Month: December 2012

Systemic corruption

by David Atkins

The Washington Post has a good bit of journalism on family members of congressmembers getting hired as lobbyists, with all the problems that one might expect from such incestuous relationships:

The Post analysis shows that the interests of lawmakers and their relatives have overlapped to varying degrees on bills before Congress. In the past six years, for example, 36 congressional relatives — including spouses, children, siblings, parents and in-laws — have been paid to influence 250 bills passing through their family members’ congressional committees or sponsored by the members.

All of this is legal under the rules Congress has written for itself.

That lawmakers have relatives working as lobbyists has been widely reported over the years. Lawmakers have consistently said their relatives don’t lobby them directly. The 2007 overhaul prohibited spouses from direct lobbying but gave other relatives more leeway.

For the first time since the changes, however, The Post examination reveals the extent to which relatives are still paid to work on issues before their family members.

“It’s a technique of throwing money at the feet of the congressman who can influence my business,” said Craig Holman, a campaign finance and government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen.

The family ties are another example of the intersection of lawmakers’ public and private interests, which The Post has been documenting in a year-long series. Earlier articles revealed lawmakers who secured earmarks for projects near properties they own, traded in stocks of companies lobbying on bills before them and pushed legislation affecting industries in which they had financial interests.

Historians are going to look back in awe at this New Gilded Age of ours in which an utterly broken government functioned solely on behalf of the wealthy when it functioned at all, with open graft and corruption everywhere in spite of unprecedented access to citizen mobilization and information.

It’s stunning and not in a good way.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits:  Hey Joey, Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?

by digby

Once again, thanks for your support during this holiday fundraiser. I know that money remains tight for many of you and that you already dug deep in the last election to help us elect some Real Progressives to the congress, and I’m very grateful.

In the course of the last 10 years I’ve had some good fun at the right wing’s expense. Because they’ve earned it. The term “keyboard commandoes” came from Tbogg, I believe, although it could have been The Poorman (sadly missed.) These were the bloodthirsty war bloggers, furiously pounding their … keys for war. We all spent a good part of our time in the early days just watching their antics.

But I honestly can’t recall ever enjoying anything so much as the spectacle of the wingnut bloggers going completely goo-goo over the film 300.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Hey Joey, Do You Like Movies About Gladiators? 


by digby


I’ve been following this story about “300” in the entertainment press with some interest. It has to be the most breathless, overwrought wingnut attempt to find relevance in popular culture yet. Here’s Newsweek:

…the cultural significance and popular appeal of “300” reach beyond the thrill of watching pixilated decapitations. The Persians in “300” are the forces of evil: dark-skinned, depraved and determined to terrorize the West. The noble, light-skinned Spartans possess a fierce love of liberty, not to mention fierce six-pack abs. “Freedom is not free,” says the wife of Spartan King Leonidas. The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller (“Sin City”). Miller’s post-9/11 conservatism (he is reportedly working on a new graphic novel pitting Batman against Al Qaeda, titled “Holy Terror, Batman!”) suffuses his comic-book fantasies. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that “300” resonates for some real warriors. At a theater near Camp Pendleton outside San Diego, cheers erupted at a showing of “300,” the Los Angeles Times reported. The Marines (“The Few, the Proud”) identify with the outnumbered Spartans.

Ok. So the few the proud at Camp Pendleton see themselves in the role of Spartans. Most of them do have fierce six-pack abs, if not necessarily light skin, and it’s common for soldiers to enjoy battle rituals. I’m not surprised by this. 


But this is ridiculous:

The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, “An Autumn of War.” Moved by Hanson’s evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.

Everyone thinks of George W. Bush as being something of a child, with a childlike view of the world. But I think Dick Cheney’s a bit of a child too, at least when it comes to war, something which has been well documented if not well reported. He indulged in ridiculous fantasy scenarios in the first Gulf war and was so taken with Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary that he came to believe he was Lincoln and wanted to fire Schwartzkopf for being too McClellanlike.  Keep this guy away from netflix, half baked conservative historians and comic book writers. It’s dangerous. 


