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When Rand Paul makes Marco Rubio sound sane, you know it's bad. Candy Crowley's theme of the day was the American Dream, and Rand's idea of it is, well...Randian. Actually, it's pretty dystopian.

Here's the transcript, via CNN:

CROWLEY: We leave you with a last set of thoughts on the fundamentals of the American dream. Capitol Hill, we found out, remains full of dreamers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. BARNEY FRANK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: For me the American dream is the ability of people, no matter what their ethnicity, their religion, their background, their sexual orientation, to live up to their full potential.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: The American dream is more than just about people that made millions of dollars or own a jet airplane or yacht. It's about the hard-working people that service our lunch at restaurants or clean our offices at night who are working hard so that one day their kids can do all the things they themselves could not.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D), VIRGINIA: We can't guarantee everyone in America that they're going to be successful, but we sure as heck ought to be able to guarantee that everybody gets a fair shot.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: It's not that we will have equal outcome. In fact, the American dream is that those who work harder and those who merit it will have unequal outcomes, that they will gain more of whatever the American dream is.

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D), MISSOURI: The American dream means to me that a young girl who grew up going to public schools in a very modest household and who worked her way through college and law school someday has the incredible opportunity to be a United States senator.

In the overall spectrum of remarks clipped in this segment, Rand Paul's stand out like a big black thumbprint on an otherwise gradient landscape. "Those who work harder and those who merit it..." What exactly does that mean? Is there some formula for preordination for some in this country to 'merit it'? Is it a dogwhistle or just simple-minded meanness? What I heard in this segment was a United States Senator arguing for inequality, which squares exactly with his political philosophy of returning us to pre-Civil War era times.

As for Marco Rubio, what did he say, exactly? Not a whole lot, but most of it contradicts his actions. He voted for the Ryan plan, won't vote to raise the debt limit, and supports draconian cuts to services and assistance that would help those hard workers out there who want life to be better for their kids. So thanks Marco for the platitudes but next time back up your pretty words with some action, okay?

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I had a chance yesterday to catch up with Van Jones, who is out on the stump these days working on the effort to build the "American Dream movement" -- the kickoff for which we witnessed the week before in Van's rousing speech at Netroots Nation.

We talked for a good twenty minutes. Since so much of what we do here at C&L is focused on dealing with the the Right's inevitable attacks on progressive initiatives -- and particularly the lies and smears that are part and parcel of those attacks -- and Van is one of the foremost victims of their lie-and-smear campaigns, I wondered if he had some thoughts on how we confront them.

Van was talking about how a wealthy fringe is financing the effort to destroy the American Dream for the nation's working-class people:

C&L: They're spending a lot of money to promote that, too. They have their media machine, and they're able to propagandize largely at will. And we know that, you know, a lot of what they do, they're gonna do this time around just as they've done it in the past, is they're gonna lie and they're gonna smear us. Any ideas? I mean, you've had to deal with that pretty up close and personal. Any ideas how we deal with that?

JONES: Well, I think we have to have some courage. I mean, one of the things -- I mean, I went through it, and you would like to be -- I think one of the reasons liberals and progressives are so vulnerable psychologically and emotionally to these smear campaigns is because we have some unacknowledged desire to be liked and seen as good people. And so that becomes a soft underbelly when you're dealing with people who don't care about the facts, and who are willing to say anything.

And so there's a crucible that every movement has to go through where it comes under heavy, unfair attacks and criticism. And you have to be willing and able to push back as best you can, but also not to get absorbed into the food fight.

In other words, I think there are three mistakes you can make. One is to say that it's just too tough out there, it's a contact sport, I don't like it, I'm not gonna do anything. Let the bad guys win without a fight. In other words, they so discourage and demoralize people that people will just defeat themselves and they won't even try to make the country better. That's the main mistake that people make, and I think you break through that just by having examples of people picking up and fighting on.

The second mistake that people do is they get so kind of above the fray that they just don't respond to nonsense and to foolishness. I've been accused of having made that mistake, of kind of ignoring these people too long, and people have accused John Kerry of making that mistake. So that's another mistake that you can make, of just ignoring these people too long and not be forceful about setting the record straight and demanding some fairness.

C&L: You were were trying to turn the other cheek in a lot of ways, though, right?

