GOP Senator Lugar criticizes Tea Party

But more importantly, is there anything this "movement" believes that isn't simply conservative Republican doctrine? Uh, no. They're not a new movement - they're FOX News viewers organized by Glenn Beck and Dick Armey. As if this were a surprise to anyone. Read the rest of this post...

Putin's $1 billion palace?

This even puts to shame any perks that retired US presidents have received after leaving office. Either way it's a form of corruption, though $1 billion is a seriously large number. Too bad money can't buy taste because this palace is tacky. Read the rest of this post...

William Greider: 'The end of New Deal Liberalism'

The inestimable William Greider has been wrestling with many of the topics the rest of us have — how to deal politically with this obviously new world. We are solidly post-Bush, and Obama has not brought forth the Change that he promised and progressives wanted. In many ways, he's dug us in deeper.

Greider's latest is "The End of New Deal Liberalism", a cover article in the January 24 issue of The Nation. Thankfully, the whole thing is available on the web without subscription.

I consider it an important piece and recommend reading it in full. It's longer than I can excerpt fairly and covers much territory that people who know my views will find familiar. Here's the opening (my emphasis throughout):

We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.

Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media.

What the capitalist system wants is more—more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it. The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except of course for business subsidies and protections. ... A lot of Americans seem to know this; at least they sense that the structural reality of government and politics is not on their side. ... In these terms, the administration of Barack Obama has been a crushing disappointment for those of us who hoped he would be different. It turns out Obama is a more conventional and limited politician than advertised, more right-of-center than his soaring rhetoric suggested. Most Congressional Democrats, likewise, proved weak and incoherent, unreliable defenders of their supposed values[.]

No words were minced in the writing of his article. It's a cogent analysis and makes its point with all of Greider's knowledge and skill. In addition, it's prominently placed in The Nation, in the issue on newsstands just prior to Obama's State of the Union address. (That in itself is comment-worthy; the piece could be considered a shot-across-his-bow message from The Nation to Obama.)

But I'd like to focus here on Greider's conclusion, in which he offers a plan. His suggestions:

I suggest three steps for progressives to recover an influential role in politics. First, develop a guerrilla sensibility that recognizes the weakness of the left.

Here he discusses the success of the Tea Party in shaping GOP politics by holding Daddy Warbuck's feet to the virtual fire. The important word here is Primaries. Need I say more?

Second, people of liberal persuasion should "go back to school" and learn the new economic realities ... a fundamental re-examination of capitalism and the relationship between the state and the private sphere. This will not be done by business-financed think tanks.

The New Deal fixed an old world. It's a new world now, Greider argues. To solve its problems, we have to learn its dynamics. He sees working people as the potential "new center of a reinvigorated democracy" but notes that there's no guarantee that working and middle class reaction will be left-oriented.

I will add, on this point, that we not only have to learn, we also have to learn how to teach in this new world. I've written on that before and stand by those thoughts.

Finally, left-liberals need to start listening and learning—talking up close to ordinary Americans, including people who are not obvious allies.

Again, you have to be able to listen in order to teach. The real split in this country is not left-right. But it's being sold as left-right to keep the confused from seeing the game, from seeing whose hand is really in their pocket. The more we fight the right-wing followers (as opposed to their leaders), the more we confirm to the followers that we are their enemy. Very bad idea. Better to listen and talk, to and not at, tough as that sounds to do. (No one promised the best tactics would be the most fun, folks.)

And I'll add another point — we have no time to waste. Once the bank is fully robbed, teaching the guards who to watch for doesn't count for much.

All in all, a great read. And one that would make a great starting point for a panel at Netroots Nation (coming soon to a Minneapolis near you), should someone be inclined to suggest it. I know I will.

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP Sen. Thune (R-SD) may be entering the presidential race

More from AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field. Read the rest of this post...

Google to hire thousands

Maybe Paul "We're Number 2!" Ryan was wrong last night about America being a country in decline. Read the rest of this post...

Scientists record polar bear's 232 hour, 426 mile swim

It's amazing to think the polar bear was able to survive such a long journey. The theory is that the polar bear probably was forced to swim such an extended journey due to climate change. BBC:

"This bear swam continuously for 232 hours and 687 km and through waters that were 2-6 degrees C," says research zoologist George M. Durner.

"We are in awe that an animal that spends most of its time on the surface of sea ice could swim constantly for so long in water so cold. It is truly an amazing feat."

Although bears have been observed in open water in the past, this is the first time one's entire journey has been followed.

Read the rest of this post...

CNN: Marines change commander at facility where WikiLeaks suspect held

The Marines say the commander's move is unrelated to the complaints from WikiLeaks suspect PFC Bradley Manning's lawyer. Maybe... Read the rest of this post...

Meet Obama's new solicitor general nominee

What, was an oil executive from BP or an attorney from Philip Morris not available? The RIAA is a bunch of bullies who don't mind picking on students with lawsuits but somehow they can't live by their own rules. Who is hiring these people and what are they thinking?

