Mr. 0%

Is it possible that for ten of the past twelve years, Willard Mitt Romney paid no federal income tax at all?

According to an unnamed source known to both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and CNN's Dana Bash, that's the case. And Reid is not backing down when Romney tells Hannity that he oughtta "put up or shut up," he's doubling down:

“It’s clear Romney is hiding something, and the American people deserve to know what it is. Whatever Romney’s hiding probably speaks volumes about how he would approach issues that directly impact middle-class families, like tax reform and the economy. When you are running for president, you should be an open book.

The Dems are forcing Romney into a corner of his own making. Mitt keeps having to defend, primarily because whatever is in those taxes is obviously damaging to him, or else he'd release them. Since the wealthy live by different rules and have all the tax lawyers and tax accountants in the world to help them "preserve capital" it is not hard to imagine Mitt having skirted his civic duty, even if foolish for someone with designs on the White House.

This whole narrative has made it impossible for Mitt to carefully choreograph his introduction to the electorate - Obama For America has already introduced him to us all as Mr. Bain, destroyer of American businesses. Best of all for Barack, it plays right into Romney's policy choices, as demonstrated by this new, hard-hitting ad:



My only fear is that Romney is so weakened by the time the GOP Convention rolls around, they replace him with somebody who might actually win.

The Return of the Dick

Former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, the man who was acting President for George W. Bush's first term, the man who has done the most damage to America since the year 2000, is back with his memoir. Don't even think about an Amazon link for this one.

It turns out he's such a continuing asshole that those he smears in the book, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice from the same Administration, are calling him out on it. Whatta guy.

Here's the list of questions someone should ask him on the tour. Got to imagine he's an ultimate "get" for The Daily Show. Think he has the guts to go up on Jon Stewart -- and think Stewart would do any better with him than he did with Rumsfeld?

And, by the way, how much had you been drinking when you shot your best friend in the face?

Even better: Did You Tell Scooter Libby To Leak Valerie Plame's Identity As A CIA Agent To The Press?

Demystifying the Debt

Whiny Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) walked out of budget/debt negotiations this morning, which seems to be mainly a move to avoid any tax increase blood on his hands and kick it upstairs to golf buddies Boehner and Obama. Fine, whatever. Cantor is not the stupidest member of his caucus, but he is certainly not as bright as he thinks he is. He is, however, photogenic.

As for these deficit negotiations, it is taken as conventional wisdom now that somehow this most be solved before, say, lowering the unemployment rate. When you're feeling like caving yourself to the Fox News CW (FNCW, perhaps?), it will help to have this handy list, so beautifully assembled by Avenging Angel on DailyKos -- "10 Things the GOP Don't Want You to Know About the Debt":

1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
5. Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low
6. Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
7. Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
8. Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
9. Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
10. $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid

Ah, the sweet scent of truth, rather than truthiness. All those links are clickable to documentation and evidence, so enjoy.

And remember, support and vote for any candidate who promises, convincingly, to tax the rich.

It's about time again.

Tax the Rich Pt III

Okay, this will do -- take this passage, from the President's speech today:

"Of course, there will be those who disagree with my approach. Some will argue we shouldn't even consider raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It's just an article of faith for them. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more. I don't need another tax cut. Warren Buffett doesn't need another tax cut. Not if we have to pay for it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. Or by cutting kids from Head Start. Or by taking away college scholarships that I wouldn't be here without. That some of you wouldn't be here without. And I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that's done so much for them. Washington just hasn't asked them to."

The speech is not his most eloquent, just super smart and super refreshing:



Poor Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is fighting to get the most attention and be the brightest John Galt in the room after releasing his feudalistic budget last week:

Reacting to Obama’s Wednesday speech on deficit reduction, Ryan said that he was first “excited,” then “naively optimistic,” then “disappointed,” then “sad” and finally, in the end, “sincerely disappointed.”

“I was excited when we got invited to attend his speech today,” Ryan, who authored the Republican budget proposal unveiled last week, said just hours after returning from George Washington University where he was given a front row seat for Obama’s address. “I thought the president’s invitation…was an olive branch. Instead, what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our countries fiscal challenges.”

