Greenies in Denial: Monsanto Won and We're All Gonna Die - Really

This is the most hilariously tragic thing I've read in years:

It should be no surprise that Monsanto's PR machine is working hard to spin the truth in this morning's decision in the first-ever Supreme Court case on genetically engineered crops (Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms). Despite what the biotech seed giant is claiming, today's ruling isn't close to the victory they were hoping for.

The ones who are frantically spinning, unfortunately, are the sustainable agriculture advocates whose failure to stop Monsanto has lethally endangered the ability of human beings to feed ourselves.

Here's Grist's take on the ruling:

The sustainable agriculture world is abuzz today with news of the Supreme Court's ruling regarding an earlier lawsuit, brought by alfalfa farmers, that sought to stop any planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa seed. While the press coverage heralds the ruling as a decisive victory for Monsanto, a close reading shows that, in fact, it's a fairly significant win for opponents of biotech crops.

And why do they think such a thing?

Despite the news reports claiming victory for Monsanto, the Supreme Court did not overturn the central tenet of the case: that the USDA prematurely approved Roundup Ready alfalfa. The District Court, in effect, made it once again illegal to plant Roundup Ready alfalfa -- and the Supreme Court endorsed that ruling. While the Justices did declare that the USDA, if it wants to, has the right to give the seed a preliminary approval (i.e. for limited, restricted planting), the Supreme Court decision does not by itself give Roundup Ready alfalfa the green light.

And it's important to note that the USDA has not yet formally announced any intention to re-authorize the restricted plantings, which would come in the form of a rule for "partial deregulation" of Roundup Ready alfalfa. In fact, the agency and Monsanto hed preciously submitted such a plan to the District Court in hopes that it would be incorporated into the final ruling, and instead, they received an injunction.

To some, that move appeared to be an attempt at an end run around the official rulemaking process. It's not clear if the USDA will move forward with anything other than the "final" environmental review.

[Update:] The USDA office that oversees biotech crops, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), just released a brief statement via email in response to the Supreme Court's ruling. In it, the agency leaves the door open to some sort of preliminary approval for the alfalfa seed, without indicating its intention one way or the other: "APHIS is carefully reviewing the Supreme Court ruling before making decisions about its next regulatory actions related to the deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa." It also announced its intention to complete the full environmental impact statement "in time for the spring planting of alfalfa crops in 2011." That start date presumes they get through the process without any more lawsuits or injunctions -- not a safe bet, at all.

In other words, NOT a loss for Monsanto, a HUGE WIN for Monsanto, and a HUGE LOSS for sustainable agriculture.

"The USDA will protect us." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? The USDA's devoted fellating of its "regulated" industry (agriculture) makes the Minerals Management Service's massaging of the oil industry seem like waterboarding.

Wanna destroy an entire food crop across a continent? Make it "Roundup Ready."

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

Think you're safe because you buy organic or even grow your own non-Monsanto seeds? Do you know the source of every seed being planted within two miles of where your "safe" food is grown? Because chances are somebody is planting Roundup-ready corn - and soon alfalfa and then everything else - close enough to contaminate your organic crops.

Make no mistake: this decision is a fucking catastrophe.

Which should have been obvious from the fact that the Criminal Conservative Cabal that passes for a Supreme Court majority made it possible.

And all of you Obama-bots who railed at us liberals to shut up about Sonia Sotomayor's deference to corporate power? Yeah, she voted with the majority.

The sole dissenter was John Paul Stevens. Who is about to be replaced by non-liberal Elena Kagan.

There will never be a Supreme Court ruling against corporate power again in our lifetimes.

We. Are. So. Completely. Fucked.

UPDATE: Blue Girl reminds me that Monsanto uses the contagion of their Frankenfood seeds to steal other people's land. See here and here.

Do NOT Mess With the Mermaids

I love New York.

June 19, 2010: The annual Mermaid Parade is held on Coney Island in New York City. The parade has been an annual tradition since 1983, and participants typically dress up as sea creatures -- "mythical and real" -- to celebrate the beginning of summer. This year, some took the opportunity to draw attention to Gulf Coast marine life that is endangered because of the BP oil spill.

Click here for the slide show.

Lying to Kill Social Security

I love it when the motherfucking liars get so overconfident they start lying about fucking their mothers right in front of cameras.

