First Draft

They Cannot Muzzle The Light

You know that famous picture from the Westboro Baptists protests and counter-protests? This one?

I feel like standing next to Capitol Hill with that sign right now. Or the DNC headquarters. Something.

Thousands of people are in the fucking streets. Thousands. In New York, Boston, Cali, Philly. Thousands.

Yet Washington Democrats cower in the corner for fear of joining them.

I can see why. What if one of the hippies has a rude shirt?

And doesn't it make Obama look bad to point out that the earth is caving in on his watch?

What if somebody at the rallies compared Republicans to Satan? What would Chris Matthews say?

What if somebody at the rallies once sold his food stamps on Facebook?

Won't that give Republicans and the pundits who hold Washington hostage cause to say mean things about us? Won't that give them cause to talk about how we're all about the smelly kids and faggots and welfare cheats and others who are anathema to America? Surely they wouldn't be doing that anyway so I'd best stay over here, and pretend those protesters don't speak for me.

Surely I'd better not note that these are my people, my constituents, the middle class workers for which my party is supposed to have fought, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. Surely I'd better not concede that even if they are just "college kids," they're goddamn citizens of this country whose concerns deserve a voice and whose voice is a vote. Surely I'd better not worry that where there are ten of them today there will be sixty tomorrow, because when in history has that ever happened?

Surely it's safer to stay indoors, keep my powder dry, and hold off having this fight until things get just a little bit worse. Surely, when the right moment comes along, someone will let me know.

In case it's escaped anyone's notice, the Occupy All That Shit protests aren't going away. They're growing. They're going from city to city. They're getting louder. They're gaining friends and allies. They're becoming more. And I don't know how much more, how many more people it's going to take before somebody supposedly on the side of the middle class takes fucking notice and gets his ass down to the microphone. 

Isn't there a single strategist in Washington yelling that there are thousands of votes out there to be won by actually acting like a Democrat? I know that hasn't exactly been in high favor the last 10 years, but do thousands of people in the street express anything BUT a deep hunger for a world that isn't going to screw them over? And isn't that a political opportunity of which someone should avail himself?

Yes, the Tea Party was funded, and marketed nonstop by Fux News. You know what else it was? Supported by every major Republican candidate, who looked at the racist signs and the ignorant-ass 'necks in attendance and said sure, some of them are gaping assholes but all of 'em are gonna vote and they might as well vote for me. That's part of how that movement gained legitimacy. If tea partiers held a march against Obama's wars, they wouldn't lack for grand marshals.

Our leaders, even among those who do nothing but comment, just snipe about hippies and kids, as if they have any economic or demographic data on these crowds at all. That's if they notice; most are too busy figuring out how much to cut from Social Security. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. Yes, everybody's tired, but eventually your exhaustion is just self-indulgence, and it doesn't matter what's on the back of the trustafarian's shirt at this point.

You go to the revolution with the revolutionaries you have.

I'll be at Occupy Chicago tomorrow with food and coffee for the demonstrators. Where will our leaders be?

A.

Malaka Of The Week: Jackie Clarkson

Jackie Clarkson is a veteran New Orleans pol. She's currently President of the City Council, which isn't as grand as it sounds: we have 2 at large members and they alternate in the post. She is also the mother of the fabulous character actress, Patty Clarkson, of whom she is apt to brag at the drop of a hat. She is also malaka of the week after making a serious gaffe from which she seems unable or unwilling to recover. Here are some extensive quotes from Ariella Cohen's kick ass story at  the Lens:

For Blunt and the millions of non-white Americans who survived segregation, the years before the civil-rights era were fraught with daily injustices as obvious as having to sit at the back of the bus or send your child to an inferior school, and as subtle as being forced to put tissue paper on your head before trying on a hat.

“We had to abide by the rules,” Blunt said.

Given that history, public officials around the country have often avoided using that period as a reference point. Especially in the South. Not, however, New Orleans City Council President Jackie Clarkson.

