Backstabbers in their Midst

Great Josh Marshall piece on the instant implosion of the New Gingrich campaign barely days after its announcement. His biggest mistake doesn't seem to be calling President Obama the "biggest food stamp President" which is just heinous with identity politics, but that he called Paul Ryan's Medicare elimination plan "Conservative social engineering" and "too radical" for America. (Hey, that sounded like surprising sanity to me.) It's been a particularly wild firestorm:

And now it comes out that this afternoon Newt was compelled to personally call Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to apologize for questioning and criticizing Ryan's Medicare phase-out plan. And his spokesman publicly stated that Newt apologized. Publicly. On the record. Voluntarily.

I mean, wow. Watching TV just now, I see that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is now lashing out at Gingrich as some sort of GOP health care policy traitor.

What's breathtaking about this isn't just the reckless ridiculousness. That's Newt's trademark. But I can only imagine Newt's mortification. This is a man of no little ego. Whatever else you want to say about Gingrich, he is a genuinely historic figure in the history of American politics. And he's called on the carpet and has to apologize to these newcomers who couldn't have been out of their 20s when he was in his early 90s heyday?

I can only imagine.

It's all about fear, as Josh points out, which is exactly what Obama was saying in the last election (and Bill Clinton the decade before that): hope vs. fear. And all the GOP are terrified, mainly of their own Party. After all, Dems don't scare them. Case in point, per TPM:

"If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we'd listen to them," former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman told Time in a new interview. "I respect science and the professionals behind the science so I tend to think it's better left to the science community - though we can debate what that means for the energy and transportation sectors."

The reaction to that little nugget was about as you'd expect.

Never mind that Huntsman also backs off his past support for cap-and-trade in the interview, or that he basically says that while climate change is a problem, it's not one that America should deal with until after the economy recovers (both standard GOP talking points). It's his basic understanding of the concept that human-caused climate change is real -- and even worse, that maybe something should be done to stop it -- that caused a stir on Tuesday.

...

Over at RedState, Daniel Horowitz wrote that Huntsman's views on climate change's human origins were just another piece of the Huntsman which conservatives have found less than palatable thanks to his moderate views on gay rights (he's for civil unions) and the uncomfortable fact that until this month he was a full-fledged member of the Obama administration.

The interview Huntsman gave to Time "can only mean that he is seeking the VP nomination for a Mike Bloomberg ticket," Horowitz wrote.

Fear of betrayal, core of Conservative paranoia.

Hence purity tests.

Brinksmanship, Please

I sense this decoupling of the tax cut for everyone from the tax cut just for the rich (they get their first $250k/year exempted with the general cut just like everybody else) is a threshold issue for core Dems, or should I say the kind of old loyal and new potentially loyal Democrats that Obama and Kaine forgot to market to this past election.

Here's what America's Republican Party leadership is planning:

The Republicans' top tax guy in the House threatened in the clearest possible terms today that he and the rest of the GOP would vote to block any tax cut for the middle class during the lame duck session unless tax cuts for the wealthy are extended for the same period of time.

In a policy speech at the business-friendly Tax Council today, incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp called the Democratic plan for tax cuts -- a permanent tax cut extension for all income up to $200,000, and a temporary extension for income above that level -- "a terrible idea and a total nonstarter."

"We would be foolish to fall for it," Camp said.

Of course not -- don't fall for helping all Americans when you can disproportionately help those billionaire Lords who fund your think tanks and your campaigns, your millionaire Dukes and your close-call wannabees. You know, the Top 2%. Instead of everyone.

They're even scared of meeting en masse with President Obama again, getting more time for preparation lest they endure another Baltimore:

The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.

Obama’s last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat – and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush – has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.

....

Stung by the Baltimore fiasco, Republican leaders carefully stage-managed a televised health care summit at Blair House in February, helping to choreograph every conceivable detail, from the order of speakers to the precise configuration of the horseshoe table occupied by Obama and Congressional leaders. Wary of what they perceive to be potential traps when it comes to appearing with Obama, that kind of precautionary behavior is likely to continue.