JONES: Yeah. Exactly, and eventually, you know, I figured out that the human body only has four cheeks on it and I think all four ran out. So at some point you've had enough.

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On this, the 4th of July, I, a Canadian, want to talk to Americans about their values. Perhaps that's presumptuous. Perhaps I should just shut it and say "it's none of my business."

I could argue that it's my business on purely pragmatic grounds: where goes the US, Canada often follows. We are a US subject state in all but name, and your failure to fix your problems makes it much harder and sometimes impossible to fix our problems.

But forget that. I don't primarily care about the US because of Canadian interests, I care about the US because I care about the American dream.

I sometimes think that many of us who aren't Americans believe in American ideals more than American citizens do. We imbibe, in other countries, a particularly pure form of the American civil religion. We hear about doing the right thing, about always giving the accused a day in court, about freedom of speech, about division of power and about rights that are rights not because they are given by government to its subjects, but because they are inalienable human rights.

Oh, as time goes by, you realize that America has always had problems with its virtues. You learn of the red scares, the Japanese internments, the genocide against the Indians, slavery and Jim Crow.

And yet... and yet, both people and countries are defined not just by their failures, but by the ideals they strive towards. America's ideals, and its striving towards them, were what gripped the world and gave others hope. If the American experiment in freedom, in rights, could succeed, then perhaps it could succeed in other places.

But what we see today is the American Dream dying. Not just the dream of every generation being better off than the one before, though that's dying, but the dream of a country where the citizens actually had rights, where they actually were free.

There are a number of reasons, but I think Jefferson's prescient phase sums it up best:

I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies

I'm not so sure that banks are more dangerous than standing armies, but certainly the two of them together have brought the US to where it is.

The problem with standing armies is simple enough: if you've got one, politicians are always tempted to use it. When it's a professional standing army, so the majority of the population is not effected by its use, that temptation increases. When the army is the most powerful (though not the most effective) in the world, well, that temptation increases even further.

War is an executive function. A war cannot be run by a legislature. As a result, during war the power of the executive grows. In the US the executive can now hold people without charge indefinitely, meaning President has the ability to lock people up without a trial. If he does bother to grant a trial, the accused does not have the right to face their accusers or to see the evidence against them and evidence obtained through torture can be used.

The President can spy on any American he wants, and you have essentially no recourse, since it is illegal to let you know that you're being spied on. The President can declare American citizens combatants and have them assassinated, which is capital punishment without a trial.

Meanwhile, instead of the whole country being a free speech zone, free speech is only allowed in small areas if anyone important is nearby. Lord save the important people from having to actually see the people whom their policies are impoverishing and whose rights they are destroying.

The right of association has been severely crippled, since the executive can now declare any organization a terrorist organization without any trial and without any appeal. Any American who works with "terrorists" is a criminal. Even if they are, say, like Jimmy Carter, helping Hezbollah participate in fair elections.

To sum up, the President can do all of the following, in most cases without meaningful appeal or a trial: execute Americans, imprison people indefinitely, spy on anyone he wants, forbid people from flying, torture people, kidnap people, forbid people from associating with whoever they want, and deny them the right to speak freely anywhere except in small cordoned off zones.

This is America?

This is what the American dream has come to?

Your founders warned you about this. Warned you that standing armies and unrestrained banks would cost you your freedom.

And the sad thing is that most Americans are ok with it.

Are Americans who don't believe that everyone is endowed with inalienable rights still Americans worth the name?

That is my question to you on July 4th.

Happy Independence Day.

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Glenn Beck has been working hard to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King for conservatives like himself. He's even planning a big Tea Party event for the anniversary of King's march on Washington "I Have a Dream" speech. (Wait, let me guess: Glenn Beck, too, has a dream. Yegh.)

Thursday on his Fox News show, he tried to deny that progressives had any right to the mantle of civil rights:

Beck: Who were the Civil Rights marchers? They were people with a profound belief in God. They were trying to set things right. They weren't crying for social justice! They were crying out for equal justice!

Well, actually, Glenn ...

"Social justice" was a common rallying cry for the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, your newly adopted hero, Martin Luther King, gave a famous speech in Michigan titled "Social Justice and the Emerging New Age", on December 18, 1963, at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse at Western Michigan University.

I think with all of these challenges being met and with all of the work, and determination going on, we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.

