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Oh, man, is Meghan McCain ever asking for it:

In an appearance on ABC's The View, Meghan McCain also took issue with a number of recent statements from Sarah Palin, criticizing the former Alaska governor for defending Rush Limbaugh's use of the word "retard" and for suggesting that President Obama launch a war against Iran in order to win a second term.

McCain described Former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo's call for a literacy test for voters as "innate racism."

McCain obviously also has issues with Palin, but it was Tancredo's speech -- in which he thanked God that McCain's father lost the election -- that stuck in her craw:

"It's innate racism, and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement," McCain retorted on The View.

"I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not 65 year old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English," McCain added.

McCain, a self-described "progressive Republican," criticized Palin's assertion that President Obama could get himself re-elected to a second term if he launched a war against Iran.

"You should never go to war unless its the absolute last circumstance," McCain said.

As for Palin's defense of Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard" after calling for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's resignation over the same word last week, McCain said it was a symbol of "exactly what is wrong with politics today.

"We can't placate and say Democrats can say one thing and Republicans can say another thing," she said.

McCain added that the rhetoric coming from the Tea Party movement and from Republicans like Palin "will continue to turn off young voters, and anybody who says different is smoking something."

Why, if she only watched Fox News, McCain would know that America loves this movement and it's full of revolutionary fervor and all kinds of vim and vigor and pep!

Translation: Intraparty heretics like Meghan McCain are political roadkill. Like her dad.

I saw this on CNN last night and cheered. I've been wanting the Dems to bring back Bush because he's responsible for the mess our country has been left with after he split the scene, man. The GOP knows it and that's why he's been off the national stage for so long. He didn't look too happy going out there in front of the cameras to help during the Haitian earthquake.

Americans are strange people when it comes to politics, and as we've seen with the polling of the mythical independent voters, the numbers go up and down all the time. The determining factor seems to me to be who is in power at the time when your life sucks. So this country is about to reelect the people who created our misery.

For many liberals President Obama hasn't handled these problems as the progressive we want him to be, but in his defense, he didn't initiate two wars in the Middle East after we were hit with a terrorist attack, and he didn't allow the global financial meltdown to happen right before his eyes. So if some people want to bring back BUSH for us, I'm all in.

Bob Collins says that nobody knows who actually bought the billboard that says" Miss Me Yet?"
Digby calls it Presidential Rehab, but I think this would be a blessing if he's trotted out there again. We can promote the theme of "Don't Get Fooled Again." We had eight long years that proved to all of America that Conservatism was and is a failure.

After her Tea Party Convention speech this weekend, Sarah Palin flew to Houston to continue campaigning for herself. The news focused on her appearance at a Rick Perry rally, but Palin also appeared at another event in Houston: a "motivational seminar" at the Toyota Center at which she was the featured attraction.

As Richard Connelly reported:

The other event here was the motivational seminar at Toyota Center. The event seemed to be grossly oversold (Tickets were just $19 for entire office staffs to attend), perhaps because organizers thought people would only attend parts of the all-day event.

But no one told attendees that Palin would be speaking at 8 a.m., so bitterly disappointed fans standing in line at 10:30 a.m. weren't happy.

Palin presumably was, having pocketed her fee for a 30-minute speech.

C&L had one of its friends at the seminar: Josef Jarod is a reporter in Houston, Texas with a background that includes work for Fox and CBS News. He presently is on a "mystery" assignment in the Bayou City.

Here's Jarod's report:

"I wasn't motivated" one man said to me in the elevator as I left the speech, "she sounded un-prepared and erratic and focused an awful lot on her script."

It was 9:30 AM, and Just half an hour earlier Sarah Palin had wrapped up a "motivational" speech about "achievement" at the Toyota Center in downtown Houston. Though Palin was to be the headliner of the all day business seminar which featured a dozen other speakers like General Colin Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. She was the first to perform.

"I was also kind of amazed that they let her go first, I mean, we weren't even all seated yet when she started." Palin started her speech at 8:00 AM sharp, she was the first person out of the gates - there wasn't even a Master of Ceremonies. And given the fact that morning rush hour in Houston was exceptionally bad today, it meant there were going to be a lot of unhappy ticket holders(particularly as some paid as much as two hundred dollars.)

"She already gave her speech?!" One man exclaimed in the lobby after arriving minutes too late, "What the hell, I was stuck in traffic... why wouldn't they save the best for last?!" Several elderly women with Palin lapel pins who were trying desperately to hurry through security were also distraught when they heard the news, "Ohhh Noooooo! Nooooo!"

