks he’s some movie star. So I’m tired of Al Gore.

TOOBIN: Oh, Jack…

CAFFERTY: And I think he’s out of line doing that.

TOOBIN: I couldn’t disagree more. If Gore is right — and virtually every scientist in the world thinks he is — people are going to look back on this era and they’re not going to look at Iraq and they’re not going to look at immigration and they’re not going to look at the economy. They’re going to wonder why we didn’t do anything about global warming. And if he’s making a nuisance of himself, good for him.

[…]

CAFFERTY: But the point is…

TOOBIN: I just…

CAFFERTY: …he was talking to an audience that’s well aware of global warming. That’s why they’re all in Bali is to deal with global warming. This was just all about Al Gore trying to get the spotlight squarely on himself.

I know he sometimes says things we all applaud, but his “straight talk” is often nothing more than braindead knee-jerk contrarianism just like this. Yuck.

I’m depressed that this immigrant bashing, Archie Bunker style faux populist “character” is suddenly popular on the cable news shows again thanks to Dobbs (and O’Reilly, of course.) I will bet you money that we’re going to suddenly start hearing a lot of drivel from the gasbags about “angry, white males.” The rise of these boring curmudgeons is almost always a precursor to another round of tiresome whining that comes up whenever racial minorities and women seem to be getting too much attention.

Update: To those of you who think I’m making shit up about Cafferty and immigration, check this out:

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Wolf. Once again, the streets of our country were taken over today by people who don’t belong here.

In the wake of Congress failing to pass immigration legislation last week, America’s cities once again were clogged with protesters today. Taxpayers who have surrendered highways, parks, sidewalks and a lot of television news time on all these cable news networks to mobs of illegal aliens are not happy about it.

With every concession by the Bush administration, and the ever- growing demands of Mexican president Vicente Fox, America’s illegal aliens are becoming ever bolder. March through our streets and demand your rights. Excuse me? You have no rights here, and that includes the right to tie up our towns and cities and block our streets. At some point this could all turn very violent as Americans become fed up with the failure of their government to address the most pressing domestic issue of our time.

Here’s the question: What effect will the immigration protests have?

E-mail your thoughts to caffertyfile@CNN.com or go to CNN.com/caffertyfile — Wolf.

BLITZER: A lot of these demonstrators, you know, Jack, are legal. And many of them are citizens of the United States. They’re not all illegal immigrants, the people protesting.

CAFFERTY: How do you know?

BLITZER: Because I as out on the streets. I saw.

CAFFERTY: Well, where’s the immigration service? Why don’t they pull the buses up and start asking these people to show their green cards? And the ones that don’t have them, put them on the buses and send them home.

BLITZER: There’s a — well, that’s an expensive proposition, as you know — 12 million — 12 million of them.

CAFFERTY: As opposed to the cost we’re enduring by having 12 million of these people running around the country.

BLITZER: Jack, much more coming up. We have a debate. Lou Dobbs is standing by as well.