Month: July 2010

Up From The Bottom

by digby

Here’s astirring story of American meritocracy :

Luke Russert, son of Tim Russert, the “Meet the Press” host who died in 2008, was an intern at City Hall during summer 2007. In an interview, Mr. Russert said that he juggled two internships that summer — one at the mayor’s office, the other at NBC, working forConan O’Brien.

Mr. Russert, then a senior at Boston College, worked for Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey, who befriended his father after both worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Mr. Russert researched gun-control positions of Republican lawmakers who wanted to meet with Mr. Bloomberg. “It was really worthwhile,” he said. “It was not just opening letters and getting coffee.”

Asked what role his connections played in landing the job, he said: “I don’t really know about that. I went through the application process like anyone else.

h/t to ms

Game On

by digby

Greg Sargent correctly identifies the method to the GOPs unemployment madness:

The GOP game plan: Amid the debate over benefits, point to “chronic” joblessness — that’s a word you’ll be hearing more often — in order to illustrate that Dem economic policies are failing. Republicans hope that even if the unemployment standoff gives Dems a short term advantage, any discussion about joblessness will continue to sow doubts over time about the efficacy of the Dems’ big-spending approach.

Two Republicans made this case explicitly today. Here’s Mitch McConnell, on the floor of the Senate today, slamming Obama’s presser yesterday with three unemployed Americans:

“If ever there was an indictment of this administration’s economic agenda it was yesterday’s press conference. The administration asked taxpayers to foot the bill on a trillion dollar stimulus that he claimed would create 4 million jobs. A year and a half later the President is standing with three chronically unemployed Americans, some of the victims of a 9.5 percent unemployment rate, asking taxpayers for $34 billion more in deficit spending to continue paying their unemployed benefits.”

You can read Eric Cantor’s at the link.

And the head of the Republican Party chimed in as well.:

It’s a bold plan and it plays into the sour mood quite well. But the Dems can return volley quite effectively if they try — they have to ruthlessly accuse the Republicans of wanting to place the burden of their own economic crisis on the backs of the unemployed rather than their rich friends. I don’t know if they have it in them to make that argument since they share so many of the same friends, but it’s the best way to beat this back.

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Update below:

Weak Back Hand

by digby

When our new overlord Andrew Breitbart says jump, the White House says, “how high?” Kevin Drum:

Hoo boy. Conservatives apparently aren’t going to back down from ever more overt appeals to racial resentment this summer. BigGovernment.com “broke” a story yesterday about a speech given a few months ago by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, at an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner. In it, Sherrod tells a story from 24 years ago about not helping a white farmer as much as she could have because she was “struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farm land.”

The point of this story, told in a public venue, was that she quickly realized that she had done wrong. “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. It’s not so much about white…it is about white and black but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes.”

Naturally, the administration panicked like a bunch of frightened little children:

Sherrod told CNN on Tuesday that she was told repeatedly to resign Monday afternoon after the clip surfaced. “They harassed me,” she said. “I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

Sherrod said the calls came from Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary for rural development. “The administration was not interested in hearing the truth. They didn’t want to hear the truth,” she said.

Sherrod said she and the white farmer she referred to in the video, Roger Spooner, became friends. Spooner’s wife, Eloise, confirmed to CNN that she and her husband considered Sherrod friends. “She helped us save our farm by getting in there and doing everything she could do,” Eloise Spooner said. “They haven’t treated her right.”

Sherrod said she told the story to make the point that at the time she thought that white farmers had the advantages because of their race but she learned that was not the case. “The point was to get them to understand that we need to look beyond race,” Sherrod said.

Breitbart had edited the video, of course, and he refuses to release the whole thing, naturally. But that didn’t matter in this case any more than it mattered in the ACORN case. It’s nothing but a play to America’s racist lizard brain.

And today the wife of the farmer went on CNN to say that this woman had been instrumental in helping them keep their farm and that she considered her a good friend. I suppose it would have been too much to ask that the administration at least checked that much out before they hung this woman out to dry.

