Category: Politics

Why David Paterson Less Popular than a Case of the Clap

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And maybe even less popular than Dick Cheney, according the the latest Marist poll, 26% favorable, with the poll showing him being trounced by Andrew Cuomo in the primary, and being soundly beaten by Rudolph Guiliani in the general.

I think that his slime campaign against Caroline Kennedy is a part of this, but his bleatings about how you can’t raise taxes on the rich, or they will leave the state, is what really put people over the edge.

His argument is, of course, completely absurd. No one lives in in New York, or at least no one lives in New York south of Albany, because it’s a low cost place to live.

What’s interesting here is that there are a lot of conservatives in New York, particularly in Long Island and upstate, and there is a long tradition of conservatism in those areas, and they hate him too.

I think that this is significant because people are finally beginning to understand that keeping taxes low on rich folk buggers the rest of society (without lube).

After 30 years of soak the poor (and middle class) tax policies, people are finally starting to get it.

As for what looks like a soon to be former Governor Paterson, who missed this shift, and looks like he might be crushed by it, the great Gary Larson put it best:

Limbaugh blasts Steele, the GOP – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com

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Last night, I commented on efforts by the Democratic Party to tie Limbaugh to the Republican Party.

I thought that it was a good move, and now it appears that republicans are doing their level best to reinforce that meme.

Michael Steele makes some fairly innocuous comments about Limbaugh not being a leader of the Republican Party, just an entertainer (vid), and then goes on a rant against Michael Steele, suggesting that people should not give to the RNC, and a few hours later, we have a Steele giving yet another Stalin show trial Mea Culpa.

Tim Kaine was on it like white on rice

‘I was briefly encouraged by the courageous comments made my counterpart in the Republican Party over the weekend challenging Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party and referring to his show as ‘incendiary’ and ‘ugly.’ However, Chairman Steele’s reversal this evening and his apology to Limbaugh proves the unfortunate point that Limbaugh is the leading force behind the Republican Party, its politics and its obstruction of President Obama’s agenda in Washington. Just this weekend, Rush Limbaugh repeated his claim that he is rooting for the President to fail. The last time Rush Limbaugh said he wanted the President to fail, virtually every single Republican in Congress followed his lead and voted against the President’s plan to create or save 3.5 million jobs.

….

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Timothy “Eddit Haskell” Geithner and His Evil Minions&trade Have Lost

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James Baker, “chief of staff and Treasury secretary for President Ronald Reagan and secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush,” on his management of the problems of America’s banking giants.

When you have James “Evil Capitalist” Baker saying that you are placing too much faith in private ownership, you have not just jumped the shark, but you have jumped Carcharodon megalodon, and probably an entire school of the prehistoric giant shark….

on a Big Wheel tricycle….

Naked…..

While blowing a slide whistle….

With a clown nose on….

While giving yourself a tattoo…

On your own genitals.

Smart Politics, and True

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In 1993, Bill Clinton went after Rush Limbaugh, and it proved a failure.

Between people claiming that it was in assault on free speech, and the absolutely bizarre spectacle of a sitting president going after a political shock jock, it flopped.

Well, times are different now, and the Republican party really does take its marching orders from him now, and there’s also the fact that he’s a drug addict and a sex tourist too, and that he’s no longer the new flavor of the week.

So, Democrats are bring up Rush again, but they are not going after him, so much as they are Rush Limbaugh is the intellectual voice of the Republican party.

This makes a lot more sense, because Rush Limbaugh can be relied to say something mind numbingly scary to 70% of the American population on a weekly, if now daily basis.

Unfortunately, the ‘Phants can’t walk away from him, because those 30% dead enders are something like 70% of the Republican party, just note Rep Phil Gingrey’s (R-GA) abject apology to Rush after he made a fairly innocuous comment defending the House and Senate leadership, and Limbaugh sicced His Evil Minions&trade on him.

It was reminiscent of the confessions at Stalin’s show trials, and Rush Limbaugh now owns the Republican party.