R.J. Escow at Crooks and Liars:

If you haven't seen this video yet, you should. Jane Hamsher's put it up at FDL, Dave Johnson's got it up at Our Future, and I've shown it on The Huffington Post. Alan Simpson of Wyoming sounds a lot more like Bart Simpson of Springfield in it - except without the humor. It's worth watching for sheer outrageousness, but remember: Simpson's one of two chairs of a bipartisan commission created by President Obama to study the Federal deficit.

His co-chair, the Democratic "counterweight" to Simpson's radical hostility toward the social safety net, is Erskine Bowles. Bowles was finalizing a deal with New Gingrich to cut Social Security when the Monica Lewinsky scandal derailed their agreement.

Here's what Simpson's comments reveal, besides an irascible personality: That he wants to create a sense of crisis around Social Security, that raiding Social Security to pay for other government expenditures is perfectly fine with him ... even though he's supposedly a "small government" conservative, that he's entered an Orwellian world where cutting Social Security isn't really "cutting" it, and that he'll use absurd rhetorical games to defend his position.

SNIP

But you get the idea. Alan Simpson isn't just a cranky old man ... he's a cranky old man gunning for the financial security of older Americans.

Read the whole thing.

Then read Digby for details on Social Security lies.

Celebrate World Humanist Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the Summer Soltice, the longest day of the year. What better time to celebrate the rational, ethical and moral principles of Humanism?

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

How to celebrate? Parties and bonfires are always appropriate, of course. But how about just greeting everyone you meet with a smile and "Happy World Humanist Day!"

If they ask what Humanism is, tell them.

Congressional Liberals Playing Hardball on Jobs Bill

Two powerful liberals in the House of Representatives are fed to the teeth with the refusal of the Senate to pass a jobs bill that is the only hope of avoiding a Great Depression.

First, retiring Rep. David Obey responded to House of Lords obstructionism with "No money for jobs? Then no money for wars."

John Nichols at The Nation explains:

House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey, who has made no secret of his discomfort with the Obama administration's plans to dramatically expand the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, has moved to put a hold on the president's request for new war funding.

Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat whose home-state party last week went on record as opposing any additional war funding, says he will not advance the supplemental spending request until action is taken to address urgent domestic needs. Among the domestic priorities is new education assistance to avert teacher layoffs this fall, a $24 billion package of state Medicaid assistance and the extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Obey, who has been increasingly outspoken with regard to his concerns regarding excessive U.S. spending on wars abroad while needs at home go unmet, told reporters Tuesday that he planned to withhold action on the war funds while congressional leaders and the administration reach some sort of agreement to advance a sweeping economic relief bill that would extend the jobless benefits and provide tax breaks aimed at promoting job creation.

"It is a huge problem for me."

Read the whole thing.

Then, Nancy Pelosi announced her intention to turn the Senate's obstructionism back on them in the cause of obtaining a jobs bill.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

You go, girl! When I read this earlier, I thought, "Why are the Dems giving this away without using it as a bargaining chip?" Once again, we see that the Speaker is the only one with real cojones:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a combative tone tonight, rejecting the Medicare "doc fix" passed hastily through the Senate Friday until Senate Republicans allow a vote on jobs measures that have passed through the House.

"I see no reason to pass this inadequate bill until we see jobs legislation coming out of the Senate," said Pelosi in a statement.

"House Democrats are saying to Republicans in the Senate: Show us the jobs! (exclamation mark hers)"Her statement, along with Senate Republicans' unwillingness to pass any legislation that adds to the debt, means that Medicare doctors can expect a 21 percent pay cut when claims that have been held for two weeks start to be processed by Medicare's government administrator on Monday. Senate Democrats could not muster 60 votes twice this week when they considered bills more to Pelosi's liking. They passed the last-minute doc fix bill to avert the 21 percent pay cut to Medicare doctors on Friday afternoon, even as the pay cut was scheduled to take effect.

Read the whole thing.

Long past time the Democratic Congress told the warmongering plutocrats to fuck off and die.

Call or email your members of Congress and tell them not to do anything until a massive jobs bill is signed by President Obama.

It's a Floor Wax AND a Dessert Topping - Redux

Steve Benen points out the latest repug about-face on President Obama.

GOP STEPS ON ITS OWN 'SHAKEDOWN' TALKING POINT.... It's hard to see how Wednesday's meeting at the White House could have gone much better. President Obama met with BP executives, told them how it was going to be, and BP quickly agreed. The result: a $20 billion pot of money that will bring much-needed help to workers, businesses, and families who've been victimized by a devastating oil spill.