As if Ryan's feed the rich/starve the rest of us budget wasn't hyperpartisan? With this speech, Obama has lashed the GOP to the budget of their own making, and the U.S. public is against whatever Ryan and his fellow Republicans think they are selling. Per this week's USA Today survey:

• Are split over whether there should be significant additional cuts in domestic spending: 47% say no, 45% yes. On this issue, there is a yawning divide between the parties. Democrats by 2-to-1 oppose more cuts; Republicans by 2-to-1 support them.

• Overwhelmingly oppose making major changes to Medicare. By 2-to-1, they support minor changes or none at all to control costs, rather than major changes or a complete overhaul. Even a third of Republicans say the government should not try to control the costs of Medicare.

• Favor imposing higher taxes on families with household incomes of $250,000 and above, as Obama has endorsed: 59% support the idea, 37% oppose it.

Welcome to the 2012 General Election.

Moore in Madison

Michael Moore makes sense of the situation once again:

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

Once again the question must be asked: Why have no bankers gone to jail?

So instead of taxing the plutocratic 400, we impoverish those who teach our children every day?

America needs to get its head screw on straight again.

Honest GOoPers

It turns out that even Republican economists, two men heavily responsible for the current U.S. fiscal situation, believe it is time to let the deficit-creating Bush tax cuts, a non-progressive cut favoring the wealthy, expire. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who drove the go-go aughts by not putting on the breaks with sub-prime lending, offered his late-to-the-party wisdom on Meet the Press:

Greenspan expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.

"They do not," said Greenspan.

"I'm very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money and the problem that we have gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money," he said. "And at the end of the day that proves disastrous. My view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here."

Ditto for David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

With Obama promising to keep the cuts for taxpayers earning $200k/yr or less -- and families earning $250k/yr or less, it's hardly a strike against most Americans.

But then again, maybe the GOP plan for winning is continual fiscal collapse?

The $32 Million Man

Glenn reveals the truth:

With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. He gets $13 million a year from print (books plus the ten-issue-a-year magazine Fusion). Radio brings in $10 million. Digital (including a newsletter, the ad-supported Glennbeck.com and merchandise) pulls in $4 million. Speaking and events are good for $3 million and television for $2 million.

It's like a Star Trek channel that just provides that alternative universe for its adherents to wallow in day-in-day-out and replace actual reality with something that plays to their sensibilities without relief.

And Glennie just reveal what everyone with half a brain should already know. The word "News" in the channel name is meant as satire.

Ka-ching!

Truthless

I'm not sure why anyone takes Newt Gingrich seriously anymore. The guy didn't last as a politician, as a leader of his party, as a husband, but maybe he seems like an intelligent source in comparison to his Republican colleagues. Guys like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and even Eric Cantor aren't dazzling anybody with their intellect. They feel like second-stringers.

So Next goes on The Daily Show to promote his co-written novel about George Washington and they don't even talk about the book except in a glancing reference. Instead, he does what we've come to expect from The Party of No. He lies. Then, when confronted with his lie today, he lies again:

Newt Gingrich tried on Wednesday to brush off the glaring gaffe he made this week on "The Daily Show" when he insisted that the Bush administration was right to read shoe bomber Richard Reid his Miranda rights because he was an American citizen.

But in doing so, the former GOP House Speaker only dug his hole deeper.

In a post on his Twitter page, Gingrich explained that when he made the Reid comment to the "Daily Show"'s Jon Stewart his reference was actually to Jose Padilla. Reid, after all, is a British citizen -- Padilla is American.

But Gingrich wasn't done there. In a dig at the Obama White House, he added to the tail end of his tweet: "Treating terrorists like criminals wrong no matter who is Pres."

That's a standard GOP talking point, and yet when President Bush moved the Padilla case from a military setting to the criminal system, it was Gingrich who came to his defense despite conservative howls of protest, a Democratic source points out.

I wish they'd just admit that they're not being patriotic with their war on the Obama Administration's war on terrorists. Why don't they just say, "we just need some way to wedge him out of there in 2012, and we'll say anything to do it!"

