Month: December 2010

Ask and Tell — Just Don’t DREAM

by digby

They broke the filibuster on DADT so they’ll get a vote and unless something very, very strange happens, it will pass. Millions of our fellow Americans took another step toward full equality today. Congratulations to all all of the tireless (and fearless) activists who made this happen. It’s inspiring, which is something in very short supply at the moment.

Kudos also to Bob Gates and the military brass for using common sense at long last and putting their clout behind this. It’s fairly amazing that so many Republicans still opposed, even with those endorsements. But then they’ve always used the military more as a prop and a weapon against their political enemies than anything else, so I suppose it’s not surprising.

Finally, the president deserves praise for this too. He has sealed himself today as one of the presidents who advanced civil rights — and also as the ultimate enemy to millions of people for whom this action is a fundamental threat to their worldview and belief system. That takes some courage and good for him for being willing to do it.

Here’s his statement:

Today, the Senate has taken an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security while violating the very ideals that our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives to defend. By ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay. And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love.

As Commander-in-Chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known. And I join the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the overwhelming majority of service members asked by the Pentagon, in knowing that we can responsibly transition to a new policy while ensuring our military strength and readiness.

I want to thank Majority Leader Reid, Senators Lieberman and Collins and the countless others who have worked so hard to get this done. It is time to close this chapter in our history. It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed. It is time to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country openly. I urge the Senate to send this bill to my desk so that I can sign it into law.

Predictably, America was unable to take a step toward equality without sullying ourselves with a blatant act of cruelty and bigotry to balance it out. I guess there’s only so much decency allowed at one time. They filibustered the DREAM Act, which would have given a path to citizenship to people who’d been illegally brought to the US as children. Surely the empire would have fallen if young people who’ve been here their whole lives were allowed to work and contribute to our country.

Oh and by the way, several Democrats helped them do it. When they are losing their next elections to some right wing racist I wonder if it will occur to them that they are going to spend time in hell for no good reason.

So, it’s a very good day and a very bad day, which is better than usual.

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In Memoriam, Don Vliet

by tristero

Captain Beefheart’s voice, long silent, is now permanently gone. His profound influence on alternative music – from rock to rap to modern concert music – is simply incalculable. I once heard David Byrne begin a concert with Don’s solo “Well” from Trout Mask Replica, a staggering masterpiece with some of the most extraordinary music-making of the late 60’s. But for all of Byrne’s expressiveness and intelligence, nothing, simply nothing, compared to the sound of Don’s Blues-on-Mars voice – and the sound of that amazing band – live.

In early 1971, Captain Beefheart played a skeevy little NYC club called Ungano’s for two nights, two shows a night. I was at every show and I can still remember where I was as I watched them; Looking up at the impossibly tall and think Bill Harkleroad, as he performed the solo “One Red Rose,” each time more beautiful than the last, each time simply incredible, impossible electric guitar virtuosity. Ornette was there – God knows what he thought of Don’s faux soprano sax solos – but I can’t imagine even Ornette not being impressed by that tight, tight, perfect band.

At the time, I was working as a dj for WFMU, a pioneering free-form radio show. I had a show called The Alfonzo Hour (long story) and somehow managed to wrangle an opportunity to be part of a long interview with Don in his room at a Howard Johnson’s motel on 8th Ave. Rockette Morton showed up, as did Artie Tripp. About 6 or 7 years ago, I found the recording, contacted the Beefheart web community, and sent copies to the first five Beefheart fanatics that wrote me with strict instructions to distribute it far and wide. I’m sure if you search the web, you can find it. It provides a portrait of Don at the height of his creativity and fame, and is filled with numerous Beefheartian quotes, and much laughter.

Also at the New York shows was a young, already amazing guitarist named Gary Lucas. Gary and I would meet years later, when we were both working for the same record company and became friends. He became Beefheart’s manager and performed on the splendid Ice Cream For Crow – his solo is amazing -and, in addition to his own legendary career, Gary organizes concerts of Beefheart’s music with other original Magic Band members along with screenings of rare film footage. I’ve been to several and they’re wonderful.

