Whitfield, Davis, Guthrie, Rogers all vote to let Wall Street screw you.

Ben Chandler was not the only member of Kentucky's Congressional delegation to vote against a new law preventing Wall Street from raping consumers to death.

Joining Wire Hanger in trying to throw Kentucky's hard-working middle-class into the Big Bank Snake Pit were repugs Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie, Geoff Davis and Hal Rogers.

Steve Benen explains:

THE WALL STREET REFORM AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT.... Yesterday's big news on the Hill was the House vote on bringing new safeguards and regulations to how Wall Street does business.

The House approved a Democratic plan on Friday to tighten federal regulation of Wall Street and banks, advancing a far-reaching Congressional response to the financial crisis that rocked the economy.

After three days of floor debate, the House voted 223 to 202 to approve the measure. It would create an agency to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, set rules for the trading of some of the sophisticated financial instruments that fueled the crisis, and take steps to reduce the threat that the failure of one or two huge banks or investment firms could topple the entire economy. [...]

The Democratic authors of the House legislation hailed the bill as the biggest change in oversight of Wall Street since the Great Depression, and said they believed they had struck a careful balance between protecting the public and the economy while not stifling economic growth and market forces.... The bill represents an attempt to address comprehensively what many of its supporters have called the underlying causes of the collapse -- reckless risk-taking unrestrained by regulation.

There is, of course, a chasm between the status quo and the ideal. Democrats claim that the reforms are the most significant since the New Deal. A wide variety of progressive analysts believe the reforms fall far short of what's needed. Who's right? Well, both are.

For all the key improvements, the House bill lacks, for example, a cramdown provision, which Blue Dog Democrats joined Republicans in killing, and which would have likely made a major difference in the lives of many. For that matter, institutions that are "too big to fail" are still "too big to fail."

But it's worth noting that just one year after Wall Street recklessness pushed the global economy to the brink of wholesale collapse, exactly zero House Republicans voted for watered-down safeguards, deeming them too onerous. Indeed, their unanimous opposition to Wall Street accountability came just a few days after the House Republican leadership huddled with more than 100 lobbyists to rally opposition to preventing Wall Street irresponsibility.

Shortly after the vote, DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement. The subject line of the email read, "Seriously?"

"Not one Republican voted for the financial regulatory reform and consumer protection bill in the House. Not one," Woodhouse said. "One year after nearly the worst financial collapse in our nation's history -- a collapse brought on by the excessive greed and risk taking of Wall Street and by the anything goes regulatory environment put in place by Republicans -- not one Republican in the House thinks that consumers deserve additional protections or that the practices of Wall Street should be curbed. Do the Republicans not get that one of the reasons they lost so badly in 2006 and 2008 is because the public believed that the GOP had just become shills for oil companies, Wall Street financiers and insurance companies? Apparently not -- because here they go again."

The goal, apparently, is for Republicans to actually suffer some electoral consequences for this one. DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told reporters that GOP opponents of reforming the way Wall Street does business "are going to pay a very heavy price."

And in his weekly White House address this morning, President Obama reminded Americans, "Just last week, Republican leaders in the House summoned more than 100 key lobbyists for the financial industry to a 'pep rally', and urged them to redouble their efforts to block meaningful financial reform."

Is this the issue on which Democrats take the offensive?

Don't say it. I already know the answer.

"Wire Hangar" Chandler Now "Wall Street" Benny

Everybody knows I think Blue Dog DINO Ben Chandler is the lowest of the low. Getting elected as a Democrat and turning around and voting against Democratic policies and programs time after time after time. He's a corporate cock-sucker, always on the lookout for the next opportunity to fuck over his constituents in return for campaign cash.

But even I don't believe this:

Ben Chandler's never-ending quest to get street cred from teabaggers and Republicans continues today, as he chose to join just 27 Democrats in the House voting against the The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009.

SNIP

Good luck with those Republicans next year, Ben. I'm SURE they'll appreciate this vote and be on your side. Sure of it...

Read the official roll-call vote for yourself.

The hard-working people of the Sixth District are literally dying for the lack of a Real Democrat in Congress who will stand up for them and against Wall Street, Big Insurance and Big Coal. Wire Hangar is facing a well-funded republican who will draw every repug vote Benny needs to win. He's pissed off the Democrats who held their noses and voted for him last year. A Real Democrat could give him a real primary.

But however the Democratic primary turns out, this time next year we'll be waving bye-bye to Wall Street Benny.

GAO: 2 Billion Cubic Yards of Mine Spoil Bury Hundreds of KY Watersheds

Strip mining in Eastern Kentucky is so overwhelmingly destructive in so many ways, that even the dry statistics in a government report have the power to shock.

Coal companies got approval to fill hundreds of hollows in Eastern Kentucky during the last decade, according to a new federal report.

Such fills, called hollow or valley fills, are controversial because they often bury stream areas.

Regulators gave coal companies permission to put up to 2.15 billion cubic yards of spoil — rock and dirt left over from mining operations — into 1,488 fills in Eastern Kentucky between 2000 and mid-2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report issued this week.

Nearly all those were hollow fills, which are smaller and located higher in the watershed than valley fills, one official explained in the report.

SNIP

"I think it adds weight to the argument that the scope of the surface mining that has taken place and is taking place is truly massive," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "That is a huge amount of rock and dirt."

Tierra Curry, a Knott County native who is now a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said there have been conservative estimates that 2,000 stream miles in Appalachia have been buried under hollow fills and valley fills. Mining also removes mature forests from large areas, she said.

"It is time to say enough is enough and end surface coal mining in Appalachia," Curry said.

Read the whole thing.

The Legacy of Fred Hampton

I wonder what a young black activist murdered in Chicago by J. Edgar Hoover's stormtroopers would say to the first black president about shielding federal employees from having to answer for war crimes.

Jeffrey Haas in The Nation:

December 4 marks the fortieth anniversary of the raid on a Black Panther apartment in which Chicago police shot and killed Fred Hampton in his bed. Hampton was the charismatic young chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, and under his leadership the party's membership and influence had increased dramatically. The party had instituted a popular and expanding Breakfast for Children Program and a police accountability project. At the age of 21, Hampton was able to reach and influence gang members and welfare mothers as well as college and law students. Under his tutelage, the Panthers formed a coalition with Puerto Rican and white activists.

SNIP

Two years after the murder, antiwar activists raided the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and found and distributed documents that demonstrated that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was conducting a secret war on the left--the Counterintelligence Program, or Cointelpro. Its most aggressive and lethal tactics were used against the black movement, and the Panthers in particular. Cointelpro mandated FBI agents in cities with Panther chapters to "cripple," "disrupt" and "destroy" the Panthers and their breakfast program and to prevent the rise of a "messiah" who could unify and electrify the black masses.

SNIP

Noam Chomsky has called the murder of Fred Hampton "the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon Administration." It is hard to imagine a more serious abuse by a government than the deliberate assassination of a citizen for his political beliefs and activity. But though we were finally able to reveal that Hampton's death had been an assassination, it has never gotten the attention it deserves. The government's cover-up and stonewalling basically worked.

SNIP

Three decades later we are watching history repeat itself. In the 1960s the enemy was domestic dissent; today the enemy is international terrorism. In both cases, however, the right used fear to increase the powers of police and government agencies to operate in secret and with impunity. Cheney and Rumsfeld used 9/11 to beat back Church Committee restrictions on intelligence activities and reporting requirements. They encouraged intelligence agencies to spy on US citizens and to ignore international and US law forbidding torture and kidnapping.

In 1978 the Justice Department argued that FBI operatives were immune from liability for killing Hampton because they were carrying out government policy. An incredulous Judge Swygert asked the US Attorney if he thought they would be immune if they had given the police a gun and told them to murder Hampton. The government retreated from the "good German" defense at that point. In our own day, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a special prosecutor to look into the acts of torture carried out by CIA officers amid claims they are immune because they were carrying out government policy.