Clarkson, 76, has been known to invoke the 1940s and‘50s as the city’s halcyon days. Sugary memories of her youth in Algiers, and her father, Johnny Brechtel, who helped found New Orleans Recreation Department in the late 1940s pepper council meetings. One familiar anecdote involves a 1949 issue of Life magazine wherein her father’s work with NORD was recognized for its “progressive” approach to urban recreation.

Rarely in her reminiscences does Clarkson acknowledge that the city was, at that time, building separate playground for black and white children. Most recently, Clarkson spoke of the era while praising Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a public meeting in Lakeview.

“I never dreamed I would stand here and say this city is on the best roll I’ve been since I was a child,” she told a racially mixed crowd. “For those of you who are also my age, is this not just like the ’40s and ’50s?

“It’s that good, and we are back on that roll.”

The usual rule of thumb is that when you dig yourself a hole, it's wise to stop digging. Clarkson is far too grand to do so; she obviously doesn't think she said anything wrong:

“The things Jackie’s thrilled about … the ’50s and ’60s were not glory days for me and the rest of the black community,” said Pearl Cantrelle, President of Kenilworth Civic Improvement Association, speaking at another meeting on the 2012 budget.

“I don’t like sitting on the back of the bus or picketing on the steps of City Hall.”

Cantrelle’s comments drew applause and cheers across the vast Household of Faith sanctuary. And minutes later, Clarkson was greeted with boos from the mostly black crowd after she was introduced to the crowd, having arrived a bit tardy for the meeting. As the catcalls died down and she took her seat, Clarkson can be heard on a video recording telling an aide that she’d never been booed in her life.

“We’ve wasted our time. Let’s go,” she muttered to the aide, though they both stayed.

The mayor, however, apparently didn’t hear Clarkson and decided, a few moments later, to hand off a microphone to the notoriously voluble councilwoman, so that she could explain herself to Cantrelle. And explain herself she did.

Clarkson, wearing one of her trademark printed silk neck scarves and a bright blue suit, began her speech with an earnest plea for the crowd of roughly 300 to understand that she would “never do anything to offend you.” She had “opened a business out here in the ’70s and always believed in you,” she recalled.

After Hurricane Katrina, she had gone on “international television and said ‘bring back the east, that’s a valuable part of our city’,” she said. “If that wasn’t enough to prove how much I believe in you…I don’t know what else to do.

“I’ve been out here as an At-Large Councilwoman, anytime there’s been anything important and anytime I’ve been invited,” she said.

As she continued well beyond the 30 seconds that Landrieu suggested she use for a response, angry voices began to rise around her and Clarkson’s tone hardened.

“Excuse me, excuse me – no, I’m going to finish,” she said. “I’ve never been treated like this in my lifetime, and I won’t have it.”

“I was referring to my childhood,” Clarkson continued. “I had a very happy childhood. I’m not apologizing for that.”

“Please don’t be so rude,” she scolded the crowd before explaining that her “father’s best friend in the 1940s” was Morris Jeff Sr., “a black Ph.D. who I adored.”

Ouch, Jackie C is, of course, a grand dame and grand dames do not apologize even if they acknowledge error. She clearly doesn't think this exchange was a gaffe: it's kind of like my man Berlusconi saying that Italy is a "shitty country" because they're ungrateful for his Silvioness.

Jackie C is known to be imperious: I once dubbed her the NOLA Queen of Hearts. I've never considered her stupid but answering a constituent by saying "one of my Daddy's best friends was black" is asking for it. I do wonder if she's starting to lose it mentally: she *is* 76 years old, after all. Stubbornness is a more likely explanation.

I would, however, like to thank Jackie C for her utter cluelessness in dealing with the inevitable criticism that has flowed from her remarks. Her malakatude is good for the satire business and my little buddy Jeffrey is having a field day, calling the episode The Help 2. Well played, sir.

The good news for Jackie C is that old white people love her and if there's ever a film made about her life, Patricia Clarkson would be excellent casting.

