Needlenose

After voicing his support for the recent wing-nut terrorist Joe Stack and his suicide air attack on the IRS, Steve King is now standing up for the little guy – the Washington lobbyists on K Street.  They are apparently his ‘go to’ guys for all his information regarding pending legislation!  Imagine that, getting all your campaign financing, legislative review and background information from one convenient source!

Has Mr. King taken over the Pombo mantle of Congressional venality?  How does an evil dumbfuck like that get elected anyway – they can’t be that stupid in Iowa, can they?

For the short term, I think Pelosi should strip Mr. King of his congressional staffers and aides, since he his needs can all be satisfied by K Street.

*Update 2/26/10* Please show your appreciation for Mr. King by donating to one of his two Democratic challengers in the Iowa 5th District, Matthew Campbell or Mike Denklau.  I prefer Mike, but I think Matt might have the edge in $ and seems more Iowan.  They said we couldn’t unseat Pombo here in CA, but McNearney is in Congress and Pombo is off shagging sheep, so it can be done!

*Update 2 2/26/10* Seems to be the day for asshole Republican Congressmen. Trent Franks believes African Americans were better off as slaves then they are today – some tortured argument involving abortion.  Let’s fund whomever runs against him!

There seems to be only one means to achieve bi-partisan support for a bill – lard it with pork.  Or make it a pork-only bill, with cash for everybody’s constituents!

Case in point – 5 members of the GOP, hearing the “Woo pig sooie!” siren call of pork-barrell spending, crossed the aisle to vote for the so-called Jobs Bill.

The Repugs used this to good effect in the early post-9/11 days of the Shrubya Preznitcy to bring Democrat pigs to vote on their bills – Remember those bipartisan bamboozles such as the Agribusiness Handout  of 2008, the original Agribusiness Handout of 2003, and perhaps the most odious piece of legislation ever, the Big Energy Handout of 2003?

That must be why the Health Care Bill stalled out…insufficient pork!

Come on Dem leadership, grow a pair!  This is what I’m talkin’ about:

And this is just a Canadian!!!

Tip of the ‘Nose to Recruiter Buddy!

David Dayen at Firedoglake wrote this morning about how Sen. Richard Shelby’s attempt to block 70 Obama administration nominees over a couple of earmarks “does amount to what you would call a ‘teachable moment’ about the dysfunctional Senate.”

In his initial reaction overnight, Josh Marshall went a bit further, noting that Shelby’s hostage-taking attempt showed “gallons more audacity than Obama ever could have hoped for”:

… I wonder if this story might not end up amounting to much more than the sum of its parts because it brings together three or four of the issues roiling American politics today in a bundle of smack-you-in-the-face arrogance that’s too much to ignore.

For Republicans and the Tea Party set you’ve got pork-barrel spending and earmarks… for Democrats, there’s the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism.

Perhaps more important, it crystallizes the essential pettiness and hubris of the Republican in such a vivid way that even Democrats should be able to sell the image of GOP selfishness to a generally inattentive public.

It’s happened before, back in 1995 when Newt Gingrich led the newly Republican-controlled Congress in forcing a shutdown of the federal government, trying to force President Clinton to capitulate on budget issues.  Thanks to an inopportune remark by Gingrich about a personal snub he had received from Clinton, the White House successfully embarrassed the GOP into ending the standoff.

That Shelby would try such a stunt barely a couple of weeks after the Republicans snagged their coveted 41st Senate seat shows that his party hasn’t outgrown Gingrich’s penchant for overreach.   But, as D-Day also wrote today, President Obama and the Democratic leadership can’t let themselves be even less willing to stand up for their own interests than the famed triangulator, Clinton.

Perhaps Obama should make a high-profile visit to various GOP senators’ home states, asking locals if they’re as fond of Shelby’s earmarks as Massachusetts voters were of Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker kickback.”  Or maybe there’s a better attention-getting maneuver.

But hell, they need to do something.  Don’t let this teachable moment pass.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

We may have invented the solar cell, but China has taken the lead in manufacturing solar panels – and wind turbines as well, to add a little salt into the wound.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

That’s just rhetoric, Mr. President, Congress wants whatever their corporate masters tell them to want.  And in spite of what Justice Alito  may have been muttering during your speech, that’s regardless of where those corporate masters may live.  Multinationals just follow the money.

The Bush-appointed SCOTUS majority hastens the end of representative democracy with their catastrophic ruling eliminating Corporate campaign donation limits.  Well we had a good 200-odd year run, give or take a few misAdministrations.

A Repug Senator wins in Massachusetts?  Seriously?  Shows you how fucked up the Dem leadership really is.  The idiots dicked around so long with trying to appease the Repugs, the Repugs in drag ‘Blue Dogs’ and the lobbyists and now they’ve screwed the pooch.  Barney Frank pretty much said ‘back to the drawing board on health care.’  This is fucked up.  Forget Lincoln, Kennedy, Clinton…Obama is Jimmy Carter.

Carbon limits are for the little people! Faster, driver!