One lesson we should learn from the Hampton case is that although it's important to put strong legal limitations on what police and intelligence agencies are permitted to do, that is not enough to prevent abuses. What's required is accountability, in the form of criminal prosecution, not only for those who carry out criminal policies but for those who formulate them. Thus far Holder's investigation is limited to those who carried out the policy of torture and may have exceeded its carefully hedged strictures. But the investigation we really need will look at the policy itself, which by all appearances was a criminal conspiracy by Cheney, Rumsfeld and a group of administration lawyers to subvert the Constitution.

Fred Hampton's legacy should be our continued vigilance against government crimes and secrecy and our demand that officials be held responsible and criminally liable when they violate the law. This is about deterrence and equal justice, not revenge.

"A Fearful Price"

KeninNY at Down With Tyranny calls our attention to a brilliant column by Bob Herbert on the real victims of the crime that is our escalation in Afghanistan:

There was an article in The Times on Monday about a new study showing that the eight years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan were taking an emotional toll on the children of service members and that the difficulties increased the longer parents were deployed.

There is no way that the findings of this study should be a surprise to anyone. It just confirms that the children of those being sent into combat are among that tiny percentage of the population that is unfairly shouldering the entire burden of these wars.

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

SNIP

The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.

To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.

The National Military Family Association, which commissioned the RAND study, has poignant comments from the children of military personnel on its Web site.

You can tell immediately how much more real the wars are to those youngsters than to most Americans:

“I hope it’s not him on the news getting hurt.”

“Most of my grades dropped because I was thinking about my dad, because my dad’s more important than school.”

“Mom will be in her room and we hear her crying.”

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

SNIP

What we are doing is indefensible and will ultimately exact a fearful price, and there will be absolutely no way for the U.S. to avoid paying it.

Read the whole thing.

KeninNY comments:

If it turns out that there is an afterlife that involves rewards and punishments for earthly deeds, you have to hope that there is a sufficiently fierce punishment for sending other people's children off to die.

I disagree with Herbert on just one point: we can avoid paying this price. Get out of Afghanistan now. Put a gun to Karzai's head - or rather a rusty razor blade to his nuts - and make him announce live on Al-Jazeera, BBC and CNN that he is demanding the U.S. and NATO leave his country immediately.

Far be it from us to hang around when we're not wanted.

Stop the Payoff to Big Insurance

An email blast from Robert Reich, the True Conscience of Genuine Health Care Reform:

You've probably heard about a possible "deal" in the Senate to do away with the public option.

I'm here to tell you that this is no deal: it's a gift to Big Insurance, plain and simple.

The details are sketchy. The only thing that's really clear is the deal would drop the public option from the bill. With no public option, there's no guarantee of real competition. And without real competition, health care costs will continue to be out of control.

But the deal is far from done. If voters generate a massive outcry around this and progressive leaders in Congress fight back, we can fix it.

Can you sign a petition to leaders in Congress and the White House right away?

Click here to sign your name.

The petition says: "You must make sure health care reform includes a real public option—it's what the majority of Americans want. Anything less is a gift to Big Insurance."

With no public option, the Senate "deal" is a giveaway to Big Insurance—and industry insiders admit it! One recently wrote "We WIN," in an email about the "deal."

What's in this "deal"? Like I said, almost no one knows the details. That means that progressives who embrace it right now may be giving away the store without getting anything in return.

But here's what we do know: First, it might allow some 55-64 year-olds to buy into Medicare. Second, it might allow those without employer health insurance to buy private insurance the way federal employees do.

So what's the problem here? A system of only private insurers simply will not control costs. Without competition from a public option, insurance companies have no incentive to compete—just like now.

Enlarging Medicare is no answer. The Senate bill slows Medicare's costs only if they're rising faster than total health spending. But with private insurers running the show, total health spending will still be out of control. Plus, we have no idea how many people might be allowed to buy into Medicare, or if it will be even close to affordable for them.

Health care reform must include a strong public option. It's key to controlling costs, expanding coverage, and forcing Big Insurance to compete. Without it, we'll end up with a national health care system controlled by a handful of very large corporations accountable neither to American voters nor to the market. And that is not even close to real health care reform.

Please sign the petition to House and Senate leadership and the White House today. The deal is still up in the air. If congressional progressives hold strong—and public demand for a public option is clear—then White House and congressional leaders will have to do what they haven't: put pressure on the few conservative Democrats to get on board and help pass real health care reform with a public option.

Click here to sign your name.

This thing is suddenly moving fast and changing hourly. It's almost impossible to say what we'll end up with. That makes it all the more important to make your voice heard now.

Click here to sign your name.

Teabagger Tyranny

Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars has the latest proof that self-proclaimed "anti-government conservatives" are against only that government they don't like. Tyrannical despotism that forces everyone else to live by their rules - that government they love.

Our nation's founders came here to escape religious persecution. They made sure that our Constitution prohibited the formation of a national religion, but to this teabagger from California, forcing Christmas music on children is patriotic. More from The Huffington Post:

The Tea Party movement is supposed to be all about keeping the government out of your business. But if some California members get their way, the state will force public school children to sing Christmas carols.

It's called the "Freedom to Present Christmas Music in Public School Classrooms or Assemblies" initiative.

Merry Hyatt, a substitute teacher and member of the Redding Tea Party Patriots, is behind the push. The Record Searchlight reports:

The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn't followed.

"Bottom line is Christmas is about Christmas," said Erin Ryan, president of the Redding Tea Party Patriots. "That's why we have it. It's not about winter solstice or Kwanzaa. It's like, 'Wow you guys, it's called Christmas for a reason.' "

This goes against the Tea Party movement's anti-government intrusion platform, but consistency or historical accuracy has never been their strong suit. Hanukkah-Shmanukkah, there is only one REAL American holiday, don't ya' know? /snark off

How do you fight against people who reject facts, reason, logic and consistency?

Last Gasp of the White Male Power Structure

Peter Beinert - would that be the same shit-fer-brains who spent 2002-2009 sucking Smirky/Darth's cock and declaring that the Democratic Party could only save itself by becoming republican? Oh, yes it is. Because now he's saying only re-embracing racist, misyogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic "values" can save the Democratic Party.

Digby takes him down.

The party of FDR and LBJ didn't have blacks in it and women had no power at all. Hispanics didn't even figure into it, much less gays. That's because it was a different world. And not incidentally, a much worse world for well over half the population.

Nonetheless, he evidently believes that the 60% of the party that is female, the members of the fastest growing demographic (Hispanics) and the 90+% of African Americans who vote Democratic are going to just allow the white male privilege people to turn back the clock in the name of the Big Tent. What nonsense. Today's balance of power calls for compromises on these issues to be borne by the straight, white, male privilege set in order to advance everyone's economic agenda, not the other way around.

The days of white male privilege are nearly over and those who want to recreate them are going to find themselves stymied in a party in which the majority are women, Hispanic, black or gay -- or often a combination of all of those. I can't imagine why anyone would even think of saying they shouldn't be. Economic issues and "cultural issues" (if you want to describe human rights in such a dry way) aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, they are mutually dependent. The Party that gets that right will be the Party that can form a majority for a long time to come.

Read the whole thing.

"Americans Want Government to Spend for Jobs, Send Bill to Rich"

That's the headline on a new Bloomberg poll:

"Americans Want Government to Spend for Jobs, Send Bill to Rich."

Steve Benen comments:

It seems the Neo-Hooverite agenda isn't gaining steam.

Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless.

They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7 shows two- thirds of Americans favor taxing the rich to reduce the deficit.

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare were wildly unpopular.

In other words, here's a poll showing widespread support for the Democratic economic agenda. Let's hope it makes the rounds on the Hill.

Kitchen-table politics always wins. Real Democrats know this.