After ACORN and now this, I really have to wonder if the Democrats and Brietbart aren’t actually working together on a whole Sistah Soljah campaign. It’s a little bit hard to see why anyone over 10 years old would fall for the same ruse over and over again. (Hey, maybe their focus groups show that simply alienating liberals isn’t going to impress those swing voters so they need to alienate the black vote too…)

But I also have to wonder if they know what the optics of this are. If two-bit sociopathic wingnuts can scare them to this extent with obviously doctored videos, what happens when they see a real threat? Are they going to flap their arms like penguins and run around in circles screaming “they’re coming to get us, run for your lives!!?” At this point, that doesn’t seem entirely ridiculous.

Seriously, this shows tremendous weakness. Andrew Brietbart is a con artist and and right wing entertainer whose antics should always be met with a cynical laugh and a shake of the head. To fall for his schtick more than once is political malpractice.

Update: Greg Sargent urges caution because it’s not clear that the White House itself actually ordered the firing. Perhaps not. But there is no doubt that Tom Vilsack fired this woman, issuing a statement that they have zero tolerance for discrimination and it’s obvious that they did not wait to get all the facts before they did this — Vilsack is a member of the cabinet. The buck still stops at the White House.

Update II: Vilsack takes responsibility and White House backs hIM:

Yesterday, I asked for and accepted Ms. Sherrod’s resignation for two reasons. First, for the past 18 months, we have been working to turn the page on the sordid civil rights record at USDA and this controversy could make it more difficult to move forward on correcting injustices. Second, state rural development directors make many decisions and are often called to use their discretion. The controversy surrounding her comments would create situations where her decisions, rightly or wrongly, would be called into question making it difficult for her to bring jobs to Georgia.

Our policy is clear. There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA and we strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. We have a duty to ensure that when we provide services to the American people we do so in an equitable manner. But equally important is our duty to instill confidence in the American people that we are fair service providers.

“Her decision ‘rightly or wrongly” will be called into question” because some right wing hitman put out an edited tape that makes her sound as if her point is the opposite of what it is, so she had to be fired.

They are telling wingnuts everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are “fair service providers.”

This is sheer cowardice.

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Sharron’s Best Pal

by digby

In case anyone still has any question about how influential the vile racist Mark Williams really is in the Tea Party movement, this article in MoJo should put them to rest. He’s behind one of the flagship teabag Senate races:

Williams and the group he’s affiliated with, the Tea Party Express, have almost single-handedly made Angle into a contender. Earlier this month, Angle described Williams, who stepped down this weekend as chairman of the outfit, as “instrumental” to her success. So does she still consider him a key to victory? So far, she’s not saying.

Up until now I’ve thought she was just a fairly foolish amateur wingnut, but her response to the Williams “satire” shows she’s really a typical Republican nasty piece of work:

Angle’s campaign issued a statement to CNN that managed to avoid mentioning Williams’ name directly and spin the controversy into a chance to bash her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “Mrs. Angle readily condemns the use of the type of inflammatory language used on somebody’s private blog just like she condemned the language used by Majority Leader Harry Reid when he referenced our President as being a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one’.”

The spokesperson goes on to say that “all” such racist language is to be condemned, as if Reid’s clumsy remarks are in any way comparable to Williams’ shockingly noxious screed.

But then Sharron Angle couldn’t distance herself if she wanted to — Mark Williams and the Tea Party express pretty much made her:

It wouldn’t be easy for Angle to sever ties with Williams and the Express. This spring, Angle received the Express’ full-throated endorsement, and not long after, her campaign hauled in $5,000 from the group’s political action committee—the maximum donation from a PAC. The Express has also spent more than $500,000 on TV ads, radio spots, and direct mail backing Angle, and has blasted email appeals to its members to drum up contributions to Angle’s campaign. Williams has said his group “spent more in the campaign to defeat Harry Reid than just about any other group out there in this election cycle.” Once the Williams-led Express got behind Angle, her rise in the GOP primary was meteoric. She had a mere 5 percent support in an early April Mason-Dixon poll, but won 40 percent of the primary vote in early June. Angle likely couldn’t have pulled off her GOP primary upset over moderate Sue Lowden without the Express’ backing.