But, as pathetic as Cheney’s Walter Mitty delusions are, nothing comes close to the wingnut bloggers:

The movie is a cartoon, based very loosely on historical fact. The Persians are depicted as either effeminate or vicious abusers of women, while the Greeks are manly men. The bad guys in “300” also include corrupt Spartan politicians who refuse to send more troops to the battle. Some right-wing bloggers have likened them to liberal Democrats voting against the surge in Iraq.

Here’s a fairly typical post:

The mind set reflected in the reviews of “300” suggest that the reviewers, with their apparent discomfort with the open expression of defiant aggression expressed in the movie, are too sophisticated to partake, even vicariously, in the Spartan heroics. It is unclear whether the pacifist left would ever fight, even to save themselves, let alone to save the civilization that they cannot imagine is under siege. If the sophisticates of Athens had refused to pick up the sword, they would have been dead or enslaved. Our modern day sophisticated Athenians of the MSM who refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of Western Civilization, have already shown their willingness to live as slaves. After all, what did the Danish cartoon saga tell us except that the members of the elites in Academia, Hollywood, and the MSM are willing to offer up their free speech rights in obeisance to the barbarians at the gates.

“300” resonates because Americans have not yet shown themselves so willing to live as slaves as their “betters” in the effete elites.

Who hasn’t wondered why the “modern day Athenians of the MSM refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of western Civilization?” Thank God Americans such as this fine blogger are wielding their mighty weapons in public for all the world to see, eh? It’s made all the difference. 


The Jawa Report is much more honest and straightforward than most:

I just saw “300”. It is probably the most important movie made since 9-11…The propaganda, it is oh-so-beautiful. It rivals anything put out by Republic Pictures or Warner Brother’s animation during WWII. Heroic Americans fight the Hunnish/Asiatic hordes (many seem to forget that it wasn’t until after WWII that our movies redeemed the “Germans” by separating them from the “Nazis”—part of the Cold War propaganda effort).

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and compare this to Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part I–that classic piece of Soviet propaganda which artfully legitimized the Stalinistic purges as an effort to consolidate state power in the face of a foreign menace (Ivan as Stalin, the boyars as anti-revolutionary forces, and the Turks as the Germans). And who would argue that Eisenstein’s masterpiece wasn’t needed to help the war effort? Or Bugs Bunny? Or John Wayne?

No, “300” brings us back to the good-old days of propaganda. When propaganda was produced in support of our country. When propaganda was produced to remind us that we are the good guys and that our ideals are better than the ideals of our enemies.

Go see “300”. If you don’t like it you probably hate America. That, or you’re gay.

Right. Nobody who likes 300 could ever be gay.





It should be said that some rightwing bloggers were not as taken with the film. But their commenters showed them that they were missing the point:

No one ever said that reinstalling the American man’s long-lost testicles was going to be a painless process, but it’s worth it. Best of all it reminds us that we once made of far sterner stuff than we are now and we need to get it back. I’m hoping there are a hundred more movies like “300” over the next couple of years. We need them.

dostrick on March 16, 2007 at 12:51 PM

Bingo.

Haven’t seen it yet (getting my infusion of cinematic testosterone tomorrow), but I’m definitely pumped up and ready for it. I can let the fact that it’s not historically accurate by any means slide since the movie makes no pretenses to the contrary. It pisses off all the right people (liberals, the tyrants in Iran, etc.) while espousing themes such as that there are some things worth fighting for.

‘Bout damn time. I’ll take this over former tough-guy Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima wimpfests any day.

thirteen28 on March 16, 2007 at 1:03 PM

“It’s a manly film, full of heroic poses and speeches…”

Which is why some liberal reviewers hated it, of course. After all, liberalism’s fundamental premise is the sissified surrender of the West, while presided over by girlymen.