It's Human Rights Day - Work for Non-Discrimination

The theme of the 62nd Human Rights Day is Non-Discrimination.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

"Discrimination targets individuals and groups that are vulnerable to attack: the disabled, women and girls, the poor, migrants, minorities, and all those who are perceived as different.

... But these victims of discrimination are not alone. The United Nations is standing with them, committed to defending the rights of all, and particularly the most vulnerable. That is our identity and our mission."

The realisation of all human rights - social, economic and cultural as well as civil and political rights – is hampered by discrimination. All too often, when faced with prejudice and discrimination, political leaders, governments and ordinary citizens are silent or complacent.

Yet everyone of us can make a difference. You are encouraged to celebrate Human Rights Day by advocating non-discrimination, organizing activities, raising awareness and reaching out to your local communities on 10 December and beyond.

Speak out against discrimination today.

Don't Miss "The People Speak"

Regardless of whether you've read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States - and if you haven't, read it now - don't miss the documentary based on it this weekend.

The first time Howard Zinn's now-classic book "A People's History of the United States" appeared on TV was in "The Sopranos" on HBO, when Tony's teenage son A.J. came home from school with a copy of the book and told his parents that, according to Zinn, Columbus was a slaveowner and murderer. Tony got mad, and replied, "In this house Columbus is a hero. End of story!"

That was 1999. This Sunday, Dec. 13, Zinn's "The People Speak" – the documentary inspired by his books "A People's History" and "Voices of a People's History," will be broadcast on the History channel at 8 PM/7 Central.

The documentary "gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history," says Anthony Arnove, who produced and co-directed the show and co-edited the "Voices" book. The featured voices "forged a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice" and "remind us never to take liberty for granted."

The History channel is best-known for WWII documentaries, which has earned it the nickname "the Hitler channel." "The People Speak" made it onto this unlikely site apparently because of the irresistible actors who appear in the documentary, including Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Morgan Freeman, and Sandra Oh, along with music performances by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Eddie Vedder, among others.

My personal favorites on "The People Speak": Malcolm X's "Message to the Grass Roots" from 1963: "America's problem is us. We're her problem." And Frederick Douglass's 1857 words, read by Don Cheadle: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

"We wanted to choose words that had some meaning today," Zinn told me; "Not from Supreme Court decisions or presidential speeches, but from some people you've never heard of."

There's also a soundtrack on CD, and a big "People Speak" website with video and a classroom study guide. A two-disk DVD will be out in January. The "People's History" book, meanwhile, has now sold two million copies.

And the Christopher Columbus part that got Tony Soprano mad? It's in the documentary: the Spanish priest Bartolomeo Las Casas' "Brief Account" of "The Devastation of the Indies" – read by Viggo Mortensen.

Watch it.

E. KY Doctor Killed for Refusing Pills to Addict

Wonder why mountain doctors often enable their obviously addicted patients by continue to prescribe narcotics? This is why:

A man seeking prescription painkillers shot and killed a doctor at a Perry County medical clinic Tuesday morning, according to state police.

Dr. Dennis Sandlin, 57, of Delphia died after being shot at Leatherwood/Blackey Medical Clinic in Cornettsville.

John Combs, 46, of Redfox in neighboring Knott County, was arrested after the shooting, state police said. Combs has been charged with murder.

SNIP

"We've all seen patients become visibly upset" when they didn't get the drugs they wanted, said Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, a doctor from Perry County who said he has known Sandlin for years.

"Here's someone who came back home to help his community ... an innocent victim of a problem that is an epidemic throughout this state."

Wooton said he understood Sandlin previously had been involved in an incident in which he physically fought with a man seeking drugs.

"Denny knocked him out," Wooton said.

But generally, Sandlin was "a very gentle person," Mongiardo said.

"He was very laid-back, mild-mannered, never raised his voice," Mongiardo said. "I can't begin to tell you how heartbroken we all are. He's taken care of generations of families."

Caudill said Sandlin was well-loved. He had recently participated in a program to collect $10,000 worth of Christmas gifts for children.

The gifts are to be distributed next Tuesday, Caudill said.

Sandlin would take time to talk with patients, and he was "particularly gifted" at caring for older people, Wooton said.

The clinic is closed until Monday.

"MCHC is a family and will pull together to overcome this," Caudill said.

The non-profit Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp. is based in Whitesburg and is one of the largest rural health centers in Kentucky, according to its Web site.

Read the whole thing.

Audited for Being Too Poor

Zandar brings us yet another dispath from the front lines of the War Against the Working Poor.

It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit. She couldn't believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A few hundred of that she spent to have her taxes prepared by H&R Block.

"I asked the IRS lady straight upfront — 'I don't have anything, why are you auditing me?' " Porcaro recalled. "I said, 'Why me, when I don't own a home, a business, a car?' "

The answer stunned both Porcaro and the private tax specialist her dad had gotten to help her.

"They showed us a spreadsheet of incomes in the Seattle area," says Dante Driver, an accountant at Seattle's G.A. Michael and Co. "The auditor said, 'You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle."

"They thought she must have unreported income. That she was hiding something. Basically they were auditing her for not making enough money."

It gets worse. Read the whole thing.

Zandar concludes:

Too poor. It'll only get worse as the middle class continues to vanish in this country. We have no problem with giving a trillion dollars to financial institutions that gambled and lost. It's unfair to limit CEO pay when they get government money, and in return the system gets rigged even more towards the banks so they can "pay the taxpayer back" while keeping the hundreds of billions under the table.

But we will take a year's pay out of a single mother's hide, and hound her family. We will declare her children unable to count as dependents for tax reasons, so that this year she can't use that nasty welfare tax cheat. But we'll give the banks hundreds of billions with no strings attached.

Our priorities as a country are so screwed up, we deserve what happens to us when it comes crumbling down.

I'm not that pessimistic, but I'll add this:

At the core of this is the mindset that a single mother earning $19,000 has done something wrong but a CEO who grabs a billion-dollar bonus after driving his company into bankruptcy has not.

The last time that mindset ruled the nation was just 80 years ago, when Wall Street speculators were the nation's heroes. All it took to change that belief was the collapse of the world economy and 25 percent unemployment.

It is within living memory that rich people, the "malefactors of great wealth," were the enemy, despised by "real Americans" for the crimes and exploitation assumed to be the source of their money. They don't have to be the enemy, if we can just stop equating pecuniary success with moral superiority.

We're never going to save the middle class until we stop demonizing people who work hard and pay taxes but need a little help.

Who is your hero?

SJ has a provocative post on heroes, wondering if it is even possible to name a living individual as a personal hero.

While it may be “jaded” to say: “there are no heroes,” it is certainly false to say so.

A more appropriate question to ask is may be: -Where have they gone?
In this age where entertainers, celebrities, professional athletes and political demagogues so easily capture our imaginations; our attention once held by accomplished persons, scholars, civic leaders, inventors, artists, writers, doctors, healers, and yes Presidents, -where are those individuals we would call heroes without embarrassment, qualification or excuses?

Who can I name without feeling like some silly thoughtless flatterer in search of someone to worship?

-And that’s the real truth isn’t it?

It feels weak, even juvenile to name someone a hero today. Perhaps, in our modern insistence on sober equanimity and self-reliance we just can’t afford them anymore.

Read the whole thing.

I don't have an answer, but I can offer these thoughts:

The reason it seems that we don't have heroes like our parents or grandparents did is that today, potential heroes can't hide their feet of clay like they could 50 or even 20 years ago. The moment someone in our 24-hour-news culture steps forward, she is stripped naked, every blemish exposed. Difficult to maintain a heroic posture throughout that.

Relatedly, the speed of information today means that today's hero disappears in the shadows of tomorrow's hero, who is long forgotten by the time we're praising next week's hero. New York State Senator Diane Savino was my hero for the superb speech she gave in favor of marriage equality, but then U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, became my hero for standing up in the Senate and demanding radical health care reform.