She had to have known about Williams’ views since the article further shows they were all over his “private” web site and he never failed to express them in “colorful” terms on his radio show. She apparently didn’t think there was anything wrong with them. Certainly the Tea Party Express knew about them. But they aren’t pulling out of her campaign and Angle isn’t planning to return any of the money they raised for her.

We already knew she was a heartless person who thinks that little girls should give birth to their own sisters if they are raped (they can be adopted together!) and that the unemployed are spoiled and should be forced to pick strawberries and clean toilets. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise anyone that her closest allies are vile racists. It’s a worldview.

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Your Daily Grayson

by digby

“The Republicans are thinking, why don’t they just sell some of their stock? If they’re in really dire straits maybe they can take some of their art collection and send it to the auctioneer. And if they’re in deep deep trouble maybe the unemployed can sell one of their yachts. That’s what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that’s not the life of ordinary people…”

“I will say to the Republicans who have blocked this bill for months, to those who have kept food out of the mouths of children, I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls”

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It’s Official

by digby

We don’t need any fresh ideas. It is fresh ideas that have gotten into this mess. All the ideas we need can be found in an 8 page document, it’s the Constitution; if you need to go beyond that just look at the Federalist papers. We don’t need any fresh ideas.

Today the GOP agreed:

The House Administration Committee on Friday officially approved Rep. Michele Bachmann’s request to form the House Tea Party Caucus, the Minnesota Republican announced on Facebook and Twitter on Monday.

Not that it’s a particular surprise. Today we have more proof that the Tea Party is not just a group of disaffected Americans who are drawn into the political system out of frustration with both parties. This latest report from Democracy Corps from focus groups and polling done over the past three months confirms what any sentient person can see with their own eyes: they are far right loons, who have the populist impulses of Paris and Nicky Hilton:

Popular accounts describe it as a populist revolt against elites. Richard Viguerie at a tax day rally said, “The tea parties are an unfettered new force of the middle class tapping into the anger [at] most major American institutions such as Wall Street, education, Hollywood, the media, big labor.”[1] And Matt Bai in The New York Times writes, “the only potent grass-roots movement to emerge from this moment of dissatisfaction with America’s economic elite exists … in the form of the so-called Tea Party rebellions that are injecting new energy into the Republican cause.”

While many of the Tea Party supporters are also frustrated with the Republican Party of TARP bailouts, that does not alter the character of the movement:

* 86 percent of Tea Party supporters and activists identify with or lean to the Republican Party.
* 79 percent identify as conservatives.
* They are among the most pro-big business segments of the electorate: 54 percent rate it warmly and 20 percent coolly.
* The Tea Party movement is not particularly blue collar. Tea Party supporters are slightly less likely to be college-graduates than the likely electorate (41 percent, versus 45 percent), and the activists more so (48 percent). And 85 percent of the supporters are white.
* Only 5 percent report having voted for Obama in 2008.

With Tea Party supporters comprising one in four (25 percent) likely voters and one in ten (10 percent) active as donors or attending rallies, what they think matters:

* They are fired up – 94 percent of the supporters say they are almost certain to vote.
* They share a great disdain for President Obama, with over 92 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance, and 89 percent strongly. Only 6 percent think Obama ‘shares their values.’
* They share a coherent, anti-government, conservative ideology that wants small government, little spending and returning the country to the Constitution.
* They are united against “Obama’s Socialist Agenda” – that puts the country gravely at risk.
* They deeply identify with Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the NRA – which share their worldview – re-enforced by the echo-chamber of Fox News, their main source of news.
* They are gaining energy from the prospect that they can stop Obama in this year’s election, save the party from fake conservatives and use the Republican Party to save the Constitution.

Tea Party Supporters and Activists

In this combined database of over 2,600 interviews, 25 percent identify themselves as “strong” supporters of the Tea Party movement.[4] These are the Tea Party supporters in this analysis. One-in-ten are activists: 10 percent who have been active in the Tea Party by either donating money or attending a rally or a meeting.

Tea Party activists are a very Republican and conservative group. Over 70 percent call themselves ‘conservative Republicans,’ compared to just a third of all likely voters; 86 percent say they are Republican or lean Republican.

