Month: November 2008

Big Shots

by digby

Read the following article and ask yourself if we live in a sane country:

Barack Obama said he would improve the economy. Turns out he already has, at least in one retail niche: gun sales. Starting in the days before the election, gun shops across the state have been mobbed by buyers who fear that Obama and a larger Democratic majority in Congress will restrict firearm sales.Many were stocking up on things such as assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and handguns that they think would be the most likely targets of new laws, though practically everything related to shooting has been selling more quickly. “It’s been an absolute madhouse,” said Trey Pugh, a manager at Jim’s Pawn Shop in Fayetteville, which is selling 15 to 20 AR-15 assault rifles a day. “I’m getting guys come in and say I always wanted that gun, and give me that one too and that one and, oh, I need a gun safe, too.”

I might chalk it up to a bunch of gun nuts using this as an excuse to buy some new toys, if it wasn’t for the ugly nature of the conservative campaign against Barack Obama and the ongoing sense of paranoia and victimization that characterizes the right wing.

Here’s an example from one of the Republican presidential nominee’s good friend:

On the November 4 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, G. Gordon Liddy spoke to a caller who stated: “I’m ready to go to the concentration camp, that [Sen. Barack] Obama’s police force — he will round me up. Because I — I’m a white American.” Liddy then said, “Well, listen to this,” and aired an edited clip of Obama [talking about the America Corps program] saying in a July 2 speech in Colorado Springs: “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Liddy then stated: “Shades of the Gestapo. The Geheime Staatspolizei,”

As Dave Niewert has thoroughly documented, this is the way the far right nutballs get their lunacy mainstreamed. It’s a much bigger danger when the fringies like this become the dominant voice in a minority Republican party.Unfortunately, there are a lot of them.

… we are fooling ourselves if we think the United States is still a Christian nation. Its people just elected a barbarian as president, authorized the killing of both its youngest and sickest, rejected scientific fact that human life begins at conception, blocked parental intervention of abortions of young girls, and voted down the wording of an abortion ban they said only two years ago they would support.

[…]

Obama’s election means Roe v. Wade has been taken off the table for the next 20 or 30 years. Throughout his four- to eight-year tenure, Obama will nominate at least two or three young Supreme Court justices to ensure the majority continues to agree with that decision, forcing the continued legality of abortion on all 50 states for decades.

So the holy grail for many pro-lifers is now gone. Just get used to thinking of pro-life strategy without it.

This lunatic says that people all over the country rejected the anti-choice measure on the ballot and that Obama has taken Roe vs wade off the table so the “pro-life” movement must develop a different strategy than through the ballot box and the courts to stop abortion. She says that the church must become more active in teaching that sex is bad, but I suspect that zealots who read this will perceive the literal call to arms in her words, “God’s people are commissioned.”

Ed Kilgore points out:

I know some religious progressives, with encouragement from Barack Obama, are working hard to find common ground with anti-choicers on efforts to reduce the demand for abortion. But so long as such efforts rely, as they always will, on aggressive promotion of birth control, you have to recognize that many if not most self-conscious right-to-life activists regard the most popular and effective forms of birth control as abortifacients, not contraceptives. Progressives need to understand that we are talking about people who sincerely think that every abortion is an act of homicide, representing an ongoing Holocaust of about one million victims a year. They use the Holocaust analogy very deliberately, because they believe they are living in a latter-day Nazi Germany, wherein the rest of us are as complicit in evil as the “good Germans” of the Third Reich. And they are not going away. There’s good reason to believe that homophobia will fade due to generational changes and the steady exposure of more and more Americans to gays and lesbians. But if anything, young conservatives (who often call themselves “abortion survivors” and spend time thinking about their “murdered” co-generationists) are more adamant in their anti-abortion views than their parents and grandparents.

I’m not so sure about the homophobia either anymore, to tell you the truth. The Christian Industry believes it’s found it new Holy Grail and is delighting in the fact that it has another issue from which to become millionaires on the backs of bigots. They’re not going to quit.