Sarah Palin had another engagement in California later in the afternoon and didn't have a minute to waste. The speech itself seemed more like a sermon, Sarah frequently attributed "God" and "Jesus Christ" to lifting her out of despair. She gave several long rambling examples of tough times in Alaska, during which she would occasionally lose her footing and immediately jump to praising the state for it's beauty.

She also focused heavily on her trade mark lines as a crutch. During one incredulous example of a way to get motivated describing a bed time fairy-tale she told to her daughter: "Last night Piper asked me to tell her a bedtime story and I said 'YOU BETCHA,' let me tell you about two brothers named Abel and Cain..."

The crowd was made up mostly of office-workers who opted to come to an "all day business seminar" instead of sitting in their cubicle and so the fanfare was minimal. As I gazed around the audience from my VIP seat - just feet away from the stage - I had the impression that most of those sitting near me were insulted. Sarah Palin was clearly still in campaign mode, but this wasn't a crowd looking for a stump speech.

She ended by spending several minutes with her head down reading from the podium and gave a very abrupt and final "God Bless America" before departing the stage. As she left one man with a thick country drawl leaned over to me and said "you know, she's not that impressive in person."

She's not that impressive on TV, either.

I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

This story reeks of "I'm on deadline, I don't feel like working that hard so I'll just expand this handy list of Republican bullet points and then call a few Democrats for 'balance.'" But then, maybe it's just me:

WASHINGTON — When Republicans take President Obama up on his invitation to hash out their differences over health care this month, they will carry with them a fairly well-developed set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net.

Umm, excuse me, Mr. Reporter? What do you mean by "fairly well-developed"? And why are you just taking their word for it that their ideas will make health insurance more affordable? Did you, you know, ask any experts?

It is not clear that Republicans and the White House are willing to negotiate seriously with each other, and Mr. Obama has rejected Republican demands that he start from scratch in developing health care legislation.

But Congressional Republicans have laid out principles and alternatives that provide a road map to what a Republican health care bill would look like if they had the power to decide the outcome.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were writing a press release!

[...] The Republicans rely more on the market and less on government.

Ha ha ha! Oh, I get it now: It's a parody of a press release, like Stephen Colbert!

All kidding aside, is this really journalism? Not by any stretch of the imagination. There's no new information, there's only the Republican insistence on their far-fetched version of reality - which we could just as easily get from Fox News. New York Times, maybe you should put some actual work into these stories if you plan to charge us for them.

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I don't agree with Mark Halperin about very much, but I agree with him on this one. After a discussion on Sarah Palin going to speak to the Tea Bag Convention and whether or not this is an independent movement or disgruntled Republican voters, Mark Halperin lists the reasons Sarah Palin will never be President.

Brzezinski: Mark Halerin is there a third party wave brewing? Is it real?

Halperin: It’s real and there for someone who has a lot of money that they could spend tens of millions on a campaign and who had real ideas about how to unite left and right because there is commonality such as going after Wall Street. I see no such person. Can I state three other reasons why to date Sarah Palin will never be president?

Brzezinski: Yeah.

Halperin: One is that Republican elites behind her back think she’d be horrible for the party. Two is, she’s not appealing to anybody but a narrow slice of American life and she’s heading more and more in that direction based on her rhetoric.

And finally and I think it’s best for the country. She has no ideas. She stands for nothing specific. To go into an event like that with the opportunity to say “I hear you disaffected Democrats” and here’s where we need to go. Great opportunity—she wasn’t woken up and kidnapped and flown to this event.

It’s been on her schedule for a long time. To come in so ill prepared for both the event and the interview with no ideas I think forfeits any claim on being a credible national leader right now.

Anyone believe Halperin or the rest of them are just figuring this out now? I sure don't. Don't you just love Peggy Noonan making sure everyone knows what John noted here earlier—that Sarah Palin now owns the tea bag movement which has been co-opted by the Republican Party and Fox News. But that’s been obvious since Dick Armey and Tim Phillips and other astroturfers got in there and started planning rallies. She made sure to let the rest of the cast know that these people will be voting for Republicans even though she and Mike Barnicle tried to act like there were a bunch of disaffected Democrats in that crowd. I doubt there were very many of them if any.

Noonan also claims there were a thousand people watching her. I thought they were only trying to sell 600 tickets and they couldn’t get those to sell out? Nothing like over-hyping the crowd size and calling it a movement when we had quite a few more show up for events like Netroots Nation. They weren’t giving that prime time live coverage on all the cable news stations and saying that the Democrats had better listen to the netroots or they were going to be in trouble the next election.