Which he kicked their asses in anyway. I say let them prepare, but more such meetings, please.

The GOP sense fold. Please don't reward them with it, Obama and even you most Blue Dog Dems. Not when you have a chance to win the Lame Duck session and slightly redeem yourselves.

Show me something.

"It's a trap!"

If you only watch one Jon Stewart clip this year, this one may be it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Apparent Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Enjoy.

Best New Trend

I'm betting some city folks who make the move to the country end up back in the cities, but I've thought for a while that not that there is connectivity to both non-farming work and cosmopolitan culture available in rural areas (and even Netflix for the types of movies that don't get a fair showing outside of urban centers), why wouldn't more people take advantage of the comparatively low property values, closeness to nature and terrific place to raise kids, and just head for the hills:

Sometimes dubbed "ruralpolitans," these city and town dwellers are looking at land as their new safe investment, one they hope could prove more stable than their jobs and 401(k)s—and provide a better lifestyle.

Motivations can vary, but typically there are three groups: young people buying land as an asset or investment, with vague hopes to live on it someday; exurban commuters who have jobs in big towns or cities but want to escape the sprawl; and back-to-the-land types who want to dabble in hobby farming. While the 76 million-strong baby boomers eyeing retirement represent the largest ruralpolitan segment, they're being joined by a growing contingent of 20-to-early-40-somethings freshly imprinted by this recession's pain.

Ruralpolitans -- nice moniker. The Wall Street Journal Article highlights some of the surprises that hit the "hobby farmers" et al who find it's not always the farm they imagined, but in general it seems like lessons get learned and people grow smarter.

Most of all, it's a break from the treadmill of work and fear:

For some people, the break to rural living is a hedge against an unpredictable future. Brandon Peak is a 36-year-old technician at Intel Corp. who works nights on the factory floor in Phoenix and rarely sees his wife and three children during the week. Mr. Peak's company laid off workers this year, and he's received no raise. So when his parents called recently to say they'd purchased 80 acres in Missouri, and asked if he and his family would join them to start a dairy farm, their son jumped at the chance. They're scheduled to move in March.

"I can't tell you how many people at work say, 'Man, I'd like to do that,' " Mr. Peak says. "Everybody is looking for the next opportunity for hope."

Just watch the hippies turn out to be right after all. In a yuppified kind of way.

Take Notice

Here's some of the billboards up in Missouri calling for armed insurrection against our nation's current democratically-elected Democratic-led federal government. At no time during the Cheney-Bush Presidency, not once despite all the intense antipathy so many of us Americans felt towards George W., did I ever see a public billboard, paid or owned by some company, lobbyist, media outlet or individual, that advocated armed insurrection if we didn't start getting our way.

This blog has been honest about its concern for the first even partially African-American President's health and the Becks and Bachmans inciting violence towards him, the droning dehumanization, just as Bill O'Reilly emotionally enabled thinking like the assassin of Dr. George Tiller on a Sunday morning in a church in front of the doctor's wife.

Arianna's dead right, so to speak:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

That wingnut world isn't fun, it's dangerous, proven lethal throughout history. At least sometimes they turn on themselves. Because no matter what the agenda-driven rightwing or copy-cat mainstream media tells you, people don't like Liz Cheney's ideas, and there is consensus that Obama was right again, say, on the stimulus.

And with water now discovered, there is hope of a lunar colony.

Oh, and there will be a bong shortage this Xmas.

Terror

Nightmare unemployment numbers. Here's an interactive chart to tell you how your own demographic is doing.

As for the terror at Ft. Hood, here's to the courageous Police Officer who took down the shooter (and managed to leave him alive to stand trial or court martial), Kimberly Denise Munley.

I'm hoping her heroism will be kept separate from the ideological landgrabs on the Right, but we'll see how it plays on Faux News.

Glenn Massah

The odious Mr. Beck is losing all of his quality advertisers for calling our President, who is of both African American and Anglo American heritage, a racist. Thanks to a protest organized by ColorOfChange.org, where black Americans stand up for themselves as so many people have told them to do for so many years, his filthy invective has cost Fox his advertisers, and other Fox programs have lost some of these high-quality advertisers as spillover from the hate.