So there you have it. 

The funny thing is that I’ve long joked that “America isn’t Sparta — America is a bunch of fat, spoiled mall shoppers” which is true. If you want to be a mighty warrior nation, everybody has to move their fat asses off the couch and become — you know — warriors. “Wielding” a keyboard and using words like “girly-men” and Islamofascism” doesn’t count.


This is how it’s done:

The agoge was a rigorous education and training regime undergone by all Spartan citizens (with the exception of future kings.) It involved separation from the family, cultivation of loyalty to one’s group, loving mentorship, military training, hunting, dance and social preparation.

The term agoge literally translates as ‘raising’. Supposedly introduced by the semi-mythical Spartan law-giver Lycurgus but thought to have had its beginnings between the seventh and the sixth centuries BC, it trained boys from the age of seven to eighteen.

The aim of the system was to produce the physically and morally steeled males to serve in the Spartan army, men who would be the “walls of Sparta,” the only city with no defensive walls – they had been taken down at the order of Lycurgus. Discipline was strict and the boys were encouraged to fight amongst themselves in order to determine who was the strongest in the group…

Boys were sent from the family home and from then on lived in groups (agelae, herds) under an older boy leader. They were encouraged to give their loyalty to their communal mess hall rather than their families, even when married they would not eat an evening meal with their wives until at least 25. The boys however were not well fed and it was expected that they would steal their food. If caught stealing however, they would be severely punished (not for stealing, but instead for getting caught). All Spartan males with the exception of the eldest son of each of the Spartan royal households (Agiad and Eurypontid) were required to go through this process (they were permitted not to attend as it was believed they were part god).

Americans wouldn’t last a day in such a regime, and frankly, good for us. There have been others who tried to emulate it and it didn’t work out so well. 


These macho keyboarders are just big babies like their hero Dick Cheney, getting all hot and bothered at the sight of all those rock-hard abs and all that death. If they want a piece of it, there are military recruiters everywhere who would be more than willing to sign them up and send them to the marine version of agoge. It’s called boot camp. Once they get through that and do some time in an actual war zone then maybe they can cheer wildly at “gladiator” movies and talk about manly-men without sounding like a bunch of fools. 


Or if they have “better things to do” maybe they could just be all they can be. The Spartans would have been pleased.

Saturday Night at the Movies



Behold a pale orc 

 By Dennis Hartley

On the road again: Martin Freeman in The Hobbit

While the director and his co-writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro have been careful to preserve most of the characters and creatures featured in Tolkien’s original story (including orcs, wargs, trolls and a goblin king who looks like Jabba the Hut’s first cousin with a tremendous goiter issue) they’ve also tossed a few new ones into the mix (how else are they going to embroider what I assume is destined to become the #1 9-hour bong, pizza and Blu-ray marathon of choice in 2015?). I’m not sure yet how I feel about the Pale Orc, a heavy who seems destined to play the One Armed Man to Bilbo’s Dr. Richard Kimbel, glomming on to him and his dwarf buds like a bad suit all the way to the goddam Lonely Mountain (admittedly it’s been quite a while since I read the book, but I’m fairly sure he’s new). At any rate, until such time as someone heroically cleaves him in twain in a sequel, I guess I’ll live with it. The real scene stealer in this outing is Andy Serkis, returning as the younger version of the creature Gollum, who has his fateful first encounter with one of those “filthy Bagginses”.

There have been grumblings in some corners about the film being a little “cutesy” compared to its predecessors; aside from a goofily choreographed housecleaning scene where I half-expected the merry dwarves to break into a rendition of “Whistle While You Work” I didn’t see it. What I did see was a story with a surprising amount of heart, especially when one considers how easily the undeniably dazzling technical wizardry involved in bringing Tolkien’s universe to life could overshadow the flesh and bone performances. That being said, there are some real knockout set pieces, especially if you opt for seeing the film in the high-res 3-D presentation. The best eye-candy sequence involves Rivendell, which here looks like the kind of place I could  really settle down with Cate Blanchett and raise a couple of half-elven kids (I can always dream, can’t I?).