If nothing else, Barack Obama is a glutton for punishment. Apparently confident in his ability to manhandle the Republican leadership in the wake of his televised beat-down of the House GOP caucus two weeks ago, Obama has invited McConnell, Boehner and company to the White House for a health care summit. But instead of applying a full-court press on recalcitrant members of his own party to finally pass a Democratic bill the country so badly needs, Obama will waste yet more time in his futile quest for bipartisanship.

After a year of unprecedented obstructionism by the Republican Party, it begs the question:

Mr. President, what part of "no" don't you understand?

Within days of Obama taking the oath of office, Clinton health care assassin Bill Kristol counseled his Republican colleagues to repeat their obstructionism at all costs. (Not, of course, because Democratic health reform plans might fail, as Orrin Hatch later admitted, but precisely because they might succeed.) Despite facing almost total GOP opposition to his economic stimulus plan, on health care President Obama reached out to mythical moderates like Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME). All voted against the Senate bill, including Snowe (who supported it in the Finance Committee) and Grassley (who was among those regurgitating the "pull the plug on grandma" fraud).

And the 220-215 margin in the House and the complete 60-39 Republican rejection in the Senate came despite, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein reported, "The six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill":

At this point, I don't think it's well understood how many of the GOP's central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.

On July 20, 2009, weeks before the August town hall disruptions and a full seven months before President Obama's proposed bipartisan health care conclave is to meet, Bill Kristol penned a memo telling Republicans to "Kill It, and Start Over." And for months, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, John Kyl, John Cornyn, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and myriad other Republican leaders have faithfully coughed up that same talking point. As Boehner reproduced it in September:

"It's really about the president pushing the reset button. There's a way to start this process over, and I think that's really what the American people want. Let's start over."

And as Eric Cantor and John Boehner made clear today in the responses to the President's invitation, that rejectionist position is still operative.

Continue reading »

Dean Baker writes a fabulous new post on the skanky tactics of the Deficit Hawks.

Jingoism and the Budget Deficit: Using Any Tactic to Advance the Budget Cutting Agenda

The deficit hawks apparently believe that their case is so weak that they must resort to crass jingoism to push their agenda. NBC apparently intends to run a piece on the evening news on Tuesday that talks about the portion of the government debt that is owned foreigners, highlighting the role of China.

This is incredibly dishonest. The extent to which foreigners hold U.S. assets is determined by the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. (Actually, the causation largely goes the other way. The decision of foreign governments and/or investors to buy dollar assets raises the value of the dollar, leading to a larger trade deficit.) Insofar as there is an issue of U.S. indebtedness, it is the holding of U.S. assets in general by foreigners. This represents claims against future U.S. output that will be paid out to foreigners rather than being available for domestic consumption. Whether foreigners hold shares of General Electric and Microsoft or U.S. government bonds makes no difference, especially since one can be readily sold to buy the other any day of the week.

A serious discussion of this issue would focus on the value of the dollar. That is the relevant factor in the story of foreign indebtedness. Given the current value of the dollar, at the same level of GDP, we would be building up just as much foreign debt if the government were running a budget surplus rather than a $1.3 trillion deficit. Economists all know this.

However, the deficit hawks are not interested in a serious discussion. They are pushing their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare. And they are apparently willing to appeal to crude jingoism to make their case.

Can we ever have an honest debate in this country over such a serious topic as this? The College Republicans headed by Norquist, Reed and Abramoff in the '80s, along with the rise of Newt Gingrich in 1994, rendered the political environment in America toxic, and it has never recovered.

Are the Blue Dogs shamelessly self-interested and venal, or are just plain stupid? Economists are predicting these high unemployment numbers through the end of 2011, and these clowns want to cut government spending even further. As long as they get to keep their jobs, they don't give a crap about putting even more Americans out of work. Lovely!

Blue Dog Democrats want Congress to go further than President Barack Obama’s proposal to freeze spending in next year’s budget.

The group of House centrists will soon introduce a bill capping discretionary spending at specific levels. The move would challenge their leadership and the president, who are balancing concerns with the nearly $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 with those who say government spending on job creation is the way out of the recession.

The spending levels sought by the Blue Dogs may result in spending cuts, which would go beyond Obama’s proposal to save $250 billion over the next decade by freezing non-security discretionary spending for three years, said Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), a senior Blue Dog.

“Two hundred and fifty billion is a lot of savings with a freeze on discretionary spending, but I think we can do better,” Hill said in a brief interview.

The group has yet to hash out the details on the spending caps bill, but it has near-unanimous support among its members, a Blue Dog aide said.

