The Republican War on the Middle Class: Apparently, living in a house you own and supporting government aid to the uninsured is enough to earn the scorn of right wing tools. Digby is in fine form here:

This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance --- and sure as hell couldn't get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.

They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.

They'd better pray that they stay rich and healthy and live forever because if there is a hell these people are going to be on the express train to the 9th circle the minute they shuffle off their useless mortal coils.

Scum.

Ditto. More here on what may be a nadir in the culture of attack politics.

Let it be said that perhaps the most significant thing Joe Torre did as Yankees' manager for a dozen seasons is the manner in which he altered the public perception of the team, from arrogant, rich symbols of corporate sports into a scrappy, classy collection of athletes. It wasn't easy to root against the Yankees while Torre was their manager. Without doubt, a class act.

Also, he skippered the team to four championships. I guess that's significant, too.

Yeah, I know, tomorrow is the day I reach the number of Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, et al., that is to say, 44. With that comes the bleak notion that in eight years, my life will be half-over. So unhappy....

"Hey Faggot Stupid": A day like any other in Neoconland. I'm sorry, but I read something like this, and the first thing I think about is whether it's author is going to be found to have a "wide stance."

Right from the Start: Kevin Drum points out the obvious flaw to Sen. Obama's campaign strategy of highlighting his opposition to the 2002 Iraq Resolution:

Maybe it's unfair, but being "right" five years ago just doesn't seem to be a winning pitch. In a way, that doesn't surprise me. Most people react negatively to blowhards who are always reminding their friends about how smart they were on some previous occasion, and maybe that's how this sounds to a lot of people. Especially people who themselves might have supported the war back in 2002 and don't really appreciate being reminded about it.

I don't know. I'm just guessing here. But bragging about your good judgment might be a very different thing than bragging about a concrete achievement. On this score, Hillary Clinton's decision to cosponsor legislation preventing military operations against Iran without congressional approval seems pretty smart.

This really goes without saying. It's a frustrating thing for lefty bloggers to have been proven right about going to war in Iraq, only to have the same people whose counsel got us into the mess in the first place remain the "acceptable" voices about what to do now.

But in politics, it's entirely understandable why that should be so. The public backed the President's position the first time around. They have now come to realize they were sold a bill of goods, and they want someone to reverse the policy, but the fact that someone vociferously opposed said policy at the outset doesn't make them any more credible now. If you're a voter, a candidate who tells you that he, like you, supported going to war five years ago, but has now come to see the error of his ways, and that the policy needs to be changed, is simply going to have more influence than the smarty-pants who just wants to say "I told you so."

Your very special musical moment of the day:

Having fooled around for a bit on both MySpace and Facebook, I can say that Toby Young's analysis on the "U v. Non-U" traits of both social networks is dead on:

I’ve been a member of both MySpace and Facebook for at least two years and while MySpace is populated by a vast array of hip, alternative types (disc jockeys, musicians, skateboarders), Facebook users are almost exclusively upper-middle-class professionals and/or their children. It’s the internet equivalent of U and Non-U.

If anything, this divide is even more pronounced in the UK because, as a nation, we’re so class-conscious. The great thing about Facebook is that it offers people an almost limitless number of ways to advertise their superior social standing — something that U-types are particularly keen on in my experience. I don’t simply mean you can post a picture of yourself standing next to a celebrity — though, God knows, we’ve all done that — or even that you can advertise your membership of U-sounding groups, such as ‘I’d rather be hunting’. (There’s even one called ‘I say loo not toilet’.) No, I’m talking about the ‘update your status’ button that enables you to tell all your friends exactly what you’re doing at any given moment. It is this feature, more than anything else, that allows Facebook users to flaunt just how successful they are.

(snip)

For a Facebook user, the ultimate confirmation that you’ve arrived is if someone else tries to impersonate you on the site. I had no idea how widespread this practice was until I applied to become Facebook friends with ‘Harold Pinter’, ‘Daniel Craig’ and ‘Angelina Jolie’ — and they all said yes.*

Personally, I've always found MySpace to be more interesting, and not just for the creative and genuinely hip manner in which spam finds itself to my humble site on a routine basis. Maybe it's just the blogger in me, but I enjoy having a forum to unapolegetically display my inner geek to the universe, and MySpace is perfect for that. Perhaps that's why bands and artists of all types love it so much; being "private" is the opposite of being creative, and exposing yourself (so to speak) to a world outside your circle of friends is liberating.

*Ed.-Also a problem on MySpace; it never ceases to amaze how low a level of celebrity it takes to generate a bogus site.

If there's anything sadder than Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS (which, from the technical aspect of contract law, may not be entirely meritless, particularly if representations were made to Rather about future employment), it's the pathetic defense of the report about George Bush's "service" in the Air National Guard that inexorably led to his ouster at the network. For some lefty bloggers, the bogus documents are what global warming and/or WMD's are to the right, a claim that must never be conceded to the other side, in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary. Truth is always the first casualty of war.

It is true that the documents highlighted on the 2004 60 Minutes II report have never been "proven" to be forgeries. No eyewitness has come forward to claim that they witnessed a third party drafting the letters on a Dell Computer, nor has anyone admitted to having been the forger. The only evidence that exists that the documents were forged is circumstantial. In that respect, saying that the forgery was unproven is like saying O.J.'s guilt in the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman is "unproven." After all, nobody saw him do it, a jury hearing the case in a criminal court acquitted him, and he claims he's still looking for the real killer. The blood of the victims in his car, on his clothing, and at his house is nothing more than the kerning and the raised font of the TANG letters.

Of course, there are still wingnuts on the right who insist that the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" weren't similarly discredited, who insist that the multiple contemporaneous accounts of John Kerry's bravery in Vietnam were less credible than the memories of middle-aged men, warped by partisanship and anger, three decades after the fact. The desire to believe the absolute worst in your enemies is a very human one, and is unaffected by one's opinion on providing universal health coverage or supporting preemptive wars. It is so much easier to stick to one's guns to the bitter end.

But in the end, I prefer the truth. In this case, the truth is that the documents in question were almost certainly forgeries. That doesn't mean that George Bush fully performed the terms of his service to the Air National Guard, or that Robert Bullock, the Kerry for President campaign, or Karl Rove were behind the forgeries, or that everything Dan Rather or Mary Mapes ever reported on is discredited. And it shouldn't have any bearing on whether Rather's lawsuit against his former employer has any merit, since it is based on representations made after the validity of the documents had come into question.

It simply means that the juiciest portion of the infamous broadcast back in the late summer of 2004 was based on fraudulent evidence, evidence that would never have been broadcast had CBS News performed adequate due diligence. These were not counterfeit documents, reproduced copies of genuine letters, "fake but accurate" evidence, like a medieval monk's careful reproduction of an ancient text that he couldn't read. If it is the duty of a progressive to speak truth to power, to be a critic and opponent of injustice, then the tactics of a partisan hack cannot be followed.

Tip for the Track: Always bet on Bodacious Tatas....

Perhaps the most famous boxing TV broadcast in history:



It probably got pushed back in the morning paper, though, since it occurred on the same day the Supreme Court announced the Roe v. Wade decision, the North and South Vietnamese publicly released the terms of a peace treaty temporarily ending the war, and LBJ died.

Figures: Move-On's lame-o ad attacking Gen. Petraueus was plagiarized...from Rush Limbaugh. And as Marc Cooper points out, the entire purpose of the ad was apparently not to raise public awareness, but filthy lucre instead.