Or maybe they're just waiting for the Bernie Saunders treatment:

"I really don't like being lectured on deficits when you (Sen. Gregg) and many members of your party (Republicans) helped cause the situation we are in right now."

~snip~

"Please, please, spare the lectures on deficit reduction."

Say it, Bernie:



Maybe there's truth coming from the teabagger movement. Oops, as a committed conservative who went to their party last weekend writes, their relationship with reality is even worse:

Steve Malloy, author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life, kicked off the first full day of conference proceedings by warning that Obama and his minions are conspiring to control every aspect of Americans' lives—the colors of their cars, the kind of toilet paper they use, how much time they spend in the shower, the temperature of their homes—all under the guise of U.N. greenhouse-gas-reduction schemes. "Obama isn't a U.S. socialist," Malloy thundered. "He's an international socialist. He envisions a one-world government."

I consider myself a conservative and arrived at this conference as a paid-up, rank-and-file attendee, not one of the bemused New York Times types with a media pass. But I also happen to be writing a book for HarperCollins that focuses on 9/11 conspiracy theories, so I have a pretty good idea where the various screws and nuts can be found in the great toolbox of American political life.

Within a few hours in Nashville, I could tell that what I was hearing wasn't just random rhetorical mortar fire being launched at Obama and his political allies: the salvos followed the established script of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have suffused the dubious right-wing fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

And their truthless queen, we all know...well, she's had enough publicity so I won't add another link to her train.

Rachel Take Down Supreme

Yes.



This guy is a smooth obfuscator, but he's not on a Fox shoutfest, and she is clearly the smartest commentator type anchor on TV.



Journalist lives, even if relatively barren on TV.

Getting Real

Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, explains in the most upfront manner possible, that this is not going to be a passive White House, thank the good Lord. She does it in this interview with the sometimes disingenuous Howie Kurtz of CNN, with the focus of the first 2/3 on why Fox News is not a news network like any other, but rather what we all know it to be (in so many words): a propaganda unit:

"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological... what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party."

"Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again... when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition."

"[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news organization like CNN is."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/anita-dunn-fox-news-an-ou_n_316691.html

This is exactly the tone that every single Democrat needs to take with Fox News, and in the long run it will help the other (actual) cable news networks with their own identities, assuming they are finally over being the "me, too!" network to Fox. You can't beat FNC in the cable news ratings because it isn't news, it's reality TV with its own orbit of stars, or rather it's alternative reality, with assumed values of a fictionalized works and soap opera-long plotlines.

In any case, it's nice to have Dems with cajones and like Rep. Alan Grayson (R-FL), Ms. Dunn has them:



Now let's see if FNC fairly covers the real story happening right now in our America.

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.

Ends vs. Means Test

I'd always said that when we eventually found out the truth about what happened behind the scenes in the Bush/Cheney Administration, it would be worse than whatever we were imagining. And sure enough, it now appears that Vice President Cheney ordered up a torture program for the personal purpose of beating out a link to justify the invasion of Iraq:

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

There's a longstanding myth, bolstered by movie heroes of increasing amorality over the course of the 20th Century, that the only way to really get anything done is to break eggs, break the rules, break arms. Jack Bauer isn't the first or the worst, he's just one in a chain but the one most seems to inform the Bush/Cheney political era. He's the valorization, with the occasional dramatic flaw, of the ends-justify-the-means rationalization which has just enough grains of truth to tempt. After all, is there any of us who has not, at some point, chosen an arguably less ethical means in order to achieve an end. Maybe you needed a more tranquil result, so you held back information. Maybe you needed a little more time to get something done.

Whatever it was, I'm betting it wasn't on the scale of fixing a policy and then torturing individuals to get a pitchline for it.

So the big problem with a Nixon and a Cheney and their close advisers is that because they have chosen to override the moral compass of our nation based on the simple fact of ego, that they somehow know better than the laws man created to protect the republic, like the dictators of ancient yore, means that they cannot be trusted on anything. Because somewhere in their mind on every key issue is that they know best, the closed mind, the ruthless mind, the despot mind, stuck operating within the diametric structure of democracy, but pushing the edges, blurring the edges, crossing over so much they end up living on the other side.