Now the clown prince of simpleton hate and fear is going after Color of Change co-founder Van Jones, who is an expert on sustainability, particularly in urban areas where it is so deeply needed, and an Obama appointee. Jones is an accomplished man and author of bestseller The Green Collar Economy, which posits that we can solve two economic problems with the same stone, i.e. green jobs that will employ more people while making our world more livable.

A far cry from the hate and fear-mongering of the clown prince. And now Beck is going after Jones, calling this special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality a "revolutionary" due to Jones' social and environmental activism.

As I recall, revolutionaries work to tear down a system, not join to make it more sustainable. But then again, racebaiters like Beck have historically worked to cut down strong black men in their prime. When I was born they could do it with ropes and hoods in the middle of the night.

Maybe that's not Beck.

But what percentage do you think it might be of his audience?

Right Again

So I was one of those so-called rabid George W. Bush haters who thought the whole terrorism alert thing was a political lever for the Administration to use when they needed to shock the monkey, a.k.a. public opinion. While some called folks like me irrational, I felt it was based on previous experience, i.e. Karl Rove's long history of political trickery, Dick Cheney's contempt for any oversight of the Executive going back to his first White House stint for Richard Nixon, Bush's own use of fear regularly in his own post-9/11 rhetoric.

The truth, now coming out from the first ever Secretary of Homeland Security, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge:

Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Right again.

Dammit.

The Real Story?

Nuisance Industry over at DailyKos has the most interesting analysis of the Republican health insurance reform kabuki that I've yet seen, "It's about the Republican death spiral." Very much worth reading the whole thing, but some key grafs:

What's happening now is a result of what's happened since 2006: Republicans are in a death spiral, and are increasingly incapable of making policy. Not only do Democrats need to work without them, Democrats need to make Republicans own their impotence in 2010...

...Should Grassley broker a deal for health care reform -- not single payer, not a public option, not co-ops, but any thing with the words "health" "care" and "reform" attached to them -- he will be primaried in Iowa...

...In recent days, it has become abundantly clear (not just to us, but to the media) that Republicans have no intention of working for any kind of health care reform. Grassley said as much, on the record. It is becoming clear that Republican officeholders are acting to block reforms that would benefit their states and districts, putting political strategy ahead of sound policy. Policy that, if enacted properly, could make the politicians who shaped it very popular with millions of constituents it aided.

That is the dilemma of the Republican death spiral. As fewer voters remain in the party, the die-hards become a larger proportion of the remaining voters. These die-hards become ever more important in determining who the Republican Party will nominate in its primaries. Thus, four-term Senator Arlen Specter is chased out of his party by Pat Toomey. The party gets more Toomeys on the ballot as a result.

Toomeys are harder to elect amongst the wider population. Had 300,000 moderate Pennsylvania Republicans not changed their affiliations to vote in the Democratic presidential primary last year, Arlen Specter would likely still be a Republican, poised to win nomination for his next term. Except those former Republicans (many from his base in suburban Philadelphia) are no longer part of the primary voting population. They can't help a Republican Arlen Specter.

Those former Republicans can, however, vote against a Republican Pat Toomey in the general election if they think he's too extreme...

...The Republican Party is paralyzed in 2009, incapable of governing, incapable of even helping to govern. The party that once preserved the Union can now only preserve the fears of bigots and the profits of special interests. The party that let New Orleans drown has shown no indication of learning from its mistakes; the past four years have seen it even less willing or able to manage the very real needs of the American people. Democrats from Barack Obama to Max Baucus to Ron Wyden have extended their hands to see if Republicans could be engaged at any level on this issue. We now know that is impossible. It was never possible; the dance of the past few weeks confirms that the Republicans simply cannot afford to govern in any way, shape, or form lest they be tossed out by the party's rank-and-file. If Rahm Emanuel's on-the-record comments are any indication, the White House now knows that is the landscape.

