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The Gregory Brothers--Smoking Lettuce

Welcome to another game of "You Just Don't Get It": Sunday Morning Edition. Once again the Villagers have decided that they will approach the issues of the day without context, without background and without respect for their viewers. Which is why we'll have Tim Geithner on both This Week and Meet the Press, defending the economy, dismissing why we need Elizabeth Warren on heading the new consumer agency. But will anyone mention that Geithner's sticky little fingers were all over the financial meltdown in the first place? And Newt Gingrich will be on Fox News Sunday wailing and gnashing about the Obama administration, without ever 'fessing up to the fact that it was his party's leadership and policies that put us barrelling down the wrong track. And don't even get me started on the discussion of civil rights and racial politics that Bob Schieffer is presumably leading on Face the Nation. I'll lay even money that at some point during the hour he'll ask the panel if it's possible for blacks to be racist. Like I said, they just don't get it.

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University; Cornel West, a professor of African-American studies and religion at Princeton University.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Geithner.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Amy Walter, Howard Fineman, John Heilemann, Cynthia Tucker. Topics: Will African Americans Stick With Obama This Year? Will This Year's Elections Be an Historic Wave Year, and Is it Better for Obama to Lose Control of Congress?

CNN's "State of the Union" - Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley; author John McWhorter; Mort Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News; former CIA director Michael Hayden.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Is the United States making any real progress in Afghanistan? What about Pakistan? Find out what the Obama administration's man in the region has to say about the matter. Watch Fareed's exclusive interview with U.S. Special Representative Richard Holbrooke.

"Fox News Sunday" - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

I wasn't very nice to Sen. Debbie Stabenow during yesterday's conference call. I feel bad about that, because she's actually one of handful of senators who consistently stands up for the unemployed. She understands that real people are affected by what Congress does and doesn't do.

But I was getting impatient.

See, she was talking about the Republicans obstructing the jobs bill, and how every time they raised an objection, the Democrats changed the bill to meet their demands. She was asking us to help.

That's when I interrupted her. She kept talking, but so did I.

Finally, I pulled the trump card: "Yes, Senator, but you still have a job." Because really, as upset as she was, I wanted to give her a reality check: It wasn't about her.

I felt mean as soon as I said it; it was kind of like kicking a puppy, because the Senator did the verbal equivalent of a cringe, and she immediately began apologizing and saying how hard they'd worked to pass this bill.

I told her I understood, that I appreciated the fact that she understood and spoke out for working people all the time. But why, I said, didn't the Democrats abandon these useless ideas about Senate comity and collegiality and really let the Republicans have it? (In the teeth, I wanted to add.)

"The Democratic Senators should call a press conference, tell them how the Republicans are blocking this and say, 'If that's not okay with you, you need to get on the phone right now and call your senator's office.'"

She mumbled something about how the leadership was "working on it." Dear God, I thought. Do these people do anything without polling it first?

Anyway, then I got off the call to talk to a friend who's talking about killing herself and her three cats because she's 57, her unemployment's running out and she's at the end of her rope.

But I wouldn't want the Republicans to stop playing these games just because a few weaklings didn't arrange to get born with the right DNA. Please don't worry about it now, Sen. McConnell. You and the rest of your boys'll have all the time in the world to ponder these things when you're burning in hell.

Oh, and boys? Just a reminder: no air conditioning!

NY Times, Wash. Post omitted Democratic response to Bush, Cheney attacks on Iraq War critics

This works beautifully for the GOP.

One of the biggest criticisms rank-and-file Democrats have of the Democratic leadership is that they don't fight back - but what difference does it make if the news media never goes to them for a response? They should be asking them directly, but even if they are too lazy they could check their various websites (some of them even have blogs) to see what they have to say about these things.

Posted by Avedon

I actually meant to include this in my previous post, and judging from comments it's just what some of you want - a media contact list. So let me encourage you to tell the media how outrageous you find it that they give so much coverage to ludicrous right-wing talking points and then don't cover the response from the Democratic leadership - or from the majority of Americans.