The Republican response was quick: the relief fund is outrageous. The matter, the GOP said, should have been resolved in the courts. Obama pressuring BP on Americans' behalf was evidence of a "shakedown" and "extortion," which might have even been "illegal." How dare the president step up to secure needed funding for struggling families and small businesses in the region. The nerve. Hell, one key Republican official even apologized to BP for Obama strong-arming the oil giant into setting the money aside.

Yesterday, though, the Republican message seemed to shift a bit, at least in some corners. What was initially deemed an outrageous presidential abuse turned into a GOP idea that Obama shouldn't take credit for.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), for example, issued a statement yesterday implicitly arguing that there couldn't have been a shakedown, since BP intended to put $20 billion into the escrow fund before the White House meeting. "The true outrage," Franks said, "is that this was never the President's idea at all."

It wasn't just Franks.

SNIP

First, there was considerable disagreement about the escrow issue, since the entire Republican establishment quickly rose up to trash the agreement, loudly and publicly.

Second, this new message completely invalidates the first. Simultaneously, we have Republicans saying Obama extorted the money out of BP and that BP agreed to the payment before Obama walked into the room. The president's efforts were scandalous, some Republicans are arguing, but the effort was a GOP idea.

Can't anybody here play this game? Just pick a message and go with it.

A) Why should they? Throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks is easier and more effective.

B) The last time repugs used truth, facts, logic or reality to make accusations was so long ago there are no written records or survivors.

C) Cutting the tether to reality brings freedom: if one baseless claim doesn't garner enough support, try claiming the exact opposite.

D) Repug voters don't punish hypocrisy, contradiction or blatant lying. They do punish the failure to attack Barack Obama every minute of every day for anything and everything.

It only looks pathetic and politically dangerous to those of us in the reality-based community. To repug voters, it's heroic.

Softening Up the Judicial Battleground

I'll never understand how liberals got a reputation for running away from a fight. In the Democratic Congress, liberals are the only ones who know how to play offense.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

I have high hopes for Sen. Al Franken, who never stops fighting for the things he believes in. How refreshing that a freshman Senator refuses to shut up and sit down, instead putting himself in the forefront of progressive fights:

Republican senators and conservative jurists found themselves on the defensive after Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) blasted "conservative activism" on federal courts.

Franken, in a major speech Thursday evening before the American Constitution Society, sought to set the stage for a summer confirmation battle in the Senate over President Barack Obama's pick, Elena Kagan, to join the Supreme Court.

The first-term senator launched a full-throated attack on originalism, the judicial philosophy often upheld by conservatives as an example for model nominees for the federal courts.

"Originalism isn’t a pillar of our constitutional history. It’s a talking point," Franken said, adding a jab at Chief Justice John Roberts for his famous comparison between judges and baseball umpires during Roberts's confirmation hearings.

"How ridiculous," Franken said. "Judges are nothing like umpires."

The Senate is set to take up the Kagan nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Franken serves, later this month.

With the battle over Kagan and other judicial nominees having stalled in the Senate, Franken also took a moment to castigate GOP filibusters of Obama's court picks.

"The Republican obstruction that is standing between you and the work you’ve agreed to do for your country is unacceptable. And we will continue to fight it," Franken said, apologizing to Goodwin Liu and Dawn Johnsen, the president's picks for a circuit court spot and director of the Office of Legal Counsel, respectively, who were both in the audience.

It's too bad hardball tactics like this have to be wasted on non-liberal corporate shills like Elena Kagan, but the nation's liberal muscles are atrophied, and need all the exercise we can get.

Fossil Fuel Extraction: No Such Thing As an Accident

The reason it's so important that federal agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board need large numbers of inspectors and police-level enforcement powers is that without them, the fossil fuel extraction industry will kill too many employees.

Because it's cheaper than making the work safe.

Eleven men died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded not because of an "accident," but because worker deaths are a necessary cost of doing business for oil companies.

Twenty-five men died in the Massey coal mine not because of an "accident," but because worker deaths are a necessary cost of doing business for coal companies.

This is just the latest example:

A coal miner killed in Kentucky this week was engaged in the dangerous practice of retreat mining that involves deliberately cutting away pillars of coal intended to support overhead rock layers.

Statistics compiled by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health show more than 50 miners have been killed in retreat mining operations over the past 25 years. Of those, 20 have died since 2000, including Jimmy Carmack, a miner from Barbourville who was killed Wednesday.