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

Dick Armey: shock trooper, grifter, blackmailer

by digby

So basicallyDick Armey blackmailed Freedomworks’ sugar daddy and is now admitting to being a whore. Well, why not? It’s not as if the man’s ever been an upstanding citizen.

My favorite clip of Dick remains:

Aside from the sexist creep’s snide, anachronistic behavior toward Joan Walsh, if you watched that clip you saw Limbaugh’s early complaints about being asked to “hope” the president will succeed. Oldies like me will recall that Dick Armey was the guy who said this earliy in Clinton’s term:

In 1994, he told [the Democrats] “your president is just not that important for us.”

Hardcore Republicans never acknowledge a Democratic president. In fact, they start with the proposition that they cannot possibly be legitimate because they are Democrats and go from there. The Obama administration should not have been surprised by this.

Armey was one of the modern conservative movement’s shock troops and rose in the leadership along with Gingrich. He was a tea partier before tea partiers were cool.
The funny thing is that Armey was the right wing’s favorite “economist” in the congress for many years but apparently didn’t figure out how to properly milk the spoils system he helped build. So now, at the age of 72, he has resorted to blackmailing his wingnut welfare benefactor. What a perfect ending to a thoroughly ignominious career.

No danger to Boehner

by digby

If anyone’s still laboring under the illusion that John Boehner is some kind of hero trying madly to wrangle his recalcitrant Tea Partiers and putting his speakership at risk to do it, this should clear it up:

“There’s no ‘better plan’ to get the House GOP out of this mess, i.e., ‘If I were speaker, I would do ‘X’ as an alternative,’” explained one House Republican.

A GOP aide echoed that: “[N]o outsider, were there even a path for them – which there isn’t – has any interest in doing this dirty work. They don’t want to have to meet with the president, work with Harry Reid, or even Mitch McConnell. They want to stay pure, and the only way to do that is to shout from bleachers.”

In fact, in closed party meetings, most of the chatter is about how Boehner is sticking up for Republicans, even if they feel pressure from the outside to oppose him. While those displays aren’t always indicative of the real mood inside the GOP Conference — party leaders often push their allies to speak out during the meetings — it does show there is strong, vocal support for Boehner.

And to bolster his conservative bona fides, Boehner is tacking to the right. He has said he would only press for a fiscal cliff deal that has backing from a majority of Republicans. The speaker is taking a hard line on the debt ceiling. And when asked about gun-control legislation in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre, Boehner committed to merely looking at Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestions but promised no House action.

Another sign that Boehner is probably safe: His staff is not engaged in any kind of aggressive whipping effort that would signal that he’s truly afraid of losing the speakership, according to more than a half-dozen lawmakers and senior aides.

The reason is because no one is actively running against him.

The painfully drawn-out fiscal cliff talks with President Barack Obama and rejection of Boehner’s “Plan B” million-dollar tax hike gives the speaker something he’s been long seeking in this debate: political cover.

There will be no “Boehner Plan B” or a “Boehner-Obama compromise.” The entire leadership is either leaping off the cliff, or joining together to pass a smaller bill to avoid tax increases for most Americans.

After Friday’s White House meeting, all eyes are on whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can cut a deal, with Obama’s blessing.

Boehner’s could also be helped by his insistence that the Senate pass a bill first – something he told the president repeatedly in Friday’s session at the White House, sources said. A bill has to pass both chambers, and if the Senate goes first, Boehner can insist that the upper chamber is stifling the will of House Republicans.