I'm traditionally wary of any partisan, Dem or GOP, who believes that a final death blow can be delivered to the other side. However, either of the major political parties can be marginalized to various degrees over a decade-long period or more. Eventually there are generational changes that help retool a party and upheavals or shifts in the world that favor one side or the other.

However, the argument here is that if Dems stick together and stay strong (which I equate to adding a government pool to the health insurance competition -- no mandate without public option), they win bigtime. All that's left is the nihilism of our early 20th Century GOP hardcore driving their non-agenda -- they have to poke holes with whatever scares they can dredge up or invent in order to undermine public desire for the government to do any kind of reform. Or maybe come up with an 11th hour counterproposal that Tom Delay can dance to with the stars.

That's why we need debunking reference sites like this.

That's why I'm so glad the President is taking the suggestion I emailed to him to define health insurance reform as a moral issue.

I'm guessing I wasn't alone.

New Catalog

Hate to do this since I seem to have a (small but) growing number of GOP friends, but I do think that the biggest lies need to be called out when they happen, especially the most dangerous ones, and there's a whole new catalog on display this week.

• There's the McCarthy-esque redbaiting lie that there are 17 socialists in the House of Representatives fro Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL).

• There's GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann's gun-crazies inspiring lie that Obama is going to create young adult "re-education camps." She also believes Obama is going to trade in the U.S. dollar for a global currency, but that was last week's lie.

• There's GOP Chairman Michael Steele's anti-democracy lie that the voter registration group ACORN engages in voter fraud and will somehow take over the counting of the next U.S. Census.

• There's a whole big homophobic commercial full of lies that pretends to be ordinary people speaking out against marriage equality, but turns out of be full of actors per the uncovered audition tape (now pulled from YouTube for "copyright infringement").

And, last but not least, there's a huge lie being circulated by the Republican talking heads that the latest Pew Research poll proves that Obama is the "most polarizing" President ever...when really it just means that hardcore, hard-right Republicans are a shrinking minority, small than they've ever been in modern times:



As always, I'll say that the GOP are not gone for good, and that the timing of their return depends on the success of the current President and, potentially, his Democratic successor in eight years. But if the public eventually turns back to the Republicans due to lies rather than truth, it'll be another dark day for America.

Like December 12, 2000.

Fairness

Is it fair to invent stories about Barack Obama and disseminate them in major newspapers and Republican emails

For example, is it fair to create a fake bru-ha-ha claiming he received a discount on his home mortgage

Is it fair to take a true story about his refusal to sign a schoolboy's hand without his mother's approval and turn it into a fake story about him refusing to give the boy a fist bump?

And what does it say about our Mainstream Media?

At the same time, is it fair to point out John McCain's own inconsistencies, on camera and in print, about whether he really understands economics?

Is it fair to point out that his health insurance plan might actually raise taxes?

Is it fair to point out that one of his topmost fundraisers supported a terrorist organization?

Is it fair to bring up a story told by a Republican Senate colleague about McCain flying off the handle during a diplomatic meeting, grabbing a Sandinista official by the collar and physically lifting him off his chair?

And how about this: Is it fair to call McCain's campaign a run for El Presidente George W. Bush's Third Term if he's using one of Bush and Cheney's top men to run his campaign?

Whether the fabricated stories about Barack Obama are part of the Mainstream Media's bias in favor of balance, even when the truth tips in one particular direction (i.e. away from Conservative rule), or whether they're part of a concerted attempt to make a real horse race in an attempt to keep people watching the news and buying newspapers, it doesn't much matter, does it?

We've got a nation in dire need of change.  One candidate brings it, albeit with less extremism than his purity trolls would like and less than the 100% certainty of winning that his concern trolls need.  The other may be a different individual than the current White House occupant, but the party to which he must appeal, that runs his campaign, and from which his appointees would be drawn is exactly the same.  And the guy doesn't seem that stable of temperament, that sound of judgment, or that educated in those areas most central to our nation's troubles.

So life isn't fair.

So what.