If you can't trust any key players in that Adminstration about torture and the selling of the Iraq War, then how can you trust them about wiretapping? Or whether they abused the Patriot Act? Or their motives for choosing the head of FEMA? Or their haste to roll back taxes on the rich? Or their desire to privatize Social Security? Or why they fired a Federal Prosecutor? Or why they outed an undercover CIA agent?

It's just at 51% right now, but I wonder if the trickle will grow. We had the wool pulled over our eyes by the ultimate Ends/Means crew: Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove.

Will the chorus grow for accountability?

Jonathans

It was all anybody could talk about today, and it was pretty intense because clearly our big expensive news media can't do their job. CBS felt that Murrow blood running through their veins and ran Jeff Greenfield's excellent piece:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Time media critic James Poniewozik gets to the core of the modern television journalism problem -- and how Cramer was trapped by it under Stewart's questioning:

"These people were my friends." Cramer said that, or something like it, repeatedly: that longtime friends flat-out lied to him. So problem one: coziness with sources is death for the information business. Now, Cramer is a commentator, not a reporter, and I don't begrudge him friends per se. But it is a problem when reporters either become too close to their subjects to treat them skeptically, or become so obsessed with access that they are leery of being too skeptical: i.e., "If I do that, they'll never talk to me again."

Journalists prize getting people to talk to them, with good reason, but they shouldn't be hostage to it. Part of the problem is a culture in which interviewing is privileged over research: "reporting" is defined as getting a person to talk to you, preferably a famous person. But as the original Daily Show CNBC clip showed, research can be pretty powerful—then it created a situation where Cramer pretty much had to talk.

So what I heard today was that Jon Stewart is doing CNN and MSNBC job for them, that it's only the court jester who can speak truth to the emperor as he reveals him to have no clothes, and that he's essentially our century's Mark Twain.

Or maybe our Jonathan.

Joe's Right

Clear away the b.s. from the past week and here's the truth:



Unlike his opponent, Obama made a Presidential choice.

The difference is obvious.

Shiny

Although it's a bummer that I'm participating in the same cheap political ploy that has, as even the Obama campaign expected, taken the media's eye off the epic glory of Barack Obama closing the deal last night (and without a goddamned teleprompter!), it's just too perfect. In fact, if anecdotal reports are correct, McCain flipped the last few customers over to Obama for good this morning.

What have we learned from the past 24 hours?

About John McCain, I've learned that he's attracted to shiny, newish things. For his first Presidential decision, he hired the person who could very possibly replace him before the end of his first term, whom he had met exactly one time before this week, and spoken on the phone with once. Because, according to McCain camp and GOP reports, he wanted someone from outside Washington who would reinforce his defunct "maverick" image. So he went as far out as possible. To Alaska.

He either did little vetting of her, or thought she could pick it all up really quickly (meaning, of course, that his "experience" slam against Obama is bullshit), or in some sort of ragingly egotistical way thinks it won't matter because he will never die or be debilitated in office, even after four bouts of skin cancer and a current medical report totalling over 2,000 pages. So he clearly believes the campaign can somehow bamboozle the news media into co-selling a Sarah Palin narrative they are feverishly concocting as I write this for injection into Monday's Republican National Convention.

He stopped thinking with the big head and went for the shiny object.

Look, we all know John McCain likes being around great looking younger (than him) women. He likes charming them, he likes their admiration, if they're lobbyists he shuttles them off with him (Where in the World is Vicki Iseman?), he has dumped a sick wife for one who also happened to be loaded with beer money.

Shiny shiny!

I learned that John McCain is a coward. He wanted to nominate his friend, Joe Lieberman, but his party insiders howled over the Senator's party affiliation and liberal social views. He wanted to nominate his friend, Tom Ridge, but his party insiders told him he would lose the fundamentalist base due to the former Governor's pro choice views. But he had ridiculed former Governor Mitt Romney during the primaries and thanks to his own house counting gaffe they couldn't add another bushel of 'em. And Governor Tim Pawlenty was being laughed about on the air last night, which was when McCain made the final decision.