Who is your hero?

The Homeless Family Next Door

After the overnight temperatures drop into the teens tomorrow night, don't be surprised when whole families freeze to death on the streets in Kentucky.

Shelters are so overwhelmed by the increase in homeless families, they're having to turn people away.

Shelters in Louisville and Southern Indiana say they are struggling to cope with an increase in homeless families — turning common areas into makeshift sleeping quarters, starting waiting lists, and, in some cases, turning people away.

Advocates, school and shelter officials all say they fear family homelessness is reaching record levels here, and while it’s difficult to precisely quantify, they cite a variety of indications, which include:

*Jefferson County Public Schools counted 9,023 homeless students during the 2008-09 school year, and educators project that the district is on pace to exceed that number during the current school year. Already, schools have seen about 800 more homeless children than the same time in the last school year.

*Volunteers of America says its emergency shelter and transitional apartments for homeless families, which can house 18 households, have been full since at least mid-2008 and since then, the number of families requesting housing aid has risen 21 percent. At the same time, the Salvation Army began a waiting list for its temporary apartments about four months ago, and is turning away four to five families a day, said Margaret Saunders, the agency’s director of transitional housing.

*Wayside Christian Mission gained some space for families when it started using the Hotel Louisville to house women and children in November, transferring people from its Market Street shelter. But within days, the mission’s 60-person shelter space was full, said Nina Moseley, Wayside’s chief operating officer, noting that one of its families had been living in a tent.

SNIP

Advocates blame the increases on worsening poverty rates and joblessness.

“We’re seeing a lot of middle-class families who never thought they would be faced with a homeless situation,” Saunders said.

“Every family shelter in Louisville has a long waiting list,” Moseley said, adding, “there’s people out there.”

And, they fear, worst may be yet to come.

Read the whole thing.

The Class Argument Against the War

It's not a new argument, because it's not a new phenomenon. But it seems every generation has to re-learn the lesson that anti-war protestors have been preaching since the War of 1812.

Austin Cline at Jesus' General reminds us:

Deploying Troops & Funds for the Ruling Class

America's ruling class wanted massive bailout funds for a few select banks and investment firms without any strings attached, and they got it. They wanted no return to the old financial regulations which would have prevented the current economic crisis, and they got it. They want the government to retain the power to spy on, arrest, and detain Americans on a whim, and they got it. They want an international copyright treaty that will transfer to copyright holders unprecedented power over consumers, and they will likely get this as well. You don't think that they also want a series of open-ended foreign wars?

War abroad creates excuses to use the state security apparatus at home. War creates profits for well-placed corporations and individuals, transferring wealth via the government from the dwindling middle class to the ruling class. This also comes with the added bonus of depriving the government of funds that might go to programs that would enhance the health and welfare of the rest of us.

War creates an outlet for the jobless, allowing for higher levels of unemployment without as much risk of social unrest — and what's left can be more effectively contained by a militarized police force which enjoys broader powers in the context of the government's war policies. Finally, it's clear to those who study the issue that a principle driving force of international terrorism has been hatred and resentment against America — not because of our "freedom," but because how we and our proxies invade, occupy, and brutalize Muslim populations. Continuing war and occupation in Afghanistan thus effectively preserves and enhance the very excuses needed to stay there.

Extended war in Afghanistan serves all the interests of the ruling class and none of the rest of society. It will waste more resources, destroy more lives, increase debt, and reduce the ability of the American economy to ever provide a stable, secure future. Even worse, it will make it easier for the U.S. to move on to the next conflict, maybe Iran or Pakistan, just as being in Afghanistan made it easier to move into Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

Class war is not a liberal conspiracy theory: it's the fundamental reality of our economic system. It waxes and wanes, going almost quiescent during the post-World War II expansion of the middle class, flaring up under Reagan and raging unchecked for the past decade.

It's amazing how easily it hides from the public and the press, given that it's simple to find: just follow the money.

Two Young Kentuckians at Denmark's Talks

If anyone at the global climate change talks in Copenhagen starting today suffers under the impression that Kentuckians don't understand how coal is making the planet uninhabitable, two young Kentuckians are there to set them straight.

Lauralee Crain, a Transylvania University senior from Flemingsburg, will participate in youth rallies as a member of the 18-person Sierra Student Coalition. Marcie Smith, a 2009 Transy grad from Richmond, will return to Copenhagen, where she advocated for more aggressive actions and nations, particularly developed countries, during last December's dress rehearsal for this year's United Nations climate conference.

Both say they hope to represent their generation by encouraging global leaders to take bold actions against pollution not only in industrialized nation but also developing countries.

"Climate change has started to happen and continues to happen. So the most culpable countries ... do have a responsibility to clean up the messes in other countries — the countries that are bearing the brunt of global climate change," said Smith, who has taken a job as an international media coordinator for the group Climate Justice Fast. People from at least 23 countries, through that effort, have been fasting since Nov. 6 to raise awareness about and underscore the urgency of actions to slow climate change.

SNIP

Crain and Smith both said they know some of their outspoken stances won't be popular in their native state, where coal mining remains a staple of the economy.

"I don't think people realize that Kentucky is climate ground zero," Smith said. She likened it to oil fields in the Middle East, where drilling companies profit but those who live nearby and even work for the companies struggle to escape poverty. Extraction of fossil fuels "means your home exists to be exploited," Smith said.

SNIP

"A green economy is necessary to the survival of Kentucky because coal is not a forever resource," Crain said.

Smith said that's one of the debates she looks forward to engaging when she one day returns to live in Kentucky.

"If coal has so much potential, why have the poverty rates in Eastern Kentucky been stuck at 30 percent for the last 100 years?" Smith said. "Why are we still one of the poorest states in the nation? Why do I still get made fun of every time I go anywhere out of the southeast United States?"

Wouldn't it be great if Smith and Crain were invited to speak about their Copenhagen experiences before the General Assembly's Natural Resources Committees in January?

Wouldn't it be better if those committees weren't run by a repug in the Senate and the inhmanly idiotic Jim Gooch in the House?

"It should be more easy to get out of war than into it."

The irreplaceable Bill Moyers on how the separation of war powers in the U.S. Constitution was designed to make it more difficult, not easier, for the nation to indulge in war.

Our founders knew too well the habits of European kings who went to war at the drop of a royal hat or for the lust of a royal heart. Matters of life and death, they argued, should never be so easily decided by one man. In the now quaint but still elegant language of their day, they understood – and these are the words of James Madison – that: "In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them." But that was not a good idea, Madison said. Such a mixture of powers would be a temptation "too great for any one man." Even a good man, of good intentions. Madison worried that: "The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."

They were not naïve, our founders. The question of war was no theoretical exercise for them. The new republic was threatened on all sides. Its young government had to be able to defend itself; the new chief executive – not a king but a president – would need, at times, to act quickly and decisively. So the founders debated the question vigorously. Where do we vest the power of war?

Charles Pinckney of South Carolina wanted to give it to the Senate alone. Pierce Butler, also of South Carolina, wanted to vest it in the President, quote, "who will have all the requisite qualities and will not make war but when the Nation will support it." That idea brought Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts to his feet, shocked: "I never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the executive alone to declare war." And George Mason of Virginia agreed. "I am against giving the power of war to the executive," Mason said, "because he is not safely to be trusted with it — or to the Senate [...] I am," he said, "for clogging rather than facilitating war."

In the end the delegates compromised, as usual, with an eye to checks-and-balances. They gave Congress the power to declare war legally, but left the President free to repel sudden attacks. The delegate from Connecticut, Oliver Ellsworth, summed up their collective wisdom when he said, "It should be more easy to get out of war than into it."

How far we’ve come.

Click here to watch the whole thing and read the transcript.