Scary Lady

Fear is all she's got:



When a Democratic candidate invokes the specter of Osama Bin Laden to make their case, does that make them a Republican?

Well, speaking of hope vs. fear, I don't have high hopes for Pennsylvania tomorrow and fear for the worst.

Surprise me, PA.

Despicable

The ends justifies the means. Ask Richard Nixon.

Ask Hillary Clinton:



Barack Obama never goes for the cheap shot, never tries to create a story out of innuendo, never goes for the cheap shot. In contrast, Hillary's team doesn't really give a shit:

A lawyer in a predominantly Democratic suburb of Cleveland relates this tale to The Swamp on the day before the all-important Ohio primary:

So last night around dinner time, the phone rings. It’s the Hillary campaign–official number, per the caller ID. The woman on the other end asks me if Hillary can count on my support Tuesday. I say I have not decided.

She asks what would help me decide. I say, “Well . . . maybe she can make Bill her vice president.” She does not know how to take me, of course, but has to assume I am serious. “I don’t think she can do that.” “Bill will have a significant role in major decisions, though, won’t he?” I ask. “Oh, certainly he will be very involved. Do you like Bill?” “Very much.” I reply.

She then launches into a two-minute spiel on all the very specific initiatives and proposals Hillary has put forth on health care, the war in Iraq, etc., etc. At the end of her spiel, she says, “And we haven’t heard anything that specific from Osama bin Laden.”

I say, “You did not just say that.” She replies, “I’m sorry . . . just a slip of the tongue.” She then thanks me for my time and encourages me to vote for Hillary on Tuesday.

The lawyer says he was "stunned" and tells The Swamp the call originated from the Clinton campaign in Columbus.

Per Rachel Maddow, she acts like she's running for Republican Senator John McCain's VP slot:



The ends, it turns out, say, in Iraq, are always affected by the means. That's the message of The Wire. That's why, when Hillary says something as double-dealing as this:



...even I wonder whether I could vote for her in a general election.

And could she still win? Sure. If Obama were to lose three of the four states tomorrow, she'd have some sort of momentum, she'd have her claim. And she'd have done it by making the story all about her -- even in her most Machiavellian moments, playing the fear card just like a Cheney, just like a Nixon, to battle his hope.

It's getting hard to remember that all I want is for this entire election cycle to really be about him:



Not perfect but always straight with us?

I'll take it.

Liars

This was always Bush's fatal flaw, the whole Administration's.

They lie. It's how they're built. Every time George W. Bush moves his lips, a lie slips out.

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

And they keep circulating the liars back through, even the foolish ones.

Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank—amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend—he's in line to return to public service. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters.

It's all on video here with MSN's Countdown, including Bush three months ago escalating rhetoric to WWIII. When he must have known of this report.

What is left of Bush/Cheney's previously shattered credibility? Not even the shards? It'll come clear that they've known this for at least a year. Maybe Cheney or John Bolton will try to start the war anyway, just fire something into Iran. Are these suckers whipped, or instead ready to push the button if only to justify their position. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm guessing that this came out because of Poppy's mole, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. So if the Democratic sweep in 2006 did anything, it got rid of Donald Rumsfeld and maybe saved the Republican.

As Josh Marshall so correctly summarizes:

But it shows us once again, for anyone who needed showing, that everything this administration says on national security matters should be considered presumptively not only false, but actually the opposite of what is in fact true, until clear evidence to the contrary becomes available. They're big liars. And actually being serious about the country's security means doing everything possible to limit the amount of damage they can do over the next fourteen months while they still control the US military and the rest of the nation's foreign policy apparatus.

If only the bigger the lie, the bigger the damnation.

But come January 20, 2008, watch Junior skate.

Callow Gunslinger?

Watching the Red Sox takes apart the previously hot Colorado Rockies is a bit like watching Hillary Clinton take apart Barack Obama. The talented newcomer may get a clever hit or streak, but the experienced warrior doesn't let it last for very long.

On a purely gameplay level and leaving aside any preferences along with possible comeback kid John Edwards, the Obama campaign has been surprising for it's reverse momentum.