 

Let's Be Friends!

NICE, Madigan:

Politics, as the adage goes, makes for strange bedfellows. How else to describe the news state House Speaker and de facto jefe of the Illinois Democratic Party Michael Madigan attending two fundraisers for House Speaker and Republican John Boehner a couple of weeks back?

[snip]

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said his boss was there in the spirit of cooperation. Only the public hopes politicians cooperate with each other to get shit done, not raise money.

I get Mike's got to be hard up for friends these days, given his reputation as a truly epic asshole and the state's continued financial suckery, but seriously, nobody's 5-year-old had a bouncy castle he could spend the afternoon in?

And I bolded that bit above because it's such an important point, especially during this new era of cooperation and bipartisanship. People only really care if politicians like each other if that liking results in people's lives improving. I don't care how many rounds of golf Obama and Boehner play together, or if they call each other names. I live in the world, I can wrap my head around the idea that two grown-ass men think less than the world of each other, and occsaionally say mean things. What I can't wrap my head around is prioritizing making nice over doing good, or acting like the former is the latter.

A.

Just When We Thought He'd Gone Away

At dinner Friday night I commented to Dan that we hadn't heard from Joe Lieberman in a while, and maybe Obama had quietly had the little jerk neutered.

So I guess it's my fault Lieberman's back and more odious than ever. I'm sorry. From now on I'll just refer to him as Lord Voldemort. 

A.

 

Freezer Burn

You know, it's not that there shouldn't have been a compromise to keep the government running. I can sit here and say they should have made Republicans shut it down and eat it and choke on it, but a) I have no confidence in Democrats' ability to make Republicans pay politically for anything they've done ever and b) it's really easy for me to yell things like "shut it down" when my paycheck and/or benefits don't depend on government running in any way. I'm all in favor of keeping the government running.

But there's an awful lot of truth to this:

Ezra Klein gets this right, I think: it’s one thing for Obama to decide that it was better to give in to Republican hostage-taking than draw a line in the sand; it’s another for him to celebrate the result. Yet that’s just what he did. More than that, he has now completely accepted the Republican frame that spending cuts right now are what America needs.

Which, yeah, you don't go out there and yell, "WE GOT SCREWED AND IT WAS AWESOME! Be grateful for how hosed we are! Be incredibly happy that we came together and agreed on a bunch of stuff that, while it wasn't half as asstastic as it could have been, will under the very best scenarios help absolutely no one whatsoever! Wheee!" You don't win the argument by pretending you won when you lost. Not only does it mean you, you know, lost, but it means those people already pissed about the loss will not only think you are a loser but a delusional one.

Centrism is not what America needs. Shutting up and going away so that America can think we're all getting along and being nice so they won't have to think about politics in any way is not what America needs. I swear, half the carping that goes on about how we all need to compromise is just a cover for, "Oh, God, I am exhausted and I can't wrap my brain around this stuff. Can't we just watch TV? I just want to watch TV."

And I get it. I do. It is exhausting. It is annoying that stuff doesn't just work. I keep going back to this guy I used to work with, who when the IT tech was explaining in great detail why our computers were fucked would just yell at the top of his lungs, "FIX IT!" This is how I feel about the world in general most days.

We just want government handled, because if it's handled, then someone is handling it, and we can go bake some cupcakes. If it's not handled, and I want to send this out as some kind of telegram to the world, but if you still notice a problem it means nobody is handling it. So if your school has a hole in the roof and eight of your ten friends are out of work and your kid sister can't get birth control pills without running a fucking gauntlet of assholes holding bloody-bucket signs and screaming, that means nobody is handling any of that. Moreover, it means you're going to have to handle it, and that alone is enough to make everybody want to lie down and nap.

