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Today Blue America is hosting an old friend here at Crooks and Liars, Representative Paul Hodes. Paul first came onto our radar in 2006 was he was campaigning-- successfully, as it turned out-- against entrenched incumbent Charlie Bass in New Hampshire. Blue America endorsed him and has been gratified to see him consistently standing up for working families in the House of Representatives. He was one of the Democrats who put his foot down and refused to vote for the Wall Street bailout, TARP. He believes, firmly, that the government has to watch out for Main Street and for American consumers by reigning in the excesses of Wall Street. "I voted against the Wall Street bailout because I didn’t believe we should bail out the big banks while middle class families are hurting across America. I'm working-- fighting-- for tougher regulations on credit card companies, mortgage lenders, and big Wall Street banks so Wall Street’s greed will never be able to hurt middle class families again." When AIG's irresponsibility, unregulated avarice and gambler's instincts got them in trouble and they came looking for money from the government, it was Rep. Hodes who pointed out that to American taxpayers AIG "stands for arrogance, incompetence and greed."

Today, he's asked us to let our readers know that he'd like anyone who was considering donating to his campaign during this live blogging session, instead donate to the No on 1 campaign in Maine. Paul isn't a frightened, mealy-mouthed congressman tiptoeing around equality with a "separate but equal" non-solution for marriage rights. You don't hear him talking about domestic partnerships. He favors equal rights under the law for all couples regardless of gender. "The legislation passed in New Hampshire," he reminds us, "will ensure that all Granite Staters have equal rights under the law. And the law is consistent with the spirit of New Hampshire expressed in our state motto ‘Live Free or Die.’ Marriage equality gives equal justice to New Hampshire residents. I will continue to work for those same principles as a US Senator and I am a proud co-sponsor of the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act."

Please join us in the comments section below and let's talk with Paul about why he's demanding a timeline in Afghanistan and a public option in the health care reform bill-- and anything else you'd like to ask someone who's been serving in the House and wants to move over to the Senate.

What is it about stupidity that America seems to love so much?

This glorification of stupidity has been consistently promulgated by films like Dumb and Dumber, Legally Blonde, Dude, Where's My Car, Idiocracy, Borat and - god help me - Forrest Gump. We Americans love stoopid peepul. As much as I enjoy the series Eureka, it's telling that in a town full of geniuses, the schtick is that it’s the not-genius sheriff (at least he isn't portrayed as a slapstick idiot) who usually solves the problem by either shooting it, whacking it with a stick or driving his Jeep into it. The geniuses are stereotyped as bumbling, socially inadequate, skinny, malformed, couldn't get laid if their Nobel Prize depended on it geeks. (Not helped that Bill Gates fits the physical profile). Real life geniuses, like John Forbes Nash, are presented as more cautionary tales - See? See? That's what happens if you get too smart, you become paranoid and go insane. Told ya so. Pass the popcorn, Ma...

Stupidity in politics didn't start with Dubya, however exemplary he is as the ultimate manifestation of incompetence and malevolent stupidity. Nor did it start with the tea-baggers holding up misspelt signs as they march to proudly display their ignorance and pointlessness. It’s endless, just endless…

It's ingrained in the American popular and political culture to exult stupidity and tear down intelligence. Adlai Stevenson's 1956 bid for the presidency was scuppered because he was denigrated by Republicans for being 'too smart', called an 'egghead' as a scathing pejorative, the distrust for intelligence is deep rooted in our history.

Stupid people aren't leaders, they're not even followers. They're the Marching Morons. They're the Eloi to the Morlocks of Coulters, Rushes, Limbaughs, Savages, Hannitys, et. al., who cultivate and nurture their hordes of the slavishly stupid, then feed off them mercilessly. It’s the bread and butter for the Malkins who can claim millions – millions I tells ya! – turned up for the 9/12 marches, then used photos from the inauguration to fraudulently bolster the lie, fully aware her multitude of mindless minions will never bother to check – or ever realize it was all a lie, that a mere few thousand at most showed up, all that empty lawn speaking volumes. (*crickets chirping*) It doesn’t matter to the Malkinoids and the Coulterites if they’re caught out, time and time again, their dishonesty exposed, their self-serving agendas flapping in the breeze like dirty underwear on a clothesline – they depend on the dedication of their supporters to stupidity. They trust in that entrenched compulsion to not-want-to-know, they know they can always rely on those antithetical sycophants of hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, but sure as hell spout off a load of uninformed, boorish, and – so sadly – ultimately self-defeating crap.