Tea Party activists and supporters see Obama as the defining and motivating threat to the country and its well-being, typified by his socialist agenda. Among supporters, 90 percent say the socialist label describes Obama well and 68 percent say it describes him very well. Obama fares no better on the other attributes tested: nine-in-10 think he is too liberal (93 percent) and a big spender (90 percent).

The driving force behind their negativity toward Obama is the belief that his actions and goals are un-American. Throughout the focus groups, people repeatedly invoked “Obama’s Socialist Agenda” – with the occasional communism comment thrown in. Participants said it is this socialist agenda – which underlies all of Obama’s policies seeking to make citizens more dependent on the state – that has put people over the edge and launched a movement that has been percolating for a long time.

The only thing I’ve seen is that government has grown exponentially under Obama since he’s been in office and we’re going towards Socialized everything.

The cap and trade, the healthcare, all the things that Obama is throwing out there towards the Socialists.

It’s ugly right now, and it’s a long cycle and it seems like this country is becoming like a Socialist country. Obama’s sure into that. I don’t know. I just think he’s got a lot of inexperience and whoever the puppeteers that are behind him, you know, they’re doing all this too.

It’s going to take a long time to kind of repair the socialist agenda that he’s got going. But, today is better than tomorrow to start and just do something.

We’ve been crawling toward Socialism for 70 years; we’re sprinting toward it now.

Any questions about the transpartisan nature of these folks?

The following comments are also very revealing — these people confuse the TARP with the stimulus and the auto bailout and that’s something people should be aware of when they insist that these people have something in common with progressives:

We had stimulus one, stimulus two, and then the health care bill just threw it on it’s… that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The whole TARP thing. And we’ve spent like 25% and it was this grandiose save the day or whatever. And then people started to say, what? Where is the money, where is it going? Million dollar TARP money spent for some study on frogs, stupid stuff. SO people started to realize that we got conned, and yet we are losing jobs.

And why are they so misinformed?

Glenn Beck is the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters of the people we tested. He scores an extraordinarily high 75 percent warm rating, 57 percent very warm.

This affinity for Beck came through very clearly in the focus groups. The only news source that participants said they could trust was Fox. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity were cited as people who “are not afraid to tell it like it is” and support their arguments with solid facts. Beck was undoubtedly the hero in these groups. Participants consider him an “educator” (in contrast to the popular Rush Limbaugh who is an “entertainer”) who teaches people history and puts himself at risk because he exposes the truth. In the words of a woman in Ft. Lauderdale, “I would trust my life in his hands.”

Other comments are just as laudatory:

I like the way he’s trying to get back to the basics of the Constitution of the United States because I think that’s where our government is losing focus. They’re trying to change the Constitution or somehow twist it…

He brings out facts… And he actually shows the people saying the things. It’s not like just sound bites. It’s not chopped and really edited. And he is scary because every time I watch the show, which is pretty much every day, my heart feels…and I feel like I want to do something.

I’m frightened for him… Because of the things that he says. I think that he is stepping on some big toes.

He really does his research and he really lays it out to you well; a good professor.

That tracks with what Teabag leader Pam Stout said on Letterman: “He makes me think.”
(I’m going to guess these people are confusing “making my head hurt” with “making me think.”)

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the other Tea Party leaders:

Warm ratings for Rush Limbaugh were very high at 70 percent, just 5 points below Beck.

Sarah Palin is also a hero of this movement, with a warm rating of 75 percent among supporters, as reflected in the focus groups…But while Palin was received favorably, there was also some caution as several participants expressed disappointment in her ability to perform as a leader and questioned her qualifications.

I mean, I don’t mind her. I think she was, you know, okay. I mean, I don’t think she was right for the job certainly. I don’t think she was experienced enough but I didn’t mind her.

I sometimes a little bit wonder because she just seems to kind of just repeat herself with the same things. It just seems like if you see her last year and you see her three months ago, she’s saying the same things. I’m certainly supportive of her, but I guess I’m a little disappointed that she seems so stagnated.

I kind of equate her on the same parallel as Bush; a likable person, kind of out of her element when it comes to the big league, not well informed but a very likable person.