SNIP

Retreat mining has been going on for generations. It is legal and considered standard procedure in mines where coal reserves have nearly played out.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reported last year that retreat mining historically accounts for only 10 percent of U.S. coal production and 25 percent of roof fall fatalities.

Of course it's legal. Virtually everything that kills workers in the oil, natural gas and coal industries is legal.

The problem is not what's legal; the problem is that extracting fossil fuels is irredeemably lethal. To workers; to the land, the sea and the air; to people living even far away. Always has been; always will be.

The solution is to stop extracting fossil fuels. Make that illegal.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Obama Seeks Republican Unicorns

This week, President Obama calls on Congressional republicans "to put scoring political points aside, and instead to focus on solving the problems facing the nation."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Mr. President: You really need to start prefacing your weekly addresses with a liquids alert.



Full transcript here.

Rand Paul to Unemployed: Fuck Off and Die

UPDATE Below

Somebody tell Rand Paul that unemployed people vote.

And there are enough of them in Kentucky to swing an election.

So shit like this will cook his goose.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul on Friday urged Americans who have been unemployed for many months to consider returning to the workforce in less desirable jobs rather than continue relying on government unemployment assistance.

“In Europe, they give about a year of unemployment. We’re up to two years now in America,” Paul said on Sue Wylie’s WVLK-AM 590 radio program.

“As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again,” Paul said. “Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.”

You never hear people who actually hold down minimum-wage jobs praising the "tough love" aspects of not being able to support yourself on full-time work. Wonder why that is?

UPDATE, June 19: Digby has great analysis of the larger blame-the-jobless picture.

Gubmint Revenooer Misses Chance to Kill Taxpayer

Clip this article, keep it in your wallet, and show it to the next teabagger who rants about Big Gubmint or those terrible, worthless state workers.

From the Herald:

They say that death and taxes are inevitable.

But in the case of Earl Phillips, taxes may have helped save the Adair County man’s life.

When Phillips called the state Department of Revenue last month to get answers about his state income tax bill, the faceless Frankfort bureaucrat who called him back saved his life.

Now Phillips thinks Department of Revenue employee Natalie Brown — who dialed 911 when Phillips had a heart attack during that May 26th phone call — should receive more than a simple thank you.

“I’m very proud of that lady,” said Phillips. “She saved my life. As far as I’m concerned, there is no end to what she deserves.”

SNIP

Brown’s boss, Bruce Nix, the Director of Individual Income Tax for the Department of Revenue, said state employees have had to call ambulances before to help co-workers, but this is the first time in his 21 years with the department of revenue that he can recall that a revenue employee may have saved the life of a taxpayer.

Brown, a Frankfort native, started working for the department in August 2009, just a few months after graduating from Morehead State University. Brown said Friday that she loves her job and she truly believes that state employees are there to help the public.

“We will help you any way that we can, even if it’s calling 911,” Brown said. “I feel like it was fate that I happened to lose (Phillips’ phone number) and I’m glad that I found it when I did.”

Write About Your College Costs and Win $1,000

The Nation has a new essay contest for college students:

PENCILS UP: For our fifth annual student writing contest, we're looking for thoughtful student voices to answer this question in 800 words: how has your education been compromised by budget cuts and tuition hikes?

We'll select five finalists and two winners—one from college, the other from high school. Each will receive a $1,000 prize and a Nation subscription. Finalists will receive $200. The winning essays will be published in the magazine and featured at TheNation.com.

Entries will be accepted through June 30, and a winner will be announced by September 15. The contest is open to all matriculated high school students and undergraduates at US schools, colleges and universities, as well as those receiving high school or college degrees in 2010. E-mail entries to studentprize@thenation.com.
Check out thenation.com/students to read previous winning essays.

Get cracking: the deadline is June 30.

Kentucky Victory for Individual Liberty

I can't wait to hear Rand Paul praise this ruling in favor of individual liberty:

Women can not be criminally charged for abusing alcohol or drugs during pregnancy, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case that has generated national attention.

In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that the state’s Maternal Health Act of 1992 expressly precludes women from being charged with crimes if they ingest drugs or alcohol during pregnancy.

At issue is whether police and prosecutors were correct in charging Ina Cochran with first-degree wanton endangerment after she gave birth to a child who tested positive for cocaine in 2005.

Cochran’s lawyer moved to have the charges dismissed and a Casey Circuit Court judge agreed. Prosecutors appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which ruled that the charges should be allowed under Kentucky law.

Lawyers for Cochran had argued that the General Assembly also made it clear in 2004 that women should not be prosecuted for harming their unborn children.