UPDATE: And of course one fund-raising scam deserves another [courtesy of TPM]

One Morning at Berchtesgaden:

President Bush and Karl Rove sat listening to Norman Podhoretz for roughly 45 minutes at the White House as the patriarch of neoconservatism argued that the United States should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The meeting was not on the president’s public schedule.

Rove was silent throughout, though he took notes. The president listened diligently, Podhoretz said as he recounted the conversation months later, but he “didn’t tip his hand.”

“I did say to [the president], that people ask: Why are you spending all this time negotiating sanctions? Time is passing. I said, my friend [Robert] Kagan wrote a column which he said you were giving ‘futility its chance.’

And both he and Karl Rove burst out laughing.

“It struck me,” Podhoretz added, “that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, ‘No, no, it’s not futile, there’s a very good chance.’ ”

From The Politico, 9-24-2007.

Losing the War:

It's not often mentioned, but the rest of the world does not evaluate all international interactions from a starting premise that America is right and its motivations pure. We actually have to convince them of that, particularly in the post-Iraq era. And we're failing. We're abetting Ahmadinejad's attempts to project a hugely disingenuous version of himself through our megaphone. Without us, he's in trouble: He's domestically unpopular, and fundamentally without a platform. With our opposition and apparent hatred for Tehran, he's Iran's champion against America, and he's outwitting us in the court of world opinion.

--Ezra Klein

Needless to say, any Presidency that can transform Hugo Chavez from an egocentric nickel-and-dime hustler into an internationally beloved populist shouldn't have any problems making a Holocaust-denying whack job like Ahmadinejad into a world-historic figure. Well played, fellas.

In the middle of another banal attack on "Bush-enabling" Democrat Dianne Feinstein, comes this rather sleazy attack by Glenn Greenwald:

Additionally, Feinstein is a 74-year-old divorced Jewish woman currently on her third husband, and it is thus extremely unlikely that she harbors any hopes of running in the future on a national ticket.

One would think by the thrust of that jab that the senior Senator from California was a political version of Zsa Zsa Gabor, or the Democratic version of Rudy Giuliani. In fact, Feinstein has been married to the same man now for 27 years. Her previous husband was married to her for sixteen years, until he died of colon cancer. The one divorce she had was nearly fifty years ago, hardly the marital record to make Liz Taylor blush.

In any event, it's hard to see why Greenwald is so hysterical about Senator Feinstein, since it's not as if she's ever pretended to be a tribune for the underclass or a champion of progressive values. When she was Mayor of Frisco many years ago, a leftist group tried to recall her at the polls (oddly enough, it was over her support of gun control laws), and it was hard to see much of a difference between the candidates when she challenged Pete Wilson for governor in 1990 (she lost, barely) or Michael Huffington for the Senate (she won that one). She's never campaigned as a liberal, so it should hardly be shocking that she doesn't always vote that way.

Back when rock and roll wasn't a niche music, and was still spoken of in the present tense, this is how performers entertained us:

To no one's surprise, the arbitration panel hearing Floyd Landis' appeal of the drug "testing" that stripped him of the official designation as 2006 Tour de France champion upheld the ruling today, by a 2-1 margin.

Reading between the lines of the ruling, it's clear the panelists were deeply uncomfortable with the standards of evidence in use by the French lab, even agreeing with the cycling champ that the initial positive test that Landis "failed" was not credible. The whole ruling reads like one of those Rehnquist Court decisions upholding the death penalty, even though the defendant can be shown to be innocent, the police had planted evidence, etc., on the grounds that said evidence was never argued before the trial court. And the controversy concerning Greg LaMond and the crank phone call, which was the highlight of the prosecution's case-in-chief, received the minimal consideration that it deserved.

Anyways, kudos to Landis for fighting the good fight, and to Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times for exposing the whole sordid business of the drug testing racket to the light of day. This may well turn out to be the opening salvo in a much larger war, like the Curt Flood case, that the athletes shall win in the long run.

More on the Belichick Tapes, here. There's no doubt the $500,000 fine was deserved after this story.

With the filibuster being the GOP weapon of choice in the Senate, this is probably a good time to put its abolition on the agenda for the next Congress. On paper, it shouldn't be difficult, since a bare majority of the Senate votes on its rules before it ever convenes, and the filibuster has traditionally been a conservatising influence on legislation. I know there are some with sugar-plum fantasies that the Democrats will pick up 6+ seats in 2008, even nine seats if Republicans continue to remain satisfied with the bang-up job their doing in Iraq, but more likely there still won't be enough votes to overcome Republican obstructionism when the issue is, say, healthcare or getting a progressive judiciary confirmed. We have to start thinking about what our agenda is going to be in post-Bush era on the morrow, and not just pretend that getting more Democrats elected is the End Game.

Now here's a worthy netroots target for 2008: Max Baucus. As the New Republic blogs over his decision to deny Congressional representation to the voters of D.C.:

(Baucus') explanation for his vote against DC receiving a vote in the House of Representatives (with Utah receiving one as well to maintain presumed partisan balance), is really one for the ages:

Baucus said in a written statement that he opposed the bill because Montana has only one House vote. "If we were to expand the House, Montana's voice would become less influential," he said.

Now, my back-of-the-envelope calculation--and I hope readers will feel free to correct it if it's wrong--finds that Montana's single House vote currently makes up 0.2299 percent of the total House vote. If the House were expanded from 435 members to 437, Montana's share would drop to 0.2288 percent. Yes, Baucus felt obligated to vote against any federal representation for residents of the District of Columbia, because it would reduce the relative clout of his states' residents (in the House only, the Senate would be unaffected) by one-thousandth of one percent.

Contrary to popular netroots mythology, Montana is not that red a state, and has not even historically been a particularly red state. All but two of the Senators it has elected in its history have been Democrats, it voted for Clinton in 1992 (and almost went for Dukakis in 1988), and routinely has been the most liberal of the Rocky Mountain states, although Colorado has probably passed it for that distinction in recent years. Tester and Schweitzer have shown that a progressive Democrat can win there today, so there's no need for the rest of us to assume that Baucus is the best we can get out of Big Sky.* [link via Matt Yglesias)

*Baucus has always been a Luxury Box Democrat, dating back to his first election to the Senate, when he defeated an incumbent, Paul Hatfield, over his support for the Panama Canal Treaty the previous year.

Angry Young Man: The guy who got tasered at the John Kerry Q&A the other day was, how should I gently put this, a blogger-in-training.

Shorter Roger L. Simon:

O.J. Made Me Want to Nuke Iran.

And of course, props to Mr. Beard for perfecting the format. When I have more time, I'll post about how the assasination and funeral of Princess Diana ("How Dodi Changed My Life") shaped my political ideology.

One area where Atrios has been consistently prescient is the emerging housing bubble, and what should be done about it. Here, he links to a dialogue about a potential legislative fix to the 1978 bankruptcy law, which was drafted long before adjustable rate mortgages became de rigueur among homeowners, that's well worth reading. My understanding is that it concerns the power of the bankruptcy court to modify loans in the Chapter 13 context, but I suppose Congress could also extend the practice to Chapter 7 cases as well, provided the debtor is current on the mortgage at the time of filing. The 2005 BARF act made the practice more difficult as well, so that law will need to be revisited as well if Congress really hopes to make a dent in the problem.

Lacks the fuzz guitar that made the original recording so priceless, but still a gem from the mid-60's:

Hearing this song over and over, in a continuous hellish loop, has given me about four hours sleep the past two nights, so why not share the burden with my readers:



Sweet dreams !!!