I come from a generation where women were struggling to break out of the Stepford Wife, I Dream of Jeannie, Father knows Best stereotypes that held us back - I once had a date kick me out of his car late at night on a deserted country road and had to walk 15 miles home, because I was going to college and had used a word he didn't understand; he felt so threatened by his own ignorance that he took out his inferiority complex on me. I refuse to dumb-down my vocabulary, for anyone, for any reason. I was warned by my family and friends that I would never find a husband if I were openly 'too smart' - men don't like 'too smart' women, they said. They were perplexed that I didn't care; why the hell would I marry anyone stupid enough to want someone more stupid than themselves? And yet… it still goes on. And on … And on...

I loathe stupid people. I loathe them because, unlike those genuinely afflicted with mental illness or disorders, stupid people willfully choose their stupidity. They revel in it, they venerate it, they wrap themselves in it tighter than an American flag and subject their children to the same brainwash-rinse-repeat that incited parents to prevent their children from listening to the first truly educated and articulate president this country has had since perhaps Lincoln tell them to get an education. Horrors, that might cause them to actually learn how to think for themselves, and become Atheists and Communists and Liberal Undesirables. Catchy, that, innit?

So it is hard for me to reconcile this mass approbation of blatant stupidity with the achievements we Americans have given to the world. We as a nation and as a culture have had so many shining, glorious moments where stupidity was forced to STFU. We put a man on the moon - several, in fact - and it was the Failure Is Not An Option inventiveness that got Lovell, Swigert and Haise back to earth alive. We split the atom. We invented the light bulb, the telephone, the airplane, peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

We invented the circular saw, the electric hot water heater, the elevated railway system, the engine muffler, the fire escape, Kevlar, the life raft, the medical syringe, the railway crossing gate, the rotary engine, the submarine telescope, the windscreen wiper – all inventions by American women, by the way.

We Americans invented airbags and autopilots, bubblegum and bulldozers, the credit card, dental floss, the flashlight, the Hubble telescope, laser printers, microwave ovens, the particle accelerator, the QWERTY keyboard, radar guns and radio carbon dating, the sextant, the supermarket, the space shuttle, and the sewing machine, volleyball and videotape and the zipper. We invented the Taser, the teddy bear, the traffic cone and – yes – even the tea bag.

We invented the Internet.

We invented the blog.

Educated, creative, intelligent Americans can, have done, and are still capable of doing amazing things. If only we could find a way to invent a cure for stoopid peepul.

The Bush Administration sure had a knack for letting criminals get away with it, didn't they? They failed to stop 9/11, never caught bin Laden, and now we're learning about the total incompetence of the SEC in responding to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances to catch Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud over 16 years by assigning inexperienced investigators and accepting “implausible” explanations after catching him in lies, the agency’s internal watchdog said.

At least six warnings from sources including a money manager, a “respected hedge-fund manager” and a firm that studied Madoff’s business failed to spur a “thorough and competent” probe, Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a summary of a report released today. Madoff, in an interview with Kotz, said even he “was astonished” when investigators failed to check trading records that would have exposed his scam.

“Despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme,” Kotz wrote.

This is not only an incredible report, it plays into a larger truth about the conservative conception of regulation as a needless bother rather than a diligent effort to protect the consumer. One incredible moment, referenced above but covered in detail by Zachary Roth, shows that Madoff basically thought he was caught and the scheme had been discovered by federal regulators, only to find himself safe once again.

The agency's biggest screw up, says the summary, was the fact that examiners never verified Madoff's trading through an independent third party.

The details of that failure are more astonishing still. Madoff at one point told examiners that all his trades were cleared through his account at the Depository Trust Company (DTC), a clearing agency -- and he gave the examiners his DTC account number. At that point, Madoff told Kotz in an interview, "I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they'll call DTC and this will be over." Amazingly, the SEC never followed up with DTC. Madoff said he was "astonished."

The summary almost makes clear that the SEC's right hand didn't know what the left was doing. It notes with astonishment that at one point, two Madoff examinations were going on at the same time within the agency, without either being aware of the other. It was Madoff himself who informed one team of the other's existence [...]

The final, failed Madoff investigation of 2006 -- triggered by a detailed Markopolos complaint -- was perhaps the most egregious. According to the summary, most of the investigative work was done by a staff attorney "who recently graduated from law school and only joined the SEC nineteen months before she was given the Madoff investigation. She had never previously been the lead staff attorney on any investigation, and had been involved in very few investigations overall. The Madoff assignment was also her first real exposure to broker-dealer issues."