Don was many things – a great musician/composer, a poet, a band leader, a fascinating visual artist, and – by all accounts – deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Jan. But he was an artist – not an exemplar of middle-class values. He consumed vast quantities of mind-altering substances which have been cited, perhaps mistakenly, as a major factor in the development of his multiple sclerosis. He could be unbelievably tyrannical and abusive to his bandmembers – drummer John French’s monumental memoir of life in the Magic Band and beyond is both horrifying and heartbreaking – but if you do track down the interview I did with him (please don’t write me for a copy- at some point I’ll post it to iTunes if it turns out to be hard to locate), you’ll find a charming Don Vliet, generously giving considerable credit to the band for their dedication and intelligence.

For many of you who are new to Beefheart and think he might be worth checking out, I think you may be shocked by how “unpleasant” and “weird” it sounds at first. Chances are you’ve never heard anything like it, and you may snap judge and decide to hate it, or think it’s pretentious. Please listen again, then again, and then a third time. And a fourth. It will creep up on you. It is indeed harsh, but who ever said that beautiful art has to be soothing? IMO, the most beautiful, the most sublime music, is deeply, irreducibly strange, whether it’s an unexpected modulation in a Mozart concerto, the rambling impossible length of Parsifal, or the Beefheart band doing “Hair Pie” on Trout Mask. Don’s music and his performances were ecstatically revolutionary – nobody drums like Drumbo, nobody’s guitar sounds like Harkelroad’s, and Don, for all his debt to Howlin’ Wolf, transcended every category of music-making in the 20th century. My own music sounds nothing like Don’s, and never will. But I listen to his work constantly, I have a large collection of rarities and unreleased material that was passed to me from friends who have friends and it is among the most listened music in my library.

I’ve often wondered if it was simple nostalgia for all the crazy times I had back then that makes Don’s music so appealing. But then I put on “Electricity” from Safe As Milk, which begins with a sea chanty and seques into madness without missing a beat – that John French really was an amazing drummer, a force of nature – and I know this is music I will be listening to when I’m 90, that this music will endure even as the dust blows forward and the dust blows back across my grave.

The world is a far more boring place today than it was yesterday.

Mission Accomplished

by digby

In the president’s remarks today he sought to reassure the American people that he hasn’t forgotten the deficit amidst the upper 2 percent’s gluttonous gorging on tax cuts:

There will be moments, I am certain, over the next couple of years, in which the holiday spirit won’t be as abundant as it is today. Moreover, we’ve got to make some difficult choices ahead when it comes to tackling the deficit. In some ways, this was easier than some of the tougher choices we’re going to have to make next year. There will be times when we won’t agree, and we’ll have to work through those times together. But the fact is I don’t believe that either party has cornered the market on good ideas. And I want to draw on the best thinking from both sides.

Well, except for tax hikes, of course, which are off the table:

The fact that the extension of Bush-era tax cuts was not made permanent means the issue – and its impact on deficits – will not disappear. The down side of the extension is that its time frame coincides with the electoral cycle. Some deficit hawks worry that, just as this time, political pressures will make it impossible to address in a fiscally responsible way. But two years from now, much will depend on where the economy and the longer-term fiscal picture stand.

But I’m sure there are many good bipartisan ideas for “fixing” the deficit without raising taxes:

A bipartisan group of more than 20 senators has been meeting since July to try to push for fiscal discipline. The senators’ effort to require the Senate to address comprehensively the deficit, spending cuts, and tax reform in 2011 failed to make it into the two-year tax-cut legislation signed Friday, but they will keep pushing for action.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s forced retreat on an omnibus spending bill over earmarks – pet projects inserted by senators of both parties – shows that a new day has dawned on spending. True, the $8 billion in earmarks represented less than 1 percent of the $1.1 trillion bill, and the Republicans had already signed off long ago on that overall $1.1 trillion figure. Democrats argue that spending cuts could hamper the economic recovery. But, deficit hawks argue, the time for belt-tightening is long overdue…

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, also says she’s holding on to “slight optimism” over the fiscal situation.