Turns out the "Presidential Election Reform Act" (ie., the Calif. Political Consultant Full-Employment Act of 2008) that may be on the June ballot in California has another flaw, besides the fact that it would eviscerate the state's national influence in Presidential elections: it's blatantly unconstitutional. Turns out that Article I of the Constitution gives exclusive power to determine the appointment of electors to the state legislature, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly viewed as absolute (most recently, in an obscure 2000 case called Bush v. Gore).

Two things to like about Hugh Hewitt: He's a Browns fan, and he wrote this post. Prof. Chemerinsky was easily my favorite professor at USC, and his warm, student-friendly teaching style is a principal reason I didn't quit law school. He made every student in his first-year Con Law class believe what he was teaching was the most important class they were taking, and his popularity cut across ideological lines. Here's hoping the UC Board of Regents reconsiders its dunderhead decision to unhire the King of Really Bad Puns.

9/11 Changed Nothin': Roger Ailes is right. We're going to keep living this nightmare over and over, like Groundhog Day, until the Lord (or Shaq) returns.

Complete with Go-Go Dancers !!!

The Greatest Guitar Solo Ever, according to the Times of London:

Z

From "The Jonathan Winters Show," 1967. As I get older, I'm starting to find the contributions of his bandmates, esp. Mr. Krieger, to be of more interest than those of the Lizard King.

Rats. They announced the Creative Arts section of the Emmy Awards tonight, and my sister (and her colleagues) got robbed. As if it were that hard to recreate ancient Rome on a soundstage....

It's fair to ask whether the BBC will next be censoring programs about the Holocaust under the guist of its "Impartiality" doctrine.

Signifying nothing: From a blogger named Matt Stoller:

Also, while I'm doing a bit of ranting, stupid articles on what the 'netroots' does or does not do, such as this one or this one, to take but two examples, that ignore the fact that no top-tier Democrat differs from Clinton on Iraq, are really really stupid. They are much stupider than articles (like this one by Art Levine or this one by the usually-very-good Kevin Drum) that just whine inaccurately* about what 'the blogosphere' should have done as if the blogosphere is some top-down organization with centralized management that controls the Democratic party leadership rather than a network of people with somewhat highly trafficked websites held in mild disdain by most Democrats on the Hill with any decision-making authority or useful information. Although to be fair to the previous two really stupid articles, the latter two stupid articles were pretty stupid.

Huh? Well, feel free to rant away, Mr. Stoller, but it wouldn't hurt to get a f**king clue. Lefty bloggers are great at raising money for causes, for garnering attention to worthy causes, and for publicizing dark horse challengers, but on a tactical level, they have all the sense of a cage of spastic ferrets being harassed by a deranged hive of wasps. Bloggers can get a Ned Lamont nominated, but actually electing him, or avoiding doing really airheadish things that rile up the opposition, is another thing entirely.

Stoller's notion that blogs doesn't have "top-down" organizational control is technically correct (for one thing, traffic-wise, political writing is a relatively insignificant part of the blogosphere), but it still obscures the very negative role the Queen Beez play in determining what the agenda is for the rest of the non-MSM. If anything, it's "pretty stupid" for Stoller to pretend that within the lefty blogosphere, there aren't about a dozen bloggers who link almost exclusively to each other, who generate 99% of the press coverage, and thereby set the agenda for the rest of us.

Like it or not, that exclusivity can be a strength, since it keeps us on message and magnifies our influence, but it also backfires on occasion, as Mr. Drum points out in the post referenced above. Depending on the season, we are told by the Queen Beez that we have to elect more Democrats to Congress, no matter what position they take, or we are told that we have to purge the "Bush Dog" Demos at the first chance, or we just sit back and make snarky quips about "Friedman Units" and post photoshopped pics of Joe Lieberman. With that sort of de facto leadership, it's no wonder we feel like we get snookered at every turn.

*BTW, how does anyone "whine inaccurately" about anything? "Whining" connotes an undignified, childish complaint; it's not a verb that can be properly modified by an adverb relating to the accuracy of the complaint, since whether the whine is true or not is irrelevant. In any event, if you are going to complain about the whining of others, it would be best not to adopt such a prissy, petulant tone.

Later turned into a very boring cover by Jimi Hendrix, this has all the spirit that the drug-ladled Hendrix version lacked:



It was their only hit, though....

Turns out all the U.S. needed to reclaim the top spot in world hoops was a dose of Kobe...of course, it also helps that LaBron and Carmelo aren't rookies anymore, either. Surround Bryant with some talent, and you've got a team with mucho swagger. Let's face it, A.I. and Duncan are both talented players, but by themselves, they don't put the fear of god into anyone, especially not at the international level. Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, sends a signal to the rest of the world that the real battle is for silver.

Rape, or whatever...: A talmudic discussion of whether there can be rape without a victim "harmed" by the attack, here. Ezra Klein raises a strange analogy, likening the woman who doesn't feel "terribly traumatized" after a "non-consensual sexual act" to a "bookish type" who doesn't miss the TV set that was burgled from his studio apartment; in Klein's view, the perpetrator of the first act is as much a "rapist" as the second is a "thief." By the same token, if I get slapped in the face, but I'm not hurt, the slapper has committed "battery" just the same as if I had been punched in the jaw.

But since rape, like burglary, is a crime, not merely a verb describing a particular bad act, how the victim feels afterwards makes all the difference in the world. In prosecuting crimes, the DA's office will only proceed if there is a sense that harm has been imposed on a victim, for obvious reasons: it's next to impossible to convince a jury to deprive someone of his liberty unless they feel he's wronged someone in an egregious manner. With rape prosecutions, having a traumatized victim is even more important, since the element of consent is not all that easy to prove, especially since eyewitnesses are not likely going to be available to decide the issue. And having a victim who feels like she's been wronged is always handy when you're proceeding to trial; the last thing a DA wants is to have the supposed victim appear before the jury as a reluctant, unsympathetic, or even hostile, witness.

If all you want, though, is to decriminalize "rape," to turn what has been viewed for millenia as one of the worst crimes people can inflict on each other, into a mere insult, like calling someone a "thief," then by all means, parse away.

Another entry from the gutsy journalistic tradition that is the N.Y. Post:

'It's hard. He's such a wonderful person,' one source said. 'He's such a great guy and so smart and just . . . nice. We're just hoping he gets better.'

"He", of course, being Owen Wilson, the "tow-haired, Tinsel Town hunk" who is recuperating from a recent suicide attempt. Why Murdoch's flagship paper is granting anonymity to a source for expressing the courageous thought that The Wedding Crashers star not succumb to his demons should be obvious; the last thing any entertainment reporter wants is to be cut out of the loop by the P.R. flacks who write most of the stories about the "Industry." [link via Kausfiles, which inexplicably thinks the LA Times should be as similarly hard-hitting]

The Little Boys Room: Another GOP Senator busted.

Becoming a Man: Like many of you, I saw the live press conference by the former Atlanta Falcon quarterback this morning, and I was particularly moved by this quote:

I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts and, you know, what I did was, what I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up.

I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Michael Vick the person, not the football player.

Although some people may live their entire lives on the straight and narrow, the callow rebellious youth who emerges from a life of selfishness and vice into later greatness is a common one. It is a story that is as old as Alexander the Great and St. Augustine, and on through to Prince Hal, Winston Churchill, and the great man who currently holds supreme power in this country. Many of us can attest to what the Leader of the Free World admitted during his first Presidential campaign, that when we were young and irresponsible, we were young and irresponsible.