Gosh that sure doesn’t sound like a set-up for a deal to me. I’m not sure why McConnell is eager to be the face of some sort of compromise anyway, but I honestly can’t see what he could come up with that the House Republicans would like better than Plan B. (But hey, maybe it’s all a dastardly plan that will reveal itself as brilliant once it’s all over and done. Me, I’m still thinking we’re going cliff diving.)

One wonders if this article will show the Villagers that their imbecilic notion that Obama must agree to enact the Republican agenda on taxes and spending in order to “get anything done” in the rest of his term isn’t operative. Boehner’s moving right, not left. And there’s zero reason to believe that’s going to change.

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QOTD: Swopa (and Samuel Becket)

by digby

Swopa at FDL on the Senate negotiations over the fiscal cliff:

Given the increased leverage that Democrats will have after we go “over” the supposed cliff, perhaps the best advice to Harry Reid (and President Obama) is the aphorism coined by Beckett in his posthumously published Worstward Ho:

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I think that may be my new motto.

In case anyone’s in need of yet another primer on why this whole debt discussion is daft from beginning to end, I highly recommend this one from Joe Wiesenthal:

When people talk about the deficit, they almost always use the “pain” metaphor.

In almost any op-ed extolling the wisdom of the Simpson-Bowles plan, it’s pointed out that we’re going to need to take some pain. Obama has said that the Federal Government needs to tighten its belt, which is something that is painful.

Conservatives say the government needs to go on a diet. Diets are painful. A recent USA Today headline was very standard: “Nation’s soaring deficit calls for painful choices.”

It’s understandable why the pain metaphor is so popular. One, it’s logical to think that the answer to big deficits is cuts, and cuts are painful. More importantly, it appeals to an innate sense that pain is frequently a long-run redeeming thing to experience. You go to do Crossfit, and you feel pain. But then pretty soon you’re a beast that’s never felt better. Some religious people used to mutilate their own flesh to show proper respect to The Lord.

So this is just a popular idea: Take the pain now, be redeemed.

The good news is that in economics and when talking about the deficit it doesn’t need to work that way! Fixing the debt is painless!

That’s because the primary driver of deficits is a lack of growth.

A chart that everyone needs to have seared into their brains is this one, which shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP (red line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line).

For 60 years (!) the pattern has held. When unemployment drops, the deficit as a percentage of GDP drops. When unemployment rises, the deficit rises.

So now let’s break this down further, to address the idea that we need to increase revenue as a percent of GDP, which is undeniably true if we want to prevent the national debt from growing. The answer there is, once again, improve the employment picture (i.e., increase growth).

This chart shows revenue as a percent of GDP (red line) vs the unemployment rate (inversed).

The chart isn’t quite as pretty, but as you can see, the primary driver of how much revenue we get as a percent of GDP is unemployment. Want to get the red line up closer to 0.18? That will take getting the blue line closer to 6 percent.

It’s the same deal with the spending side.

This chart shows spending as a percent of GDP (red line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line). Want to get the red line down to its historical range closer to 22 percent of GDP? Improve the unemployment rate! This makes total logical sense, of course, since lower unemployment implies reduced spending on all kinds or programs.

These charts showing the connection between the unemployment rate and the deficit (and the drivers of the deficit) are especially powerful when you consider that they’ve held firm through a variety of different tax regimes.

There’s more, much more. If you read nothing else today, please click over and read that whole piece. Any doubts you might have that this move to shrink social insurance programs across the globe is not on the up and up will be removed. It’s clear what needs to be done to shrink debt. The people who run the world are doing something else entirely.

First gay couples married in Maine

by digby

I just love seeing this every time it happens in another state. It’s witnessing history and we’re lucky to be alive to see it.

Congratulations to everyone involved, especially those activists who have been working for the past decade to make it happen. What a job well done.

Via Aravosis who has more at Americablog.