Saving the Middle Class - Liberally

I am a Liberal, and I support government building a strong middle-class by creating good jobs and preventing Wall Street from cheating working people.

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, explains how pro-bank, anti-worker policies over the past 30 years have brought the middle class to the brink of extinction, and concludes:

Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.

Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking.

Middle-class-saving policies are obvious, but can't seem to get traction even in desperate economic times. Digby explains why:

As I've noted before, people have been propagandized with conservative dogma for years and the Democratic Party hasn't even been offering much rhetorical support to those who are feeling this awful squeeze. People are turning to the explanations that have been pounded into them for decades about free markets, taxes and deficits and they are scapegoating culprits far more ancient than that.

If liberals hope to persuade people that their philosophy is preferable to the emerging wingnut rage, they're going to have to at least try to explain why. So far it's all been about mechanics and arcane concepts that seem remote and uninspiring. The fact is, as Warren illustrates in her piece, these problems aren't just there because of the current economic crisis. It's been building for decades as a result of those conservative dogmas to which people are clinging for the lack of anything more persuasive. It's highly doubtful that once the crisis has passed that people are going to feel "normal" now that credit's become far tighter and is likely to stay that way for some time to come. This reform populism is at least trying to address these real problems of real people in ways they can see, understand and feel.

Watch Warren discuss saving the middle class here:

"To stand up for the embattled middle class"

President Obama's Weekly Address:

But I didn’t run for President to pass emergency recovery programs, or to bail out banks or to shore up auto companies. I didn’t run for President simply to manage the crisis of the moment, while kicking our most pressing problems down the road. I ran for President to help hardworking families succeed and to stand up for the embattled middle class. I ran to fight for a country where responsibility is still rewarded, and hard-working people can get ahead. I ran to keep faith with the sacred American principle that we will deliver to our children a future of even greater possibility.

And my commitment to you, the American people, is that I will focus every single day on how we can get people back to work, and how we can build an economy that continues to make real the promise of America for generations to come.

Full transcript here.

Hold him to it:

Call members of Congress here: (202) 224-3121

Call the White House here: (202) 456-1414

Kentucky's House Delegation Caves to Israel Lobby. Except Geoff Davis

In late December 2008, Israel invaded Gaza. It kept all press out of the beseiged strip of land, preventing any independent observation of actions by both the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas. Unsurprisingly, accusations of war crimes flew on both sides.

The United Nations appointed experts to investigate the charges, and in September the group released its report, called the Goldstone Report after its leader.

The United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict at the start of this year has found evidence that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants committed serious war crimes and breaches of humanitarian law, which may amount to crimes against humanity.

And all hell broke loose. If you search the internet for "Goldstone Report" the top links will be not to the report itself but to the many condemnations of the report from both sides, but primarily from pro-Israeli voices claiming that it's a fraud because everybody knows only mooslins commit war crimes.

It didn't take long for the stupidity to reach the U.S. House of Representatives.

Down with Tyranny explains:

H.Res. 867 was introduced by an anti-Cuba fanatic with a huge Jewish constituency, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She had 202 co-sponsors for a cowardly bill to condemn the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report) to be biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy." It passed overwhelmingly-- 344-36 (with 22 voting "present").

The only members of Congress to oppose the outrageously biased resolution were 33 Democrats and 3 Republicans:

SNIP

Geoff Davis (R-KY)

SNIP

Although Ron Paul issued neither a statement nor a press release on why he voted no, his unofficial mouthpiece, the Daily Paul didn't get into The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion territory many of his supporters frequent. In fact, they start out with a lengthy self-examination by the Jerusalem Post and point out that "a person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.

This will be even more the case now that the Israel Lobby, after years of effort, has succeeded in repealing the First Amendment by having the Hate Crime Bill attached to the recently passed military appropriations bill. This is the way the syllogism works: It is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. anti-Semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime." Democrats had a more rational reason for opposing Ros-Lehtinen's AIPAC-y resolution.

Watch:

Surge 2.0: Not Just Wrong, But Falling Into the Repugs' Trap

If the Afghanistan escalation is really some kind of 11-dimensional-chess move to escape that clusterfuck while avoiding any political penalty, then President Obama better finish the game before next November. Because the repugs are already three steps ahead of him.

Zandar explains:

Now that Obama has gone full in on THE AFGHANISURGE and given the GOP what they wanted, the exact same Republican hawks will now immediately turn on the war for the sole reason that Obama's running it. Reihan Salam lays out the game plan over at The Daily Beast:

SNIP

And so the president is caught in an extremely awkward position. Abandoned by the Democrats, he is relying on the support of a shrinking centrist foreign-policy establishment that, to put it bluntly, has zero political muscle. The conservatives who back the troop surge don’t think the president is going far enough, and most expect that his effort to craft a compromise counterinsurgency will fail. Among grassroots conservatives, there is a growing sense that the U.S. military is too hamstrung by concern about civilian casualties and political correctness to wage an effective military campaign under Obama, which implies that there is little point in offering him political support.

SNIP

In 2010, expect Republicans to say Afghanistan is the wrong war and that we need to get out and move on to Pakistan and other places...and of course, Iran.

The bashing on Afghanistan by the right as "Obama's Vietnam" has already started...that note was hit back in February only a month after he took office for crissakes. Remember the GOP plan: Destroy Obama. He cannot be allowed to take positive credit for anything. When Obama wasn't sending troops into Afghanistan, he was a dithering softy. Now that he's sending 30K plus troops in, he's fighting the wrong war. The Village won't even notice the hypocrisy of course...they're pushing it too. Now that Obama has actually done what he's said he's going to do and that the GOP has complained that he wasn't doing fast enough, doing what the GOP wanted him to do and deploying troops in a lightning-fast six month manner is of course unacceptable to the Republicans.

They'll be running as the anti-war candidates in 2010. Count on it. Don't believe me? Remember the GOP and Bill Clinton in Bosnia? Remember Clinton being attacked for sending in cruise missiles into Iraq? Same thing. We've seen it before. We're about to see it again.

Why Wall Street Loves High Unemployment

Because it keeps the toiling masses grateful for the chance to work their asses off for pennies.

Natasha Chart reads the preliminary, third quarter productivity and costs estimates from the Bureau of Labor Standards and concludes we've been robbed.

American workers have been producing more, in less time, and not getting raises. In short, your boss is stealing from you.

Indeed, if the minimum wage had tracked productivity over the past 30 years, it would be $19/hour. That's how much our bosses have been stealing from us.

Get the picture?

They make more money off of your work and they don't share the increased returns. They invest money, you invest time and expertise, blood, sweat and tears, hours spent commuting and separations from your family. They get to realize a profitable return on their investment, you get to keep treading water and waiting for a ship that probably isn't coming.

They are stealing. From. You.

This is what it means to have organized labor in disarray, in retreat. This is what it means to have politicians in the pockets of the investor class, their donor classes, totally unaccountable to voters. This is what it means when both political parties are the property of the economic aristocracy. This is what it means when consumer debt obligations are sacrosanct, and business pension obligations aren't worth the paper they're written on. To paraphrase Anatole France, this is what it means when it's a crime to steal bread or sleep under a bridge, but not to crash the whole world's economy. It means they get to keep stealing from you, steal more over time, and can steal with impunity.

There are consequences to a lack of political power, to the working classes being too tired (all too understandably) to maintain civic participation, and these are them.

They get to steal from you and no one will stop them.

Take This Viral

Lindsay Robertson at Jezebel.com:

Out of yesterday's NY state gay marriage setback has emerged a new icon: Sen. Diane Savino, whose brilliant, off-the-cuff speech in favor of same-sex marriage has made her an overnight internet star. Just watch this. (Savino for President 2016!)



Some choice quotes:

"I'm over the age of 40 and that's all you're going to get from me, but I have never been able to maintain a relationship of the length or the quality that Tom and Lewis have."

"Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on the way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don't have cable television? Put on network TV. We're giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch The Bachelor, where thirty desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life."

"That's what we've done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they're five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they'll wear, how they'll look, the invitations, the whole bit, they don't spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before god and man even in Senator Diaz's church, they swear to love honor and obey, they don't mean a word of it. So if there's anything wrong with the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right and have abused it for decades."

A former labor activist, Savino was elected in 2004 and serves Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. But now that this speech has put her on the national radar, who knows how far she can go?

The Real Cost of Surge 2.0: Thousands more disabled veterans

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars brings us the bad news from the San Francisco Chronicle:

More than 13,000 new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. An additional 8,000 or so traumatic brain injuries. More suffering and need coming home in the form of wounded vets than the country can easily handle.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced more diagnosed cases of PTSD and debilitating injuries per capita than any other war in the nation's history, health care experts say. And veterans who encounter homecoming trouble are becoming homeless more quickly than ever, street counselors say.

SNIP

"We have this theme in this country that we will support our troops, all work as a team, but there are so many cases when they are just released from service and left on their own," Blecker said. "We treat them as second-class citizens, but they are the ones who pay the price."

There are proportionately more vets than ever suffering from PTSD and disability upon coming home because military armor and rescue capabilities are better than ever, experts say. That means fewer soldiers die of serious wounds, and more survive with lost limbs, injured brains and the damaging memories of horror.

Read the whole thing.

Even if half a trillion dollars to pay for fighting another 18 months in Afghanistan were to fall from the sky tomorrow, the price we will pay for the injuries to our veterans who survive that fight will continue to rise for decades to come.

Click here to support the Democrats in Congress who oppose escalation.

Call members of Congress here: (202) 224-3121

Call the White House here: (202) 456-1414

Support the Democrats in Congress who oppose escalation.

Stupak Lives! Help Us Kill It Dead

Remember how Congressional Democrats assured us that the horrific Stupak amendment would not survive in the final health care reform bill?

Eh, not so much. But Firedoglake is on it, and already has a plan of action:

Ever since Stupak hijacked the health care bill, we’ve been watching. So far, nothing looks like it has any chance of success of beating the Stupak amendment back. And Nancy Pelosi is quietly telling people she can’t pass the health care bill without it.

We can’t just sit back and let that happen without a fight.

Today we’re announcing “One Voice for Choice,” a national phone bank that will launch calls into the districts of the Representatives who voted for Stupak. We’ll be targeting likely Democratic voters who are pro-choice. We’ll be letting them know that Stupak goes WAY past Hyde. And we’ll be asking them to sign their names to a letter to their member of Congress, demanding that they not make Stupak the litmus test for their vote.

We hope that by reaching out to educate likely voters in their districts to the far-reaching implications of the Stupak language, we can help these wayward Democrats understand that having the Hyde language in the bill is sufficient to their needs.
One Voice for Choice is a targeted effort that doesn’t need big numbers to be successful. In 2008 for instance, Tom Perriello won his district by less than a thousand votes. Bobby Bright won by a margin of 1700 votes.

Making a few, carefully targeted people aware of what’s happening can have a big impact.

We actually think we’re doing these members a big favor in the process. Democratic turnout in Virginia was terribly depressed when Creigh Deeds started running from the right, and a Daily Kos poll indicates that there is a 3:1 “enthusiasm gap” in favor of Republicans for 2010. These members need reliable Democratic voters to turn out for them next fall. They need to start paying attention to them now.

We are asking people to host phone banks, or volunteer to take part in one, at One Voice For Choice. The program is being run by Marta Evry of Venice for Change, who ran phone banks in California for the Obama campaign in 2008. You can sign up here and Marta will get you everything you need.

This is an important step forward for FDL Action PAC and for our online activism.

Just as we did during the public option whip count effort, we looked at the landscape, we analyzed what needed to be done, and isolated the way we could use the resources we were capable of leveraging in the most closely targeted and specific way to have the biggest impact. Mike Allen was on Morning Joe this morning talking about it, and I think you can tell from his response — it’s a big move. A real game changer.

But we can’t do it without your help. It will be pro-choice supporters working together who will make it happen. We’re simply giving women — and those who care about the rights of women — efficient tools to use to raise their voices and defend themselves from the Stupak pack who would hold health care hostage and take women’s rights away.

Sign up to volunteer here. And you can donate to help us keep this program going here.

Working together, we can raise our voices — in One Voice For Choice.

"Unemployment is a bigger deal than Afghanistan"

With one huge difference: There are known, proven, ready-to-go solutions to unemployment ready to hand, if only President Obama and Congressional Democrats will pick them up.

John Nichols in The Nation:

But if unemployment keeps rising -- if it gets to 12-, 13-, 14-percent officially, and over 20 percent unofficially -- it will be the only issue for the great masses of Americans who will tip the country's political balance in a direction that either empowers or disempowers the Obama administration when it comes to addressing fundamental social, environmental and foreign policy concerns.

In other words: It's still the economy, stupid.

So what should we hope for from the jobs summit?

Something real, not tinkering around the edges, and not a reprise of the tepid stimulus initiative that spent more on tax cuts for well-to-do Americans than it did for actual job creation.

The intervention must be dramatic, primarily because of the social concern and economic concerns. There is a mounting sense of hopelessness in many regions of the country and it is grounded in a reality that is too infrequently noted: Since the current recession began in December, 2007, the United States has lost more than eight million jobs. This country has experienced 22 consecutive months of job losses, which the AFL-CIO correctly identifies as "the longest such losing streak in 70 years."

There are a lot of plans out there, some warmed over versions of approaches that have failed in the past (more tax cuts for the rich), some visionary proposals that ask us to imagine the possibilities of a transformational 21st century (groundbreaking green jobs initiatives).

The AFL-CIO has developed a smart proposal that focuses squarely on job creation and retention -- the interventions that get to the heart of the matter -- as well as needed steps to aid those who are now out of work.

Read the whole thing.

Without Liberals, Democrats Are Just Unarmed Republicans

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit gave us a small sample of the anti-Obama hatred that has flooded Facebook. He concluded:

This is a reminder, as we on the left disagree with Obama and oppose some of his policies, of what we're actually up against, our own extremists and the absolutely bugfuck insane shit they are willing to say openly.

The Rude One is right, and we cannot lose sight of that.

But blind loyalty is not the only alternative to rejecting Obama outright.

The proper response to a Democratic president failing to champion liberal values is to stand up and demand he champion liberal values.

Exhibit A: health care deform, which has become a corporate windfall beyond the dreams of avarice because the White House refused to accept the liberal solution even as a negotiating position.

Steve M. makes the point:

I wonder where these polls would be if Obama and the Dems had managed to position the set of proposals we have now as a middle ground between dirty-hippie single-payer advocates and pro-status-quo Republicans. Forcing true progressives to the margins helped Republicans to portray the stance of Obama and the Dems as the far-left position. Imagine if the single-payer fans had been allowed into the discussion, pitchforks in hand. Would Obama look moderate now?

The lack of triangulation allows Republicans to claim that Obama and the Democrats -- who in reality are endlessly compromising -- are actually dictators ramming health care reform down our throats. There's no middle, according to this narrative -- there's a jugfgernaut and then there's a band of brave, politically incorrect souls standing before the tanks.

That's why centrist Democrats need dirty hippies. It's a lesson many of them struggle to learn.

Tell Congress and President Obama to champion your liberal values:

Call members of Congress here: (202) 224-3121

Call the White House here: (202) 456-1414

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

The Road Not Taken - Yet

At The Nation, Tom Engelhardt writes the Afghanistan speech Obama should have given.

.... During the presidential campaign I called Afghanistan "the right war." Let me say this: with the full information resources of the American presidency at my fingertips, I no longer believe that to be the case. I know a president isn't supposed to say such things, but he, too, should have the flexibility to change his mind. In fact, more than most people, it's important that he do so based on the best information available. No false pride or political calculation should keep him from that.

