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As many of you know, conservatives hate government because it interferes with their precious free market 'GOD', so when they actually control the government they hire unqualified sycophants, who by their very nature undermine the posts they are given because of their incompetence and hatred for the government they draw a paycheck from. They then will use their position like an ideological club as much as possible. This comes in very handy when the administration changes hands, because then they can work to get rid of everything Democratic.

Monica Goodling was a powerful symbol of of the Bush administration. She was given a very powerful position with none of the basic qualifications for the job, just like Heckvuajob Brownie. In her case, she graduated from Pat Robertson's Regent University, and because she's a right-wing conservative hack, she got hired to assist Alberto Gonzalez at the DOJ with the power to hire and fire people. How is that possible, you say?

About a week ago, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted a tidbit that the rest of us missed: TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University boasts that 150 of its graduates, including former top DoJ aide Monica Goodling, are serving in some capacity in the Bush administration. Lithwick noted that this is “a huge number for a 29-year-old school.” That’s certainly true; it’s also a huge number for a small right-wing college led by a radical televangelist who believes Americans brought 9/11 upon themselves.

George W. Bush is the answer. If you forgot who Monica is, here's how she abused the power she was given. And of course she acted like a typical Grover Norquist clone and instructed the DOJ's attorneys to delete and destroy documents.

Turley and Olbermann discussed Alberto and Monica here. (Click to see video)

If McCain had won the election, he would have continued hiring incompetents throughout his administration because having a jackass fail in a key job only helps push the conservative meme that the government is useless and should not be involved in the actual job of governing. I was wondering if David Axelrod and his crew have made a real effort to purge these Heritage/Robertson imbeciles from their ranks?

Here's an example of what conservative governance is all about and what can happen if you don't clean house.

Hullabaloo writes about Bush-era embeds.

During the US Attorney scandal many of us wondered if it would result in a bunch of GOP operatives remaining burrowed in the Justice Department because the Democrats would fear being criticized for "politicizing" the department if they tried to fire them. Republicans, having fully mastered "I know you are but what am I" politics can always be counted upon to cry victim even when the turned tables are of a completely different type and the hapless Democrats end up chasing their tails because they can't figure out how to parry it. It was predictable that, perversely, there would be quite a few wingnut holdovers after the scandal completely safe in their jobs.

It turns out there are burrowers and one of them has left the department and immediately gone to the press to spill breathless tales of racism in the Obama/Holder DOJ -- toward white people, naturally:

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[Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.]

There's been a lot of crying about "thugs and anarchists" in Toronto. I live about 4 blocks from where some of the vandalism occurred, though I wasn't there at the time.

As best I can tell, what happened is that for about an hour, the Black Bloc protesters clearly and visibly prepared for action, with both the police and other, non-violent protesters able to see they were doing so. The number of Black Bloc vandals seems to have been between 50 to 100, certainly not more than 200. (The police had 20,000 men.)

The police actually withdrew, leaving behind police cars for the Black Block to torch. Which they then did. The Black Bloc then proceeded up Yonge street (the main north/south street in downtown Toronto), vandalizing as they went, and eventually many headed over to Queen's Park, the Provincial capital. Two hours after the first violence, the police finally take action, ensuring that there are plenty of videos of police cars burning and vandalism that would not have occurred if they had taken action earlier.

According to the police, rather than confront a maximum of 200 protesters, they withdrew behind the barrier around the G20 meetings and let them vandalize downtown Toronto for 2 hours.

At the end of the day the people who matter never even saw any protests and the 1 billion dollar police presence and suspension of civil liberties was "justified" by vandalism and burning police cars.

Simply put, the police decided that they couldn't spare, say, 2,000 out of their 20,000 men to stop 200 vandals. This was a deliberate decision to allow downtown to be vandalized.

I leave it as an exercise for readers to decide if this was a matter of incompetence, or if it was a deliberate strategy. And if it was deliberate strategy, just what they were trying to accomplish with their strategy.

Of course, along the way Canadian Civil Liberties observers were arrested as well, and protesters were not allowed to see lawyers.

I am ashamed to be Canadian today, and I am ashamed of my governments, at all levels.

NPR has a pretty chilling report on the investigation of Massey Energy's management of the Upper Big Branch mine ventilation. After listening to their report and reading the allegations miners made about the ventilation system it seems apparent that clowns were in charge of lifesaving ventilation systems.

Some snippets from mine safety inspectors' reports in the months leading up to the explosions:

Jan. 7, 2010: the air flow is not in the direction as shown on the approved map ... [miners] questioned management about this condition and they were told it was fine, not to worry about it.

March 9, 2010: Test[ed] air flow and it was flowing in the wrong direction. ... [I]nformed [manager's name blacked out] that the air was not according to the approved plan [and] that a citation would be issued [for] high negligence. ... All men [in that section] were removed from the mine.

Moving on to NPR's interviews with employees reveals an even uglier scene:

"They wouldn't fix the ventilation problems," a former supervisor and a member of mine management said. "I told them I needed more air. They threatened to fire me if I didn't run enough coal."

Another miner said "there was constant confusion" in the management of the airflow system.

A third miner described mine managers this way: "They don't have a clue how to ventilate this place."