Cuts are going to fix none of the 47 things currently wrong in this economy. Cuts are not going to make CEOs less beholden to their beliefs that they are owed bonuses and severances. Cuts are not going to make clothes and food less expensive. Cuts are not going to bring the factory down the street back to life. (I know NO ONE who has started a business "because the tax picture right now so totally kicks ass," by the way. People start businesses because they want to make or sell something, and that's about the only real reason.) So that we all agree on cuts as being in principle nice things DOESN'T FIX ANYTHING, and it's beyond insulting to expect us to be happy to have agreement when agreement in and of itself doesn't give us the desired results.

From the Ezra piece Krugman links above:

The Obama White House is looking toward the Clinton model. After all, Clinton also suffered a major setback in his first midterm, Clinton also faced down a hardline Republican Congress, Clinton also suffered major policy defeats, and yet Clinton, as the story goes, managed to co-opt the conservative agenda and remake himself into a successful centrist. The Obama administration has even hired many of Clinton’s top aides to help them recapture that late-90s magic.

That story misses something important: Clinton’s success was a function of a roaring economy. The late ‘90s were a boom time like few others -- and not just in America. The unemployment rate was less than 6 percent in 1995, and fell to under 5 percent in 1996.

The outcome matters. Agreement, centrism, compromise, these things are done in service to particular ends. They're not ends in and of themselves. I had a teacher in high school used to talk about averages by saying if your feet are in the icebox and your head is in the oven, on average you feel pretty good. Burning and freezing are not okay, however, and possibly we should try to argue for something other than the most vicious middle we can find.

A.

 

 

Well, since we're doing snow day goggie and kitteh and ferret stuff...

Sorry to get out of my box, but when I let Bailey and Brillo out for their morning constitutional yesterday, I had a feeling that one or both would have trouble with the strange white stuff all over the ground.

They usually trot over to the far end of the yard to do their business, but poor Bailey just wandered around in circles looking pitiful until he finally just squatted a bit and went in the snow on the porch.

I remarked - "Quitter."

 

Spineless

I'm not surprised by the fact that Congressional Democrats won't be voting to rescind the Bush tax cuts for people with polo ponies BUT I'm still horrified. They've raised spinelessness to dizzying new heights: they refuse to do something popular out of fear of the Tea Party.

There are some times that you should bring something to a vote on the floor knowing that you'll lose that vote but gain politically. Instead, the House has allowed its fear and loathing of the Senate to trump political common sense. Yes, the House does the heavy-lifting on many bills that the Senate either kills or allows to languish BUT this should have been a no-brainer.

Living in formerly purple, now red, Louisiana, I've been less critical of the Blue Dogs than many. Not this time: they're driving the bus in the House and their strategy is duck and cower. They're convinced that the mean old teabaggers will leave them be if they assume the fetal position. Fat fucking chance.

Don't Tell Me

Assholes:

Don’t believe the hype. The failure of cloture in order to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell cannot be fully laid at the feet of the Republican party. The Democrats – and not just the ones who voted bigot like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor – have a lot of blame in this failure too.

If someone in the Senate threatens a filibuster, they need to be forced to filibuster. When southern racists opposed civil rights, they were forced to actually filibuster on the floor of the senate. If you are so bigoted that you oppose allowing a vote (that has a majority) on whether gay Americans can serve their country, by God, stand up and defend your position in the well of the U.S. Senate.

Nice job, fucksticks. Really. Good one there. You just helped the GOP make history, you gutless wonders. How does it feel? Listening to Rachel Maddow tonight, this is the first time a defense appropriations bill has failed to pass since 1961.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What will you get out of this, pray tell? Reward for your brave moral stand, Blanche Lincoln, by way of the GOP not running a candidate against you? Maybe their candidate will refrain from making really nasty attack ads. Maybe your own constituents will love you a lot more now. Maybe you'll be re-elected. Maybe you'll go live the rest of your life in peace and harmony knowing you did the right thing, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning each day, because God DAMN it, people, this was one of those votes.

This was one of those votes. Like FISA, like the war, like the PATRIOT Act, where you either do the right thing or you spend the rest of your life flapping around trying to explain and justify and wiggle out of why you didn't do the right thing. And I don't know about you, and I don't know about members of the U.S. Senate, but it seems in terms of simple expediency that acting like a grown-up would have been best here, and fuck what your bigoted phone callers might have said.