And the best information available to me on the situation in Afghanistan is sobering. It doesn't matter whether you are listening to our war commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who, as press reports have indicated, believes that with approximately 80,000 more troops--which we essentially don't have available--there would be a reasonable chance of conducting a successful counterinsurgency war against the Taliban, or our ambassador to that country, Karl Eikenberry, a former general with significant experience there, who believes we shouldn't send another soldier at present. All agree on the following seven points:

SNIP

Given that, let me say as bluntly as I can that I have decided to send no more troops to Afghanistan. Beyond that, I believe it is in the national interest of the American people that this war, like the Iraq War, be drawn down. Over time, our troops and resources will be brought home in an orderly fashion, while we ensure that we provide adequate security for the men and women of our Armed Forces. Ours will be an administration that will stand or fall, as of today, on this essential position: that we ended, rather than extended, two wars.

Read the whole thing.

Then take action:

Peter Rothberg has some ideas:

This seems crazy to me. Can't see how it can possibly end well. To cite Malalai Joya, the youngest woman elected to the Afghan Parliament, writing recently in The Guardian, "by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences."

If you agree with Joya, as I do, there are a range of groups trying to build peace and security in Afghanistan.

One is the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy. The venerable peace, social justice and democracy group recently sent a declaration to President Obama, titled We Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's a strong, comprehensive statement, and it addresses the valid question asked by many critics of de-escalation, who argue that withdrawal equals an abandonment of the Afghan people.

"Withdrawal should not mean that the US abandons any effort to help the people of Afghanistan and neighboring states. Washington ought to lend political support to regional negotiations and to a broader settlement of the disputes between India and Pakistan, which continue to stoke the violence in Afghanistan. Above all, the U.S. should provide large-scale humanitarian aid to the desperately poor Afghan population -- which, aid agencies note, is hindered by being intermingled with military operations."

I was proud to add my name when asked. Now, the CPD is looking to amass as many signatures as possible in a symbolic effort to underscore how wildly un-popular the president's bellicose direction may prove to be. Click here to add your name, to see the growing list of signers, and/or to make a tax-deductible donation to help publicize the statement.

Another excellent new campaign worth circulating is Jonathan Tasini's effort to convince Congressional candidates running for office in 2010 to sign a commitment that they will band together to end the incredible waste of life and resources in Afghanistan.

It's not too late.

Call members of Congress here: (202) 224-3121

Call the White House here: (202) 456-1414

Silence Give Assent; Shout Your Dissent

You bet I'm disgusted. Infuriated, outraged, sickened. Yes, President Obama is doing exactly what he promised he would do in Afghanistan - which is why it's so wrong.

Nothing that's happened in the last year has influenced him in the slightest. He decided two years ago, as the primaries began, that bygod he was going to escalate in Afghanistan no matter what.

No matter that millions more people are unemployed approaching Great Depression numbers. Never mind that one in four American children needs food stamps to survive. Forget that the crackhead gang that poses as the Afghan "government" has proven itself far more corrupt than anything ever imagined in Saigon. Pay no attention to the lying incompetents running the military for the profit of their raping, murdering corporate buddies.

Facts be damned, full speed ahead.

If that's not Bush III I don't know what is.

So take your anger, your disappointment, and make it amplify your voice in dissent.

Over the next days and weeks, I will bring you as many opportunities as I can find to make your voice heard. For now, start by clicking here.

SIGN THE PETITION TO CONGRESS

President Obama has decided to send more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, at a cost of more than $100 billion/year. But America cannot afford a war that does not make us safer, and Congress has the power to stop the escalation. Vote NO on any spending bill that would send more troops to Afghanistan.

Click here to sign.

The Hate Behind the Kettle

In the true spirit of christianist charity, the Salvation Army is - wait for it - checking IDs on the brown kids to prevent the illegals from getting toys meant for ril murkin children.

Jesus' General has the correct response:

It'd be a real shame if wicked people tried to pressure the Salvation Army into treating everyone with dignity by doing something like this:

1. Download the graphic below.
2. Print it.
3. Cut it into check-sized pieces.
4. Deposit "checks" in Salvation Army kettles.

Jackie Makes It Even Worse

Wow. I didn't think it was possible to be more vague, confused and fact-free about Afghanistan than Our Only President was last night, but Jack Conway proves me wrong.

Via MC, Conway's press release on The Surge 2.0:

"I think it is apparent that the President has given this issue of escalation in Afghanistan great deal of serious thought,"

No, it's apparent he hasn't thought about it for a split second since he decided two years ago that he was going to escalate come hell or high water.

"and I appreciate the appropriate tone of his remarks, as well as the laudable goals he set forth."

His tone was robotic and lifeless, which I guess is appropriate since it matches the "plan" perfectly. Goals of killing as many millions of Afghan civilians as possible in a futile attempt to get repug approval is something Conway thinks is laudable?

"Success in this venture will mean leaving behind a stable government in Afghanistan that does not provide safe haven to Al-Qaeda."

Afghanistan has never had and never will have a stable government, because it is not a nation of any kind, shape or form. It is a snakepit of vicious warlords who thrive quite well, thank you, without any semblance of government.

"In order to do that, the United States will need serious commitments from NATO partners as well as political cooperation from partners in the region."

France and Germany have already announced they're leaving Afghanistan. That leaves six Bosnian truck drivers and a Polish plumber as our allies.

"While I agree with the President's goals, I heard too little about political cooperation from Pakistan and the threat it poses. Pakistan harbors the most dangerous mix of terrorists and nuclear weapons in the world. This is where our focus should be. We must have a policy that roots out terrorists from their hiding places, eliminates their threat, and brings our troops home quickly."

There are at most 100 "terrorists" still in Afghanistan - all the rest are in Pakistan. 100,000 troops and a hundred billion dollars to root out a few dozen terrorists?

"As a United States Senator it would be my primary duty to help keep Americans safe.

Wrong. Your primary duty as United State Senator is upholding the Constitution of the United States, which quite clearly says absolutely nothing about "keeping Americans safe."

"I would also weigh how any plan of action would affect Kentucky, our troops, their families and our standing among other nations.

80 Kentucky dead in the Warren Terra, thousands back home with traumatic brain injury and PTSD. You want more of that?

"I know our military men and women will serve valiantly, but I have reservations about the President's position to send more troops. I do not feel President Obama has adequately explained how he will get Pakistan involved in the effort to combat Al-Qaeda. At its core, we are dealing with a regional issue which requires the cooperation of regional partners to ensure success."

No, we are dealing with illiterate criminals who have no interest in governing in any manner that doesn't involve automatic weapons. Success is not an option.

You're an ass, Conway. Get a spine, grow some balls, get a clue and stop pretending that claiming an invisible sky wizard runs the department of homeland security will gain you a single repug vote.

UPDATE, 6:45 a.m.: No, Mangy's statement is no better, though at least it's clear.

"I believe the president clearly defined the mission, how he intends to accomplish that mission and, equally important, a reasonable time frame for when we can expect to bring the war in Afghanistan to a close," Mongiardo said.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. Obama never defined an achievable mission, never explained how we would reach his nebulous goals, and plucked a date out of his ass knowing it's impossible.

The Right Argument Against the War Tax

If we're going to throw another hundred billion, quarter-trillion down the Af-Pak shithole, the least this president and this Congress can do is fund it with a new, heavy tax on the rich who are the only ones benefitting from American imperalism.

Demanding the escalation in Vietnam Afghanistan be funded by a new, dedicated tax also creates a political strategy for withdrawal.

Crooks and Liars has the video:

Ed Schultz talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the proposed war surtax to pay for Afghanistan. Grayson feels we've paid too much already for both Iraq and Afghanistan and that it's time to bring the troops home.