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Don’t Come Together

by David Atkins

Ezra Klein had by far the best takedown of the stupidity of many elites, including Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, in demanding more generic “bipartisan compromise.” But Paul Krugman was also on his game as well:

One of the enduring fantasies of the pundit class – most dramatically demonstrated by the ludicrous Politico piece on What Insiders Know – is that all we need to fix our economic problems is to get the great and the good together and bypass those pesky elected officials. Business leaders, in particular, are presumed to have the know-how to deal with all the important issues.

But the reality is that the business leaders intervening in our economic debate are, for the most part, either predatory or hopelessly confused (or, I guess, both).

I’d put Fix the Debt in the predatory category; it’s quite clear that the organization (which is yet another Pete Peterson front, this time explicitly dominated by corporate interests) has an agenda more focused on cutting social insurance and corporate taxes than on reducing the deficit per se.

Meanwhile, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, exemplifies the hopeless confusion factor. By all accounts, he’s a good guy, with genuinely generous instincts. But in his message to employees, urging them to write “come together” on coffee cups, he gets the nature of the fiscal cliff completely wrong…

OK, first of all, the fiscal cliff is NOT A DEBT PROBLEM. In fact, it’s the opposite: the danger is that with expiring tax cuts, expiring unemployment benefits, and the sequester, we’ll reduce the deficit too fast. Deficit scolds are having a hard time reconciling their sudden concern about excessive deficit reduction with everything they were saying before – and evidently Mr. Schultz hasn’t gotten the message that we are now at war with Eastasia, and always have been.

And then, on top of that, he has the politics all wrong, in the characteristic centrist way: he makes it sound as if the problem was one of symmetric partisanship, with both sides refusing to compromise. The reality is that Obama has moved a huge way both in offering to exempt more high-earner income from tax hikes and in offering to cut Social Security benefits; meanwhile, the GOP not only won’t agree to any kind of tax hike at all, it also has yet to make any specific offer of any kind.

The system is broken. One side–the conservative Republican side–is breaking it. The conservatives are breaking the system specifically in order not to reduce the deficit, but to starve the beast in order to transfer wealth from wages to assets, and from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.

And most of our business and political elites are in on the con, or too befuddled and incompetent to realize the con, or willfully blind to the con because to admit there is an extortion racket being used against the American People would be “extreme” and “partisan”. And “extreme” and “partisan” people don’t get invited to the nice cocktail parties. Only people who paper over politics with an appeal to “come together” get invited to those.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: Commander Codpiece

by digby

Ten years is a long time to be blogging.  But the mockery of the right wing may be what makes it worthwhile. No Hullabaloo Greatest Hits would be complete without a post about Commander Codpiece. This is one of the earliest ones:

Saturday, May 10, 2003

“Here’s grace and a codpiece; that’s a wise man and a fool.

by digby 

I posted a little picture a few weeks back showing a woman in a red dress with a sign that said “W” is a Hottie. Lo and behold I get an e-mail the other day from the presidential groupie herself:

Hey Digby!
I am the so called “red stater” with the “w is a hottie” poster. Where did you see it? I’m sure you were nowhere within a hundred miles of someone that would support our troops and our president. BTW- “W” IS a hottie! I would have hated to see Al Gore in that flight suit yesterday. ; )

Jessica

I didn’t reply. I thought it was sweetly…irrelevant. However, yesterday I realized that I had to go back and take another look at that sizzling million dollar moment when I read this titillating little piece by Lisa Schiffrin in that bastion of right wing testosterone, the Wall Street Journal. GOP women are veritably oozing with admiration for the suddenly potent POTUS.

I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking–how to put it?–really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly “hot,” as in virile, sexy and powerful.

My goodness. It sounds like she needs a cold shower. I think maybe it’s time to get out those old well thumbed National Reviews from the Clinton era. This kind of thing can get away from you in a hurry.