Pass the popcorn.

Yeah, the VWRC is Back, Only It Ain’t So Vast

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I’ve been vaguely aware of CNBC D-Lister Rick Santelli, who let loose a torrent of abuse at people at risk of losing their homes, The government is promoting bad behavior! Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?! This is America! We’re thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July, all you capitalists who want to come down to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.”

That day, a website went live Chicagoteaparty dot com (top pic), which is awfully fast, only the first domain was actually registered in August of last year, and had lain dormant, but suddenly sprung to life, calling for protest with Santelli’s rant on the front.

We also had another domain, created and going live that day, Officialchicagoteaparty dot com (middle pic), which was owned by one Eric Odom, a long time ‘Phant political operative, who created astroturf groups to support offshore drilling, which would directly benefit the business interests of the Koch families.

So, what’s going on?

Well according Playboy* (and mirrored at the Exiled for those of you who have to deal with content filters), the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VWRC) is at it again, only it seems to be perhaps a few dozen people:

What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.”

Added to this was the owner of Chicagoteaparty dot com is one Zack Christenson, who is a producer for a rightwing radio jock Milt Rosenberg, the man who came up with the bogus Barack Obama-Bill Ayers link.

It’s all a part of the “Sam Adams Alliance,” which has funding from the Koch family, though you have to go to cached copies connecting this to FreedomWorks, run by Republican House Majority leader Dick Armey and paid for by the Koch’s.

Note Santelli front and center on the FreedomWorks home page too.

Mr. Santelli’s contract with CNBC is up in a year, and getting a Youtube hit, even if it is AstroTurf, is likely to improve both his chances of renewal, and his chances for a big contract.

Not also that this has been going on for some time, as it’s also tied into angryrenter dot com, which has been registered for a year.

Seriously though, when you look at all these, there is a guy, his money, and perhaps a dozen other people, who were locked and loaded before the rant ever happened, and when the “grass roots” protests happened, they were lame and fake.

It’s kind of a metaphor for the Republican party as a whole.

H/T The Big Picture.

*Proving that Playboy, at least can do real reporting and cover real stories, in addition to being what the Brits call a “grumble mag”.

My Thoughts on Obama’s Iraq “Withdrawal”

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I think that he got played by the military. There are likely to be over 100K troops until year’s end, because General Ray Odierno wants them there for elections, and over 50K for a stabilization force until the 2nd half of 2010.

I think that Obama did not want to deal with the “death by 1000 leaks,” that Clinton saw on gays in the military, and felt that some senior army officials, particularly Ordierno, who have already pretty much said that they would ignore the status of forces agreement.

This should have been fixed in 1993, by Bill Clinton firing Colin Powell for insubordination, and could be fixed now by firing Ordierno if he steps out of line.

Truman’s precedent with MacArthur stands, and should be enforced.

In the short run, Obama needs to start pulling out the extensive infrastructure at the “superbases,” such as maintenance and communications, so as to reduce the military utility of these facilities for use outside of Iraq, as quickly as possible.

Zimbabwe Update

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So, now we have a “unity government”, only Mugabe continues to make appointments unilaterally, though Tsvangerai is disputing them, for what that is worth.

In any case, we are seeing an increase in political violence, and government elements allied with the ZANU PF are continuing arrests and detentions of political prisoners, including a “terrorism” charge against senior MDC official Roy Bennett, who is still in detention despite a court order realeasing him on bail.

Seriously, one of the two only good pieces of news coming out of here are reports that Robert Mugabe has bought a $5.7 Million house in Hong Kong, because that might mean that he is preparing to leave.

The other good bit of news is that the new Finance Minister, and Tendai Biti (MDC) is starting to pay some wages in foreign currency.

If Tsvangerai and Biti are smart, they will make sure that the foreign currency goes to organizations that aren’t just a bunch of Mugabe’s thugs.

Unsurprisingly, the seizure of farms is continuing unabated, because it’s about the only currency left for Mugabe to use to buy continued support.