The speech may best be remembered for its stirring conclusion:

In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality. I am convinced of this because I believe Carlyle is right. "No lie can live forever." I am convinced of this because I believe William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." I am convinced of this because I think James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own." Somehow with this faith, we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new life into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This will be a great day. This will be the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!"

Of course, this all kinda raises the point we've made previously with Beck: If progressives really are a cancer destroying America, what about the cause of civil rights they championed?

It's a joke and an outrage that Beck is trying to claim MLK's mantle for conservatives -- the people who were MLK's lifelong enemy. I hope folks in the civil rights community start making a stink about this nonsense.

So it looks like Goldman Sach's strategy is going to be "deny, deny, deny." "We didn't mean it like that," "You're misinterpreting," and "We wouldn't dream of it."

And yet, here we stand, in the smoking rubble of the American dream. And there they are, laughing it up in Park Avenue penthouses. Time for some karma, baby!

Goldman Sachs sought to protect itself from a collapsing housing market by selling mortgage investments that it knew were likely to fail and taking other steps that helped spread risk throughout the financial system, according to the findings of a Senate investigation released Monday.

The investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations suggests that Goldman's actions may also have helped fuel the financial crisis by creating risky investments and then ensuring that other parties were exposed when they lost value.

Excerpts of hundreds of internal Goldman documents released by the committee show that Goldman created and sold complex investments backed by risky home loans. Then, Goldman also bet against those investments by buying a type of insurance that would pay out if the underlying home loans went bad.

"Goldman Sachs was slicing, dicing, and selling toxic mortgage-related securities on Wall Street like many other investment banks, but its executives continue to downplay the firm's role in the financial engineering that blew up the financial markets and cost millions of Americans their jobs, homes, and livelihoods," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the subcommittee.

"Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars from betting against the housing market, and it placed those bets in some cases at the same time it was selling mortgage related securities to its clients," Levin said. "They have a lot to answer for."

The findings of the Senate probe come as Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and several other current and former Goldman officials come to Washington to testify before the subcommittee on Tuesday. The panel is using Goldman as a case study of how investment banks fueled the financial crisis.

In prepared testimony released by Goldman, Blankfein says that the firm must do "a better job of striking the balance between what an informed client believes is important to his or her investing goals and what the public believes is overly complex and risky."

He also said "we didn't have a massive short against the housing market and we certainly did not bet against our clients. Rather, we believe that we managed our risk as our shareholders and our regulators would expect."

But internal e-mails show that Goldman did expect to make big profits off the decline in housing.

Some Guy's Blog: Happy Thanksgiving!

James Fallows has been posting on how our myopic media manufactured a failure out of Obama's China trip

Angry Bear: Another Reagan myth bubbling back to the surface

cab drollery: They Knew

The Sardonic Sideshow: Has the American Dream drifted north?

onegoodmove: The Right Side of History (h/t reader Geoff)

Mr. Tobacco Bribe issued so much crap on Saturday that it was hard to get the smell out of my keyboard.

I came here to renew the American Dream, so my kids and their kids have the same opportunities I had. I came here to fight big-government monstrosities like this bill that dim the light of freedom and diminish opportunity for future generations," Boehner said in a statement.

Freedom allows Boehner to hand out checks in the halls of Congress.

In late June of 1995 then-GOP Conference Chairman John Boehner handed out "about a half-dozen" checks from the political action committee of tobacco company Brown & Williamson Corp. to fellow Republicans on the floor of the House.

Boehner's chief of staff Barry Jackson stated, "We were trying to help guys who needed to get their June 30th numbers up, their cash-on-hand numbers up. All leadership does this. We have to raise money for people and help them raise money."

Boehner was forced to stop handing out the checks when two freshmen Republicans, "appalled by it," confronted him and voiced their displeasure. Boehner's reaction was one of tempered apology, "I thought, 'Yeah, I can imagine why somebody would be upset. It sure doesn't look good.'"

Now that's freedom.

Conservatives are so against President Obama that they actually hoped America would lose the 2016 bid for the Olympics. That would have been a huge stimulus package, but Republicans show their true colors about job creation for their own country.

Americans For Prosperity show their hatred for America.