A snap, reactive, ill-considered, small-ball decision dressed up as big-ball but ah obvious sham to all but the most deluded believers.

McCain was too much of a coward to go with his first choices so he decided to say f.u. to everyone and pulled a 20-month Governor of a tiny population state who's previous job was Mayor of a 6,000 person town, and who has shown absolutely no in-depth study or thought about national security, foreign affairs, or nationwide economic policy.

Think she'll be vetted for potential Commander-in-Chief over just the remaining sixty days? ("Way to go, Brownie!") Way to make us all feel that much more secure, John.

Way to put your own ambitions first and country way behind.

I guess Barack was right last night: John McCain just doesn't get it.

About Sarah Palin I learned that she is not related to Monty Python's Michael Palin. I learned that she's not the breath of fresh air that John's campaign is trying to sell, she's actually a plain ol' Bush-era Republican. After all:

• Due to her ego, she made terrible fiscal decisions that cost her town exponentially more wasted public money than it should have, and left the wreckage for others to clean up.
  
  
• She believes in Creationism and thinks it's fine to be taught in schools as an alternative to proven science.
  
  
• She's against a woman's right to an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.
  
  
• She doesn't believe global warming has anything to do with man-made factors.
  
  
• She is ignorant of the actual function of government.
  
  
• She rewrites history.
  
  
• Her close GOP party buddy and endorser is in a bribery scandal.
  
  
• She wants to open up protected lands in Alaska for big oil drilling.
  
  
• She hates bears.
  
  
• She's under government investigation for abuse of power.
  
  
• She likes to point out whiners.

What did I learn about Hillary Clinton?

That for all my complaints about her during the primary season, when she finally accepted that she had lost the battle and the dust cleared, she rose to the occasion and, by way of her graciousness and forcefulness, came out more appealing than she went in.

And, praytell, what did I learn about Barack Obama?

He knows how to play big-ball. He knows the right way to go about making a momentous decision and come out with the best possible answer. He doesn't make crucial long-term governing decisions for short-term political gain.

He knows how to manage a media drama, giving the MSM what it needs (Obama/Hillary rift) and then paying it off exactly the way he intended. He knows how to successfully mount a massive event. He knows how to deliver at a crucial moment. He can draw 38 million viewers, more than the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the American Idol finals.

He won't back away from any challenge. He's smarter, more qualified, more suited and ready to be Commander-in-Chief than John McCain.

Today John McCain closed the deal for Barack Obama. John McCain not only proved the truth of the meme that he'd be Bush's third term with his Harriet Miers-esque decision, he actually echoed the first President Bush's choice of the prima facie unsuited Dan Quayle -- as well as Richard Nixon's choice of conservative-appeasing, under-experienced Spiro Agnew, who preceded Nixon prematurely out of office in disgrace.

Taken against Barack Obama clearly, reasonably, and forcefully laying out of where he wants to take this country last night, one now knows everything one needs to know about this crazy, egotistical, dangerous gambler, John McCain, who I learned turned 72 years old today, not a lot of time left to rectify mistakes.

I learned that he's actually unfit for the office of President of our United States of America.

The Gateway

This should be an extraordinary week for Barack Obama, and hopefully for the Democratic Party as a whole. A lot seems to be riding on how Hillary Clinton treats her loss, even if it isn't sealed yet by the first round Convention vote. Does she want the Democratic Presidential candidate to win this fall even if it isn't her? Does Bill?

If you are an Obama supporter worried about her holding the Party hostage, here's some facts that may make you rest easier:

- Even though she trounced Obama in Puerto Rico, per tunesmith at DailyKos she underperformed:

Before the Puerto Rico primary, Hillary Clinton needed 79.24% of the remaining delegates (uncommitted + edwards delegates) in order to claim the nomination. She had 1876.5, and there were 303.5 remaining delegates. She needed 79.24% of them to reach 2117.