I think she’s genuine, but I don’t think she’s educated enough. I don’t think she’s savvy enough and I don’t think she knows enough actually to, you know, let’s put it this way there’s no way that she’s going to go anywhere. I mean, it’s just, I don’t see it. I don’t see it happening. I don’t see her becoming another one that’s going to be electable.

But Glenn Beck’s a genius. Ok.

And one more time, except for the nativist, racist elements common to right wing populism everywhere, these people are not populists:

The movement is rooted in a strident small, and in many cases, anti-government ideology. “Getting back to the Constitution” was a recurring theme across all the focus groups, with people explaining that this simply means: We the People. These groups suggest that the Tea Party movement is not fueled by the economic situation in the country or any populist underpinnings.

We don’t need any fresh ideas. It is fresh ideas that have gotten into this mess. All the ideas we need can be found in an 8 page document, it’s the Constitution; if you need to go beyond that just look at the Federalist papers. We don’t need any fresh ideas.

Well, I think the economy is a result of other issues that are leading the charge. You don’t keep to the things that are traditions, our constitutional values and rights, and you are pushing for agendas for socialized…

I doubt [Obama’s] desire to protect our Constitution as was originally delivered by our Founding Fathers, of which my ancestors were a part of. I doubt his loyalty to us and I doubt his ability to keep his word.

When asked what they thought of the country’s economic situation or their own personal situation, focus group members would repeatedly revert back to talking about how bad Obama is and that the government needs to get out of our lives. Any discussion of jobs or recovery turned to “all the new jobs are government and census jobs which don’t do anything for our economy.”

These groups suggest that the Tea Party movement is not fueled by the economic situation in the country. Yes, there were a lot of economic concerns among the non-college educated women, but for the other three groups this was just not the issue. In the open-ended discussion at the beginning of the groups, they rarely brought up the economy unprompted. And when asked what they thought of the country’s economic situation or their own personal situation, they would not engage.

There’s a lot more at the link, but suffice to say that these people are not some group of yeoman farmers and small town burghers who are mad at the Wall Street kingpens and the government bureaucrats who serve them. They are mad at Democrats, Barack Obama in particular, and they are being ginned up into a frenzy by the professional right wing media.

I also think there’s something generational about this which deserves more scrutiny. Most of them are baby boomers and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of them are living out some adolescent fantasy of themselves as the rebels they never were. It’s kind of baked into our generation and these were probably all the ones who sat it out when it was young and sexy. I could be wrong. But this whole thing has the familiar stench of the self-centered boomerism.

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‘Night John Boy

by digby

It’s not an emergency if you’re rich:

‘We think it’s an emergency,’ and it isn’t,” Bunning said in an interview last week. “The debate has changed only to the point that my side, all of a sudden now, has gotten religion. It isn’t a question of the worthiness of the unemployment benefit; it’s a question of adding it to the debt that my grandkid gets stuck with.”

It’s not an emergency for millionaire baseball players, true. But for some people it really is an emergency when they have no money coming in at all and no job prospects.

I have an idea. How about we “find offsets” for the wars first, so Bunning’s grandkids don’t get stuck with those bills. Orhow about we ask the millionaires to kick in so Bunning’s grandkids don’t get stuck with the bills?

And can someone tell me why, with all the great concern for everybody’s grandkids, that Republicans are hellbent on sticking them with the care and feeding of their grandparents once they destroy social security to pay for the wars and the millionaires’ tax cuts? I guess they really think that the Great Depression were good times. Just like The Waltons.

This is serious business and these people are playing cheap political games. And people all over the country are being affected. One of our friends, and a longtime friend of this blog, is one of them: Activist Susie Madrak is one of “the 99ers” whose unemployment has run out. It’s not an abstract question to her and all the others who are caught in this bind. It’s a very real emergency.

Like many 99ers, she still works every day — she’s just not getting much money for doing it. Blogging isn’t exactly a high paying job and full time jobs are just not there. So she’s holding a summer fundraiser. If you can afford it, a few bucks would go a long way to getting her over the hump.

The Republicans are telling us that we’re on our own. So in the short run we need to pull together and in the long run we need to convince the country to “refudiate” the sick, immoral ideology that encourages the Randian selfishness at the heart of the modern conservative movement. Susie’s one of the people who’ve been fighting that good fight for a long time.