If confirmed by the Senate, Verilli, now the White House deputy counsel, would assume the powerful position left vacant by Elena Kagan, who was elevated to the Supreme Court. Obama said he was “confident” Verrilli, one of five former RIAA attorneys appointed to the administration, would “serve ably.”

The solicitor general is charged with defending the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it will bring to the Supreme Court for review.

Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a lower court’s pro-RIAA verdict.

Until recently, Verrilli also was leading Viacom’s ongoing and flailing $1 billion copyright-infringement fight against YouTube.

Read the rest of this post...

Paul Ryan's rebuttal & Paul Krugman's kindness

Well, von Ryan's express has left the station and no one was impressed. Rep. Paul Ryan, oft-proclaimed brainiac of the new-gen Repubs, gave his rebuttal to Obama's State of the Union address. There's much comment on the style of his performance, his own future prospects as White House resident, his acting, and his hair. (John's excellent comparison of Obama and Ryan is here.)


But I was most struck, as I listened, by this one paragraph:

Just take a look at what’s happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn’t act soon enough; and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody.

Now, I've read a document or two in my time on this planet, and a few have involved the current European crisis. And as soon as he said that, I thought — he's lying; not a word of this is true.

Paul Krugman agrees, sort of (my emphasis):

[I]f your whole public act is based on your supposed knowledge of the importance of fiscal responsibility, wouldn’t you long ago have made sure that you actually know something about the fiscal crises now taking place in Europe?

But no. I suspect that Ryan is honestly unaware that Ireland, far from being a spendthrift, was seen as a fiscal role model before the crisis. And that’s not hyperbole: in 2006 George Osborne, now Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared that

Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn.

And I also suspect that Ryan is honestly unaware that the UK has not, in fact, experienced a debt crisis.

How can he be unaware of these things? The only explanation I have is intellectual laziness — why check the facts when you already believe that you have The Truth?

That's so kind. Unfortunately, you can't be intellectually lazy if you're not an intellectual. Ryan's a Movement Conservative operative, one with good enough hair to get him into Congress.

Intellect is not his playing field, it's his "act", as Krugman correctly points out (or his "USP" in sales parlance, unique selling point, like "squeezably soft" or "doesn't leave a ring"). Ryan's playing field isn't intellect, it's power, and his tool is "Say anything to win". It was Rove's tool, Bush's tool, Rumsfeld's tool; it's Newt's tool, McCain's tool, Boehner's tool; and it's Ryan's tool.

You can't be an intellectual if the mind doesn't matter. And whether he believes his swill or not, is not at all the point. After all, most determined liars, at some point, are forced to believe themselves; self-deception is the only way they can get any sleep at night.

Ryan's tool — Say anything to win. Good thing for us he's not a better actor; that good hair might make him even more dangerous than he is.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Florida's new Governor blocking redistricting reforms approved by voters

Florida's new Governor, Rick Scott, didn't follow the law when he ran an insurance company. Why would anyone expect him to comport with a silly constitutional amendment passed by the voters of his state. Rick Scott does what Rick Scott wants:

Two voter-approved constitutional amendments requiring the Legislature to draw political districts along nonpartisan standards could be jeopardized by one of Gov. Rick Scott's first acts.

Three days after Scott took office, the state quietly withdrew its request that the U.S. Justice Department approve Amendments 5 and 6 as required under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, effectively stalling their implementation just as a Republican-led lawsuit challenges their constitutionality.

At the time, Scott was recruiting as his top elections adviser Kurt Browning, who actively campaigned against the two ballot measures last year while not working for the state. Browning's spokesman said he had no role in the decision.

At least someone in Florida is paying attention:

"More than 3.1 million Floridians voted for these reforms in November, and your actions seem calculated to obstruct their implementation," said former state Sen. Dan Gelber, the Democratic candidate for attorney general in November and counsel to Fair Districts Now. "Further, Floridians have a right to know why their secretary of state and their governor are engaging in a course of conduct so clearly intended to frustrate their will as expressed at the polls."

Seems like Rick Scott is just being Rick Scott. He can't be bothered with annoying laws and constitutional amendments. Read the rest of this post...

Obama vs Paul Ryan: How GOP message discipline works

Obama's SOTU 2011:



Paul Ryan's GOP response:



It's hard not to notice the difference between Ryan's laser-like messaging and Obama's. This speaks volumes to how the GOP manages to push their lies, e.g., death panels, the stimulus didn't work, so effectively. They just repeat repeat and repeat, while we go all over the place and think that if we mention something once, it's been done. I realize that the State of the Union has to be about more than just one thing, but still, does an hour and ten minute speech really trump this kind of concise messaging, when you ask the public afterwards which speech they understood better?

Michelle Bachmann's Tea Party response:



SOTU 2010:



SOTU 2009 (Obama's first):

Read the rest of this post...

