Month: April 2008

If The Shoe Fits

by digby

McCain giving etiquette lessons:

“We deserve more than tolerance from one another, we deserve each other’s respect, whether we think each other right or wrong in our views,” Mr. McCain said in a speech delivered in Prescott, Ariz. He added: “Let us remember, we are not enemies. We are compatriots defending ourselves from a real enemy. We have nothing to fear from each other.”

Ok. I get what he’s trying to say. We should all be decent to one another because —- they’re trying to kill us in our beds! Boldly we ride together into the mouth of hell. Got it.

Meanwhile:

On the air, Ed Schultz, a liberal talk show host based in Fargo, N.D., is well-known for his blunt criticisms of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. But Mr. Schultz, a fervent supporter of Senator Barack Obama, may have gone too far late Friday when he called Senator John McCain “a warmonger.”

Mr. Schultz, whose program is syndicated nationally, made the remarks while revving up a group of Obama supporters at a $100-a-head fund raiser at the North Dakota Democratic Party’s convention in Grand Forks. As soon as the Republican National Committee got word of the attack, it issued a statement lambasting Mr. Schultz and calling on Mr. Obama to repudiate the characterization of the presumptive Republican nominee for President.

“Enough is enough,” said Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Senator Obama has an obligation to speak out and publicly reject and denounce — not applaud — the shameful and contemptible remarks made by his surrogates.”

Why is that contemptible? McCain is out there making speeches about how we are all in this together fighting our common enemy (Islamofascism…Iraqi insurgents…Iran … terrorism…bad, bad men?) He says he’s happy to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. He cheerfully sings songs with the words “bombbombbomb — bomb bomb Iran.” Why is this even controversial? McCain is a warmonger and makes no bones about it. It’s the entire rationale for his campaign.

war·mon·ger
–noun
a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war.

*For the record, the Obama campaign repudiated Schultz’s remarks. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t true and accurate.

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He Didn’t Mean What He Meant

by digby

I was going to write something about this but Jamison Foser saved me the trouble. The media’s triple backflips and double axels explaining away McCain’s “100 years in Iraq” comment this week are nearly Onion parodies, they are so ridiculous. (I wondered if poor Bob Somerby was going to have an aneurysm reading them considering the distortions and lies about Al Gore that the media gleefully spread in 2000.)

Foser points out that with all the rending of garments about the horror of Obama using McCain’s words against him, nobody has bothered to ask what McCain actually did mean when he said it — or why he flipped flopped like a dying carp saying at one time or another completely different things on the subject.

On the best of days, John McCain’s fanboys rival 12 year old girls screaming themselves faint in the front row of a Jonas Brothers concert, but this rush to ensure that that mean Barack Obama didn’t “get away” with using McCain’s own words against him on the stump was a profile in Xtreme Flyboy-love. Once again, McCain is excused for saying something completely shocking because his scribbling sycophants are sure he “didn’t really mean it.” One can only imagine what it would be like if all candidates were given the benefit of the doubt on such matters.(I’m sorry Jay, but this proves once again that they have not learned any lessons from their irresponsible behavior of the past few years.)

I wrotelast week that I think this is a very dangerous theme. If the press helps McCain reposition the Iraq issue from one of invasion and occupation to one of long term “peacekeeping” (pay no attention to all the death and carnage) then they will once again have blood on their hands because they fail to tell the whole story. Not that they seem to care.

It is very tempting for Americans, in this time of economic turbulence and personal stress, to simply accept what the media and the Republicans are telling them about Iraq. Our latter day Eisenhower, The Man Called Petraeus, has led us to victory and all we are doing now is mopping up and keeping the peace. If you don’t follow the story closely, you could easily believe that. So when you hear McCain say that he thinks Iraq will be like Germany or Korea, where American servicemen have been stationed for half a`century now, marrying little blond frauleins and passing out Hershey bars to the local kids, well, what could be wrong with that? That’s perfectly normal.