In the fullness of time, with the wisdom that accrues from age and experience, we can look back at the folly of our youth, whether it be the all-night carousing with our friends, the snort or puff of an illegal narcotic, or the rape stand we tie a defenseless animal to for breeding purposes. Just as I cringe at some of the things I used to pull in my adolescence, from crank yanking girls who didn't want to go out with me to T.P.'ing a neighbor's house, Vick will no doubt roll his eyes at the silliness of some his exploits with the Fallstaffs of his life, such as electrocuting and shooting the also-rans at "the Kennel," or injecting dogs with performance-enhancing drugs to accentuate their killing abilities.

This whole thing is just a learning experience, one that a more mature Michael Vick can use when he returns to action next season.

This place was not constructed to keep something out... To answer Pam Spaulding's question, this film, which besides some hilariously pretentious dialogue, also contains the most comical sex scene in screen history. I even remember the date I saw it: January 2, 1984. Together with my pals Jim Christianson and Greg Sapinsley, the three of us ventured to Westwood to see the early evening showing, thereby missing the second half of the Orange Bowl, and afterwards engaged in the sort of giggling more common among people who've imbibed a substantial amount of weed. I still cannot believe the director was able to survive that fiasco.

The Unfiltered Views of a Neo-Conman:

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation's powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.

(snip)

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

--Phillip Atkinson, a contributing editor for the Center for Security Policy, a conservative "think-tank" that includes, among others, former CIA chief James Woolsey, Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley, and Frank Gaffney. The piece was subsequently scrubbed from the think-tank's website, although, as Digby points out, they can't say they weren't warned about this guy's extreme opinions concerning other subjects.

Ecce Angeleno: A terrific slice o' life story out of East L.A., in this morning's local paper, about the last Japanese restaurant in Boyle Heights.

Butch van Breda Kolff, R.I.P.: The coach and mastermind behind perhaps the darkest moment in Los Angeles Laker history has died at the age of 84. Coaching the Lakers to two NBA Finals appearances in the late-60's, van Breda Kolff was always remembered for allowing his dislike of Wilt Chamberlain interfere with the Lakers' bid to win the 1969 championship.

In brief, the Lakers had lost to the Boston Celtics in five of the previous seven NBA Finals, and had not yet won a title in Los Angeles. With the teams splitting the first six games by winning on their home courts, the aging Celtics came out fired up in the 7th and deciding game of the 1969 Finals, which for the first time was being played in Los Angeles, and took a commanding lead late in the game. At one point losing in the fourth quarter by 17 points, the Lakers had cut the lead in half with less than six minutes to play, when Chamberlain dislocated his knee while rebounding a ball at the defensive end. Trying gamely to play, the Laker center finally limped off the court with 5:15 to play, and van Breda Kolff moved back-up forward Mel Counts into the center position in place of Chamberlain.

Over the next few minutes, Counts played well; it also helped that his Celtics' counterpart, Bill Russell, had five fouls. The Lakers cut the lead to a point, with Counts hitting two free throws and an outside jumber, with just under three minutes to play. Insofar as Chamberlain couldn't hit free throws to save his life, had no outside shot to speak of, and also had five fouls, Counts gave the Lakers a dimension during that rally that they normally didn't have. The Celtics, aging and in foul trouble, seemed spent.

What happened next is the stuff of nightmares to Laker fans, and still enables Celtic boosters to wake up each morning with some serious wood. With under three minutes to play, the Lakers had three straight chances to take the lead, all of which came to naught; Elgin Baylor put up a wild shot, then Jerry West and Keith Erickson had turnovers on consecutive possessions. On each possession, the Lakers' offense was curtailed by the lack of a dominating inside presence. Finally, with just over a minute to play, Don Nelson put up a desperation shot over an outstretched West, which bounced high off the back iron and into the basket, giving Boston a three-point lead. At the other end, Counts got the ball underneath the basket on the next Laker possession, only to have the ball stripped by Russell. After two more free throws, the Celtics lead grew to five points with less than a minute to play, and would eventually reach eight points. In all, the Lakers went six consecutive possessions between points in the final three minutes.

At some murky point during this sequence of events, Chamberlain had either miraculously recovered from his injury, or had decided to suck it up and play, but in any event had informed his coach that he was ready to go back in. van Breda Kolff, who hadn't gotten along with Chamberlain during the season, exercised the same coach's discretion that would get him fired soon afterwards, and told the greatest player in basketball history to sit down, as Counts was playing well in his absence. The Lakers got no closer than two points the rest of the way, and lost for the sixth time in eight years to their hated rival, 108-106.

In none of the accounts that I have seen does it identify when Chamberlain announced he was ready to go back in. Certainly, the Lakers played well for several minutes after Wilt went to the bench, but on their three possessions where they failed to take the lead, the Celtics had clearly adjusted to Counts' presence on the outside. Even with a crippled Chamberlain, the Lakers could have used him to bottle up the Celtics front court, setting up West, Tommy Hawkins or even Counts to have open shots from the outside.

What's even harder to excuse if you're a Lakers fan is that van Breda Kolff didn't see fit to reinsert Chamberlain in the final minute, when his play under the basket might have sparked a last-ditch comeback. The three-point shot was still a decade in the future, so having a good perimeter player stroking from twenty-three feet out wasn't going to make the game any closer than having Wilt put in a finger roll. Even if the Celtics had held on to win, you still want to have the players out on the court that give you the best chance, and even if putting in Wilt would have been tantamount to a Hail Mary pass, at least the fans and players would feel like the team gave it their best shot. Not bringing Wilt back into the game when he asked to go back in, even during desperation time, was clueless.

After Nelson's shot, the Lakers needed their own miracle, and Counts was clearly not going to do it. van Breda Kolff's stubbornness may not have cost the team a title in '69, any more than Bill Buckner's error necessarily cost the Red Sox the '86 World Series, but it had the same impact on the long-suffering fans of the team. He was a very good coach, and he certainly deserved to be remembered for the overachieving teams he coached at the college level (including a Princeton team that made the Final Four in 1965), so it's sad he'll be remembered for a couple of minutes when he wasn't a good coach.

I never knew a man who had better motives...: I suppose next he'll be quoting Richard III....

Atrios somewhat reticently links to this post, which posits that the changes incurred by the 2005 BARF legislation are somehow related to the high rate of foreclosures we're currently seeing. Under the old law, the hypothesis goes, the generous terms by which someone could file Chapter 7 allowed many a homeowner to save his home, receiving a breathing space in which he could stop the forced sale of his property and come current on his mortgage. As someone who loathes the BARF, and who has repeatedly spelled out some of its egregious after-effects, as well as many of its unintended consequences, such as the devastation to the credit card industry caused by the mere passage of the law, it is a tempting position, but one that I just don't buy.

You see, in American bankruptcy law, there are two avenues available for most consumers, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Choosing either avenue imposes a court order, called a stay, that stops all debt collection activity, including foreclosures and civil lawsuits. In Chapter 7 cases, the consumer files his paperwork listing his assets and debts, as well as his monthly income and expenses, and more than 9 out of 10 times, the court-appointed Trustee will determine, after a public meeting to which creditors are invited, that the debtor has no assets to liquidate. Thereafter, the consumer receives a discharge, forgiving his unsecured debts; the whole process usually takes four months, tops, although the courts in L.A. are still dealing from the huge backlog of cases resulting from YBK in October, 2005.