Not to mention which, boy, remember all those times the Democrats refused to vote against defense appropriations as a method of getting their political point across? Remember all those times Democrats refused to vote against defense spending because they were afraid of looking like they didn't care about the troops? Because Republicans would be mean? Because Republicans would accuse them of wanting our troops to die? Boy, that was a scary thing for Republicans to threaten Democrats with. That was a line of attack we were all really frightened of.

I wonder how many Republicans are frightened of it tonight. I wonder how many Republicans are sitting in their offices waiting for the flyers and the ads and the radio callers-in and the angry mobs of military mothers barraging them with complaints about not giving John and Jane G.I. the money they need. I wonder if Republicans are as worried as Democrats once were, about the political price to be paid for putting the screws to the party in power in the name of what they said they believed, even at the expense of not voting for something important.

No, actually, I don't wonder at all. Fucking gutless bastards. All those times Democrats cowered in their beds, hoping if they stayed very still and quiet and didn't go to the anti-war rallies then nobody would call them commie pussies. All those times Democrats sat back and played the odds, figuring they'd be slammed more for doing something than for doing nothing, as if it is ever the case that you lose people by doing too much. As if that is ever a thing that happens. All those times Democrats shut up and voted for the appropriations bill and didn't filibuster anything because that would be mean, and everybody knows you're not mean.

Not unless you're a Republican, that is.

Fuck this noise. Congress had its chance to do the right thing and make this as permanent as it could be. Sign an executive order, Mr. President. At least then you'll know, if it's overturned by the next president, that you, you personally, you did all you could. Dry powder doesn't seem to be doing us a lot of good these days anyway. Let it burn.

A.

Boy I'm Glad We Kept Our Powder Dry

Republicans would rather your grandma starve than Warren Buffet have to pump his own gas:

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans will oppose any effort to renew soon-to-expire Bush administration tax cuts if upper income taxpayers are excluded from the reductions.

A spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell says every Senate Republican has pledged to oppose President Barack Obama's tax-cutting plan. Obama would renew the tax cuts for most people, but let the top income tax rate rise back to almost 40 percent on family or small business income over $250,000.

McConnell has said a bill extending the tax cuts for only low- and middle-income earners cannot pass the Senate. Forty-one senators can block a bill with a filibuster, but McConnell spokesman Don Stewart declined to say whether all 41 Republicans would support a filibuster.

Let's be clear on this: Those tax cuts, along with a 40-year tradition of starving public services, have bankrupted this country. The victims of this bankrupting have been school children, the poor, the elderly, teachers, firefighters, cops and construction workers, along with artists, social service workers, social justice advocates and anyone else who is in any small way trying to make the world a better place. It is that simple. The largesse of their hard work was given to wealthy Americans and the middle-class, working-class and poor were told to suck it up until Daddy Warbucks felt like creating a few jobs. Surprise, surprise, Daddy Warbucks felt like doing no such thing.

So now they're fucked. They're underwater on their mortgages (or close to it), they're wondering every week if their paychecks are going to bounce (those of them lucky enough to still have jobs) and they know without a shadow of a doubt that help is not in any way coming. They're watched their pensions looted, their protections stripped and any semblance of trust in the government to which they've paid taxes their whole lives is just completely fucking gone.

And in the face of this, in the face of this very reasonable fear and anger, the Republicans are offering to continue to screw them over. To obstruct any kind of help, to obliterate any chance of useful legislation, to tell them nothing but how to blame black people and welfare recipients and buy Glenn Beck's books, while they shut down the government and make sure no sluts get abortions and no gay people get married. Because THAT's useful.