Posted by Avedon

Sociology 101

The Sideshow has a great post today: "What is Michael Kinsley trying to say? First he talks about all the "national myths" we have about equality, and then he notes that upward mobility is declining, but then he acts like upward mobility never existed....

" Well, now we seem to have a leadership that absolutely glories in that ugliness. They have an entire theology based around the idea that the rich and powerful deserve to be rich and powerful and lord it over the rest of us."...read on

via All Spin Zone: Has the GOP Senate and House leadership finally realized they have a stinking, rotting compost pile on their hands? Or has it finally dawned on them that there are simply more important things to be dealing with right now?... - From Forbes.com...

...RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmidt suggested that supporters who use the term "privatize" are listening to the wrong people.

"There's been a concerted effort on the part of Democrats to spread misinformation," she said. "The word `privatizing' has unfortunately seeped into the public dialogue." read on

Why Is Hinderaker Changing the Subject on Schiavo?

via Watching the Watchers

...The concept of Bush Fatigue is lost on Hinderaker. In his mind, the slipping poll numbers can only point to the inconsequential minutiae that is the "GOP talking points memo" on the Terri-inspired legislation, a.k.a the Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act. We debate with facts, not the facts themselves, so I will admit that the source of the memo is unknown, but to write that "[a] reasonable conclusion would be that the 'talking points memo' might be a fake, created by Democrats to cast aspersions on the motives of the Republican leadership" is not only irrational, but indecent. Where are the facts? Where are the sources?...read on

So Much For Moral Values Molly Ivins

My, my, gonna be a long four years. House Republicans have rewritten the ethics rules so Tom DeLay won't have to resign if indicted after all. Let's hear it for moral values. DeLay is one of the leading forces in making "Republican ethics" into an oxymoron.

The rule was passed in 1993, when Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was being investigated for ethics violations. And who helped lead the floor fight to force him to resign his powerful position? Why, Tom DeLay, of course. (Actually, it's sort of a funny story. The D's already had a caucus rule that you had to resign from any leadership position if indicted. The R's changed their rules to match the D's, except they deliberately did not make their rule retroactive, so the highly indicted Rep. Joseph McDade, senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, could, unlike Rostenkowski, retain his seat.)

DeLay has already been admonished by the House ethics committee three times on separate violations of ethics rules. Please note, that is the Republican-dominated ethics committee. The hilarious rationale offered by the R's for the new rule to exempt DeLay is that no one can accuse them of taking the moral low road here because, "That line of reasoning accepts that exercise of the prosecutor in Texas is legitimate." Uh, that would Ronnie Earle of Austin, who is a known Democrat. One the other hand, Earle is quite noted for having indicted more Democratic officeholders than Republicans, so it's a little hard to argue that this is a partisan political probe. Or it would be, if facts made any difference these days to talk-show screamers...

Is this Arafat's legacy?

I took a taxi cab ride in Philadelphia around 1999. I asked the driver to take me to get a cheese steak sandwich (of course) and he joined me saying he was hungry also. After a few minutes of small talk, he told me that he was Palestinian. I asked him, "Do you ever think there will be peace between Israel and Palestine?" He stopped eating and and said one word: Never! I asked him how come? " They kill babies in the streets! They threw my family out of their homes. How would you like it if someone came to the house that you lived in all of your life and kicked you into the streets?" After a few minutes I said, "Wouldn’t it be better for your people to finally make peace as long as it’s fair so that your families can heal and your society would begin to grow? He threw his sandwich to the ground and said, "There will never be peace! Never! "As long as we still breathe, we would all rather die!"

He was so angered that he took me back to the hotel and radioed in to his boss and told him that he couldn’t work the rest of the night.

At the time I was naive to the whole conflict and I thought I was asking an innocent question. I've heard that resentments are the number one offender in twelve step programs, and as this one goes, well… I’ve never felt hatred like I did talking to that man.

Will a new leadership help to create peace? With that type of resentment embeded in their hearts, I don't see it anytime soon.