However, a Chapter 7 does little to protect the consumer from the Big Bad Wolf trying to foreclose, either now or in the golden, pre-BARF era that was so friendly to consumers. The automatic stay provides a temporary reprieve, but secured creditors like mortgage lenders have always been able to take advantage of a remedy under the law, the Motion for Relief. That motion gives the lender the ability to go before the court and ask that the automatic stay be lifted so that foreclosure proceedings (or evictions) may continue.

Filing such motions is what I used to do for a living, and unless the property involved had a huge equity cushion (exceedingly rare in Chapter 7 cases, since the debtor would presumably borrow off the equity first to pay his debts), I always won. In fact, I was expected to have an order signed by the judge and in my client's hands within six weeks of the case being filed; if it was a repeat filer, I would seek an order for the matter to be heard ex parte, so it wasn't unusual for the client to be able to resume the foreclosure process within three weeks of the filing. And that was under the old law.

Both before and after 2005, homeowners who wanted to stop foreclosures and save their homes filed Chapter 13 bankruptcies. The Chapter 13 case is the preferred option of the authors of the new law, in that it imposes a repayment plan, usually over five years, on the debtor. Since the mortgage lender receives payment on its arrearages over the lifetime of the plan, it is protected, and the court won't grant relief from stay allowing it to pursue the foreclosure.

The problem with the new law is that it imposes additional costs on many debtors, particularly non-homeowners, who make above the median average income in their state. It doesn't impede homeowners from saving their investment through the bankruptcy courts, any more than the old law did. And the old law certainly didn't give a serious breathing spell to those homeowners who filed a Chapter 7 to stop a foreclosure. Joe Biden can be blamed for a lot of things, but not the high foreclosure rate.

Is there a genocidal regime or dictator that the ADL won't appease? [link via The Plank]

UPDATE [8/22]: I figured the ADL wasn't going to get away with playing David Irving on the Armenian genocide. Good that they switched course, even though "tantamount to genocide" sounds almost euphemistic, like "almost murder." The ADL long ago forfeited any right to be a gatekeeper for the term.

Can a statement by a press flack that it is a policy never to comment on a particular issue the same thing as "declining to comment" on same? Kevin Roderick explores the philological ramifications.

Tilting at Strawmen: Has anyone argued that bloggers will inevitably replace investigative journalists? Or that bloggers can typically do the same sort of reporting as newspaper reporters? Of course not, so what was the point of this op-ed?

A follow-up on OffermanGate. The Atlantic League, perhaps having reviewed the incident more closely than the national media has, decided to maintain the suspension of Jose Offerman until after the criminal charges against him are resolved. No life ban, not even a season-long suspension. A good article placing the incident in context can be found here.

Electoral College Reform: I think Kaus is right that the proposed initiative to divvy up California's electoral votes is much ado about nothing, but I would like to address the unstated assumption that this sort of thing would be fair and appropriate if done nationwide, as opposed to targeting specific states. The biggest problem with the Electoral College is the imbalance in favor of low-population states, like the Dakotas or Wyoming, which enable the voters in those states to have a disproportionate say in the outcome of the election. The other big problem, which partially counterbalances the first, is that a candidate wins all of the electoral votes in a state, no matter how close his margin of victory.

The proposed "reform" on the June ballot cures the second problem, but exacerbates the first. Kaus correctly points out that gerrymandering has made most House seats non-competitive; in California, the lines were drawn pursuant to a gentlemen's agreement in 2001 to protect both parties' incumbents, freezing into place a significant partisan advantage for the Democrats incurred from the previous redistricting, which was done by a panel of judges. At the time, the Democrats thought they were preserving their party's advantage into the future, not believing that it could be conceivable that they would be able to expand their advantage.

As it turns out, the post-Prop. 187 shift toward the Democrats in California was only just beginning in 2000. Only the incumbent-friendly lines drawn in 2001 have kept the Republican Party from disappearing into marginalization in the Golden State. Thus, the lines in California favor the GOP more than their actual strength would merit, and in a Presidential election, it would take a landslide of historic proportions to give the Democrats more than a fifteen-seat edge in the Electoral College under the proposed reform.

But in a state like Florida or Ohio, where the lines were rejiggered to maximize the dominance of one party, even a close election could result in a lopsided electoral count. It is almost certain that the GOP would win a majority of electors in a close election in Florida, even if Hillary or Barack were to win the state, simply because of how the House districts were drawn last time to favor that party.* It is certainly conceivable that a similar scenario could happen in Ohio, a state where a number of troubled incumbent House members were able to win reelection in 2006 in spite of the toxic political situation for Republicans in that state.

In any event, reducing the influence of the large states by dividing up their electoral votes only increases the power of smaller, more homogenous states. That doesn't seem like much of a reform to me.

*The GOP has a 16-9 edge in the state delegation, in spite of it being the state that perhaps best exemplifies the even divisions in the country following the 2000 election.

Now here's a good way for hitters to reclaim the inside part of the plate. My all-time favorite ballplayer, Jose Offerman, went after a battery with a baseball bat after being hit by a pitch in a minor league baseball game last night. For this act of self-defense, he spent the night in jail. Both pitcher and catcher were recuperating.

I know there's a "code" that tolerates "throwing inside" to a batter, but I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often. Having a 100-mph pitch deliberately thrown at your skull may seem to the outsider as a pitcher's prerogative, but to someone in the heat of battle, that's assault and battery. At least one player, Ray Chapman in 1920, has died because he didn't get out of the way fast enough from a pitch aimed at his head, and two other famous players, Mickey Cochrane and Tony Conigliaro, sustained injuries that led inexorably to their deaths years later. Charging the mound with nothing but your fists seems a disproportionately weak response.

But a baseball bat expands the arms race exponentially. Hall-of-Famer Juan Marichal once pounded in the skull of LA Dodger John Roseboro because he thought the catcher had thrown a return pitch to the mound a little too close to his ear. He got off rather easy, with a short suspension and a fine, but the public outcry was so great that a player who was arguably the best pitcher of the 1960's was kept out of Cooperstown for a few years because of the incident. Offerman can expect no such mercy from the predominantly white media or from organized baseball. Expect the home run he hit in his previous at bat to be his last.

UPDATE (8/17): Here's a real time slide show video of the attack. It's not even close to the Marichal attack; Offerman appears to take one aborted swing, connecting with both catcher (who's rushing him from behind) and pitcher, but it looks from the video that he went out hoping to scare the pitcher, and the fact that he only used one hand testifies to his lack of deadly intention. Still, if you point a loaded pistol at someone, you pay the consequences if it goes off.

Flap your wings, Junior Orwells: Ron Rosenbaum asks whether this Stanley Fish op-ed, on the travails of going to Starbucks vis a vis a traditional coffee shop, is the "worst op-ed ever written?" Maybe, but I would guess that honor should be reserved for one of those cheerleading liberal hawk op-eds, circa 2002-3 (like this one), that compared Saddam, Osama, or fill-in-the-blank Islamist up-to-no-gooder with Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany or whatever, which directly led to the ongoing Iraq disaster. Millions of people aren't going to die because Prof. Fish has an aversion to cafe au lait.

Mickey Kaus points to this ugly attack on Mike Huckabee; it's a good indication of why he can never be the Republican nominee. He will never appeal strongly enough to the racist base of the party.