Starting by gathering record crowds inspired by his mere entrance into the race, he's hurt himself with long, rambling speeches (I noticed this on C-SPAN awhile back), a message of bipartisanship at a time when the other party has proven itself worthy of only mistrust, ill-defined positions other than hope/change, and being slow to make himself known on contentious legislation (second only to Clinton herself, but she is the establishment candidate in this race).

Rumors circulated this past week that donors are asking why he's not going after Clinton for real, just as he lost a fundraiser to her campaign. So now The New York Times reports that "Obama Promises a Forceful Stand Against Clinton":

The interview came amid growing signs that Mr. Obama was looking for a fresh start for his campaign after nine months in which his aides said they were startled by the effectiveness of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and worried that her support was not as brittle as they had once believed...

...Mr. Obama said he was not concerned by a repeated spate of national polls showing lopsided support for Mrs. Clinton. “The national press for the last three months has written glowingly about her and not so much about me, so it’s not surprising,” he said. He described himself as an “underdog” running against a campaign that has “a 20-year head start when it comes to managing the spin of the national politics.”

Well, he's nailed the problem, and it's exactly why he shouldn't be going after Clinton, except in contrast by making it crystal clear what he stands for and taking on the front-running Republicans by name instead. He's the one who's supposed to be running the positive, new campaign, but we still don't know what he stands for other than a sea change in Presidential racial preconceptions. John Edwards is promising to be our age's FDR. Obama is claiming he's work across the aisle and reduce partisanship in D.C. Which is the stronger message?

The bigger issue at hand after too many Presidential elections where the Democratic candidate is fatally branded as weak, I'm not really hearing that on the GOP side about Hillary. They're trying to make you scared of her, the opposite of their approach with Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, even Humphrey. More than anything else, the Democrats need a candidate who knows how to fight, per Jim Malone (Sean Connery) in David Mamet's dialogue for The Untouchables:

"You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way! And that's how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"

Barack is in no way less likely to get smeared by the GOP in the general election than Hillary, I think it's a myth that any Democrat's Fox-fed negatives will be any less than hers by the time ballots are cast. Her 20 years are two decades spent fighting back against the vast right-wing conspiracy and, with the instructive exception of her national healthcare proposal, winning. On the other hand, Obama has never faced a seriously threatening GOP challenger. Ever.

As echoed by one of Andrew Sullivan's perceptive readers:

Clinton hasn't been overly specific on policy, either, but during the debates this summer we got to see how she'd handle the Swift Boats next year -- with competence and a spine of steel. As much as I'm emotionally drawn to Obama, his performances in the debates and on the stump have been less than stellar. It's all too easy to imagine him getting his ass kicked by the GOP and losing in a landslide to a thuggish dictator like Giuliani. Clinton may never reach the 52% she'd need to win the election -- but so far, she's the only one who looks like she can give as good as she gets. And whoever wins the Democratic nomination will face a hell of attacks the likes we've never seen.

The way I read it, the Clinton campaign has gone easy on Obama in public, responding as necessary but letting him self-destruct (i.e. the anti-gay minister bobble this past week). In response, it looks like he's going to trot out Social Security, in all likelihood handing the Republicans an issue and (God forbid) opening the door to private accounts. I seriously doubt he'll be able to knock Hillary off her perch with it, as her campaign staff is just too deep, and she's a very, very quick study.

But his staff has got to be sweating with the news that Clinton is no longer just taking a pass on Iowa:

The decision of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to send 100 or more new staffers into Iowa demonstrates that she and her aides have determined to their own satisfaction that she can cripple Barack Obama in the first-in-the-nation caucus.

Up to now I've liked Obama as a person, a presence, and I've thought from some of the stories told by those who've played on basketball teams with him that he's got leadership and fighting skills. But if he muddies the Social Security waters for vainglorious political gain, I'll never forgive him.