That year, lawmakers passed a fetal homicide statute, which allowed prosecution of a third party for killing an unborn child. In the bill, lawmakers said a pregnant woman could not be charged with harming her unborn child.

The court, in its opinion, wrote that it was clear that the legislature never intended pregnant women to be charged. “It is the legislature, not the judiciary, that has the power to designate what is a crime,” the opinion said.

Yep, Dr. "Get Big Government Off Our Backs" Paul should be releasing a statement any minute now.

Aaaaaaaaany minute now.

No, Paul's concern for individual liberty and bodily integrity applies only to male people. In this, as in everything else, he is a wingnut freakazoid repug no different from Mitch McConnell.

And of course the legislation cited by the Kentucky Supreme Court is itself a severe restriction on the individual rights of women. By making "harm to a fetus" by a third party a crime, it not only criminalizes all abortion, it specifically elevates the rights of a body part over the rights of an adult human being.

It's part of a national pattern, as Digby explains:

The forced pregnancy forces have been painstakingly working at persuading the public and changing the laws over a long period of time. And it's working.

Women are screwed if liberals don't wake up to this and formulate a plan for combating it. Giving birth isn't just another "responsibility" like paying your taxes or buying car insurance. To just let these people have their way without a real fight is criminal.

From alternet, The Sneaky, Unexpected Ways Anti-Choice Right-Wingers Are Chipping Away at Women's Rights:

Since Roe v. Wade passed, anti-choice groups have been waging a war on abortion rights. This year it's been even worse.

The Supreme Court determined in Roe v. Wade that abortion is a fundamental right, which means that access to abortion should have the same protections throughout our country and not vary based on where a woman lives. Yet in a subsequent 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court upheld several state restrictions on abortion, finding that they did not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

From that point on, antiabortion advocates have fought hard to restrict abortion at the state level in any way they can. They introduce literally hundreds of state bills across the country each year aimed at limiting access to abortion and testing the limits of Roe. And each year they succeed in enacting a handful of those bills. Some 600 such laws have passed since 1995.

Read the whole thing.

Democratic Senators Choose Big Oil Over Working Families

It's possible for a Democratic Senator - even one as supposedly not just progressive but actually liberal as Russ Feingold - to vote against a desperately-needed stimulus bill on the grounds of reining in the deficit, even though it's a false choice.

Twelve Democratic Senators did that yesterday in joining every repug to kill a jobs bill that would have been the only thing standing between us and a full-blown Depression. One that would, as a side-effect, sweep repugs back into power this November.

And it's possible for a Democratic Senator to vote against canceling the gigantic subsidies for Big Oil, even as a way of paying down the deficit and cleaning up the Gulf Coast devastated by Big Oil itself, on the false but convenient grounds of job preservation.

But surely no Democratic Senate could, in the very same day, vote against the jobs bill on deficit grounds and also against the deficit-lowering subsidy ban?

We are so naive.

The Senate is neither a representative nor a democratic body-- nor was it ever meant to be. The world is very changed since it was first established and it has long since worn out whatever usefulness it ever had. Now it just gets in the way of change and channels billions of dollars of corporate bribes into a corrupt and corrosive political system. It's time for the U.S. to do what the Parliament Act of 1911 did for the U.K.-- make the Senate a ceremonial body that can't do any more harm to normal American citizens. I suppose step on would be abolishing the filibuster, something KagroX is both working on and was blogging about yesterday. And he blogged about it in terms of just what I intend to write about today, the sorry demise of the House-passed Jobs Bill, which failed in the Senate yesterday, 45-52. And, of course, every single slimy Republican elitist in the upper chamber voted no. They were joined by a dozen Democrats, a combination of political cowards and conservative swine: Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Begich (AK), Russ Feingold (WI), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Claire McCaskill (MO), who fits both categories, Robert Menendez (NJ), Bill Nelson (FL), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Jim Webb (VA). Lieberman voted with the Republicans and Blanche ducked the vote.

For conservatives, and the cowards who help enable them, phony deficit concerns are always more important than the lives of ordinary American families. So they merrily voted against expired and expiring programs... like unemployment benefits and stimulus packages for states to help fight a recession and help foster a recovery. By the end of the week over 900,000 unemployed workers will notice they're not getting checks anymore-- a number than will rise by another 300,000 the following week. Should all million of them hunt down and give their senators a taste of their own medicine? Well, I'm not one for advocating violence but it would behoove voters to remember which senators voted against working families today-- all Republicans and 12 Democrats.