Ms. MacGuineas points to the bipartisan Senate group, led by Sens. Mark Warner (D) of Virginia and Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia, as a welcome sign that the efforts of the president’s fiscal commission won’t go to waste. MacGuineas has advised the senators.

“It seems the remarkably good work of the fiscal commission could have died a slow and quiet death if not for this bipartisan group of champions,” she says. “I don’t know that anyone was expecting this, but there appears to be a very serious effort under way in the Senate to keep the momentum of this work alive.”

Many of the senators from the group spoke from the Senate floor before the tax-cut bill passed, urging deficit reduction measures next year.

“It is time for us in the Senate – and excuse the language – to put up or shut up,” said Senator Warner.

If the Villager victory dance over this deal today is any indication, liberals have just been dealt completely out of the narrative and it’s now simply a battle between conservatives, Tea Partiers and the president. And all the important parties agree that it is a perfect template for future “compromise.”

Of course, you have to keep in mind that the Republicans gave up nothing real in this deal. Since they never expected to keep the estate tax at zero all they gave up was a fake desire to make the tax cuts permanent — they always wanted the issue for the election — and an equally phony pose that they didn’t want to extend unemployment.(Even they aren’t dumb enough to pull that much money out of the economy at the moment) That’s it, the full extent of their contribution to the “compromise.” So keep your eyes peeled for the next irrelevant shiny object they throw out to the Democrats as compromise bait. I’m sure they have them all lined up.

Meanwhile, here’s a little preview for you about how the implementation of the health care bill is going to go:

A confluence of facts and events helped McConnell convince senior appropriators in his own party — people who, like he, don’t fundamentally oppose the earmarking process — to back off the omnibus, according to a Republican leadership aide. Part of it was that, though bipartisan, the bill itself included funding for key Democratic priorities that in the current political environment no Republican supports, or wants to be accused of supporting. The omnibus included $1 billion in spending to implement the health care law — a provision no Republican wanted to de facto support.

“Health care money helped a lot….it added on to the urgency,” the aide said.

So, will they shutdown the government over health care? I don’t see why not. After all, deficits are the most serious threat to the nation since Hitler and the only weapon we have to fight them are cuts in “entitlements”. And while I think the President wants more than anything to preserve his signature accomplishment, they have every reason to believe he won’t fight to the death for it. In any case they can certainly use it as leverage. I don’t know what they want more than to force Obama to dismantle his own legacy, but dismantling Roosevelt’s might do in a pinch.

And, as usual it’s hard to know if the Dems are inept or corrupt, but this should give you a clue about how the politics are likely to go down regardless of their motivations:

Meanwhile, by picking longer-term political fights with GOP earmark flipfloppers, Democrats were in some ways harming their own short-term cause.

“Dems were pitching the Republican earmarks to anybody who’d listen,” the aide said. “What it did was it branded the bill as, if you look at the headlines, “Earmark-Laden Spending Bill” — an albatross Republicans were all too happy to hang around Democratic necks.

“They helped us do it — they were complicit in that.”

Dday puts it in a nutshell:

The public believes that the President is sincere in wanting to reduce the budget deficit because he is, in fact, sincere in wanting to reduce the budget deficit. He talks about it being in the medium term, but his opponents in the GOP want that to happen immediately, to cancel out the stimulative effects of this bill. John Boehner said today that he would like to cut spending to 2008 levels “as soon as possible.” Congress will have to fund the government early next year, if a short-term continuing resolution passes as expected. The fact that health care implementation money and money funding the war in Afghanistan was part of the omnibus spending bill which crashed and burned offers even more hostage-taking opportunities for the GOP. And then there’s this rumor, which I’ve heard as well:

Now the Republicans have identified their next hostage: They’re going to threaten to destroy the international financial stability of the United States by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. What are they demanding for ransom? They want President Obama to slash Social Security and Medicare before this next hostage crisis comes to a head in March or April.