Kevin Drum offers excellent advice for Barack Obama if he wants to set himself apart and recapture the imagination of both Democrats and independents:

(1) Propose that the United States unilaterally offer to reopen its embassy in Tehran. Ditto for Cuba and North Korea (and Bhutan, I suppose, though I don't really know what the deal is with them). Make the point that we live in dangerous times, and diplomatic relations should be used as a way of more effectively dealing with the world, not as a way of making self-righteous statements of approval or disapproval about specific regimes.

(2) Propose a specific list of Bush administration executive orders that he would rescind. No shilly-shallying, just a flat promise to revoke them. Possibilities include the orders governing torture, military commissions, and FISA. If he wanted to be even bolder, he could categorically promise to halt the use of presidential signing statements.

Show us some real fight. Show us some real menschiness. Show us some cajones. Don't just go after some little lady.

Especially when that little lady knows how to pull a gun.

I'm for: Rudy!

Last month I posted the first in what I promised would be a series of Republican Presidential candidate endorsements. In that one I endorsed former Governor Willard Mitt Romney. I wrote that I would endorse lots of the Republican candidates, because none of them scared me. In response, one of Nettertainment's valued readers wrote:

Given the American voters' uncanny knack for electing Republican candidates regardless of how awful they seem, I really think you should only endorse someone you could live with being in the White House for the next eight years.

I couldn't live with Nixon, I couldn't live with Reagan, I couldn't live with Cheney & Bush Puppet. But I did.

The fact is, people live through all types of regimes. The only question is how much they damage you during their rule. Is it an abstract abridgment of civil rights -- i.e. someone else takes the hit, but my family skates through those years? Or do they come after me, maybe for speaking my mind right here?

I believe that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. Maybe the past two Presidential elections were stolen by Mr. Rove and company. It doesn't matter. America needs to vote decidedly if not overwhelmingly against these villains, otherwise we're not really evolved, are we?

The scariest of the chest-thumping, after-shave touting, chickenhawk GOP Presidential candidates is former NYC Mayor Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani. Rudy appears tougher than salesmen like Mitt because (a) as a U.S. Attorney he won some tough convictions, (b) New York City, (c) he stood a lot taller than Mister Bush on 9/11 -- even though he made the single worst terrorism protection decision prior to that day, in essence beefing up his travails through bullheaded, egotistical executive judgment.

After the failed 1991 attack on the World Trade Center, Rudy rejected the expert recommendation to put the Emergency Command Center across the East River in Brooklyn, away from the target. Instead, Rudy mandated that it be built right under the World Trade Center itself -- the site of the only attack to date by terrorists on American soil.

Well, at least it made him look more courageous when he escaped the predicted attack there on 9/11/2001.

Rudy's image takes a continuous beating from the very public servants he claimed to be behind, the rescue heroes of the post-9/11 effort. These firemen very credibly claim that Rudy's image build-up after the attack is just a pile of lies:

What Giuliani showed following 9/11 is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them. He valued the money and gold and wanted the [World Trade Center] site cleared before he left office at the end of 2001 more than he valued the lives and memories of those lost."

-- IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger

But what makes Rudy so appealing for a blanket GOP Nettertainment endorsement? Is it his brilliant grasp of the domestic agenda Americans are clamoring to have addressed?

Rudy Giuliani seems to know next to nothing about virtually every national policy issue -- ironically, given his campaign presentation, though not so odd if you consider his actual career in office, he knows more about domestic policy than foreign policy.

Including his tone-deaf healthcare plan?

But Mr. Romney took aim at Mr. Giuliani’s recent proposal to offer people $15,000 in tax deductions to help them buy health insurance. “We have to have our citizens insured, and we’re not going to do that by tax exemptions, because the people that don’t have insurance aren’t paying taxes,” he said.

Mr. Giuliani countered, arguing that the best way to increase the number of people with private insurance was to give them the deduction to encourage them to buy policies. “They’ll have an incentive to own their own health insurance,” he said.

Is it his lack of understanding of crucial current foreign affairs issues?

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) Thursday repeated his challenge to debate foreign policy with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and offered Giuliani a "reading assignment" of books examining U.S. policy toward the Middle East...