It would seem there is either incompetence or negligence at this point, but it appears there may be more to the story still.

NPR first discovered the FBI investigation three weeks ago, when a reporter knocked on the door of the home of an Upper Big Branch miner. The man said he couldn't talk because he was in the middle of an interview with an FBI agent. NPR confirmed the federal criminal investigation with law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

A reporter returned to the miner's home after the FBI interview. The miner said he was asked whether a Massey manager made unauthorized changes to the ventilation plan. He was also asked whether miners ever disabled methane monitors.

Asking the question doesn't mean anything like that happened, of course. At the same time, those kinds of questions aren't often asked without some indication there may actually be a possibility the ventilation plan or the monitors were tampered with, in which case Massey Energy should become the first corporate "person" to be tried for 29 counts of murder.

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Michael Steele went on MSNBC this morning before the health-care summit and began attacking President Obama for a "dog and pony show" -- and claimed that the president should have held this summit a year ago, when things were just getting started.

The problem with this: Obama did. On March 5 of last year. Fully televised. All that.

Republicans were so busy back then concocting plans to scuttle ANY health-care reform, though, that it kinda slipped their minds.

Kudos to Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for calling him out for it:

STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.

TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE: On March 5th.

TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one not count? I'm just curious.

STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't have health care.

You know, you really can't blame Republicans for wanting to fire Steele as the RNC chair, when the level of incompetence is this deep.

But we progressives hope he sticks around, just for the comic relief.

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(This video is from 2005)

Conservatives will once again try to pull a scam on the America people which is known as "The Luntz"

Frank Luntz has drafted the new GOP playbook to try and stop Financial reform and it's not going to be pretty.

Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.

In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.

"If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."

Luntz continued: "Ordinarily, calling for a new government program 'to protect consumers' would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying 'no.' They are saying 'hell no' to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests."

...read on

Republicans are ahead of the game once again. Chris Dodd is possibly backing off of the agency too. Bloggers were screaming at the administration to take more of a populist approach in their dealing with the economy, but we were ignored and then FOX News created the Teabaggers and that was that.

Digby has more:

Marc Ambinder reports how the Democrats plan to fight back now:

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Liberal Values: A historical anachronism? Yeah. Just like Lott? Not hardly. But it is amusing that Michael (Injun) Steele is calling for Reid's resignation.

Echidne of the Snakes: Irrational Institutional Inequity, Incompetence and Injustice

naked capitalism: The military-industrial complex is ruining the economy (h/t Politics in the Zeros)

Media Nation: Anti-Coakley (and anti-Brown) push polling reported in Massachusetts

Dailycensored: Transforming education right in front of your eyes

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Tell the FCC: Support Net Neutrality...Broder-In-Training...Why FOX should eschew satire...On any given Sunday...FT Executive Summary...Stoopid...NPR Check...WaPo lets lobbyists write 'stories'...Right's answer to HuffPost...What you're missingat Bigjournalism.com...What Ailes us...

Let me give Joe Klein an example of why we are appalled by the insulated Beltway Villagers. Here's some typical Cokie Roberts trivial conventional wisdom that so infuriates the liberal blogosphere on NPR (h/t C&Ler Melissa):

INSKEEP: And you mentioned Yemen because this Nigerian suspect had a trip to Yemen in his past. There were other seeming warning signs before he boarded a plane and was stopped really just by incompetence and by the passengers. Is this mainly a political problem for the president or could this lead to changes in policy?

ROBERTS: Well, it's always politically difficult for Democrats when they are dealing with an issue like terrorism. It remained the Republican's only winning issue through most of President Bush's second term, and it's a particular problem for a Democrat who hasn't served in the military. But the policy problem is that it takes up a great deal of the administration's time, and will from here on out - particularly when the Senate Intelligence Committee starts hearings in a couple of weeks.

Here you have it. So sayeth Cokie, queen of the gasbags. All Democrats are weak, weak, weak on national security. It's fine with Cokie and the Villagers that most of the Bush and Cheney team refused to serve in the military when they had the chance, but during the Bush years the Villagers never questioned Republicans over their military experience or commitment to national security. Yet, it's just Jim Dandy to question a Dem's military creds.

When we were hit with 9/11, did the media or Democrats in Congress ever go on the air and, as a party, attack Bush and Cheney? They did not. Now of course, Republicans are fighting with each other to be first in line with as many insults as they can muster up to attack a Democratic president for his supposed national-security weakness. And Cokie Roberts gets to help push this old false narrative to the American people. Does Cokie remember how John Kerry was savagely attacked for actually serving in the military -- and receiving a Purple Heart -- by Fox News and the Swift Boaters?

If Cokie ventured off the set of This Week for a little bit, she would see Jim DeMint and his cronies behaving almost like traitors to America.

Howie Klein writes:

That hasn't stopped DeMint from actively doing everything he could to facilitate a national security catastrophe on Obama's watch, a catastrophe Republicans could use against Democrats in elections. He has put a hold on the confirmation of Erroll Southers, a widely admired anti-terrorism expert, until he comes out against unionizing TSA employees.

Bob Somerby has more background on Cokie in his archives too.

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.

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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