Sexual passion is one of the most powerful and disruptive forces we ever encounter, one capable of inducing irrationality and self-delusion on an epic scale; and [that] it takes great effort, by individuals and societies, to channel anarchic lusts into civilized patterns of living : Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Issue: Feb 8, 1999

Sadly, Schiffrin seems to be a tiny bit unsatisfied with her own man, which I can only interpret as 60’s style moral relativism. (And, what about her poor children? Is this the example that Republicans wish to set for their kids? This truly is too shocking.)

But a business suit just doesn’t do it the way a flight suit does. In the course of this I peeked over at my husband, the banker. He was in his third month of reading a book about the Six Day War and didn’t seem to notice.

Ouch.

The man uses overwhelming military force to vanquish a truly evil foe, facing down balking former “allies,” and he is not taken seriously as a foreign-policy president. He out top-guns the Hollywood version, and all the media can talk about is the impending campaign commercial.

So some so-called men read books but real men use overwhelming force. Ah.   

Actually, the media showed the same enthusiasm for Dubya’s high water costume as a bunch of 12 year old girls who win front row tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert. Pretty much like this woman. An others. Our lubricious scribe went on to interview some of her fellow deprived Manhattanites:

“He’s a hottie. No doubt about it. Really a hottie. Why haven’t I noticed this before? He looks so much better than Michael Douglas in that movie we saw,” comparing the tired, indifferent megastar of “The American President” to the totally present leader of the free world.”

“Hot? SO HOT!!!!! THAT UNIFORM!”

“I think he is actually protecting me and my sons, and I find that attractive in a man.”

“Oh God, yes,” she said. “I mean, that swagger. George Bush in a pair of jeans is a treat to watch.”

Yeah, baby!

She admits that many liberal women find Bush revolting.

Many of them still cite Bill Clinton and his allegedly penetrating intellect as more appealing.

Liberals make such a fetish of intellect. But who cares how smart you are if you can’t make a decision and follow through?

Damned right. What kind of a fetish is intellect, anyway? Now, form fitting military costumes with zippers everywhere or a cowboy hat and high heeled boots (or maybe, just for a treat, a pair of fishnet stockings and a little French apron…) She begrudgingly admits that the oh-so-boring intellectual Clinton was sorta, kinda known for his “swordsmanship” (as she proudly claims Ronald Reagan was as well in his sexier, sentient days.) But, it wasn’t the right kind, you see.

I recall reading an extended colloquy about hip women having dreams about sleeping with the president. And then there were all the women who did sleep with the president. Or whatever. Sex. Not quite sex. Frustrating, bad, unidirectional sex.

This squirming scribbler sounds like a woman who knows about such things as bad “unidirectional” sex. After all, she did work with Dan Quayle and William Kristol and her sad, flaccid, pin-striped husband is too busy “reading” to service his revved up Bushie.

The Clinton years must have been hell for these ladies. After all, Newt Gingrich is the reigning “swordsman” of the GOP and that is a sad, sad state of affairs (so to speak.) Still, despite her completely transparent horniness she knows she must pay obeisance to Bennettesque pseudo virtue:

This was all, of course, demeaning, degrading, offensive to the high art of democratic self-governance–and highly entertaining. And of course the Bush people can’t let their more dignified version of it get out of hand.

Yes, the President strutting around in a costume that (how do I say this delicately?) exaggerates the presidential package to such an unbelievable degree that one cannot help but wonder if somebody mischievously switched his with one from the “Anchor’s Away” revue at Chippendales, can only be called dignified.

But, perhaps this is all part of a cunning plan:

Legend has it that Edward III, king of England from 1327-1377, had the codpiece of his armor enlarged to astounding proportions because he had heard that strength and military prowess were correlated with a man’s endowment. As he was in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War with the French at the time, it would not be surprising that he would try to seek any possible advantage available to him. He then ordered that the nobility and knights do the same to their armor. The legend goes on to say that the gullible French (from the nobility all the way down to the peasantry) were scared to death by the advance of the “well-equipped” men.

