The delicate flowers that make up today's GOP are saying they're willing the country's finances collapse because Nancy Pelosi said mean things about them.
[Republican House Minority Leader John] Boehner charged that the bill could have passed today "had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House."
If you owe the bank $10,000 that's your problem (so goes the joke), but if you owe the bank $10,000,000 it's the bank's problem.
And if you ad a few more zeros it becomes the government's problem.
And make no mistake, this bailout was necessary, given the current circumstances.
And yet one wonders, need it have been?
Or, could it be, that the AIG bailout is yet another example of the GOP's favorite crisis management technique, management by crisis. I.e: ignore a problem until it reaches catastrophic levels, then scramble like mad to find enough duct tape to keep the thing from falling apart?
And, before I get into a round of Bush-bashing, let me make clear, I don't think this problem is Bush's per se, and I don't think Democrats are immune from procrastination, but the GOP's governing philosophy (if it can be called such) seems to lend itself to such disasters.
Best enunciated by St. Ronald Reagan: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."
And, since government is the problem, why not staff it with incompetent, corrupt cronies? (Katrina)
Why not use it to enrich your friends? (Iraq)
Why not ignore your rival's warnings about the world's dangers? (9/11)
Why not deregulate and let the free market's invisible hand rule and let the chips fall where they may?
But of course, when push comes to shove Republicans only want the chips to fall where they may when they fall on someone else.
I'd post more examples of the results of the GOP's "government is the problem" philosophy, but my head hurts.
[x-posted at Daily Kos]
While most talk on the web concerned with possible third party candidates for the 2008 presidential election focuses on that dying species, the liberal Republican, mostly in the form of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, I'd suggest keeping an eye on another type of Republican altogether, once (and future?) Libertarian Ron Paul.
Why, you ask, does your CaliBlogger think the still obscure Texas congressman might make a flanking run at the presidency?
First, of course is that Paul's consistently libertarian views put him at odds with Bush's Republican party which is increasingly authoritarian, Christianist, and interventionist. Paul doesn't just mouth platitudes about small government, he actually believes that government has no business meddling in foreign countries, has no business spying on its own citizens, and has no business monitoring what people do in their bedrooms, and who with.
Secondly, Paul, unlike Ross Perot whose Reform Party was more personality cult than political organization, would presumably be running under the auspices of an existing party, the Libertarian.
And while small compared to the major parties, the Libertarian Party is the largest of US third parties, and most importantly, consistently shows the ability to put a candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
Finally, perhaps because of his libertarian leanings, Ron Paul is an even rarer bird than the liberal Republican, a Republican with actual grassroots support.
While Republicans are typically funded through astroturf groups that are funded by just a few wealthy individuals or corporations, Paul is getting support and interest from that most democratic of modern amalgamations, the Internet. From the Washington Post:
Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.
"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."
Two points on the GOP debate.
First, I find it incredible that the Fox audience, and the vast majority of MSM commentators, applauded Giuliani's take-down of Ron Paul for suggesting that al Qaeda's attacks were in some way a reaction to US policy in the mid-east.
The distance from reality that suggests is truly scary.
Further, I'm stunned at just how many people seem to be OK with torture. Not surprised mind you, I've always suspected that the lip service pay to freedom and the rule of law was about as deep as a yellow ribbon.
But for those of you who think American values has meaning beyond militarism, corporatism and gay-bashing, I recommend a couple of articles, yet again, exposing the damage torture does to both the tortured and the torturers.
Though I'm not a big believer in Evil since I think that minimizes the extent to which average people can commit acts that are themselves evil, Andrew Sullivan makes the case that torture is not only evil, but represents a threat to America which no terrorist could possibly match.
The evil of torture is therefore not just a moral one. It is a political one. A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny. That tumor, we know from history, always always spreads, as it has spread in the US military these past shameful years. The fact that hefty proportions of US soldiers now support its use as a routine matter reveals how deep the rot has already gone. The fact that now a majority of Republican candidates proudly support such torture has rendered the GOP the party most inimical to liberty in America. When you combine torture's evil with the claims of the hard right that a president can ignore all laws and all treaties in wartime, and that "wartime" is now permanent, you have laid the ground for the abolition of the American experiment in self-government. Imagine another terror attack, with Rudy Giuliani as president, and a mandate to arrest and torture at will, with no need to follow or even address the rule of law. We would no longer be a republic. We would be in a protectorate of one man.