According to the summary, that inexperience helps explain why, when Madoff told the examiners that he got such unprecedentedly good return simply because he had a good "feel" for the market, they took that nonsensical explanation at face value.

Bush's SEC didn't bother to check up on Madoff's dealings, and they took his explanations as good enough for them, because their attitude toward regulation was "don't mess with a good thing." Indeed, the entire stock market during the Bush years was kind of operating under a false reality in its own right. Madoff was a crook, but at least an honest crook. And even he couldn't get caught.

This is not just the story of one agency's embarrassing failure. The failure lied in the theory of government, existing to make profits for cronies and lay off the connected and the powerful. The failure to catch Madoff and the failure of conservatism are essentially the same stories.

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(Senator Ted Kennedy - passing of an era)

Regardless of having known the end would come for some time, hearing the news that Senator Ted Kennedy lost his battle to brain cancer still came with an overwhelming sadness - a true sense of loss. The passing of an era.

So as way of a tribute, here is Ted Kennedy at the National Press Club from January 18, 1972, outlining the priorities for the upcoming session of Congress. As always, Health Care was forefront on his mind.

Ted Kennedy: “If you think we have a (health) system that is working well today, ask the person next to you. Ask a mother who tries to call a doctor after dark. Ask a man who lost is health insurance because he lost his job. Ask a senior citizen whose Medicare has run out. Ask anyone who ever paid a bill or tried to file a Health Insurance claim. Our people will never get fair value for their enormous investment in Health Care, unless we break the strangle hold of the Health Providers and Health Insurance companies. We have a mammoth Health Care crisis because we have a mammoth health care system that works well, but only for the few. It works well for the doctors. It works well for the hospitals. It works well for the insurance industry. It works well for everyone but the sick. And it is the people who pay the price for this enormous profiteering. They have been sold a bill of goods for a system that is marred throughout by high cost and inefficiency, by inconvenience and incompetence. And by implicit or outright fraud. I do not believe that the Congress will be a party to the passage of any Health Insurance bill that maintains such vital flaws. We stand on the threshold of real reform. And 1972 can be the year when we cross that threshold and fulfill at last the promise that health is a basic right for all our citizens, not just an expensive privilege of the few”.

He never quit the fight.

ONE THIRD of all the weapons procured for the Afghan security forces are missing and can be presumed sold onto the black market. Worth roughly $40 million at wholesale cost (and weighing in excess of 200 tons) to the Pentagon, would anyone like to guess at the black market value? The report has been compiled by congressional auditors, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

It found that, in the four years up to June 2008, the US military failed to keep complete records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country.

The report will be discussed in the US House of Representatives on Thursday.

It states that weapons supplied by the US to the Afghan military "are at serious risk of theft or loss".

The report says:

• US military officials failed to keep proper records on about 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008 - about a third of all the weapons sent
• There was a similar lack of management of a further 135,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces via the US military by 21 countries
• The military failed even to record the serial numbers of some 46,000 weapons, making it impossible to confirm receipt of weapons or identify any which had fallen into the hands of militants
• The serial numbers of 41,000 weapons were recorded, but US military officials still had no idea where they were

"Lapses in accountability occurred throughout the supply chain," concludes the report, which is due to be discussed on Thursday at a panel hearing of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee.

In response, the Pentagon agreed that it needed more people to help train the Afghanistan government to track the weapons, the AP news agency reported.

Which is to say the Pentagon didn't figure that much out after the first time this happened.

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What a terrible problem to have...

Politico:

Yet it’s had another consequence that has gone all but unnoticed. The campaign finance reports filed by Obama and Clinton have grown so massive that they’ve strained the capacity of the Federal Election Commission, good government groups, the media and even software applications to process and make sense of the data.

A milestone of sorts was reached earlier this year, when Obama, the Illinois senator whose revolutionary online fundraising has overwhelmed Clinton, filed an electronic fundraising report so large it could not be processed by popular basic spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel 2003 and Lotus 1-2-3.

Those programs can’t download data files with more than 65,536 rows or 256 columns.

This is astounding on two levels. For one, the huge influx of money to both campaigns is absolutely unheard of. Can you even imagine how much cash the eventual nominee will have to throw around this fall once we combine forces? Couple that with McCain's pathetic fundraising appeal, and we have a huge money advantage right off the bat, not to mention the luxury of running against the third term of the most unpopular President in US history. Secondly, is the FEC so outdated that they're really still using Excel 2003? They can't be that incompetent, can they?