By going out of their way to feverishly explain away McCain’s comments, without adding any necessary context, they are actually helping him frame his campaign argument that America needs to stay in Iraq indefinitely. And I expect that when we next have a visitation from TMCP The Great, they will work very hard to ensure that no one says anything that could be construed as a “General Betrayus” type of gaffe. Everyone will be properly respectful, no matter what crazy stuff he comes up with. (That is the happy result of a successful Hissy Fit — it’s all about the next time.)

The press is still enabling the Republicans on the issue of Iraq, this time in service of their anointed candidate McCain. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about this stuff anymore. It’s as predictable as the dawn. But it’s hard to believe they didn’t develop even the slightest amount of self-awareness over their part in the last few years of death and destruction and are going to do it again without a second thought. McCain’s the guy they want to sit in the back of the bus and have a beer with. That’s all that matters.

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Boatloads Of Bad Apples

by digby

High level interest:

The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating whether a career attorney in the department was dismissed from her job because of rumors that she is a lesbian. The case grew out of a larger inquiry into the firings of U.S. attorneys and politicization at Justice under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales…

Hagen received the highest possible ratings for her work as liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys’ committee on Native American issues. Her final job evaluation lists five categories for supervisors to rank her performance. For each category, a neat X fills the box marked, “Outstanding.” And at the bottom of the page, under “overall rating level,” she also got the top mark: Outstanding.

The form is dated February 1, 2007. Several months before that evaluation, Hagen was told her contract would not be renewed.

Hagen would not comment for this story, but her job evaluation is consistent with what many others have said about her. A dozen former colleagues, inside and outside of the Justice Department, were interviewed for this story. They worked above, below and side by side with Hagen.

Each one raved about her work.

[…]

The official line on Hagen’s dismissal was that contracts like hers are a privilege. Rotating new people through the job each year gives more people a chance to serve.

But what happened next seems to undermine that explanation. Internal Justice Department documents obtained by NPR show that soon after Hagen was let go, two people in her office had their contracts renewed for another year.

And Hagen’s post remained vacant months after she left.

Guess who was at the bottom of this odd story? That’s right, none other than our young Liberty Law School Alum, Monica Goodling:

Justice Department e-mails obtained by NPR show that Gonzales’s senior counsel Monica Goodling had a particular interest in Hagen’s duties. A few months before Hagen was let go, according to one e-mail, Goodling removed part of Hagen’s job portfolio — the part dealing with child exploitation and abuse.

Goodling, who left the Justice Department last year, declined through her lawyer to comment on the matter.

At the height of the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys, Goodling admitted to making personnel decisions about career Justice Department lawyers based on improper partisan considerations.

“I crossed the line of the civil service rules,” Goodling told Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) at a congressional hearing in May 2007.

Goodling’s conversation with Scott focused on whether Republican Party loyalty factored into her hiring decisions. But by all accounts, Hagen was a GOP loyalist.

So, what was Goodling’s problem with Hagen?

The Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into whether Hagen was dismissed after a rumor reached Goodling that Hagen is a lesbian.

As one Republican source put it, “To some people, that’s even worse than being a Democrat.”

To some people it’s worse than being a murderer.

This is another reason why I laugh out loud when I hear people say that congress must pass retroactive immunity or read stories about Michael Mukasey choking up when describing how the government needs to spy on Americans with impunity to keep the country safe. Even suggesting that the administration might have used these powers for political purposes is met with vociferous objection, as if that’s so outrageous as to be nearly delusional. Why you might as well be a Hale-Bopp cultist or a believer in the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion.

And yet we know that the Bush Department of Justice was a cesspool of political corruption emanating from the very top. They destroyed the life of a Democratic Governor in Mississippi for partisan gain. They pursued five times as many public corruption charges against Democrats than Republicans in an era of Republican political majority. They ruined the careers of honest prosecutors who refused to indict Democrats on trumped up charges of voter fraud. Evidently, they fired people for being gay as well.