Now, after winning Puerto Rico, she has 1914.5 delegates, with 248.5 remaining. She now needs 81.49% of the remaining delegates. That's a higher percentage than before winning Puerto Rico. She got a lot today, but she didn't even get the bare minimum to hold steady. She fell further behind today - her nomination is even less likely than it was before.

- Although Harold Ickes and her most hardened anti-Obama supporter may claim that the Democratic rules committee somehow hijacked her chance at the nomination by one vote, for anyone who's been following with a remotely open mind, per hudson at MyDD the facts are different. It is, actually, her own darn fault:

That contest was won fair and square by Barack Obama -- with a lot of help from the inept Clinton campaign. So let me try to list just a few of the votes and other events which collectively "changed everything" for Hillary Clinton -- changed her candidacy from one of inevitability, to one that has embarrassed many who once supported both her and her husband's political careers...

1) Hillary voting to give Bush the power to wage a falsely-justified war;

2) Hillary relying on tired establishment figures such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson to steer her strategy and message;

3) Hillary deciding to neglect the Iowa caucuses, until it was too late, giving Obama a huge national burst of publicity and momentum;

3) Hillary failing to prepare for the possibility that the contest would not be decided by the votes cast on Super Tuesday;

4) Hillary failing to comprehend the new nature of campaign fundraising in the internet era, until it was too late;

5) Hillary losing eleven straight votes in states after Super Tuesday;

6) Hillary failing, despite her decades in politics, to understand the importance of a robust 50-state grassroots strategy;

7) Hillary refusing to recognize that caucus voters send delegates to the Democratic National Convention, too;

8) Hillary committing gaffe after gaffe (from Tuzla to RFK) which made Obama's job much easier than it needed to be;

9) Hillary going negative on Obama early and often, causing even some of her own supporters (such as the editorial board at the New York Times, which endorsed her) to call on her to cool her rhetoric -- calls she ignored, further alienating core voters;

10) Hillary using divisive code words and faux-populist posturing in an attempt to divide the Democratic party against itself for her own gain, thus alienating superdelegates, including those on the Rules committee;

11) Hillary losing two out of three contests to an opponent she wrongly underestimated;

12) And most importantly, the millions and millions of votes cast for Barack Obama "changed everything" -- more, by any rational and unbiased measure, than were received by Clinton.

- If you're looking for change, i.e. true progressive leadership, per Peggy Drexler at HuffPo it's not Sen. Clinton:

She supported the Defense of Marriage Act, she co-sponsored a flag burning amendment, she voted to send our sons and daughters into the meat grinder of an unnecessary war. And with close to 70 percent of women in most polls favoring stricter gun control laws, what are we to make of her snuggling up to the NRA with tales of her childhood shooting lessons?

That Defense of Marriage Act vote is the one that always gets me when talking to gay Clinton supporters, the ones who claim they may not vote for Obama in the General Election. When are they going to feel, like the African-American community, that the Clinton transaction can end up seeming one-way?

- She hasn't been vetted -- Obama just never went after her. Or Bill. The Republicans will. They've been planning to, building their portfolio against them, for the past four years.

Without excerpting and exacerbating here, I'm linking to two more aggressive pieces. One is the article in Vanity Fair that the Clinton team, Bill's, is already objecting to. Todd S. Purdum covers all the stuff you haven't been hearing about Bill Clinton, i.e. the fast crowd he runs with, his main benefactors and their links all the way to the Kazakhstan dictatorship, his post-op behavior issues and then the way he's always used people, without taking responsibility for himself.

Think of the monumental amount of GOP media distraction that's being shortcircuited here, that we won't have to bathe in -- unless, of course, Obama makes her his running mate.

- The other piece, by Paul Abrams at HuffPo, lists In Bowing Out, 7 Things Hillary Clinton Must Say to Meet the Standards Set by Hillary Rosen. I leave it to Sen. Clinton to prove me wrong, but I think she will not fulfill 1, 2, 5 & 6. The others I expect she'll be fine with, should she bow out gracefully, this week or next.