The stuff we saw at the McCain Palin rallies was not a fluke. It’s not like the two of them were long time Republican favorites and their worshipful followers just got carried away in the heat of the moment. These people were not their followers — they were fundamentalists, talk radio dittoheads, racists, militia types and gun nuts who were there to make their voices heard. They are motivated by hatred and paranoia — and they are now the face of the Republican party.

A lot of people have compared this to the period in the 1990s leading up to the Okalahoma City bombing. But I actually think it will be substantially worse. For one thing, the conservative movement was at its zenith at that point, filled with confidence and political power. As much as they let their ids run wild, they had a stake in maintaining their own political viability. Today, after their miserable failure at governance they are scattered and confused, with their Big Money Boyz and internationalist intellectuals trying to distance themselves from the rubes and the rubes defiantly asserting their dominance. I don’t think the party poohbahs can keep a lid on this, even to the rather weak extent they did a decade ago.

And this time, instead of a mere womanizing good old boy from Arkansas, we will have a president who these people literally believe is a foreign, barbaric, baby killing, communist, Muslim terrorist. They think the liberals have illegitimately taken over the political system and are literally endangering the country in order to force their foreign philosophy on Real Americans. They believe that violence is always the best way to deal with enemies, lest they live to fight another day. They are hoarding guns. You do the math.

H/T to BB

Tales From The Second Great Depression

by tristero

This is terribly sad, and ominous:

In February 2007 New York City Opera staked its future on the vision of Gerard Mortier, a European impresario known for provocative productions and a penchant for shaking things up. On Friday the company and Mr. Mortier said they were parting ways.

In City Opera’s bold venture, Mr. Mortier was to take on the jobs of general manager and artistic director in the 2009-10 season. It agreed to his plans to scrap old-fashioned traditions, mount challenging 20th-century works, bring opera to the people in their neighborhoods and extensively renovate the company’s home, the New York State Theater, rather than try to find a new building.

Now the company, already troubled by a recent string of bad news like layoffs and furloughs, said it would abandon his programming for next season, although the renovation would continue…

“I told them with the best will, I can’t do that,” Mr. Mortier said. “I cannot go to run a company that has less than the smallest company in France.” Mr. Mortier is in the final year of running the Paris National Opera, which has a budget closer to $300 million. “You don’t need me for that,” he said…

Among his moves at City Opera, Mr. Mortier commissioned two of America’s pre-eminent composers, Philip Glass and Charles Wuorinen, to write operas for it. Mr. Glass’s subject was the life of Walt Disney, and Mr. Wuorinen’s a version of “Brokeback Mountain.” Mr. Mortier said he would try to find other houses to take on the commissions…

His lineup at City Opera was to have included Messiaen’s “St. François d’Assise,” Stravinsky’s “Rake’s Progress,” Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach,” Janacek’s “Makropulos Case,” Britten’s “Death in Venice” and Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.” He planned to move the company toward a stagione season, in which productions follow one another rather than overlapping.

As always and of course, problems in the arts pale in comparison to problems of war and poverty. Still, this is a tragedy. To those of us who know these works and composers – and love them, and know that anyone with an open set of ears would also love them – this was a season to die for. It had the potential to revolutionize the very notion of opera in this country, transforming it from a museum attraction with 200 year old masterpieces and a rapidly aging audience, back into a living tradition. So terribly sad.

Instant Gratification

by dday

While in retrospect this seems obvious, until this point I hadn’t factored in that the Iraqis were waiting out the election results like the rest of us, and making sure that they would have an honest broker.

Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Spencer Ackerman has more on this. For background, understand that this deal was dead, completely, and the American forces were by the end of the year going to be in the country illegally. Plus, with bombings ticking back up the country was starting to head into a tailspin. Now, with Obama’s presence, the deal really becomes a withdrawal timeline. And it looks like he’ll have a mandate for change in Iraq as well:

Obama won’t be able to enter office with the Iraq problem solved. But it will be well on its way to being solved. The strategic framework for his desired withdrawal will be in place. And since he and the Iraqi government see eye to eye on the issue, Obama will have the credibility in place to work toward a political compact among the different Iraqi factions — something the Bush administration hasn’t ever had and a McCain administration wouldn’t ever have had.

That’s not to say Obama will achieve it, just that the stars are better aligned now.

Amazing what a change in leadership can do.

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Irrelevant

by digby

John Amato says it in pictures.

No, No, RFK, Jr.

by tristero

I’d like to pile on with my friends over at scienceblogs.com and say that RFK, Jr. shouldn’t be running the EPA or any other agency that could benefit from a scientific background. Kennedy has written far too many factually challenged articles on vaccinations and other issues. He simply has no talent whatsoever at judging scientific data and we’ve already had far too much of that kind of incompetence over the past eight years.

The Clinton Rules

by dday

While some conservative activists have the idea to rebuild their party by using the Obama-Dean inclusive vision of organizing and party infrastructure in service to the exclusive vision of conservatism, and others are waging jihad against anyone who dares cross Sarah Palin (by the power of Grayskull Redstate, we will purge you!!!), I think we know how this is all going to turn out, right?

HH: And I think he will be very concerned with the two issues I’m going to raise with you – national security and immigration. Now I believe the Committee On the Present Danger filled a need in the 70s which we need to reorganize an equivalent now. But what do you think, Bill Kristol?

BK: Oh, I agree, and we did a little of that in the 90s with the Project For the New American Century. And I actually think there are people talking about this. And there’s a lot of good foreign policy and defense thinking on our side, the Fred Kagans and Bob Kagans and Reuel Gerechts of the world, Victor Davis Hanson, et cetera. But a little bit of a political organization for them wouldn’t be bad. And I think we should support Obama, incidentally, if he does the right thing.

OF COURSE there will be another PNAC. As the media – and lots of Democrats – do the conservatives’ dirty work for them by warning Obama not to read any kind of Democratic victory into the resounding Presidential and Congressional victory, the connected white men at the top of the party will shrink into the background, plot, seek ways to undermine the new President, and basically lie in wait. They aren’t going to throw money into 50-state organizing or the Internet – that’s for the little people. They are convinced that Obama’s agenda will fail and they will stand ready, using their message machine to continue to feed rancid ideas into the media bloodstream. They’ve already got most of the Democratic Party urging for bipartisanship and restraint like the well-trained litter Grover Norquist et al. always wanted them to be. Fox News and right-wing radio and blogs will continue to work themselves into frenzies. Direct-mail groups will start sending letters to the base about how mysterious that Obama’s grandmother and the Nevada state director died on the same day – they’ll be added to the Obama Death List. Regnery books arguing against the radical Obama vision will fly off the shelves and into the pulping machines, with the authors all over cable news. AEI and Heritage will schedule conferences on “Why Moving The Top Tax Rate To 39% Kills Poor People” and other illuminating subjects. It will still be difficult to break a filibuster, and the minority party won’t make it any easier on anything that matters.

The right doesn’t have to “do” anything, I imagine is the consensus. All the structures of an opposition movement already exist, they just have to turn on the switch and sit back and wait.

Now, the question is whether our side has learned anything from 1993-94, or not.

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Puppy Watch

by digby

Like millions of other Americans I am shamefully taken with the story of the Obama girls and their new puppy (and I confess that Obama’s comment that he wanted to get “a mutt like me” gave me a ridiculous sense of happiness.) I admit that as much as I am cold-eyed and realistic about the political scene, I absolutely love the Obama family and any time I see them all together and think of those little girls growing up in the White House I get verklempft. So shoot me.

As to the “mutually exclusive” requirement for the pup — the puppy needs to be hypoallergenic for Malia but they want to adopt a shelter dog — there is a compromise. There are lots of dog rescue groups out there that have pure bred pups that have been abandoned and they need good homes too. They didn’t ask to be born pure bred.