To simply accept that these people skirted FISA only for the righteous purposes of chasing down terrorist operations is absurd. We already know the kinds of thing the Bush justice department did. Why in the world would we not assume they used all the powers at their disposal to spy on political opponents?

Of course they did. We’d have to be complete idiots to think otherwise.

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Crying Wolf And Crocodile Tears

by digby

Glenn updated his story about Mukasey literally choking up in public over the supposed fact that FISA prevented the government from stopping 9/11. It turns out that he was, as predicted, talking through his ass.

This might be understandable except for the fact that he is not just another bush hack. He’s the Attorney General of the United States and a former federal judge. Now we know the job doesn’t require legal competence — Alberto Gonzales was formerly on the Texas Supreme Court after all. But he should be above cheap, emotional ploys to get legislation passed that would give big corporations immunity for helping the Bush administration usurp the constitution. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. There is no reasonable explanation for him making this kind of “mistake.”

This part of his plea was especially nauseating:

Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America’s anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. “We got three thousand. … We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that,” he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

At the time of the attacks, Mr. Mukasey was the chief judge at the federal courthouse a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. He was selected as attorney general in part because of his experience overseeing terrorism cases, but he said that did little to prepare him to deal with the daily briefing he receives about the threat to America.

“It is way beyond — way beyond anything that I knew or believed. So, if I was picked for the level of my knowledge of what I actually see, that was a massive piece of false advertising,” he said. “There’s a lot going on out there.”

Right. Run fer yer lives. Which,again, is why we should give huge corporations retroactive immunity for breaking the law and make sure that there is no accountability ever for anything the government does to “protect” us. That’s supposed to keep us safe for some reason.

I’m sorry, I just don’t know that I can believe him. This is, after all, the administration that decided the best way to defend the nation was to invade and occupy a Muslim country that hadn’t harmed us smack dab in the middle east. The same people who lied repeatedly about the cause for that war and used a lot of emotional manipulation, false information and rhetorical flim flam to convince the American people that it needed to be done. Excuse us for being a teensy bit skeptical.

The bottom line on this is simple. This administration lies as easily as it breathes. And it isn’t about some childhood memory or the activity in someone’s pants. It’s about really serious shit — the kind of serious shit that Mukasey was blubbering about before the Commonwealth Club. We have no way of knowing that the danger he cites is true, but we do know that he lied,outright, about the fact that FISA cause 9/11.

If we can get through the next nine months without the country being blown up, and we can elect a new administration that doesn’t come from the same martial wingnut perspective, maybe we can get an accurate assessment of what’s needed. (no guarantee there, but at least a chance.) Until then, at the very least, there should be nothing done — not one piece of legislation passed, not one initiative undertaken — to change the status quo. No SOFA, no FISA, no nothing. The whole national security regime will just have to muddle along with the laws and procedures that are already in place.

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Evergreen

by digby

One of the things I think people may not completely grok about us loathsome and reviled baby boomers is that our politically formative years were a little bit unusual — when we were young our leaders and heroes kept getting assassinated. You can imagine how that might shape a person’s view of politics. Fortunately that hasn’t happened in a long time, which is something we should be grateful for. But for a while, in the 60s, it seemed to kids like me that this was normal.

Martin Luther King’s assassination felt inevitable — especially to him. In his last speech, he famously said:

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

I doubt that anyone in that audience thought he was being dramatic. America was in a violent period. Everyone knew it.

King had been at the center of the storm for many years but had recently come in for a particularly rough time since he had spoken out against the war in Vietnam. He was an icon, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was accused of tainting his legacy and hurting his cause for standing up against the war. He led his movement beyond its original mandate and became a true leader for peace, often saying things that were so provocative you can’t help but be moved by his tremendous courage. (At least I can’t. That is the other side of the liberal baby boomer ethos — our ridiculously earnest appreciation for public protest and brave speeches. When we were young, these things seemed imperative.)

Almost a year to the day before King was killed in Memphis, he gave a speech about Vietnam at the Riverside Church in New York City. It isn’t quite as well known as his other speeches, but it’s an important one.