As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.
To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.
This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."
The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.
A confession, I didn't watch the Republican debate last night.
I tried to, but I just couldn't, clicking off half way through Giuliani's first remark. I don't recall either the question or his answer, but I knew that moment that the next 90 minutes was going to be hell.
So, unlike all those rightwing parents out there who seem unable to do so, I clicked off the objectionable programming, opting instead for watching Anthony Bourdain snark his way through Malaysia (though truth be told, Mr. Bourdain was uncharacteristically unsnarky for this particular episode).
Now I realize that it's terribly intellectually dishonest of me not to give the opposition a chance to explain their positions on the myriad challenges facing our nation: how they would extricate us from the mess in Mesopotamia, how they would address our failing health care system, how they'd address the burgeoning potential disaster of global warming.
It turns out I needn't have bothered.
Apparently what I really missed was a 90-minute paean to Ronald Reagan, the last Republican anyone really liked.
From the Carpetbagger Report:
After any debate, the first and most natural question is “who won?” Last night, the winner was obvious: Ronald Reagan.
Look, I know Reagan is the only president of the 20th century that Republicans really like. And I know that the debate was being held at the Reagan Library in California. But over the course of 90 minutes, the candidates specifically referenced the 40th president 20 times. If you count more oblique references (Gilmore thanked “the president in whose name this library is named”), the number climbs to 25. If you include references to Reagan by debate moderator Chris Matthews, well, we get pretty close to triple digits.
Pasadena, Calif.[that's me]: Love your coverage Chris, love these chats. Six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room: Playing up Reagan seemed the obvious thing to do, but do you think any of these people have any clue as to how to deal with the, um, legacy being bequeathed to them by George W?
Chris Cillizza: It's a VERY fine line that all of these candidates have to walk.
On the one hand, expressing support for President Bush's surge in Iraq makes sense because most conservative Republicans -- those most likely to vote in primaries and caucuses -- still support the policy.
On the other, none of these candidates wants to be seen as the Bush heir in the race if they wind up becoming the nominee.
The challenge for every Republican candidate is to offer enough praise for Bush that it doesn't turn off those voters still supportive of the president while offering enough criticism of his policies that people know that they would follow a different course in the White House.
A VERY tough proposition.
This topic deserves more thought than I'm willing to give at the moment, but the recent admission by Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias to having taken advantages of services from a DC escort service highlights the puritanical streak that lies at the heart of so-called social conservatives.
As McClatchy reporter Matt Stearns points out, any sort of public vice is perfectly acceptable to BushCorp, but anything hinting of sex results in an immediate Apprentice moment.
Apparently, a penchant for massages is the one thing that President Bush cannot abide in an underling.
Arranging a massive pay raise and promotion for a girlfriend? World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz "ought to stay," Bush said. "He ought to be given a fair hearing."
Admittedly muffing management of the Justice Department, then forgetting key details when a miffed Congress demands answers? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job," the president said.
The planning and execution of the Iraq war and its aftermath? Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer and former CIA Director George Tenet kept their jobs long after their foul-ups became apparent. Bush awarded all three the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
But Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias, who quit the day he admitted to getting massages - and only massages - from an escort service?
"He resigned, and it was the proper thing to do," White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday.
Thus is revealed the management philosophy of the CEO presidency. Favoritism, ineffectiveness and misleading Congress: OK. Massages: Not OK.
Heh, heh, heh. You said "probe".
Sorry, just channeling Beavis there for a sec'.
Anyway, in what continues as a pattern of weekly, if not daily Bush administration scandals, Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias has resigned after being interviewed in connection with an ongoing investigation into the activities of a prominent DC prostitution ring, er, escort service.