And, lastly, something that may not be a fact, but is lovely to contemplate:

- Per Diane Francis at HuffPo, Obama will crush McCain, and why:

1. McCain is McBush and Bush has an approval rating of 28%. In a country that has been roughly 50-50 in the last two Presidential contests, that means that 22% of those who voted Republican are likely to stay at home or vote for the Democrats. If so, that's a landslide for Obama.

2. McCain is having trouble getting the support of the religious crazies in his party and as he panders to them, he alienates the independent, or secular, voters he needs to win.

3. McCain is having trouble getting money from Republican-Bush donors because they know the Party's over for awhile. As he panders and leans on Bush for money, he alienates the independents.

4. Cindy McCain. Her abject refusal to publish her financial net worth, or income levels, is totally unacceptable for the wife of a Presidential candidate. Even John Kerry's wife disclosed information.

5. John McCain's health, not his age. He has Stage 2a melanoma in his declining years...This is a condition which must be checked constantly.

I'd give additional reasons, the foremost of which is that Obama knows how things work now and McCain is not only not up to speed, he's not smart enough to get so in time to save America, even from the diminishment that his Party has gotten us. Obama is, in essence, running all-cylinders on the cutting edge of contemporary business.

It's not Mac vs. PC.

Obama is Google. John McCain is IBM.

As in mainframe.

Feith No More

Jon Stewart once again proves why with maybe Bill Moyers (appearing Tuesday night in what should be a very interesting follow up to tonight) he is perhaps the finest interviewer of political figures working in television today, taking apart key Cheney henchman and leading Iraq War pyro Douglas Feith:



Here's part two of the full-length (only on Web) with the the Bush Administration official that U.S. Army General Tommy Franks called, "the stupidest fucking guy on the planet:"



Now how about those tribunals?

Out of Touch

Hillary Clinton seized on something Barack Obama said last weekend at a Bay Area fundraiser, took it out of context, twisted it like she did he quote about Reagan three months ago, and is trying to brand him as an elitist for basically repeating the What's the Matter with Kansas? wisdom. The McCain campaign picked up on her take immediately, back for some more tag-team, trying to create some sort of echo chamber consensus that her characterization is true.

How did Obama fight back, tonight?



Here's how her attack is shaking out for Hillary (includes her attack):


Out of touch -- like her bizarre attempt at deflecting a question regarding the $800,000+ her husband has received in connection with Colombia and his support of the Free Trade Agreement loathed by actual blue collar men and women in Pennsylvania?



What is with that maniacal laugh???

"And how many angels dance on the head of a pin?" Is this what she's feeling her whole campaign is like these days?

Must have dug hard for the thing to pounce on Obama for today, try to get the real issue of her $800,000 nightmare husband off of the front page. Because if he isn't on for that, he's on for this:

It appears that Hillary Clinton hasn't taken kindly to her husband's decision to revive the embarrassing details of her Bosnian sniper dodging tale. Bill told the press today, "Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am." NBC's First Read has the entire story below.

Read about how Bill Clinton not only revived the sniper controversy but made it worse by adding a couple more untruths.

Out of touch much? Or can we finally take seriously the notion raised that he's intentionally (consciously or unconsciously) trying to sink his wife's campaign, the better to preserve his own legacy. After all, even he can see she can't even manage her own campaign finances.

And that John McCain -- out of touch with the spirit of "Idol Gives Back"?



Ho ho ho Michigan and Florida. Even the studio audience starts booing him. The politically tone-deaf traditionally get voted off the show in November.

Maybe Obama needs to be "in touch" like Bush and Cheney -- if by that you mean in touch with millions and millions of dollars:

The federal tax bill for President Bush and his wife: $221,635. That's how much the Bushes owed on their adjusted gross income of $923,807 for the year 2007, according to a joint return released Friday. The Bushes have paid $203,894 so far, which means they'll need to break out the checkbook _ they owe the government $17,741...

...The White House also reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had an adjusted gross income of $3.04 million in 2007.

The Cheneys owed $602,651 in federal taxes on that income. They have paid $466,165 through withholdings and estimated tax payments, and will pay the remaining $136,486 upon filing their tax return.