And if you doubt that this vote was part of the class warfare the rich and their bought-and-paid for senators are waging against ordinary non-millionaires, consider a vote in the ole Senate they took the day before, a very straightforward amendment by Bernie Sanders that would "eliminate big oil and gas company tax loopholes, and to use the resulting increase in revenues to reduce the deficit and to invest in energy efficiency and conservation." Who could possibly vote against that-- especially as the Gulf States turn into an uninhabitable mess compliments of B.P.? Most senators, that's who. It failed 35-61, again, every single Republican following Miss McConnell's lead to stand with their Big Oil donors against America. And which poor excuses for Democrats joined with them?

Dan Akaka (HI)
Max Baucus (MT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Mark Begich (AK)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Chris Dodd (CT)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
John Kerry (MA)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Joe Lieberman (I-CT)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Jon Tester (MT)
Tom Udall (NM)
Mark Udall (CO)
Mark Warner (VA)
Jim Webb (VA)

The Democrats with the bolded names are the ones who both voted against the jobs bill extending unemployment benefits and against ending tax loopholes for Big Oil giants to close the deficit. Hypocrisy, a little?

The Address the President Should Have Given

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

Full transcript here.

Here's a Few Ideas For Ya, Danny

Cowardly waste of oxygen Governor Steve Beshear has nominated Daniel Logsdon to take over the moribund Kentucky Democratic Party.

Try to contain your excitement.

Fifteen months ago, I listed 10 things the then-new party chair could do to strengthen the party. You will be shocked to learn that all 10 of them remain undone. So here it is again:

The new chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party, Charlie Moore, is asking for ideas about how to improve the party organization.

Well, Charlie, given that the Kentucky Democratic Party is flat on its ass and the laughingstock of the nation for failing to win a single race not already held by a Democratic incumbent in the biggest national Democratic election landslide in 76 years, you could look at it two ways:

On the one hand the KDP is so fucking pathetic anything at all in the general direction of actually attempting to win elections would be a massive improvement.

On the other hand the KDP is so fucking pathetic that it's going to take decades, billions of dollars and millions of volunteer hours to even drag it up off the floor and into an upright position.

So, here are a few ideas from someone so disgusted with my local "democratic" party I refuse to acknowledge its existence. You want people like me involved again? Giving money, working for candidates, giving a flying fuck? Here's what you do:

* Make each and every County Chair fully accountable for party performance in his/her county. That means setting performance standards and forcing chairs to meet them. Standards like ensuring every precinct has all three precinct officers, that those officers properly organize their precincts, and that precinct officers who fail to perform their duties are quickly replaced. Replace immediately all non-performing county chairs.

* Set coherent policies for endorsements and support in primaries and general elections. If you're going to meddle in the primary, then stop lying about having to stay neutral in primaries. Support all nominees equally with money, staff and fundraising data or else just announce up front that you like rich white guys, so poor people, female people and brown/black people who win primaries are on their own.

* Announce that dissent is patriotic, but candidates and party officials who publicly reject the platform of the national Democratic Party or fail to endorse and support national Democratic Party candidates thus reject the money, volunteer support and endorsement of the Kentucky Democratic Party. County chairs who reject the party's positions and candidates must resign immediately.

* Make crystal clear that the Kentucky Democratic Party is the Democratic Party, not the Blue Dog Party, or the We Love Coal Party, or the We Do What Repugs Tell Us To Do Party, or the Rich Christian White Guys Party, or the Gay Panic Party, or the Shame the Sluts Party, or any other manifestation of the Keep Kentucky Poor and Stupid Party.

* Make substantial contributions of time and or money to local party-building a condition of serving on the state central committee. This goes for elected officials, especially. How long has it been since Dan Mongiardo knocked on doors for Perry County magistrate candidates? No more free rides for big shots who don't do shit to help the party.

* Make all state party meetings public, advertise the time and place, and move them around the state so everybody can attend. Videotape all public meetings and post them on the website. Make all party documents public - especially budgets and expense reports - and post them on the website. (Do you really think the repugs don't know your pathetic strategy? The only people who don't know it are us poor actual Democrats who don't sit on the central committee.)

* Be the first to loudly and publicly condemn any Democratic official caught in any illegal or unethical activity. Get out in front of it, demand immediate resignations from everybody who even appears to be unethical, and make clear that the Kentucky Democratic Party will not tolerate even the appearance of impropriety.