Tobias resigned after ABC News contacted him with questions about the escort service, the sources said. ABC News released a statement last night saying Tobias acknowledged Thursday that he had used the service to provide massages, not sex.
According to ABC News, Tobias said he contacted the escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage" and that there had been "no sex" involved.But did the "massage" have a happy ending? Inquiring minds want to know.
Once upon a time I believed that the Bush administration's greatest failing was its incompetence. (See Brown, Michael)
Recent discoveries have, however made clear that BushCorp's incompetence is a symptom, not the cause of its mis-management of government.
The real problem is the public corruption that has placed political operatives and "loyal Bushies" in positions all throughout the federal bureaucracy to the detriment of every department so afflicted. (See Goodling, Monica)
As I've said before, this is the natural result of an ideology that views government as "the problem, not the solution". If you don't believe that government can be a positive force, then nothing stops you form using it to accomplish narrow parochial aims.
Democratic leader Rahm Emmanuel gives an extensive outline of the way BushCorp has pillaged government to accomplish Republican party goals. If you can stomach it, his speech today to the Brookings Institution should be read in full, if you can stomach it. (H/t to Josh Marshall for posting the text).
The important point to take away from all this is that this sort of corruption is not merely a sin of the Bush administration, but is inherent in the ideology that stands at the core of Republican politics.
The Bush administration is just its logical extreme.
I'll leave to others to decide whether Diamonds are Forever was the worst of Sean Connery's takes on the James Bond character, regardless it provides an entree to today's bit of wisdom, can even diamond outlast embarassing emails?
Case in point, in today's White House Watch, the invaluable Dan Froomkin provides an extensive analysis of what could be a potential goldmine (or minefield, depending on your perspective) of information about the doings of the Bush White House.
The slowly-unfolding disclosure that some White House aides use non-government e-mail servers to conduct official business may soon be reaching scandal proportions.
As John D. McKinnon writes in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The widespread use of private email accounts by some top White House officials is sparking a congressional probe into the practice and whether it violates a post-Nixon law requiring that White House deliberations be documented.
"A top Democratic lawmaker says outside email accounts were used in an attempt to avoid scrutiny; the White House says their purpose was to avoid using government resources for political activities, although they were used to discuss the firing of U.S. attorneys."
1)The Presidential Records Act was enacted in 1974 to prevent Richard Nixon from destroying White House Records in an attempt to cover his crooked ass, and requires presidents to preserve records of White House business.
2)The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, prohibits government officials from using government time and equipment for exclusively political ends.
[x-posted at Daily Kos: be sure to read the comments]
I am, shall we say, no fan of Ann Coulter's.
But the uproar about her latest vile screed at the CPAC convention has got me t' thinkin'.
Mixed with the well deserved criticism resounding around both left and right blogistan have been calls for the various networks and newspapers who spread her poisonous views to shun our darling Ann.
And while I can viscerally agree with this stance, and as disagreable as the thought of further success for her continuing efforts at self-promotion is to me, still I have to wonder, aren't we on left really better off having her as the face of the Republican party?
This thought was sparked, in part, by an article by Bill Scher [h/t to digby], who's been blogging CPAC. Scher's main point is that, despite the mushy Common Wisdom about Democrats' problems with the religious community, they're nothing compared with Republican's problems with the secular.
Lots of ink has been spilled about how Democrats and liberals suffer from a "religion problem" -- a perceived hostility towards Christianity and religion in general. But Pew Research Center exit poll data from the 2006 midterm elections shows the opposite.
Democrats crushed Republicans among secular voters, broadly defined as those who attend church seldom (favoring Democrats 60% to 38%) or never (67% to 30%). Republicans retained strong support among those who attend church more than weekly. But among those who only go weekly -- the larger portion of the religious vote -- the Republican lead shrunk from 15 points to 7.
In short, Republicans failed to be competitive among secular voters, while Democrats were at least competitive among regular churchgoers. And since the secular vote is roughly equal to the regular churchgoing vote, according to the last several national election exit polls, that means Republicans and their conservative base have a far bigger secular problem than their rivals have a religion problem.