...He recommended that Giuliani read four books that outline causes for al Qaeda's hatred of the United States, including the 9/11 Commission Report and Chalmers Johnson's 2000 book, "Blowback."

Is it his platform of four more years of nerve-rattling fear-mongering?

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right … but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic “softness” from a delusional vice president.

This is casualties on a partisan basis — of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani’s party knows all and will save those who have voted for it — and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the messiah-of-the-moment.

Or is it the company he keeps?

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet.

Or those he's choosing to help get him elected?

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was Capitol Hill’s invisible man yesterday, lying low even as his ties to the notorious “D.C. Madam” threatened to become a political crisis for the conservative lawmaker...

...The most immediate campaign consequences came not for Vitter, who is up for reelection in 2010, but for GOP presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani. Vitter’s endorsement of the ex-New York City mayor was intended to lend Giuliani conservative heft, but the Louisianan forced his candidate to dodge scandal yesterday in New Hampshire.

Or maybe it's his personal character. You know, that issue Republicans claim to own, putting Family Values in capital letters.

Giuliani married his second cousin, Regina Perrugi. After 14 years, he divorced her, but got an official "annulment" -- a decree from the Catholic Church that the marriage never really happened (for 14 years!!), thus allowing remarriage in the Church.

Ah, the magic of annulment. Almost a decade and a half...begone!

Then there's his second marriage, with children, where his wife, Donna Hanover, and kids found out in an unexpected way that, after flagrantly cheating on her for years with a staffer among others, he was leaving their family:

Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land, for example, described Giuliani's breakup with Hanover as "divorce on steroids." Hanover learned her husband was seeking a divorce from television after he announced the decision at a press conference.

"To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children _ that's rough," said Land. "I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control." Marital history and family values have been bubbling just below the surface of the Republican campaign for months.

Class all the way!

Then there's the woman he broke up his home for, his third and current wife, Dr. Judith "Don't call me Judi!" Nathan. America currently has an openly prevaricating Chief Executive. Are they ready for a First Lady who lies for her own convenience as well?

Judith Nathan had been married twice, and not once as generally believed, before she wed Rudolph W. Giuliani in 2003, aides on the Giuliani presidential campaign said last night.

She's got a strong sense of direction:

The train of her pale Vera Wang dress was studded with Swarovski crystals; on her dark-red hair perched a Fred Leighton diamond-and-pearl-encrusted tiara.

"There is a reason why she wore that tiara at her wedding: she really does see herself as a princess," says another former Giuliani aide. "Not as a queen. Queen is her goal. Queen is who she wants to be."

It's good that she wants to be Queen. After all, she's good with the help:

If Giuliani's third wife became less popular as time went on, it was in part due to the feeling that she had a private list of Rudy loyalists she wanted fired. "The atmosphere is slippery, but not always venomous," says one. "You just realize there's an agenda there: she's worming her way in so she can push you out." Papir, for instance, was fired five years ago after word got around that he had called Judith a "princess" behind her back. But there are others, two sources say, of whom she patently disapproves. "Kate Anson, his scheduler, and this was the person who was so nice to her—everyone likes her!" says one Giuliani friend, holding up fingers to enumerate those of whom Judith disapproves. "Matt Mahoney [now deputy senior political adviser]—he loves Rudy. And Tony Carbonetti too, that's the other person Judith hates.… He would never be confrontational. His job is Rudy." A shrug. "Anyone supportive of him, close to him—Judith wants them fired. A lot of the senior staff … She just gets furiously jealous and treats them like shit!"

But the best reason for me to back Rudy to win the GOP nomination comes from another member of his family:

Even his daughter is voting against him.

ENDORSED.

War on Moore

If the health insurance companies are this scared, eliminating them and finally creating a single-payer national health service must be the right thing to do.

If Fox News is spreading the lie that Universal Health Care leads to terrorism, it must be the right thing to do.

If Fred Thompson worked to help the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association with abortion rights lobbying in 1991, he will almost certainly not be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008.