There has been some discussion about this already, apparently, with PETA and the AKC weighing in with their own agendas. (Sheesh) This blogger had a lot of good advice about how to deal with all this:

Obama’s doggie dilemma is complicated by the fact that his 10-year-old daughter Malia has allergies. She’s done the research and wants a goldendoodle, a hypoallergenic hybrid of a golden retriever and a standard poodle that often can’t be found at the pound and isn’t recognized as a breed by the AKC. Choosing the family pet is tricky even when the eyes of the nation aren’t focused on your every move, and the Obamas have already had the high-stakes discussion (even arguing about whether their daughters are responsible enough to care for a dog) on national television. I feel for them. Because our son Graeme is deathly allergic to cats, we gave our daughter’s beloved cat away and, to assuage her grief, promised to get her a dog. Our search for a replacement might not pass PETA litmus tests. For PETA, every animal purchased from a breeder represents a missed opportunity for a pooch on euthanasia row. But when you have a kid with allergies, it’s not as easy as “Let’s go to the Humane Society.” I know; I tried that with Graeme. Exposure to one small hound had him huffing like a Hoover. And finding a hypoallergenic breed at the pound can be close to impossible. We found plenty of options on the AKC’s list of hypoallergenic dogs. They’re cheaper than buying a Labradoodle puppy, which can cost upwards of $2,000, but they didn’t interest us. We’re just not toy poodle people. Our final solution may offer the perfect political path for the Obamas. We put the word out with a group of pet rescuers that we were looking for a goldendoodle or Labradoodle. Groups dedicated to rescuing mutts and specific breeds (the AKC maintains a list of breed rescue groups) match owners who are giving their animals away with families looking for a new pet. For us, it paid off in late July when we adopted a 7-month-old Labradoodle (pictured left) from a family relocating across the country. We got the dog we were looking for (no wheezing in the Kelley household), kept a puppy from going to the pound, and supported the kind of organization even the AKC can get behind. That kind of political maneuvering can win hearts and minds (at least the ones that belong to my kids). I wonder if the Obama campaign is looking for a pet consultant?

They should call him.

Here’s what the new potential first puppy, if it’s a goldendoodle, will look like:

Problems

by digby

“Democratic strategist” and uber-villager Michael Feldman appeared with Andrea Mitchell earlier and said this:

Mitchell: Let’s talk about the State department and foreign policy. John Kerry, widely anticipated to be at least one of the people considered, really wants the job, although with joe Biden leaving the foreign relations committee,if he doesn’t get the job, he would be the foreign relations chairman because he has the seniority.What about John Kerry as Secretary of State? How hard is it to be Secretary of State with Joe Biden as Vice President?

Feldman: What I saw the other day is the domino effect of Kerry as Secretary of State might put the Democratic caucus in a position where Senator Feingold would be the next up to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and of course that poses a whole series of problems so…

Mitchell: Why does it pose a series of problems?

Feldman: Well, because of Senator Feingold’s opposition to the war and I think that would immediately, his vocal opposition to the war, I think that would immediately then raise some issues for the caucus and for leader Reid..

Mitchell: But the president [elect] of the United States is opposed to the war…

Feldman: This is true, but I think they’ll want in foreign relations is maybe a more even handed person. Ben (sic) Nelson’s name has been floated there as a potential consensus pick…

Is Feldman saying that Democrats still believe that it’s a liability to have voted against the war? (Nelson voted for it.) If so, somebody needs to tell the country because I think they just voted, in huge numbers, for a guy who won largely on the basis of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

The Villagers want to muzzle Feingold because they are petrified that the dirty hippies are about to trash the place. But using opposition to the war as some sort of litmus test is ridiculous. They are going to need to find a better excuse to deny him the chairmanship than that or risk one of the major rationales for Obama’s presidency.