Susie Madrak Summer Fundraiser.

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Obama Throws Down

by digby

This is overdue, but very welcome.

More like this please.

And like this too, from Senate candidate Elaine Marshall, who gets right to the point:

Right now, it’s important we show Senator Burr– and his buddies in Washington– that ordinary folks aren’t going to stand for these overtly political games. But there is also a smear campaign that we have to refute– here are some simple points that our campaign has put together on the extension:

1. Jobless aid stimulates the economy. This aid has an impactful dual effect as it helps people who need it most and puts money into the economy. It pays for essential services (food, rent, car insurance, etc…) which puts money right back into the hands of small business and works to stimulate the economy.

2. It’s simply the right thing to do. These are the people who are hurting most during the recession. There is only one job opening for every five out-of-work persons, which means millions cannot find work in this recovering economy.

3. Extending aid has bipartisan support. While Republicans like Senator Burr are attempting to score cheap political points by hurting the unemployed, the extension of this aid has support from economists across party lines. Just ask NYT liberal economist Paul Krugman and former McCain economic advisors!

The Dems need to go to the mattresses on this. It’s true that it’s economically short sighted and needlessly divisive to be saying the the jobless are all lazy and refusing to put any more money into this moribund economy. But mostly, it’s just plain old immoral to play cheap politics with people’s lives this way, and these lying hypocrites on the right who love to portray their “vlaues” as being superior are on the wrong side. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

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The Constitutional Heretics Challenge The Teabag Priesthood

by digby

I’m sure you will be stunned to hear this, but it seem the Tea Party doesn’t actually know what’s in the constitution. So the Constitution Accountability Center has very helpfully gone to the trouble of writing a series of papers to explain it to them:

Our Strange Brew series is being launched today with the release of a new CAC Issue Brief entitled “Setting the Record Straight: The Tea Party and the Constitutional Powers of the Federal Government.” This Issue Brief, written by CAC’s Chief Counsel Elizabeth Wydra and CAC’s Human and Civil Rights Director David Gans, takes on the Tea Partiers’ central claim: that our country’s Founders established a sharply limited, weak national government, incapable of addressing national problems like the health care crisis in America. ..
Here are some of the topics we will cover in the Strange Brew series:

• The persistent and heated claims in the courts, Congress, and the media that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and the suggestion by Senate Republicans that General Kagan should not be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice because she might uphold the Act.
• Kentucky Senate candidate and Tea Party darling Rand Paul’s assertion that the federal government does not have the power to root out “private” discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of legislation passed pursuant to Congress’s constitutional authority to enforce the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equality.
• The call by Rand Paul, Rep. Duncan Hunter and others for repeal of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship at birth for all children born in the United States, and the efforts in states such as Arizona to interfere with the Amendment’s guarantee of equal citizenship.
• Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s suggestion that Americans should repeal the 16th Amendment, which allows for a federal income tax.
• Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee’s argument that his state can use the Constitution’s “Enclave Clause” to take land from the federal government in Utah.
• The call by Tea Party activists for repeal of the 17th Amendment, in order to take the power to elect U.S. Senators away from individual voters and give it back to state legislators.
• Disturbing Tea party rhetoric suggesting that perceived unconstitutional actions by the federal government are cause for armed rebellion—and the claim that the Founders would cheer such violence.
• The argument by Senator Tom Coburn and others that Kagan should not be confirmed because she, in their view, would not commit during her Judiciary Committee testimony to enforcing “God-given” natural or inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

I’m sure it will all be well refudiated by the Teabag priesthood. Only they are competent to read the sacred texts. But still, the heretics should be heard.

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Make Tim Geithner Cry

by digby

Since I suspect that hippie punching is going to become the default Democratic strategy going forward I’m not sure if this sort of thing will actually help. But we really have no choice but to try:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is advising the White House not to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a watchdog agency she invented! Can you sign our urgent petition to the President?

PETITION TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Elizabeth Warren has proven that she is willing to stand up to Wall Street on behalf of consumers and is the logical choice to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tim Geithner is a longtime Wall Street insider, and if he’s recommending against Elizabeth Warren that’s all the more reason to appoint her.

Sign the petition

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