Can anyone doubt that the dastardly French were similarly intimidated when they saw this:

A Cod-piece can fool them all
Make them think you’re large
Even if you’re small
Just be sure you don’t fool yourself
For it’s still just imagination
And to be sure it works like a lure
And will raise a wench’s expectations
But have a care you have something there
Or the night will end in frustration

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Fiscal cliff notes 12/28

by digby

So Reid and McConnell are supposed to try to work out some deal that will pass both houses and if they don’t the president wants an up or down vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less than 250k a year and Unemployment Insurance.  He’s pretty much daring the GOP to filibuster in the Senate — and/or Boehner to take the heat for not allowing a vote on middle class tax cuts.

I have no idea what the Republicans will be willing to do, but I’m for just letting the president’s up or down vote happen or go over the cliff — and living to fight another day.  It’s extremely unlikely that the GOP will give up the impending debt ceiling fight for anything less than a huge hit to some “entitlement” somewhere, so I say just get this vote or go over the cliff.  The price of any deal under these circumstances is almost guaranteed to be too high.

Here’s the statement from Reid and McConnell:

REID—I’m told by the managers that they think we complete action on this legislation in the next couple of hours. The plan is, everyone knows, we’ve been to the WH. We’ve had a constructive meeting. We certainly hope that something positive will come from that. The R Leader and I and our staffs are working to see what we can come up with. It shouldn’t take a long time to do that. I think it would be to everyone’s interest if we were not in session tomorrow. It’s my plan to come in at 1pm [Sunday], have an hour under our previous agreement on Galante. We’ll start votes a little after 2PM. For us, we’re going to have another caucus following that, and hopefully by that time we will have made a determination. McConnell and I, whether we can do something on the floor in addition to what ive talked about. I do think we need that to have everybody step back a little bit. It we come up with something, its not that easy. We are dealing with big numbers, and some of the stuff we do is somewhat complicated. I think it was a very positive meeting. 

 McCONNELL–I share the view of the Maj. Leader, we had a good meeting down at the WH. We are engaged in discussions, the Maj. Leader and myself and the WH, in the hopes that we can come fwd as early as Sunday and have a recommendation that I can make to my conference and the Maj. Leader can make to his conference. So, we’ll be working hard to try to see if we can get there in the next 24 hours. So, I’m hopeful and optimistic.  

REID—I’m going to do everything I can. I’m confident McConnell will do the same. Everybody, whatever we come up with is going to be imperfect. Some people aren’t going to like it. Some people will like it less. But that’s where we are. I feel confident that we have an obligation to do the best we can. That was made very clear in the WH. We’re going to do the best we can for the caucuses that we have and the country that’s waiting for us to make a decision

Keep in mind that if Reid and McConnell come up with something, the likely outcome is that Democrats will have to be the majority in both houses to pass the deal. That means most of the Republicans will be allowed to vote against spending cuts and tax increases while most of the Democrats will be expected to vote for spending cuts and tax increases. Despite the fact that the taxes were scheduled to go up anyway, this will be called a Democratic victory. Why, Villagers might even bestow upon them their greatest accolade and call them “grown-ups.”

I think the sequester will be taken care of — nobody’s going to allow the defense industry to lose even a penny. Nobody.  Either break off the middle class tax cuts now as the president proposes as his fallback plan or let everyone vote for tax cuts after the first and then allow the debt ceiling games to begin. (It’s got to happen some time.) I see no reason to capitulate on spending at this point. If that’s what it takes, go over the cliff.  Why should Democrats become the tax collectors for the austerity state?

If you are of a mind to call Senator Reid’s office and leave him a message, you can do so here. (And be sure tell him to keep Kent Conrad and his big “ideas” off the table. Conrad’s the lamest of ducks and has no business involving himself at this point.)

Reid’s office:
Phone: 202-224-3542 / Fax: 202-224-7327
Toll Free for Nevadans: 1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343) – Restricted to calls originating from area codes 775 and 702

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