Consider just how radical this was in 1967: he took the political and military establishment on directly and fiercely, long before it was fashionable and at great cost to himself. He spoke up for the victims of the war on all sides, tried to explain the history of the conflict, refused to demonize the communist “enemy” and accused the American government of manipulating events and lying to the people. You must read it in its entirety to get the full flavor of its radicalism. It’s probably wrong of me to excerpt it, (though I will.)

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

[…]

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

[…]

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

Change a few words and that could have been said today about Iraq, no? It was incendiary at the time, when post WWII America was actually far more reflexively jingoistic than it is today (if you can believe that.)

For a long time now, we’ve been talking here and elsewhere about how tired everyone is of boomer issues, boomer concerns and the ridiculous obsession this culture has with the 1960s. I agree with all of that. But it is important, on a day like today, for us to recognize just how big the issues were (and are), how huge the risks to those who spoke out, and the tremendous sacrifices a few brave people made for fundamental, meaningful change. The Reverend Martin Luther King used every bit of political capital at his disposal to advocate for equality and peace and he paid the ultimate price.

There was nothing frivolous or self-serving about this speech, or trite and old fashioned about its sentiments. It was American to its core, in the very best sense of the word:

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

Perhaps the 60s are dull and boring now — history. But they aren’t irrelevant. Revolutionary words like that, and heroes like King, are evergreen.

UPDATE: Perlstein excerpts his new book today to tell the story of King’s radicalism. Don’t miss it.

Oh, and buy the book!

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Oinkers, Continued

by dday

So remember yesterday, when I basically said that Consumers Against Government Waste was essentially a GOP front group designed to sap trust in government by promoting Congressional waste and “runaway spending” without relating it to where the real runaway spending actually comes from?

Turns out that CAGW is actually a REAL GOP front group that makes a lot of its money through lobbying.

Two years ago, the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste launched a lobbying campaign about avocados.

The group, which enjoys a strong reputation in the nation’s capital for keeping an independent eye on government spending, plunged into an obscure agricultural dispute. It issued press releases and prodded its members to support avocados from Mexico.

Tom Bellamore, whose California Avocado Commission was fighting the Mexican imports, was puzzled. “I don’t think avocados have much to do with government waste,” he said.

Indeed, Citizens Against Government Waste did not reveal what motivated the aggressive campaign: It had received about $100,000 from Mexican avocado growers.

That’s just one of many instances in which CAGW has traded on its watchdog reputation by taking money from companies and trade associations and then conducted lobbying and public relations campaigns on their behalf – without revealing that money changed hands.

You can read on in this great investigative piece from the St. Petersburg Times, and the companion piece exploring CAGW’s experience lobbying for Big Tobacco to the tune of $245,000. They also publish a lot of information in their Pig Book decrying federal grants for things like YMCAs without noting that they lobby for The International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, whose members compete with YMCAs.

What’s notable is that the exposé is in the St. Petersburg Times, a unique project owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school. In other words, not a corporate entity.

(h/t Bill Scher)

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When Danger Reared Its Ugly Head

by tristero

Look at it from their standpoint. The article states, “The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.” Therefore, why would any Iraqi with an ounce of commonsense put himself in a position to get killed as long as the US is willing to have its own soldiers die instead (and expend billions of dollars in high tech bang bang)? I’m not being snarky, it simply stands to reason:

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

And so, Maliki called for reinforcements, exclusively from Shiite tribes, an action which, according to the article, angered Sunnis willing to fight. I guess Maliki didn’t get St. John McCain’s memo to stop the bullshit. But in case you think the current decrease in violence is a hopeful sign:

Even as officials described problems with the planning and performance of the Iraqi forces during the Basra operation, signs emerged Wednesday that tensions with Moktada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who leads the Mahdi Army militia, could flare up again. Mr. Sadr, who asked his followers to stop fighting on Sunday, called Thursday for a million Iraqis to march to the Shiite holy city of Najaf next week to protest what he called the American occupation. He also issued a veiled threat against Mr. Maliki’s forces, whom he accused of violating the terms of an agreement with the Iraqi government to stand down.