And we're talking down years. Just think of how much they'll be able to make once they're out of office and freed of any restrictions.

Think of how much they'll make starting right on January 21st of next year.

Saint Al

Hear, hear:

OSLO, Oct. 12 — Former Vice President Al Gore, who emerged from his loss in the muddled 2000 presidential election to devote himself to his passion as an environmental crusader, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised both “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.”

The prize is a vindication for Mr. Gore, whose cautionary film about the consequences of climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won the 2007 Academy Award for best documentary, even as conservatives in the United States denounced it as alarmist and exaggerated.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the people that have been working so long and so hard to try to get the message out about this planetary emergency,” Mr. Gore said Friday in Palo Alto, Calif., standing with his wife, Tipper, and four members of the United Nations climate panel. “I’m going back to work right now,” he said.

Good stuff, and it's nice that the headlines from his statement are all in the vein of, "Gore: Back to work on environment" and "Gore says prize must spur action."

The environment is the frontline of peace, as virtually all wars arise from a scarcity of one kind or another. There's political thought that the Iraq War is as much about water rights -- the Tigris and the Euphrates -- as it is about oil. As the world population expands, global destruction means water scarcity. And, of course, with oil being the most immediate prize in the conflict, we're fighting for the right to continue emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide, essentially for the right to continue poisoning ourselves as we collapse the polar ice masses.

As for our acting President, Mr. Bush is damned to be fending off heartbroken mothers who despair that their husbands and sons have died for nothing:

Another person who criticized Bush to his face was Elaine Johnson of Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her son, Army specialist Darius Jennings, died with 15 others when their Chinook helicopter was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 2, 2003.

In her meeting later that month, she says, she repeatedly pressed Bush for a rationale for the war. She says he failed to deliver a satisfactory answer.

"Miss Jones, you sound a little hostile,'" Bush said, according to Jones, who was an industrial quality inspector.

"Of course I feel hostile. My only son was killed and I can't get an answer," Jones, 44, says she replied.

Bush moved on to a different cluster of family members in the large meeting room at Fort Carson in Colorado. As Bush departed, Jones says, she tried again.

"Could you tell me what is the mission?" she called out. Bush didn't respond.

Couldn't respond. How can he tell her that her son died for his Oedipus Complex butrussed by the greed of his cronies.

Look, at some point we all have to face reality. The Supreme Court blocked any chance Gore might have had to secure the Presidency and we'll never get those critical eight years back. If, like me, you believe there's a reasonable chance 9/11 would have been foiled had Gore taken office (Bush eliminated the daily intelligence briefings Clinton had instituted and didn't listen to Richard Clarke et al; Gore certainly wouldn't have been that stupid), then America would never have gotten a lesson maybe it needed about the true difference with the Republican Party, Ralph Nader's assessment notwithstanding.

I don't think Gore is going to run. I'm not even sure it'd be a good idea if he decided to in time for New Hampshire. I've grown convinced by clear, bold, even refreshing appearances like this that Hilary Clinton is prepared to lead this country, and I'm not sure who else besides Al Gore really is. Whether I'd ultimately prefer her leadership or another prepared citizen, I can't say for sure yet. But at this point only Al could knock her off the Democratic pedestal and I'm not longer certain he'd be a lock. And I think all the Republicans are underestimating her and their peril, just as Dems underestimated the candidate and electoral team of George W. Bush. And they're starting to realize it -- the way they run against her in their debates, you can smell the fear.

So bravo, Al, and here's hoping you can stay above the fetid fray and somehow effectively lead our planet -- maybe starting with your influence on a new Democratic President -- through this turning point in our planetary history. Even if you succeed, there will be other times, decades or centuries ahead, where we again forget our way and new saviors will be required.

But for now it is your ball. Who else in history has ever won as Oscar (okay, the statuette didn't actually go to him), an Emmy (sure, shared) and a Nobel Peace Prize in one year?

Answer: No one else but Al Gore.

Now, Al, for the love of all that is holy, do whatever it is you have to do to finish the job.