What price will they pay for their actions? What outrage will they face? None, naturally, since the Democrats can do nothing right:

Plus, they‘re ahead in the polls, so what will Republicans do if they take control of the government, of the U.S. Congress?  Here‘s what they‘re talking about doing—killing Obama health care, canceling what‘s left of the stimulus, and using subpoena power to investigate the White House.  One GOP lobbyist states it plainly.  Quote, “The goal, obviously, would be to make it a one-term presidency.”

Well, the leader of the campaign against President Obama would be the new Speaker, if he took office, John Boehner.  The president went directly after him yesterday.  We‘re going to ask the HARDBALL strategists whether it‘s good politics for the president to make Boehner the name and face of the Republican Party.  Do enough people even know who this guy is?

Right. Republicans are going to implode this country, so should Obama pick someone more well-known to demonize? Maybe Sarah Palin, I hear she's famous. Jesus H. Cracked Pepper Christ, THIS is the question? This is what we're asking?

You know what frustrates me the most about this shit? Remembering, especially over the weekend with all the Bush Glory Days retrospectives, just how pants-shittingly scared every Democrat was to oppose the most bizarre, nonsensical, un-American, batshit thing the president could come up with. How afraid they were of the wrath of the people for saying things like, "Mayhap we shouldn't blow up a country if we can't rebuild it" and "Did Iraq really attack us on 9/11" and "Possibly torturing people makes us look like douches."

How absolutely stalwart they were in their refusal to march with anti-war activists, to appear at rallies opposing the Bush administration's policies, to filibuster his Supreme Court nominees, to question his appointees with any real vigor. Notable exceptions aside (I'm looking at you, Chris Dodd, on FISA and you, John Kerry, on John Bolton and during your campaign) how they trembled in the face of anticipated wrath from voters should they dare to oppose the president. How they didn't want to make trouble. How they kept their powder dry.

What consequences would they have faced had they used up all their goddamn powder? I don't know. Let's see what consequences will Republicans face for their obstruction and backwards-ass actions? What will they suffer for opposing the president?

Nothing, on all counts, in all likelihood, and maybe then we can put paid to this notion that being called a dick on the Sunday shows is any kind of real, you know, thing. Being called a dick in a Sarah Palin mailing isn't a real consequence either. Even being voted out of office isn't that awful of a fate; it's not like you're going to end up on a bread line.

Unlike grandma, if Republicans have their way.

A.

Kent Conrad's Proposed Solutions

Without offsets:

We enacted these tax cuts, there was no job creation, debt exploded, and only the wealthiest of the wealthy profited. So tell me, Mr. Fiscal Conservative Kent Conrad, why should we not let the tax cuts for the rich expire?

Allow me to speak for Kent here:

It's actually pretty simple. What's going to happen is we'll just cut the Department of Education, probably eliminate Social Security or raise the retirement age to 79 or so (since I once knew somebody who lived to be 97 and was perfectly healthy), and we'll make a 1600 SAT score mandatory for receiving food stamps.

We'll make sure nobody wounded in one of our AWESOME wars can get an aspirin without paying $700 for it, our cops and firefighters can use equipment from 50 years ago (they built things to last back then!) so long as it doesn't actively electrocute them, and the water mains around here should be good for another 120 years or so.

There are private corporate foundations to provide support for the arts, and really, who DOESN'T want to enjoy the kind of productions Pfizer would put on? Our universities can continue servicing Unilever in the academic equivalent of the tavern alley, because we certainly can't afford all that nonsense about higher education. Libraries? Please, I have the Internet, so you don't need books.

The widows and the orphans? They should have been more careful with their spouses and their parents, so as not to lose them so easily. Besides, we're a Christian nation, let the churches take care of them. BP's gonna take care of the Gulf cleanup. You say we're still hosed from Hurricane Katrina, but those people should have evacuated anyway, so we don't owe them.

There will be plenty of "offsets" found by systematically fucking over this country with a rusty chainsaw, and if you think it's going to be any more complicated than that, I have a new well-capping procedure with a made-for-TV theme song name I'd like to sell you. 

One of these days I want to be wrong about some of this shit, I really do.

A.