During the Americans For Prosperity's "Defending the American Dream Summit," blogger Emily Marie Zanotti of American Princess interrupted a discussion about engaging the right online to announce that Chicago was out of the running -- and the room erupted in applause.

"If anyone cares, Chicago is out," Zanotti said. When the crowd asked what happened, she said, "The very first vote, they did not have any chance at even negotiating. They were out on the first vote." That news was met with more cheers and high-fives.

The Weekly Standard also embarrassed their publication with this one.

Soon after news broke that the International Olympic Committee had rejected Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, which President Obama had personally lobbied for, Weekly Standard blogger John McCormack published a celebratory post on the magazine’s blog, titled “Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!.” McCormack wrote that “Cheers erupt at WEEKLY STANDARD world headquarters.

--

But the post has now been changed. The reference to cheers have been removed and the title has been shortened to a non-exclamatory “Chicago Loses.” The current post neither acknowledges nor explains the changes that were made.

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Rep. Alan Grayson had to remind the Republicans that they need to remember what country they live in.

"Someone should remind them what team they're really on"

And the money keeps coming in for Rep. Grayson.

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(Above video clips supplied by Overture Films)

I went to see a preview of Michael Moore's new film: Capitalism, A Love Story at the Bruin Theater in Westwood last week with Howie and Digby and it was a very fun night.

Moore has an incredible sense of humor and it always translates well into his movies and Capitalism is no different. He makes you laugh throughout his new project with images of the Roman Empire to satirical caricatures of Bush and AIG, but then he can also make you cry a second later, which makes his movies all the more powerful. When you see people holding camcorders while the eviction police are breaking down their doors to remove them your heart cries out.

We know that Wall Street and the mortgage industry pulled a monster con game on Americans and the result was that hard-working families lost their most prized position and that is the message at the heart of his movie. What good is "Capitalism" if it can't fill the basic needs of our people? How has it served America? Not how has it served the top 1% wealthy population, but the remaining 99% of the country that is driven by the messaging that you too can become rich and famous if you just work hard enough.

Ahhh, The American Dream.

What Moore believes is that capitalism is an absolute failure and is actually evil because at its heart, it's missing a moral core. The core comes back to the American worker. Does capitalism translate into the kind of America his father was part of while he grew up in Michigan? A place where a person could work hard, earn enough to raise the family and then retire with a pension? To Moore, the answer proves it has been a failure. He doesn't say he wants socialism to take hold, but I thought he was arguing for a sort of Constitutional Capitalism since he liked Capitalism back in the days when he father was able to prosper working at one company his entire life. Corporations should have to take care of their employees just like they do their profits. An equal partnership, so to speak. Is it possible? Moore thinks the system has become too corrupted, too evil to succeed in delivering the promise of a good life for the vast majority of the country.

Corporations are beholden to their stock holders and must maximize profits at all costs, regardless of how that affects their workers. So, even if GM records a huge profit for a particular year, they could then cut thousands of workers from the company the following year just to increase profits. Destroying cities and people's lives in the process don't factor in even when there has been no financial shortfall for them. To Moore that is the real evil and the way he sees it, it may be too late to fix.

He attacks Wall Street and Congress and all the players you think he would over the bailouts and then he asks the viewer to come up with a solution to the problem as he sees it.

Can America survive without Capitalism? Where do we go from here? There is much to see in this new flick and much to like. The one thing that he does is also give his audience plenty to think about.

Chris really understands the inner workings of the Latino dream-which includes flower shops and bodegas.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT coming (rough trancsript)

Matthews: "When I think of people who come to this country from other countries - they speak Spanish-Puerto Rico which is not another country, but is the common wealth. Hardest working people, they're extremely entrepreneurial if it's just owning a flower shop, it's owning a small business-a bodega-right?

Puerto Ricans come to this country to start business. Cubans certainly come here to start businesses. The hardest working people in the United States are people who just got here from Mexico-the first day they get here. Everybody knows they don't want a big social democracy. They want free enterprise and entrepreneurialism don't they?

Mayor Villaraigosa: I think what they want-

Matthews: They sound like they are natural republicans to me.

Mayor Villaraigosa: I think what they want is the American dream and are willing to work for it...

So being hard working and wanting to get a head in the world to Chris Matthews is only a Republican ideal. I almost forgot how the Minutemen feel about Mexicans all of a sudden.