What Gail Collins Says

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Seriously:

Louisiana has gotten $130 billion in post-Katrina aid. How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money? Taxpayers in New York send way more to Washington than they get back so more can go to places like Alaska and Louisiana. Which is fine, as long as we don’t have to hear their governors bragging about how the folks who elected them want to keep their tax money to themselves. Of course they do! That’s because they’re living off ours.

You go, girl.

Bad Idea Stopped, For Now

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It appears that the Congressional Democrats killed a proposal to convene a special Social Security task force, at least in the near term.

There will not be any announcement of such a body at the “fiscal responsibility summit”, and this is a good thing.

The solvency of Social Security is the least of our worries right now, the public already pushed back on this in 2005 when Bush tried it, and people are looking at their 401(k)s right now, and want no part of privatization.

Handing off social security to wall street is a bad idea.

Expanding the sorts of wages covered by social security, and dropping the earnings limit may not be a good thing, but the “a bipartisan group take up the issue and devise a plan” people like Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, chairwoman of the New Democrats coalition, have one plan:

  • Give the money to Wall Street.
  • Extract campaign contributions from Wall Street Bankers.

Further raising the retirement age, reducing benefits, and/or handing the money to investment bankers, which is what the “Social Security Reformers” really want is a bad idea.

Just look at Chile’s privatized pensions.

The problem is 40 years in the future, and if one were simply to drop the cap on the employers portion of social security taxes, and expand the wages that are covered, there are an awful lot of wages to fat-cats that don’t count, and the problem is solved.

Governor Andrew Cuomo

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Because we just had New York Governor David Paterson confirm that he let his people loose to smear Carolyn Kennedy, to the New York Times, no less:

For the first time, Gov. David A. Paterson acknowledged Friday that he personally ordered his staff to contest Caroline Kennedy’s version of events in the hours after she withdrew from consideration to be United States senator.

However, Mr. Paterson said that he was bewildered when his staffers subsequently unleashed harsh personal attacks against Ms. Kennedy, saying he merely wanted them to challenge the assertion from Ms. Kennedy’s camp that she had been his first choice to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Let me be the first to say to you that you are lying through your teeth.

You could have picked up the phone, and talked to any paper on the record, and it would have ended this, but you leaked it via your staff, and considering what your staff said, through staffers who were clearly given marching orders to slime her.

Not choosing Caroline Kennedy as Senator was the right course of action.

She is intensely private, generally uninvolved in politics, and shows all indications of being worse on the campaign trail than her cousin, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

That being said, you did not have the guts to say that to her face, or to tell the people of New York the truth, which is pathetic.

Fear and Loathing in Euro Missile Defense

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Click Pictures for full size images
Tehran to DC


Masshad to Washington, DC


Masshad to San Francisco


Masshad to Rome


Masshad to Madrid


Masshad to Istambul


Masshad to Athens


Masshad to Chicago

I’m thoroughly skeptical of BMD systems to begin with, particularly the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.

The technology for decoys is simply too easy, it’s basically the same as the shiny metalized children’s balloons you can get at party city, and striking a reentry vehicle when closing speeds are in excess of a mile per second seems to me to involve awfully long odds.

I call it “faith based missile defense,” and one of the earliest goals of the Bush administration was to ensure that it be deployed into service come hell or high water, on the theory that once it was there, it would be politically costly to remove it.

OK, so we all know the game, scary Persians are going to lob an IRBM at Europe, so we have to put an Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system into Poland, so as to protect everyone.

Thing is, Poland is a pretty crappy place to put a BMD system to protect our NATO allies, and this installation, along with the associated radar at Brdy in the Czech Republic* and it’s gotten the Russians absolutely batsh$# insane.

If you figure out the trajectory of a Ballistic missile,† and the tools to the this can be found in a number of places on the web, the location does not make sense.

It does not protect Turkey, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, or southern France.