As the story goes, the deficit frauds are already teaming up to basically implement much of the catfood commission recommendations and attach that bill to the debt limit increase this spring. The White House has not publicly stated support or opposition to this plan, and so the planning continues, with deficit frauds in both parties, from Kent Conrad to Paul Ryan, teaming up for basically leverage the moment. In the midst of this crisis, the President will muse about not harming the hostages by ruining the full faith and credit of the US government, and austerity will get enacted. It could look a lot like the tax cut bill, in terms of the speed with which it sails through Congress. Steny Hoyer’s already talking about tax reform, and that might be a part of this as well. But the real blow would come from massive social spending cuts, including to entitlements, in the very near term, canceling out stimulus. People saw the tax cut bill pass and they reasoned that Washington doesn’t care about the deficit. They don’t, but Republicans do care about their job security. And they have to cut spending to prove they can keep it. They also have the imperative to do it to stop the economy from moving and deny Obama a second term.

So ok, there are some tiny issues to be ironed out. But keep in mind that Chris Matthews, David Gergen and Charles Krauthamer are all sure that this compromise has guaranteed Obama’s reelection so it’s all good. What a relief.

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No More Secrets

by digby

Sure you can trump up some espionage charges on Julian Assange or torture Bradley Manning into saying what you want him to say, but it won’t change the fact that no matter what you do, secrets are leaking all over the place — by everyone:

The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Islamabad was pulled from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan who claimed that his son and brother were killed in a drone strike, with his lawyer on Nov. 29.

The C.I.A. officer hastily left Pakistan on the same day that an Obama administration review of the Afghanistan war concluded that the war could not be won without greater cooperation from Islamabad in rooting out militants in Pakistan’s western mountains.

It’s sexy and fun to concentrate on Assange. But this is much bigger than him and putting him away won’t change that.

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The Method To Their Madness

by digby

From Public Policy Polling:

The media’s spent a lot of energy the last couple weeks on the specter of a challenge to Barack Obama from the left for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2012. Here’s a curveball- there are actually more Democratic primary voters in Ohio and Wisconsin who would like a more conservative nominee than Obama in 2012 than there are ones who would like someone more liberal.

Mind you there aren’t many Democrats who want Obama deposed anyway- 70% in Wisconsin and 67% in Ohio would like him to be the nominee for a second term. But most of those who would like a different face want one to Obama’s right- in Ohio 15% would like a more conservative nominee to only 7% who want someone more liberal and in Wisconsin 14% would like a more conservative nominee to 9% who want someone more liberal.

Even if liberal Democrats are unhappy with Obama on the tax deal- and our polls earlier this week in these states showed they are- it’s not having too big an impact on their overall reviews of him. 93% in Wisconsin approve of the job Obama’s doing compared to 80% of moderate Democrats and 63% of conservative ones. Ohio liberals are more unhappy with Obama- his approval with them is 76%, lower than his 78% with moderate ones. His standing with conservative Democrats in Ohio is all the way down at 43%.

Conservative Democrats are ultimately a bigger threat to Obama’s reelection prospects than liberal ones. They don’t necessarily make a lot of noise about it when they’re unhappy- they just go out and vote for Republicans. Liberals on the other hand really have nowhere to go- they can stay at home or vote for Ralph Nader but ultimately that’s just going to get them someone who makes them a lot more unhappy than Obama. It’s not a pleasant reality, but in our two party system that’s just the way it goes- conservatives definitely have more leverage than liberals within the Democratic coalition and that’s why they so often get their way despite their smaller numbers.

One would think the opposite would be true as well, no? Don’t the Republicans have to worry about defectors if they go too far? Apparently they don’t think so since they’ve purged the party even of liberals and moderates and are in the process of purging it of insufficiently doctrinaire conservatives. So at what point do these “conservative Democrats” (and the vaunted Indies, of course) who are willing to quietly walk away, find the GOP a bridge too far? What will finally make voting GOP unacceptable so that they too have “nowhere else to go?” A Great Depression? Internment camps?