* Beg the Obama campaign for the Kentucky data on its massive donor email list, then use it.

* Obtain a videotape of David Williams in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

* Obama won. Get over it.

Facing the People

Via Rumproast:

A photo gallery: When the cold and detached president met the angry people.

This Election Hasn't Even Started

More than five months out, election speculation is just political masturbation. Nobody who votes actually pays attention to the November election until after Labor Day. The dem/repug divide can swing 20 points a good dozen times over the summer, all over issues people won't even remember come Halloween.

But the poll-driven daily pendulum swings are getting out of hand.

Dems Losing Every Swing District! one day; Repugs Won't Take Back Senate! the next.

I read every contradictory one of them, and I have yet to be shaken out of a completely baseless conviction I've had since March: Democrats are not only going to keep both houses of Congress, they're going to increase their majorities.

Here's my totally un-scientific reasoning: 90 percent of every election is based on the economy. If people believe the economy is doing well, they vote for their familiar incumbents. If people feel economically insecure, they vote for challengers. If the economy is just so-so, then that wild card 10 percent can determine the results.

A lot of the conventional wisdom that assumes the Democrats will lose seats in November is based on the traditional mid-term losses for the president's party, and especially on the 54-seat landslide that gave republicans the House in 1994.

Here's why that conventional wisdom doesn't apply in 2010: First, 2002 disproved the midterm loss theory. Smirky-Darth twisted 9/11, lying and manipulating their asses off to not just avoid repug losses in Congress, but actually increase the number of repug seats and take the Senate away from the Democrats. So if you're willing to fight dirty, you can win.

In 1994, the economy was not yet the record-breaker that would re-elect Clinton in 1996, but it was far better than the recession that defeated H.W. in 1992. So why didn't voters reward the president's party? Because the economy wasn't strong enough to overcome a 22-month record of failure and disappointment: healthcare reform, DADT, Somalia. Even the "success" of welfare reform hurt Clinton because it was seen as a repug victory, which it was.

People saw Clinton and the Democrats as losers, and voted accordingly.

In 2010, President Obama has an unbroken record of huge, monster successes (with the enormous caveat of the Gulf Oil spill, which may be that 10 percent deciding factor.) And republicans have an unbroken record of shooting themselves in the head time after time after time since the 2008 election.

The question is how well President Obama and Democratic candidates promote their own record of success and the repugs' record of failure and obstruction.

And yes, that means "looking backward" and "pointing fingers" at the Smirky/Darth administration for gutting regulation and enabling the Gulf catastrophe.

Whether they can do that remains to be seen, but for the moment I'm going to assume that at minimum they will prevent it from becoming the reason for people to vote against them.

But the real key to all of it is, as always, the economy. And the only way to create an economy that will make people vote Democratic is to step on the throats of every repug and Blue Dog in the Senate and pass a trillion-dollar jobs bill. Right now.

If they can do that, then here is my prediction:

At worst, Democrats will retain their 39-seat majority in the House and 9-seat majority in the Senate. Plenty of seats will change hands, but the final count will remain the same.

I actually think Democrats will increase their Senate majority by at least one seat and their House majority by at least five seats.

But Democrats have to start NOW debunking the we're-going-to-lose assumption every time it appears. Talk like winners, walk like winners, swagger with the confidence of winners, pass legislation like winners and winners we shall be.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Careful whom you're deporting there, assholes

Remember that stupid anti-abortion argument that circulated in the '70s after Roe v Wade? You know: penniless family with seven kids, mother is pregnant with deaf baby, should she have an abortion? Congratulations, you just killed Beethoven!

It was bogus then, and still is, but now the Rude Pundit turns it back on the anti-immigrant racists:

So this guy, Eric Balderas, a college student who was valedictorian of his high school class, no, even better, a Harvard University student, no, wait, even betterer, a Harvard University student majoring in molecular and cellular biology who wants to cure cancer, was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was four years old by his mother. The twist, of course, is that they've been living here illegally for the last 15 years. So Balderas was stopped by airport security last week before boarding a flight from San Antonio, where he was visiting his mom, to Boston, where he is, as mentioned before, studying to one day cure cancer.

This kid's a better human being than at least 90% of the people who get to be Americans, so of course he faces deportation to Mexico because we are a stupid, fearful, racist nation, and it's what we do. Bill O'Reilly will lose his fucking mind if an illegal drinks and drives, but you never hear about people like Balderas, just trying to negotiate a medieval immigration system and do well in this country. Unlike nearly every other undocumented immigrant, Balderas has Harvard behind him, so there might actually be a happy ending, god bless the plutocracy.