It's safe to say the investigation of L.A.'s Mayor has gone stone cold, if this is any indication. [link via Luke Ford]

Bush's Brain Quits: I'm most unimpressed with the legacy of Karl Rove. His brilliant decision in 2000 to have Bush campaign in New Jersey and California, and not campaign on weekends, at the tail end of that election was meant to show that his boy was confident and coasting, and it was based on polling that showed Bush with a double-digit lead. Bush lost, and would have been a forgotten footnote were it not for the machinations of the Supreme Court. In the wake of 9/11 and a quick "victory" in Iraq, it shouldn't have been difficult to reelect his client, especially with a liberal Massachusetts Democrat as his opponent, but Bush almost lost that race as well. Considering that since 1952, electing Republicans as President has been the default choice of the electorate, it's hard to be impressed with his legacy.

Moreover, the Republican Party under his watch is now the weakest it has been since Watergate. The party is hemorhaging seats in Congress and at the state level, largely because of Rove's deliberate tactic of playing to the base, which has become increasingly extreme (and irrelevant). A major, potentially enormous political realignment has begun that will favor Democrats for perhaps a generation, much of it the result of the shortsighted, dunderheaded tactics of the man the President nicknamed "Turdblossom." As long as Americans study politics, they will note the hubris shown by the man who predicted a Republican victory in the 2006 election with the line "I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally...You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math." Right now, "THE math" shows Republican minorities in both houses of Congress, and no Republican presidential candidate beating Hillary Clinton.

And of course, his role in outing Valerie Plame made his very existence within the Bush White House toxic. The Plame Affair generated enormous heat within the blogosphere, with lefty bloggers suddenly appreciating the sanctity of preserving CIA secrecy, and righties obsessed with irrelevant tangents about Amb. Wilson's bona fides. But to the public, the real scandal was the cold-blooded manner with which the Bush Administration attempted to deal with a critic, potentially putting a covert agent's life (as well as the lives of the assets she dealt with) at risk. Rove's involvement in the outing of Ms. Wilson effectively proved that the action had met with the approval of the President, and further plunged his client's approval ratings into the Nixonian toilet.

Perhaps Josh Marshall has it right when he speculates, "[W]ith the recent news of cutbacks on funding of human intelligence in the intel budget, there's the possibility that there were no more CIA agents whose cover could be blown and he decided to move on to greener pastures."

UPDATE: Kevin Drum agrees, and passes along a devastating anecdote about the Bush-Rove team at work.

For the first time in nearly two years, I ventured into a cinema. The movie that lured me out of my cockoon was Michael Moore's latest attack on the American Way of Life, SiCKO. It is, without a doubt, his best work to date, and having found that Moore's docs don't work as well on the small screen as they do in front of a live audience, I'm glad I spent the twelve bucks to see the matinee showing in Pasadena. When his critics are left to debating whether the U.S. has a better health care system than Cuba, or that our relatively high infant mortality rate or low life expectancy aren't necessarily the most important factors, you can tell he has the best of the argument.

But I have a personal reason for backing Moore on this one. I just saw my late grandmother's hospital bill for a five-day stay after she fell in May. The extent of her treatment was to stitch up her face, and to give her liquids for dehydration. Neither the doctors nor the staff diagnosed that she had suffered a stroke; that was only determined after they sent her home, and we had to take her to a real hospital, Providence-St. Joseph's.

For the ludicrously small amount of treatment and attention she received, she was billed $45,000.

Nice Tie: Markos Moulitsas gets some props from an unlikely source in the blogosphere....

Random Thoughts concerning sexism in the lefty blogosphere:

1. By and large, political bloggers generate 90% of the publicity, but get only 10% of the traffic, in the blogosphere.

2. There is no female blogger, or female-centered blog, on the left that has anywhere near the traffic or the influence of Michelle Malkin, who has two sites in the Technorati 100. Arianna Huffington's blog may be bigger, but the fact that she lends her name to a site does not change the male-dominated world of the lefty blogosphere.

3. Much of the success of the lefty blogosphere in the last election cycle stems from the fact that it was an excellent tool for fundraising, organizing, and publicizing. When the entire government is run by the other side, and the Fourth Estate seems little more than a mouthpiece for the organs of power, an angry, fighting populism is the most effective way to rally the opposition. Bloggers who have the testosterone flowing are more likely going to get traffic and influence debate than bloggers who are more studious and calm in their approach.

4. That sort of attitude occurs more naturally in men than it does in women. Female anger manifests itself in a different way than male anger does; when female bloggers attempt to ape the style of an Atrios or a Kos, they tend to badly misfire, as the John Edwards campaign learned to its regret a few months back. To quote Garance Franke-Ruta, "[I]f you're an angry man you're righteous. If you're an angry woman, you're crazy or a bitch." When the Democrats take over after the 2008 election, that sort of testosterone-laden anger won't be as pivotal, and female bloggers on the left will gain more influence and relevance.

5. While there are a few female bloggers who are ensconced among the Queen Beez of the lefty blogosphere, their influence and importance tend to be a fraction of their patrons at Daily Kos, MyDD or TPM (which, contrary to what Jane Hamsher says, is a blog, and not a direct rival of CNN). Little Green Firedogs, Feministing and Pandagon are popular sites, but tend to be more in the nature of novelty acts than blogs which set the agenda (Ned Lamont got his ass kicked, remember, and Kobe Bryant and the Duke Lacrosse players were ultimately freed).

6. Digby has the best political blog, right or left, in the blogosphere. TalkLeft is the best issue-oriented blog. Period. Neither site is run by a man. There are plenty of good blogs out there that are written by women, even good political blogs. But it's pointless to pretend that the lefty blogosphere isn't afflicted by the same problems as the rest of society, no more than major league baseball or the performing arts, to name two predominantly white, male institutions, are.

What we all need when we're down:

Like the Laffer Curve and the West Coast Offense, it was originated on a cocktail napkin !!

Headline of the Day: Of interest to polished pols and those who work the pole....

This isn't exactly the Birth of Metal. Something was lost between Idea and Execution:

Tillman's Legacy: I haven't bothered to weigh in on the ongoing feud between certain right wing bloggers and the New Republic, since it was hard to know who to root for, but Josh Marshall hits it right on the head:

Beauchamp makes his charges. The US Army allegedly investigates and finds the highly embarrassing charges to be false. But no information will be released about which of his charges were false, how they were false or how they were determined to be false.

They then punish Beauchamp by preventing him from having any communication with the civilian world. And if that's not enough, an unnamed military source tells the Standard that Beauchamp has undergone a successful self-criticism session and has recanted everything. But an Army spokesman tells TNR that he's not aware of any confession or recantation.

We can at least be thankful that the matter is being handled with such transparency.

Maybe Beauchamp was always a teller of tales. He wouldn't be the first nor even the first to have wormed his way into the pages of The New Republic. But it's hard not to have some suspicion that the Army has put itself in charge of investigating charges which, if true, would be deeply embarrassing to the Army; that it has provided itself a full exoneration through an investigation, the details of which it will not divulge; and it has chosen to use as its exclusive conduit for disseminating information about the case, The Weekly Standard, a publication which can at best be described as a charged partisan in the public controversy about the case.

This hardly inspires much confidence.

Like the Tillman Affair, we made need a Congressional investigation to figure out who's telling the truth. Considering that the Weekly Standard's principal source has been a former gay prostitute, a fact which they failed to disclose, I'm betting on TNR.

To no one's surprise, the TV station that employs the "reporter" who's been sleeping with the Mayor has seen its ratings skyrocket. When you consider that Srta. Salinas had already been taken off the air, it cannot be said that Telemundo's credibility has been harmed among the only group that matters: the viewers. [link via HuffPost]

This is the sort of legal cause people that inspires people like myself to go to law school....