The Republicans allowed a global warming denying, knuckle dragging neanderthal to be the head of the Environmental and Public Works Committee and nobody said a word. Russ Feingold is not his doppleganger. (He’s sane, for one thing.) And he has voted many times with the other side for a variety of reasons. The idea that he is going to cause “problems” because he is a war opponent only makes sense if you think withdrawing from Iraq is a problem.

These Democratic villagers are victims of Stockholm Syndrome and they need to be reprogrammed. It is not automatically a “problem” for Democrats to allow liberals to have a voice in politics when they just won a big election with a man at the top of ticket who the other side named the most liberal candidate in history. The public clearly didn’t find that a disqualifier and they need to accept that.

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David Brooks Has A Dream

by digby

… that Barack Obama is Nelson Rockefeller.

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Negotiating With Himself

by dday

It’s funny, Joe Lieberman thinks he’s some kind of bonus baby who can get a luxury car and a sweet penthouse apartment overlooking the National Mall out of either caucus in the Senate. At this rate he won’t be satisfied until he’s Majority Leader. The only problem is that nobody wants to offer him anything.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has reached out to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) about the prospect of joining the Republican Conference, but Lieberman is still bargaining with Democratic leaders to keep his chairmanship, according to Senate aides in both parties.

“Sen. Lieberman’s preference is to stay in the caucus, but he’s going to keep all his options open,” a Lieberman aide said. “McConnell has reached out to him, and at this stage, his position is he wants to remain in the caucus but losing the chairmanship is unacceptable.”

A Republican Senate aide said Friday morning that there was little McConnell could offer in terms of high-ranking committee slots, which is why Lieberman is resisting overtures from the Republican side […]

Lieberman’s aide told Politico on Friday morning that “essentially what transpired is that Sen. Reid talked about taking away his position perhaps for another position, and Sen. Lieberman indicated that was unacceptable.”

A person with direct knowledge of the Reid-Lieberman meeting yesterday on Capitol Hill said Reid turned to Lieberman at one point and said, “I prefer to work this out” after Lieberman hinted he would “explore his options” with Republicans if he was stripped of the committee.

Hilarious. Like he has clout. Lieberman would end up being a headache on either side of the aisle – a mole on the Democratic side, a Judas on the increasingly extremist Republican side. What’s more, Republicans don’t have any committee chairmanships to hand out, either. And nobody’s going to put their seniority aside for him.

Of course, his operatives have one goal – to make it look like bolting for the Republicans would make any difference whatsoever, fooling accommodationist Dems into reverting to measures of conciliation and healing. They’ve already snookered Evan Bayh, who’s eminently snooker-able.

BAYH: And I think if Joe came before the caucus and said look, if I said some things that came as offensive, I’m sorry, but they were, you know heartfelt in my support of John McCain. I think we had to just let bygones be bygones. We’re going to need him on healthcare and energy independence and education and a whole lot of other things.

Bayh concluded that Lieberman is “strong on national security.” “And we’re going to prove that there is a place for Democrats who are strong on national security in the Democratic Party,” he said.

I hope I miss when I try to shoot myself shortly after posting this.

If we do nothing, Lieberman will be welcomed back into the party, and they’ll probably throw a brunch in his honor. If we call these Senators and let them know that a mole chairing the main oversight committee in the Senate is unacceptable, maybe they won’t be so keen to allow it. If after getting stripped on his chairmanship, Lieberman wants to stay in the party, I personally think that’s up to him. But making sure he isn’t a one-man subpoena machine is the bare minimum of accountability that we should expect.

The number for the Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Start with your own Senator, but call the more conservative members of the caucus too. Ask whether they support Lieberman remaining as Chair of the Homeland Security committee, given his unfair attacks on President-elect Obama. Be polite, and calm. The young people who answer the phones are entry-level staffers.

Post what you hear in the comments. Let’s outflank Lieberman.

…since everyone’s quoting it today, yeah, Michael Corleone would be a good role model for Harry Reid:

Senator, you can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.

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