I’ve had discussions with people sho have suggested that it would protect the eastern seaboard, and it would, if you launched the missiles from downtown Tehran, but just like our ballistic missiles are not located on Washington DC or Crystal City, it’s unlikely that they would put their installation there.

They would want to locate it as far away from a potential aircraft carrier, NATO airbases in Turkey, and the US base at Diego Garcia.

This would put a missile base in the North East corner of the country about 500 miles east of Tehran, in the general vicinity of Masshad, the 2nd largest city in Iran.

Suddenly that interceptor in poland does not do such a good job protecting the east coast.

For an attack on the West Coast, it’s path is too far from either Poland, or the base at Fort Greely, and the installation at Vandenberg seems iffy for covering San Francisco and points north.

Now, the folks the Missile defense agency claim that the installation in Poland is unable to intercept Russian ICBMs (bottom picture), but unsurprisingly the Russians do not believe them.

The Russians did offer a site at Qabala, which they rent from Azerbaijan, if the US dropped the Polish installation, but the respons, at least by Bush and His Evil Minions™ was to go pound sand.

In any case, it’s clear that Azerbaijan, Turkmenestan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia would be prime locations for such a site, though there are serious political issues there, but sites in Turkey, Romania, or Bulgaria would provide better coverage of Europe, and might have a shot at intercepting something headed for Chicagoland, which none of the current installations do.

*In fact, the radar, which can surveil all the airspace in European Russia, may be more of a sticking point than the missile base in Poland.
†I used Google Maps. Go there, then click “my maps”, and then click on “browse the directory”, and click on the distance measurement tool, and it will compute great circle‡ distances, which is what modern aircraft, and ballistic missiles, do .
‡It’s the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. The straight line on a Mercator projection is actually longer. It’s what you would get if you used a globe, and a tight string between two points on that globe.

Israel Demanding Shalit Return in Exchange for Truce

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It’s not going to happen, because if Hamas cuts a deal to release Shalit, even if it gets a truce and (somewhat more) open borders, it cuts its own throat.

Because Hamas’ credibility comes in large part from its absolutist positions,* a negotiation which results in Shalit’s release would be seen by many of their supporters as a capitulation and a defeat, and this would compromise their political viability, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

The short form is that if Hamas did this, they would be signing their own death warrant.

*I was going to use the “takes no prisoners” metaphor, but given the situation here, it just doesn’t work.

When Did Steny Hoyer Grow Some?

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Because he is now leaning on Pelosi to take a tough stand with Harry Reid:

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take a harder line with the Senate after a trio of Republican senators forced Congress to trim billions from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

It’s not clear how far Pelosi is willing to go in standing up to the Senate — or, realistically, what effect Hoyer and Pelosi combined could have in the face of the 60-vote hurdle Senate Democrats face.

But after last week’s stimulus votes, Hoyer called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to force Senate Republicans to mount actual filibusters if they want to stand in the way of bills “so that the American people can see who’s undermining action.”

….

(emphasis mine)

I’m not sure what is going on, but I’m not complaining.

This is Despicable

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It appears that big pharma and medical device manufacturers are gearing up to fight a provision in the stimulus bill which would compare outcomes for different treatments, so that healthcare professionals would know how they compare to each other, they are claiming that it’s, ” the first step to government rationing.”

The real reason that they are opposed to this is because selling people expensive s#@$ that does not work better than the cheap stuff is their business model.

Huh???? Judd Gregg Drops Out As Commerce Secretary

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OK, this is a surprise to me, and it appears to be one to the White House, where a source described themselves as blindsided by Gregg’s announcement.

The folks at TPM suggest that it might be that Gregg was the target of a wall of noise from the increasingly moribund Republican party in New Hampshire, or perhaps that the reason that he accepted the post in the first place was to run the Census, and Obama taking it out from beneath him made him change his mind, though this raises the question, “why now?” when it has been clear for a week.

I dunno, maybe someone has pictures of him with a goat. He’s a Republican, after all.