Prof. Kleiman examines the current fallout from the collapse of the real estate market, and states a rather obvious point, which is that Congress should revisit the 2005 BARF legislation to make it easier for delinquent homeowners to obtain bankruptcy relief. The first place to start would be to modify or annul 11 U.S.C. §1328(f), which forbids filers from obtaining a Chapter 13 discharge if they had received a Chapter 7 discharge in the previous four years (a so-called "Chapter 20"), or another Chapter 13 discharge within the previous two years. Or at least that's what it appears to say; the whole measure seems to have been drafted by the Regent U. Law School after a weekend kegger, and the courts have pretty much thrown their hands into the air trying to figure it out.

Chapter 13s are the preferred alternative for debtors who wish to keep their homes, while paying off the arrearage every month over a 3-5 year period. The standard bankruptcy, under Chapter 7, is geared toward protecting those who are current on secured loans (like houses and cars) but delinquent on unsecured debts (ie., credit cards). Section 1328(f) was designed to thwart those who had defaulted on everything except their mortgage from obtaining bankruptcy relief; a family with high medical debts or huge arrearages on their credit cards could no longer give priority to keeping their home over their unsecured debts, then filing again if their financial difficulties continued to the point that they fell behind on their home. With foreclosures spinning out of control, Congress will have to do something to save the mortgage industry, and the draconian features of the BARF legislation aren't helping.

Three reasons why the attempt by GOP attorneys to redistribute California's electoral votes from a winner-take-all system to one based on the capture of Congressional districts is overblown:

1. The 2008 Presidential election will not, in all likelihood, be that close. The last ten Democratic wins (going back to Wilson) did not require all of California's votes to reach 270; in fact, two of the winners (JFK and Carter) didn't even win California. Close national elections tend to be the exception, 2000 and 2004 aside, rather than the rule, and the massive unpopularity of the President and the Republican brand indicate that the country will see a Democratic landslide next year. As in 1992 and 1996, expect to see the networks call the election for Hillary or Barack before the polls close in California.

2. Passage of the initiative in California in June, 2008 will probably lead to a flood of other initiatives in Republican-leaning states to impose the same law before the November elections. Losses incurred in the Golden State can easily be made up by passing the same law in Texas or Florida. If the Democrats continue to control the nation's state legislatures after 2010, expect to see similar laws get enacted everywhere, along with some intricately gerrymandered districts drawn with an eye to 2012.

3. The Democrats will have to spend money to defeat such an initiative, if it manages to reach the ballot. That's good, especially for Democrats. Any initiative that faces any sort of progressive opposition is usually doomed to fail, and anything that sparks partisan interest by the Democratic Party will lead to more voters being registered and more activity to spur political interest. A higher turnout will mean more voters in November, and possibly a pick-up of several Congressional seats.

Making It: This is what happens when one loses the Lean and Hungry Look. A scene from YearlyKos:

Not that anyone didn't know this already on some level, but it really was striking to get the visual of yesterday's gate crashers quite literally mingling with the dread establishment at a cocktail party. The question that nobody seems to know the answer to, though, is whether the revolution ended because the revolutionaries won, or because they sold out? The boring, but probably boring-because-accurate, answer is that it's a little of both.

Won what, exactly?

Now is the winter of our discontent, baby:

It's not just the U.S. that's seeing its housing market crater. Home foreclosures are up 30% in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC.

What does not destroy me...: The Villaraigosa-Salinas story dies with a whimper. She is now the most well-known reporter in the city, and is clearly headed for bigger things than Spanish-language TV. And the Mayor can now sweep this scandal into the ether, and carry on as before.

It's easy to see why Hillary hates Obama. Indeed, it's easy to see why the lefty blogosphere seems to hold him with such contempt. There is a fearlessness about Barack Obama, an unwillingness to fellate the Establishment, whether it be the party base or the Queen Beez who are meeting in Chicago this weekend, that reminds progressives of the last Democratic President. Clinton, remember, was from the conservative wing of the party, and signed a bill that all but ended welfare, and supported a free trade agreement that was a valentine to the wealthy, and maintained a balanced budget. His health care plan, which was one of his few liberal maneuvers in office, failed spectacularly.

And yet progressives loved him every step of the way, while conservative Democrats never trusted him, never had his back, and always acted the role of a Fifth Column. We knew that when the chips were down, Clinton was on our side, precisely because he would fight hard for the battles that really counted to liberals, even if the battles were mainly defensive in nature over his last six years in office. Far from alienating the base, his "Sista Soldja" moments solidified our support, because it showed that he respected us enough not to mince words.

More importantly, he had the right enemies. Conservatives hated him, as did that contingent of lefties, usually found on the pages of The Nation or at meetings of the Green Party, whose power comes from their ability to sabotage progressive causes in the interest of ideological purity. When Clinton lied under oath, it was progressives that stood by him, turning what would ordinarily have been an offense that justified his removal from office into a rallying cry. We knew that Clinton told the truth about the things that really matter, even if he risked losing our votes in the process.

I have a feeling that Sen. Obama can inspire the same loyalty.

It seems hard to believe today, but when I first starting blogging five years ago, this guy was The Enemy. Andrew Sullivan was the reason why many of us started blogging in the first place, if only to shut up his smug English face. Come to think of it, it's not as if he's changed his views; his damascene moment came after the revelations of Abu Ghraib, when he realized the Bushies were false prophets. Whatever the reason, his blog is still as sharp and passionate as ever, a rare feat for a medium that encourages popular bloggers to dumb down their content, and make more strident their ideology, in order to reach larger audiences.

But the French love Jerry Lewis: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", that much unloved and unwatched critical disaster, is getting rave reviews in, of all places, Great Britain.

More than a quarter century ago, I was attending high school with a short, stumpy kid several grades behind me named Matt "Sex Dwarf" Weiner*. Even then, he had a wicked sense of humor and a sharp mind, and it was obvious that either great things were going to happen to him, or we were going to read of him getting into a shootout with federal agents at some polygamous cult in Idaho. He ended up going to college back east, then to SC Film, and the last time I saw him he was getting cheated out of a return date as champion on "Jeopardy."

After a decade or so of toiling in the trenches in Hollywood, including a stint on a sitcom that my sister worked on, Matthew Weiner ended up writing for some much beloved shows, then getting a job as a glorified gofer for David Chase, for which he received some justified props. Which, in turn, has led to this: his very own show, "Mad Men", on AMC Channel. It's not an understatement to say that it's the best new show on cable since both "The Shield" and "The Wire" debuted in 2002. It recaptures a not-so-distant moment in American history, in a way that doesn't condescend to its audience, and like most good television nowadays, it follows the MoneyBall principal of featuring unknown but talented character actors instead of "names." So watch it when it comes on, TiVo it, and watch it again. Then buy the DVD in four months.

There was clearly something in the water back at Harvard High twenty-five years, from a fountain which I did not partake....

*Also, the younger brother of the subject of this post.

One of the few TV shows in the 70's that played live, non-pre-recorded, non-lipsynced music was the one hosted by the Tom Snyder, who died yesterday. Here is a clip featuring my favorite band from high school, the Only One That Really Mattered:

I'm afraid the subtlety of this went completely over Mr. Frey's head.

FredoWatch: Dishonest, or just plain dumb? It's a question Bush observers have asked for quite awhile now:

The accusation that Gonzales has been deceptive in his public remarks has erupted this summer into a full-blown political crisis for the Bush administration, as the beleaguered attorney general struggles repeatedly to explain to Congress the removal of a batch of U.S. attorneys, the wiretapping program and other actions.