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On Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell mocks Sarah Palin's crib notes during the National Tea Party Convention by holding up her own hand with notes written on it. When you've finally got Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd throwing you under the bus, you've got problems with ever being taken seriously as a future presidential candidate. They make some comparisons to how Ronald Reagan was treated and not taken seriously and Todd points out that unlike Sarah the quitter, Ronald Reagan didn't quit being the Governor of California just because he thought the job was too hard and if she would run, the other presidential candidates are going to beat her up for this.

Why it's taking this long for some of the media to finally start admitting what's been obvious for a very long time is another story. I guess the crib notes and her partisan, know-nothing attack speech were too much even for them to continue to ignore since they know full well if they don't finally admit how bad she is, the late night comedians, the blogs and the other candidates will tear her up even if they weren't ever going to be willing to do it.

Pam Martens: Wall Street's killer instinct spells death knell for jobs

OurFuture: Colorado Springs, conservatism's shining city

Multi Medium: Great moments in rationalization

AMERICAblog News: HHS investigating Blue Cross of CA for raising rates 39%

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Elemental Praxis, BITTER LAWYER, First of the Month

Talk to the hand. (Just FYI, the annual Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm is April 2-4.)

Open thread below...

If you miss the delectable power pop sounds of the Sixties and the complex melodic structure of the Beatles, you'll want to check out the Philadelphia music scene's beloved adopted son, Jim Boggia.

Like Alex Chilton, he's one of those cult figures, the kind we can't figure out why he's not a major star. If Paul McCartney married Brian Wilson, they might have given birth to Boggia. He writes gorgeous, hook-y songs that stay with you and his musical chops are impeccable, strong enough to get him guest spots with Will Lee's Fab Faux, the celebrity-studded Beatles tribute band.

I guess they can't figure out a marketing niche for him. (Psst, record executives: a funny, hipper Michael Buble with a guitar -- and better songs.)

Here's a Prefix mag review of his most recent CD, "Misadventures in Stereo":

To call Jim Boggia's Misadventures in Stereo a smashing power-pop success almost seems like damning it with faint praise; that is, if you think the term “power pop” only encompasses a stylistic breadth that starts with the Raspberries and ends with the Romantics. However, if your definition extends instead to the somewhat more singer-songwriterly realms of Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Matthew Sweet, et al, it may start to make more sense. Especially when you discover that Boggia's last album featured contributions from L.A. pop cult-hero Emitt Rhodes and Mann herself.

The Philadelphia-based artist's third album makes no bones about its influences; “Listening to NRBQ” not only lives up to its title but even goes so far as to feature the Q's erstwhile leader, Big Al Anderson, on guitar. Elsewhere, echoes of the Beach Boys and Beatles abound. That said, Boggia is much more than simply the sum of his inspirations. His unerring melodic sensibilities canter in intriguing, unexpected directions through settings that match a musical sophisticate's knowledge of harmony with a pure popster's knack for gut-targeted hooks.

His voice doesn't do the material any harm, either; Boggia's possessed of a smooth, airy tenor that's shot through with soulfulness, enabling him to glide gracefully atop an elegantly arcing melody or deliver a visceral punch on one of the album's more rocking tracks. Misadventures in Stereo proves that its possible to pack a sharp pop bite and go deep into troubadour territory with surprising simultaneity.

There's no such thing as a bad Boggia album. They're collections of marvelous songs instead of two hits sandwiched into a bunch of filler. And he's a great live act, too.

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(James Roosevelt - selling dad's plan in 1937)

When FDR suggested changes be made in the Supreme Court, appointing as many as six additional justices instead of the usual nine, it was a hard sell. In fact it went down to a stinging 70-20 Senate defeat by July. But FDR did a huge sales pitch for the plan, including enlisting his son James to stump for its passage.

James Roosevelt: “ I believe you will come to the conclusion that the President’s proposal if the most effective way to make constitutional democracy work. It confers no new powers. It takes away no previously existing authority. It is unquestionably constitutional. It will enable the Chief Executive to carry out with quickness and dispatch all those measures which meet the cry for repair and restoration. To you and to me and to millions of others throughout our country, it will bring comfort in the thought that those evil years of eight, yes of even twenty years ago will not come back.”

I'm sure at the time most Republicans had coronaries over the thought of six additional judges, all appointed by FDR setting the laws of the land. No doubt the wave of fear and calls of Dictatorship ran up and down the ranks of the right wing like a flu epidemic. But I can only imagine what it would have been like, had those fifteen judges been in place around the time of Bush, or even Nixon for that matter.

The mind fairly reels.

Perhaps some things were best not to have happened after all.

Paul Krugman hits the nail right on the head. Now what are we going to do about it?

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.