Schultz: $234 billion, that’s the price tag; that’s that eight years of war in Afghanistan has already cost this country. Now we’re sending 30,000 more troops—a nearly fifty percent increase. We have no idea how long they’re going to be there or how long it’s going to take to “finish the job”. The idea of a war surtax is gaining momentum in both houses of the Congress and with both parties for that matter. Joining me now Florida Congressman Alan Grayson. Congressman good to have you with us tonight. Should we make sure that we can pay for this next military increase in Afghanistan and how would you propose doing it?

Grayson: I think we’ve paid enough. We’ve paid $3 trillion already for the war in Iraq—that’s $10,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. For my family, my wife, myself, my five children that’s $70,000. Enough is enough—we’ve paid enough for Iraq in both money and blood. We’ve paid enough for Afghanistan. Now it’s time to come home.

Click here to watch the video.

Want to hear more from actual Congressional Democrats and candidates who are calling out Obama on his Afghanistan clusterfuck? Down with Tyranny is taking names and recording quotes of every last dirty fucking hippie one of them.

Buddy, Can You Spare $30 Billion?

Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy on guns vs. butter:

Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed wth suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is hard to think of a prominent U.S. leader who is making an explicit case for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home.

Walt doesn't ask a question, but I'll answer it anyway:

Because money spent abroad - regardless of its original purpose - always ends up killing yellow, brown and black people who hate baby jeebus. And money spent at home ends up helping yellow, brown and black people who hate baby jeebus.

Better to spend a hundred billion dollars killing one Taliban darkie than one dollar helping a colored girl in the projects feed her baby.

That this president, elected in a landslide with super-majorities in Congress, cannot makes the case "for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home" is inexcusable.

The Liberal Path to Jobs

David Dayen at Firedoglake offers offers some proven, practical ideas for giving the country what it needs most right now: lots of good jobs in a strong, stable economy.

In a couple days, the President will convene a jobs summit, amidst pervasive calls to deal with the budget deficit during a recession. Sadly, both the issue of jobs and the deficit are being dealt with in Congress through conservative frames, with policies like across-the-board, untargeted tax cuts for job creation, or “entitlement reform” commissions basically oriented to cutting social services programs for the deficit, favored by centrists and the lobbyists who love them.
However, a wealth of policies that would seek to create perhaps millions of jobs, while responsibly paying for the investment and then some, are taking shape on Capitol Hill. Democratic leaders and the White House simply cannot say there are no ideas on the shelf but tax cuts and cat food commissions that would accomplish the same goal. Here’s just a sampling:

JOBS
• The American Jobs Plan: Conceived by the Economic Policy Institute, the five-point plan includes the following provisions: 1) stregthening the social safety net by extending unemployment benefits, the COBRA subsidy and food stamps benefits, giving people economic security and some money to spend; 2) aid for state and local governments, which are facing cutbacks of at least 900,000 jobs in the next fiscal year if they receive no federal help; 3) public investment in transportation infrastructure and educational facility repair to the tune of at least $30 billion; 4) direct employment through public service jobs through the Community Development Block Grant program, jobs like cleaning up vacant lots or staffing child care and Head Start programs or renovating and maintaining public spaces; 5) a two-year job creation tax credit equal to 15% of expanded payroll costs.

Four of the five are unquestionably progressive; the fifth, the job creation tax credit, I still have trouble with because it’s likely to be easily gamed, but it couldn’t hurt at this crisis stage.

• Small business lending through remaining TARP funds. The only part of the AFL-CIO’s jobs package not overlapped by EPI’s recommendations is this idea, which would take the over $200 billion in the TARP and distribute it to community banks to lend to small businesses, which are still having trouble finding capital in the tight credit markets.
• small-bore “Cash for Caulkers”-type programs. Cash for Clunkers was unquestionably successful in creating economic activity and moving out some auto inventory. There are even better ideas for using direct funds – encouraging energy checks of homes, or painting energy-efficient white roofs, or trading in energy-sucking appliances – that would probably lead to even more job creation than Cash for Clunkers did.
There are other ideas, like fast-tracking the transportation bill, or increased physical infrastructure spending, but in general, you can envision a dozen ideas or more to create lots of jobs in America.

SNIP

Nobody is saying that any or all of these programs would fix the unemployment rate in a week, or completely eliminate the federal deficit (although if you reduced the defense budget, maybe you’d get somewhere). But they would all be a far more powerful corrective than plans that come from the some conservative orientation that brought us into this mess, or the mushy-middle “centrism” that has provided a jobless recovery. There are literally dozens of ways to provide jobs and revenue in ways that are balanced and reasonable; the only thing missing is political will.

Read the whole thing.

As Steve M.explains:

On domestic issues, progressivism is beyond the pale -- too much fat-cat money is involved for truly left-liberal ideas to gain purchase. So, on health care and the stimulus, Obama probably assumed that right-wingers would pull one way, liberals would pull the other, and he'd seem like the reasonable guy in the middle. But domestic-issue progressives are utterly marginal. Nobody wanted to pay attention to advocates of a $2 trillion stimulus package or single payer.

So all the pulling came from the right, and on domestic issues, we are where we are.

The categorical refusal of a national Democratic Party that took the White House in a landslide with super-majorities in both houses of Congress to even consider proven liberal economic solutions is not a "bipartisan" game any more; it's literally killing the country.

Liberal solutions to our many problems are thick on the ground for anyone willing to see, bend and pick them up.

Death Wish Politics

As horrific and demoralizing as the announcement of the Afghanstan escalation is going to be today, don't let it distract you from the White House's continuing effort to ensure health care DEform enriches health insurance giants at the expense of working Americans.

Mike Lux at Open Left:

The way some Democrats want to respond to numbers like these is pure and simple death wish politics. It's the bizarre inside-the-Beltway centrism that cares more about what corporate lobbyists and CBO scoring than about what anyone who might actually vote thinks: don't do anything too tough to Wall Street, don't create jobs because it will add to the deficit, don't put anything into health care reform that voters might actually notice for the next five years, and be "fair" to the poor insurance companies.

The quote of the day that has me gnashing my teeth:

White House health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle said the president was moving as quickly as possible. She said that the insurance industry cannot be forced to accept people irrespective of preexisting conditions until everyone is required to have insurance, and that the administration does not want such a requirement until the exchanges are up and running.

Insurance companies have been making enormous profits for decades now by hiking prices through the roof and denying care to sick people, and we are going to worry about being fair to them in the transition to a better health care system? When we are going to mandate that people buy insurance, and subsidize them to do so, after the new system is in place? C'mon now. If the insurance companies have to reduce their profit margins for a few years, I don't think we should be shedding any tears for them.

Democrats have to figure out how to produce real benefits for real people now, not in some future years from now. A new poll out from Democracy Corps nails it: rather than bragging about the signs of progress in the economy when voters don't feel them yet, Democrats need to focus with urgency on jobs, and other tangible benefits voters can see and feel. Trickle-down economics (first get the banks healthy, then eventually everyone will get jobs) and health care reform with benefits kicking in for people in 2014 will make the 2010 elections ugly.

It's time to kill off death wish politics in the Democratic Party.

Digby adds:

I just can't believe it. All along I had been assuming that the one thing everyone agreed upon was that the rescission and denial of insurance based on pre-existing conditions were the things that the Democrats would have to point to as the immediate benefit of all this sturm and drangover health care this year. It's unfathomable to me that they have decided not to do that.

I guess they think they can just babble a bunch of happy talk and nobody will notice that nothing's going to change for anyone for years even as the Republicans demagogue it on a daily basis. What kind of lunacy is that?

I've called this fucking-over-the-base phenomenon "playing prevent defense" and "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", but Lux nails it with "Death Wish Politics."

"Declare Victory and Get Out"

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night:

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

Full transcript here.