In each case, Gonzales has appeared to lawmakers to be shielding uncomfortable facts about the Bush administration's conduct on sensitive matters. A series of misstatements and omissions has come to define his tenure at the helm of the Justice Department and is the central reason that lawmakers in both parties have been trying for months to push him out of his job.

Yet controversy over Gonzales's candor about George W. Bush's conduct or policies has actually dogged him for more than a decade, since he worked for Bush in Texas.

Whether Gonzales has deliberately told untruths or is merely hampered by his memory has been the subject of intense debate among members of Congress, legal scholars and others who have watched him over the years. Some regard his verbal difficulties as a strategic ploy on behalf of a president to whom he owes his career; others see a public official overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.

From today's Washington Post. I'm going to go with dishonest on this one. If there's one thing you learn while practicing law, it's that you put everything in writing. That way, if there's ever a dispute later on, you won't get caught making a misstatement of fact to a judge, or have your testimony discredited by someone who has the evidence. Gonzalez isn't just a lying corrupt hack charged with helming the nation's chief law enforcement agency; he is, more unforgivably, incompetent.

A crossroads: Up until this week, I have been skeptical of calls for the impeachment of the President. I felt that the system had been abused by the GOP during the second term of President Clinton, and still feel that Congress should be loath to overturn the results of a national election. Without substantial bipartisan support, impeachment seemed a frivolous pursuit, a masturbatory gesture without substance.

Impeaching the Vice President has seemed to be the wiser course; Dick Cheney is ever more unpopular than George Bush, has abused his power (which is even more galling, since the Constitution does not grant him any power to abuse), led a shadow government which combined ideological cupidity in pursuit of destructive ends with an unforgivable reliance on an incompetent cabal, and blatantly obstructed justice during the Valerie Plame investigation. Besides, even Republicans in Congress have come to realize what a cancer Cheney is, and the temptation to permit the President to choose his replacement before the 2008 election might swing the necessary members of the minority to make his removal a possibility.

Impeaching George Bush is another thing entirely. Democrats, remembering how badly the 1998 impeachment debacle backfired on the GOP (which included the loss of sufficient seats in the Senate to give the Democrats a majority in 2001), have been understandably reluctant to do anything which might rally the public around an historically unpopular President, so even the most rudimentary steps required to begin an impeachment inquiry have been avoided so far.

That must end. Now.

Congress must go on record and reclaim its historical prerogatives, both as a check on abusive executive branch authority, and as the voice of the people in challenging an aggressive tyrant. It must be the position of the Democratic leadership in the House that an impeachment inquiry commence immediately, against both the President and Vice President. This must not be a partisan endeavor; Republicans in Congress who see this as a "power grab" by the Democrats should appeased, either by having the current Congressional leadership stepping aside from the Presidential succession in favor of the Secretary of State, or by electing a Republican Speaker on the eve of a removal vote in the Senate.

Certainly, it should already be clear to enough members of the GOP that the same powers and the same abuses that this Administration has exercised can also be wielded by Democrats. If nothing is done now, it may be too late to reign in the Presidency two years hence, whether that position is held by Hillary or Mitt, Thompson or Obama. And as anyone who has studied government and public policy can tell you, liberal policies favoring an expanded government tend to be more permanent. The same means used to stonewall inquiry into Cheney's energy taskforce can also be utilized in favor of national health care, or making tax rates more progressive.

Another blogger put it even more plainer today:

Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I'm not sure I've seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules which our whole system is built on just don't apply to this White House.

Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we're moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I'm less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of 'normal politics' is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.

--Josh Marshall

Say what you will about Roberts and Alito, the fact that Abu Gonzo was on the short list of Supreme Court nominees, but was thwarted only because the Far Right didn't think he was conservative enough is a testament to the notion that God protects fools, drunks, children, and the United States of America.

While we're on the issue of bankruptcy, and the ramifications of the 2005 legislation, here's an interesting way to neuter its negative impact: slash the budget for the entity that's supposed to determine whether a bankruptcy was filed in good faith.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act (BARF) was a provision that created a presumption that debtors who made over the medium income for a state were filing the case in bad faith if they chose Chapter 7 relief. That presumption could be overcome if the debtor were to show that after taking his monthly expenses into account, he would not have sufficient funds to repay at least ten percent of his unsecured debts over a five year period under a Chapter 13 plan. In reality, the presumption is almost always overcome, in large part because debtors who make just over the medium can show that their reasonable monthly expenses easily exceed their gross income, while many of those who make well over the medium have always filed under Chapters 11 or 13.

But it is, nonetheless, a hassle for debtors, who are charged a higher amount by their attorneys (such as me) for the burden of dealing with the U.S. Trustee's office, which has the mandate under the new law to raise the presumption whenever appropriate. That includes analyzing and preparing the schedules filed with the court, demanding further supporting documentation (in many cases, that entails credit card receipts going back a year), and filing motions to dismiss with the court.

This past week, the House Judiciary Committee sent a shot through the bows of the credit industry by slashing the funds available for the UST to enforce the act, stating

The Committee is concerned that excessive resources are being expended on efforts by the United States Trustee Program to dismiss cases for insignificant filing defects (thereby creating added burdens on the court and debtors associated with refilings); on the unnecessary use of U.S. Trustee personnel to participate in creditors' meetings that are already handled and conducted by private trustees; and on making burdensome requests of debtors to provide documentation that has no material effect on the outcome of bankruptcy cases. Such actions by the U.S. Trustee Program are making the bankruptcy process more costly and therefore less available for those who need it. The Committee directs the U.S. Trustees to immediately examine these problems and report back two months after enactment of this Act on efforts to remedy them as soon as possible.

Without funding, the Trustee will have to drastically reduce its investigation of debtors who are above the statewide median, making the controversial provision in the new law a practical nullity. Although I expect much of the funds to be restored, thanks in no small part to a certain powerful Senate Democrat (Biden, D-Visa), this is the first step towards overturning the noxious law. There is most definitely a new sheriff in town.

Three bits of miscellany, for your review: Countrywide Mortgage, one of the nation's largest prime lenders for homes, saw its profits fall by a third in the last quarter, with one out of twenty-two loans now being in default; in Southern California, a record number of foreclosures occurred in the second quarter of 2007, with 17,408 homes being lost, an 800% increase over last year; and bankruptcy filings have more than doubled in the Central District of California so far in 2007.

Of course, bankruptcy filings in 2006 were at historic lows, in the aftermath of YBK and the passage of the new law, and the current totals are still well off the figures from the pre-BARF era. But in some areas of the country, the collapse of the real estate bubble is sparking a renewed rush to the bankruptcy courthouse. Locally, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties are the new hubs of the debt relief bar, as those two rapidly expanding centers of exurban population growth witness a Perfect Storm: an oversupply of housing combined with an accelerating rate of defaults in mortgages, together with a sharp collapse in the value of homes which makes refinancing impossible. Anyone who refinanced since 2002, and/or has an adjustable rate loan, the only thing to do is pray.

For some reason, the British refer to the type of thing that gets Lindsey Lohen into trouble every couple of months as "drink-driving." I'm assuming it's because the penalties for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), and driving while intoxicated (DWI) aren't distinguishable over there, so there's no need to make the assumption that the person behind the wheel was drunk. If that's not the case, then it must be one of those linguistic idiosyncracies, like dropping the definite article when referencing visits "to hospital."

Adventures in Babysitting:



Today, of course, it's the sort of thing that got R.Kelly into trouble....