CBS Poll: 92% approve of Obama's proposal in SOTU

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Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: Crisis was avoidable

While this doesn't come as much of a shock to anyone who lives outside of the Washington bubble, it may be big news inside the bubble. Of course it was avoidable and of course both Democrats and Republicans deserve plenty of blame. Politically, Obama hasn't shown any improvements over Bush, as Obama opted to continue the Bush/Paulson plan with the same players who helped run the economy into the ground. By reconfirming Bernanke, it was clear the administration had no interest in changing the course.

Ultimately the crisis is a result of serious failings of the political and ruling class in the US. Political leadership failed, regulators failed and those who were considered the smartest people in the world (Wall Street) failed. This doesn't say much about our ability to "out-innovate" if none of these people could see anything wrong with what was happening.

The majority report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but played a crucial role in the response. It criticizes Mr. Greenspan for advocating deregulation and cites a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” under his leadership as a “prime example” of negligence.

It also criticizes the Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” to the crisis — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse in September 2008 after earlier bailing out another bank, Bear Stearns, with Fed help — as having “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”

Like Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., predicted in 2007 — wrongly, it turned out — that the subprime collapse would be contained, the report notes.

Democrats also come under fire. The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”

Read the rest of this post...

Obama: End oil subsidies and have clean energy by 2035

Both are certainly reasonable and great ideas, but after a few years of watching this administration, you have to wonder about his sincerity and backbone for seriously promoting either. It's hard to understand how the most profitable industry in the history of the planet still manages to get government handouts, but that's our modern political system at work. Congress is addicted to oil money so they will always come up with excuses. Until we see action, these words are meaningless.

President Barack Obama is setting a new goal for America's energy future, saying 80 percent of electricity should come from clean energy sources by 2035.

But his definition of clean energy is friendlier to industry than some environmentalists might like: He includes nuclear, natural gas and clean coal in the mix, along with wind and solar.

The president is also renewing his call to boost the number of hybrid and battery-operated cars on U.S. highways, and calls for ending some $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to oil and gas companies. Obama's sought to end oil and gas subsidies in the past but Congress hasn't gone along with it.

Naturally the oil lobby is already up in arms. This is an industry that hasn't figured out how to compete on it's own and can't live without giveaways. Read the rest of this post...

Ecuador and the 'world's worst oil-related disaster'

This time, it's not BP, but rather Chevron at the center of an oil disaster controversy. The final arguments against Chevron have been made in Ecuador where plaintiffs are asking for $113 billion in damages. Unlike the Gulf Coast, access to the rain forests of Ecuador made it more challenging to cover the story, but as the court case nears its end, photos related to the alleged disaster are available. (See below.) As we've seen around the world with other oil-related disasters, the human suffering is widespread and the oil industry is reluctant to accept their responsibilities.

This particular case started in 2003, though the legal challenges stretch back to 1992. The plaintiffs argue that Texaco dumped 16 billion gallons of heavily polluted waste water from their oil production operations into waterways in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001, and claims that its subsidiary "fully remediated its share of environmental impacts" before 1992.

But the Amazonian communities represented in the case say otherwise. The oil company, their lawyers state in the final argument obtained by Mother Jones, knowingly dumped millions of gallons of the toxic waste into the rainforest, taking no action to minimize the risks it posed to communities in the region. The company also dug 900 open, unlined pits for dumping "drilling muds," which the plaintiffs describe in their filing as "a toxic soup of oil drilling byproducts that includes barium, heavy metals (e.g., chromium, lead, and zinc), chloride, petroleum compounds, and acid." Thousands of gallons of oil also leaked from the pipeline running through the region, which the company repeatedly failed to report or address, they argue.

The plaintiffs report contamination from toxic chemicals at 45 sites they inspected in the area. Further, they point to Chevron's own internal memos obtained in the case as evidence that the company knew about legacy of pollution at the sites. And they say that the remediation work the company took at the sites was a "sham" intended to fend off lawsuits.

To see the extent of the damage, click through for photos. Here are photos from the Rainforest Action Network and here is another set from Lou Dematteis. Read the rest of this post...

Protesters clash with Egyptian police, vow more protests

The police apparatus in Egypt is much stronger than in Tunisia though the frustration level among the people can't be that much different. For those fed up with the extended rule of Hosni Mubarak, they know that when he passes, his son is waiting in the wings. The Guardian:

Egyptian police used teargas and rubber bullets and beat protesters in a bid to clear thousands of demonstrators from a central Cairo square late last night after people had taken to the streets earlier today demanding the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule in mass demonstrations inspired by the toppling of the government in Tunisia.

Cairo was the scene of violent clashes as thousands of protesters from separate demonstrations converged on Tahrir Square, the central plaza. Demonstrators waved Egyptian and Tunisian flags, hauled down a billboard for the ruling NDP party and chanted "depart Mubarak" at the 82-year-old leader, who will face elections later this year. One policeman died in the Cairo violence.

Two protesters were killed in Suez, east of Cairo, as other demonstrations took place around the country.

Read the rest of this post...