I suspect that we may be heading for one of those periods when third parties spring up, (unfortunately leaving the corporatists in both ruling parties alone to run the country even further into the ground.)But it seems almost inevitable that those desperate for “somewhere else to go” will eventually decide there’s no point in being part of a coalition that is rigged against them. I had some hope that the Teabaggers would catch on to the game, which would make the Right be the first to pull away. But it’s not looking good for that at the moment. The Republicans seem to be very confident that they can appease the extremists and not any of the others. Indeed, they seem to think they can cater to the far right and even attract these “conservative Democrats” over to their side.

Here’s the latest from dday:

Bob Corker, speaking softly to Olivier Knox, casually says that the START treaty won’t pass if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or the DREAM Act get a vote tomorrow.

Corker voted against bringing up START in the first place. Nevertheless, you can’t totally dismiss this threat. Even though Corker voted against the treaty on the motion to proceed, he’s probably just the messenger here. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal is on a glide path to passage. With Olympia Snowe joining Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski as fully supportive of the standalone bill, at least 61 votes are in hand, and Harry Reid filled the amendment tree to minimize any possibility of amendments. It will clear cloture tomorrow.

This is why Corker is turning to a separate measure to try and derail the bill. The segregationists did this with civil rights bills all the time. They would just threaten to take down something more cherished and pit the two bills against one another. You can see the seeds of this strategy in the fact that Republicans have offered no amendments in two days of debate on new START on the floor of the Senate. They’re clearly slow-walking the bill so they can make this threat to kill it credible.

The administration has long been convinced that passing START was going to be seen as a huge liberal victory and the base would be ecstatic. (I know, I don’t get it either.) So at this point, if third parties are in the offing, I’m guessing it will be the left that peels off first. After all, it happened not that long ago.

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Forgotten Heroes of 9/11

by digby

The Daily Show does the story that nobody cares about anymore:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

The Democrats could have hung this issue around the Republicans’ necks and shamed them into passing it. But I suppose they were afraid too because the Republicans would scream that they were politicizing 9/11 and the Village would accuse them of being shrill. Oh well.

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The Tea Party Era Has Begun

by digby

So they passed the tax cut compromise. And the fundamental unfairness of it sticks in the craw: the nation is under a great deal of economic stress, yet the Republicans just stuck a gun to the heads of people in distress and said “give us our tax cuts or the country gets it.” It’s unjust and infuriating. And ultimately depressing because it’s clear that Democrats were either complicit in the goal or too strategically clueless to address it before the clock had almost run out.

The GOP immediately put out press release saying it stopped Obama-Pelosi-Reid tax hike by passing the tax cut package. Huzzah.

And the games really began:

The new, more Republican Congress won’t arrive in town until next month, but the Tea Party Era unofficially began on the Hill Thursday night.

Republican leaders in Congress, blindsided by grassroots fury over the tax cut deal they made with President Obama, are now scrambling to show their allegiance to the anti-federal, anti-debt movement.

The GOP brass, led by Senate party leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), did so tonight by eagerly backing the successful efforts of Tea Party favorites to block debate on a $1.1 trillion “omnibus” spending bill that would fund the entire federal government until next October — but which contained billions of dollars in “earmarks” Republicans, including McConnell, once stoutly defended.

The omnibus bill also contained the spending priorities of the Obama administration and the soon-to-be-ended Democratic-controlled Congress.

GOP senators, let by Tea Party acolyte Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), had demanded the entire 2,000 page bill be read by the Senate clerk — a formality that is almost always dispensed with. Most of DeMint’s colleagues privately dismiss him as a grandstanding freelancer who backed extremists who lost seats the GOP should have won. But McConnell and the rest of his team not only didn’t want to challenge DeMint on the spending bill, they were glad to join him in showing their newfound distaste for earmarks.