Don’t you just love that hedge, “what he called the American occupation?” Anyway, in case you were wondering, fighting hasn’t completely stopped.

One more thing, something the article, for some strange reason doesn’t mention. Seems like an Iranian general played the key role in negotiating whatever ceasefire there may be. As Juan Cole observed, Bush has been “reduced to irrelevancy in Iraq” while Iran’s influence has been strengthened. Who could possibly have predicted?

And you know what galls? Not a single prominent member of the gang that advocated and perpetrated the unspeakable set of multiple war crimes known as the Bush/Iraq war will ever go to trial, let alone see the inside of a jail cell. Not Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Not Perle, Wolfowitz, or Feith. Even worse, there is a very real chance that the truly insane course upon which the United States is headed will continue. Add the Myth Of St. John McCain to an enthusiastic propensity amongst Republicans to stuff ballot boxes, stir in a deeply divided Democratic party no matter how the primaries turn out, finally, sprinkle a huge amount of GOP fear that even worse Bush administration horrors will come out if they lose, and the country is cooking up an unbelievably rancid election battle. The 2008 Presidential will redefine the term “hard-fought.”

It is going to be an interesting year.

Early Morning, April 4

by dday

… shot rings out, in a Memphis sky,
free at last, they took you alive your life (I’m a dummy)
but they could not take your pride…

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Just to contextualize, Martin Luther King was in Memphis working with striking sanitation workers who wanted a fair contract from the city. He was a civil rights leader but understood civil rights as an economic justice issue, as an issue of equality, not just of humanity but opportunity. The workers were threatened and attacked and kept on marching for their rights. King’s fight was for freedom of assembly, for equal protection, for justice in all its forms. To me, this was actually the most powerful portion of that speech:

Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy — what is the other bread? — Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town — downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

The power of collective action. The power of bottom-up organizing. The power of seeing a world where everyone is in it together, where everyone has a stake in one another. The power of fighting for justice and fairness and right, and moving mountains just by walking together. We get cynical in this medium a lot, and maybe we have a right to; after all, forty years ago they shot Dr. King for leading such a movement. But the legacy lives on, and I believe in his aphorism that “the long arc of history bends toward justice.” This movement, this place where we’ve all gravitated, is but a small kernel of that legacy. But it’s growing, and regardless of the President or the Congress or whoever it will continue to move forward. And one day, we will get there.

…oh yeah, just so you know, and want to tell a friend, John McCain voted against making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday in 1983.

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He So PoMo

by digby

… he so cool.

Last week I wrote about Neal Gabler’s scorching essay about McCain’s relationship to the media in which he observed:

Though Mr. McCain can be the most self-deprecating of candidates (yet another reason the news media love him), his vision of the process also betrays an obvious superiority — one the mainstream political news media, a group of liberal cosmologists, have long shared. If in the past he flattered the press by posing as its friend, he is now flattering it by posing as its conspirator, a secret sharer of its cynicism. He is the guy who “gets it.” He sees what the press sees. Michael Scherer, a blogger for Time, called him the “coolest kid in school.

Here’s a perfect example of the phenomenon:

We were extraordinarily impressed at your ability to look right into the camera and lie about the fact that you’re a huge fan of The Hills,” host Joe Scarborough said (at 48 seconds into the video above). “Heidi Montag on your side – you got that going for you.” “That was pretty good wasn’t it?” McCain replied. “Well, she’s a very talented actress.” “He did it again!” Scarborough remarked.

Check out the video at the link to see how pleased with themselves the two cynical jokesters are. As I wrote in my earlier post, McCain has a lethal advantage here. We all think he’s a crazy old coot who nobody could possibly take seriously, but underestimating his appeal to the press (or his sense of humor) is stupid. He can deliver a line.

H/T to RS