Sir Richard Branson saw fit to lecture to world leaders currently debating carbon emissions limits at Copenhagen on behalf of the airline industry.  “Reduction targets”, not carbon taxes is what he’d like.  He’s also pushing the idea of moving the airline fleets to biofuels, something he terms green fuel.

Biofuels, you know – things like ethanol and bio diesel derived from industrial agriculture that require more energy inputs then they produce in outputs and exist only as pork delivery vehicles for firms like ConAgra?

Keep in mind this bullshit is from a guy who has made an a second fortune from running an especially carbon porky business, an airline.  And if that weren’t enough, his latest venture is to fly fat rich tourists into space.  Hey Sir Carbon Asshole, here’s a reduction for you – shelve your stupid space tourism and save the planet an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually – and tell your rich buddies to go plant some trees on one of their 365 days of yearly vacation instead.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you make a real statement and shelve your new Formula 1 racing team.  I don’t think the additional 50 tonnes of CO2 your car will emit per season will ‘tip the balance’ but talk about hypocrisy.

Ever since they were released last Friday, I’ve been meaning to write about the FBI notes of Dick Cheney’s interview with Plamemania special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.  As is her wont, Marcy Wheeler has already critiqued Cheney’s non-answers from a variety of angles, and multiple media reports have commented on the ex-Veep’s nearly all-encompassing amnesia, best summarized by Watergate whistle-blower John Dean (via Raw Story):

Dean told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that Cheney attained “something of a record” by refusing to answer or claiming to not recall the answer to 72 questions posed by the FBI during a May, 2004, interview.

“If you’ll recall, former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman did 150 ‘I don’t recalls’ during his three days before the Senate Watergate committee,” Dean said. “This is 72 in less than three hours, that’s right up there.“

Among the many things that Big Dick pretended not to remember or to have cared about, what stood out to me were these attempts to portray his chief of staff–the now-convicted felon Scooter Libby–as merely answering media questions in such a mundane way that Cheney was barely aware of them:

Routine press inquiries would have gone to Cathie Martin, while some of those involving more substantive matters, particularly in the area of intelligence and national security, would have likely been handled by Scooter Libby.  He [Cheney] provided press guidance to both of them at times … though he can’t recall any specific advice he gave them in the May/June 2003 time frame….

… Vice President Cheney advised he was aware, prior to the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity in Robert Novak’s newspaper editorial on 7/14/03, that Scooter Libby was speaking to reporters about Joseph Wilson and his trip to Niger.  He stated that Libby was not required to clear every public statement and press contact because the Vice President had confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries….

… The Vice President advised that it was possible while on the return flight [from Norfolk, VA to Washington, DC on July 12th], that he and Scooter Libby discussed media responses to inquiries regarding Joe Wilson’s charges about the use of flawed intelligence.  Though he cannot recall any specific conversation, he would not be surprised to learn that he had such a discussion with his Chief of Staff.

… Vice President Cheney reiterated that Libby’s 7/12/03 handwritten notes look and sound like something he might dictate to Libby, but he cannot specifically recall having dictated such instructions to him on that occasion….

… The Vice President advised that if Scooter Libby had any discussion with any reporters on 7/12/03 upon his return from Norfolk, VA, he must have viewed those discussions as unremarkable, inasmuch as the Vice President was never told the outcome of any conversations, discussions or interviews with the media by Libby.

Why do I find all of this no-big-deal spin noteworthy?  Because of how Cheney attempts to explain away a seemingly damning piece of evidence–a note written in early October 2003 demanding that the White House spokesliar Scott McClellan publicly (and, as events would reveal, inaccurately) exonerate Libby from involvement in the Plame leak:

The vice president stated that the portion of his handwritten notes which read in part, ‘… sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others’, was his reference to the efforts of Libby who was forced to respond to numerous media inquiries involving Joe Wilson because of the incompetence of the CIA.

Uhh, Dick, what happened to your “confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries”?  How did conversations with reporters that were “unremarkable” when they occurred in July suddenly become the equivalent of putting one’s “neck in the meat grinder” three months later?

Kind of makes you think that the real “meat grinder” must have been something else, doesn’t it?

I’ll have more on that soon (schedule & circumstances permitting)…

From Josh Gerstein at Politico:

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents.

In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. . . . He said the impact of such an argument would be “breathtakingly broad” and “be in direct contravention of ‘the basic policy’ of”  the Freedom of Information Act.

The judge’s ruling came in response to a FOIA suit filed by liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. . . .

In a likely disappointment to aficionados of the CIA leak case, however, Sullivan appears to have okayed the withholding of details about Cheney’s talks with CIA Director George Tenet about Ambassador Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger, talks with National Security Adviser Condi Rice, discussions regarding the 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union Address, discussions about how to respond to press inquiries about the leak of CIA officer Valerie Wilson’s identity, and Cheney’s involvement in declassification discussions.

But… but… that’s all the good stuff!  Oh, well, maybe we’ll be able to learn something from the fragments that aren’t redacted.

See emptywheel and CREW for more information, speculation, etc.