Now, all that’s just a little bit silly since the GOP is doing handsprings that they were able to cut taxes for the rich and raise the deficit without these rubes catching on to what it really means. But if Howard Fineman’s report above is any indication, the political establishment is very excited about the Tea Party takeover.

Here’s Stephanie Mencimer at MoJo:

Tea party activists have had much be angry about in recent weeks, after discovering their success in the midterm elections wasn’t yielding them any immediate power on Capitol Hill. They’ve lost every fight they’ve weighed in on during the lame duck session of Congress, including GOP elections for key committee posts, the passage of a food safety bill, and most likely, the Obama tax cut plan. Undaunted, they are now getting fired up for one last battle before hunkering down to wrap Christmas presents, and this one is a whopper. Tea partiers want to end the year with a government shutdown.

They didn’t get it last night. But they still might. And their willingness to hold the gun to the country’s head has just been proven.

But I’m sure we’ll see some of that eye-rolling from Gloria Borger and Andrea Mitchell about the importance of compromise as this goes down, right?

In the next day or two, Reid and McConnell will agree on a date through which to extend federal spending. Whatever date they decide will be the deadline for resolving the next spending fight, which will occur in a dramatically different, and more conservative political environment. Republicans will demand spending cuts. And if they’re successful, the stimulative impact of the just-passed tax package will be clawed back.

Somehow,I don’t think they’ll be lecturing the Tea Party about how silly they are for hewing to their “principles.” They are, after all, Real Americans.

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Vote of No Confidence?

by digby

I don’t know what this means, but I suspect it isn’t good:

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll finds that just 29% of the registered voters said they believed President Obama would win re-election in 2012 while 64% said they expected him to lose.

It is Fox, so maybe it’s rigged. And it doesn’t track with other polls that expect him to beat a generic Republican.But still …

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Yearning To Be Subjects

by digby

Today’s Paul Waldman piece about why people consistently support cutting the estate tax is interesting even if I still don’t understand the psychology that makes average Americans so committed to allowing very wealthy heirs a loophole you can drive a gas guzzling limousine through. But it did remind me of this essay by Phil Agre that used to get a lot of circulation in the early days of the blogosphere. It’s important to understanding just how important this estate tax concept is to our fundamental view of democracy and specifically American democracy, particularly how it relates to conservatism. But it’s larger thesis is one that gets more and more relevant every day.

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats.

More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

The defenders of aristocracy represent aristocracy as a natural phenomenon, but in reality it is the most artificial thing on earth. Although one of the goals of every aristocracy is to make its preferred social order seem permanent and timeless, in reality conservatism must be reinvented in every generation. This is true for many reasons, including internal conflicts among the aristocrats; institutional shifts due to climate, markets, or warfare; and ideological gains and losses in the perpetual struggle against democracy.

In some societies the aristocracy is rigid, closed, and stratified, while in others it is more of an aspiration among various fluid and factionalized groups. The situation in the United States right now is toward the latter end of the spectrum. A main goal in life of all aristocrats, however, is to pass on their positions of privilege to their children, and many of the aspiring aristocrats of the United States are appointing their children to positions in government and in the archipelago of think tanks that promote conservative theories.

read on, there’s much more …

I would just add this:

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” — Thomas Paine

h/t to ms .

I Gotcher Labels For Ya

by digby

Here’s another one of those silly little quizzes about your political identity. I am, unsurprisingly, a doctrinaire liberal:

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded “safety net” to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

But take the quiz for yourself. It’s quite ridiculous, as most of these are, with arbitrary definitions and somewhat amusing descriptions, but there are a couple of categories that you might find yourself closer to than you realize. And it’s certainly something you could give to certain deluded people who have clearly misidentified themselves.

*I should note that most people use the term progressive/liberal interchangeably, but there are some who make a distinction. I don’t. I use the word liberal for myself because I refuse to let the wingnuts destroy the labels and identifications of their opponents.

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