Meanwhile, Arizona, continuing in its quest to force white people to keep up their own damn lawns, is considering a bill that would deny citizenship to so-called "anchor babies." An anchor baby is a child born to an illegal immigrant mother on American soil. Our pesky Constitution says those kids are automatically citizens. But, because the state's cruel and idiotic, Arizona doesn't need no stinking 14th Amendment, even though it would seem like the decision as to who is and who is not a citizen of, you know, the nation would be decided at a federal level. Apparently, states' rights extends to disregarding the laws of the land.

If Balderas is deported and he goes to a Mexican university to finish his studies, the Rude Pundit hopes he comes up with a cure for cancer and his patent says that it can never be sold or used in the United States. When someone asks Balderas why he would deny the nation just to the norte a miracle drug, Balderas could say, "Because fuck them."

Because you never know who's going to grow up to save the world, right?

Obama Tonight: Lead or Fail

There's speculation that President Obama's national address tonight will "go big," perhaps by calling for substantial carbon cuts in a comprehensive climate bill.

I've refrained from commenting on the handwringing over the "death" of the climate bill, because until it dies and is revived at least as many times as the health care bill did, it doesn't really count.

Now I'm getting deja vu with the prospect of a last-minute big push from Obama on a climate bill like the one he gave health care reform in the SOTU in January.

Here's Steven Benen on why a climate bill is in trouble, why that trouble makes no sense whatsoever, and why a big push on it from Obama is necessary and critical.

LETTING A RARE OPPORTUNITY SLIP AWAY.... The vote was far closer than it should have been, but a narrow Senate majority rejected Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) scheme to undercut the EPA. That's the good news. The bad news, the vote made it increasingly obvious that the Senate doesn't want to address energy policy this year, an impression reinforced later in the day.

Senate Democratic leaders and chairmen emerged from a meeting on climate change Thursday with no decisions on how or whether to move forward with legislation this summer, with some saying there is little appetite among even the chairmen with jurisdiction over the issue to take on the politically dicey topic this year.

Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said the "dominant concern" in the meeting of six chairmen and five Members of the Senate leadership was whether Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) have 60 votes to beat back an expected filibuster of their bill to regulate greenhouse gases.

"What's the point of doing anything without 60 votes?" Rockefeller asked. "I think there's some feeling that you don't spend time on the floor trying to figure out if you've got 60 votes. You have to understand before you go to the floor that you have 60 votes."

He added there is some worry that the legislation could cause political problems for some vulnerable Members of the Democratic Conference. He said most of the participants at the meeting had concerns about embarking on a wide-ranging climate change debate this year, but he noted that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did not take a position.

Rockefeller is not exactly a credible voice on the subject -- he was one of six Dems who voted for the Murkowski measure -- but his comments nevertheless shed light on a larger truth. Some key senators are looking for excuses to let the initiative die, rather than looking for solutions on how to get it done.

Greg Sargent noted last night, "[I]n the wake of possibly the worst environmental calamity in our history, this is, well, freakin' insane."

I couldn't agree more. Look, this need not be complicated. Our existing energy policy is a mess; global warming is getting worse; our international competitors are getting way ahead of us in investing in a next-generation energy framework; and our dependence on oil is undermining the nation's interests in a wide variety of ways.

There's a reasonable, modest bill -- the American Power Act -- on the table, which was crafted by a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent. It doesn't go far enough, but it addresses global warming; it reduces our oil dependence; it improves American competitiveness; it creates jobs in a critical industry; and it lowers the budget deficit. The effort enjoys the support of the president, and the leadership of both chambers, and polls show public support for this kind of effort -- support that's growing in the midst of a disastrous oil spill.

And yet, Republicans refuse to even consider acting, and a few too many Democrats are scared to try.

If nothing gets done this year, an opportunity like this one will not emerge again for quite a while. The consequences of failure will be severe.

Later, Benen adds this:

In any case, Matt Finkelstein helps set the record straight: "In fact, recent analyses show that clean energy legislation -- like the American Power Act -- would create millions of jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil at a minimal cost to consumers. For example, the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the average household would see 'between a $136 increase and a $35 dollar decrease in annual energy expenditures.'"

I think Obama will try for the last-second long pass on climate change, if only because it's the only thing that will prevent a repug takeover of Congress in November, which will spell the end of his presidency.