Needlenose

I’ve done my best to remain blissfully unaware of what it is Rep. Anthony Weiner did to get himself in political trouble.  But I did note that as soon as the controversy, um, revealed itself, wise voices pointed out a simple way for Weiner to avoid having to leave office as a result — simply, refuse to resign.

Leading Democrats, though, don’t seem to want any part of that.  From TPMDC yesterday:

Democrats in Washington couldn’t have made it clearer that they want Weiner gone fast. Within minutes of his nationally televised confession on Monday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for an ethics investigation and was seconded immediately by DCCC chair Steve Israel (D-NY).…  On the Senate side, Harry Reid more or less told Weiner to drop dead, acidly saying his advice to the lawmaker would be to “Call somebody else.” On the other side of the ledger, virtually no Democratic officials have moved to defend him.

Today, Pelosi upped the ante by specifically calling for Weiner’s resignation.

To some extent, the reactions by Reid and Pelosi are simply the institutional Democrats’ instinctive timidity at work — if they’d been alive during the American Revolution, they’d have responded to Benjamin Franklin’s famous declaration of “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately” by thinking, “Well, as long as we get them to hang someone else first, maybe we’ll get through this okay.”

As the New York Times notes, this knee-jerk reflex to surrender is amplified by Weiner’s longstanding endorsement of the opposite approach to politics:

The scandal swirling around [Weiner] has revealed a truth about his personality and his place in the Capitol: He does not care much about those he serves with, and they do not care too much about him.

In a body full of ambitious and egotistical people, Mr. Weiner, 46, stands out for his brash and sometimes even impulsive style. His aggressiveness has served him well, as he has emerged as one of the most visible politicians in New York City and one of his party’s most camera-ready combatants. Liberal cable television seems to love his style, as do many of his constituents.

This contrast, in turn, is why many progressives are trying to build counter-pressure for Weiner to stay in office:

While most of cable news has focused on Weiner death watch, MSNBC host Cenk Uygur has devoted his time to defending Weiner….

Democrats turning on Weiner is “part and parcel of the correct impression that the Democratic party is weak and the Republican party is strong,” Uygur said.

If you can forgive me a brief flight of fancy, I’d suggest to Reid and Pelosi that there’s a way for them to play both sides of this controversy successfully.  I’ve argued for years that Democrats have suffered from a poor division of labor — they don’t have designated bomb-throwers/”bad cops” to say rude (but true) things in the media, so that more moderate folks can play “good cop” and make the same points while seeming more agreeable.

If Weiner rejects the pressure to resign, Reid and Pelosi can justifiably turn to the world and say, “We tried, but we can’t force him to do what we want.” And from that moment, Weiner is a free man — free to speak impolite truths in whatever attention-getting manner and forum he chooses, enabling his less brave colleagues to accept media invitations to tut-tut his uncouth tone and choice of words… and then gently add, “But he does have a point about…”

Ahh, but who am I kidding?  The Democratic leadership is as incapable of this sort of clever kabuki as they are of standing up publicly for progressive principles.

(Updated and slightly revised from a post at Firedoglake.)

I was curious what the wrong-wingers are making of the calls to end subsidies to Big Oil, and was pleasantly surprised to see Peter Suderman over at Hit & Run agree not only with ending Big Oil’s subsidies, but also taking a whack at corporate favoritism in the tax code across the board.  Bravo!  Curious though that he doesn’t mention the role the Repugs played in Big Oil pork.  Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that were he blogging back in ’03, he would have been decrying the squandering of our tax dollars on Big Oil!

Let’s go for Big Ag next!

The historical significance of Prince Charles

Here is what they were dancing to:

Harry Reid finally notices that Repugs are stupid.  Well at least Senator Milquetoast is getting a little feisty!

On related topic – I would bet most of these guys vote Repug.

Turkey stuffed with pork!!

Turporken is the holiday meal on Capitol Hill, basically Obama’s turkey tax deal now stuffed with pork, the time-honored way to get bi-partisan support for legislative shit sandwiches. Here are the details:

“Altogether the bill includes more than 6,000 pet projects worth $8 billion, including:

• $80 million to states and Indian tribes to preserve Pacific salmon.
• $2.5 million for bike paths in Illinois.
• $4 million for the Kentucky National Guard to eradicate marijuana.
• $500,000 for transportation improvements at the Bronx Zoo.”

The biggest pork of course is reserved for corporate welfare:

The legislation contains $11 billion in energy tax breaks, including tax credits for biodiesel, energy-efficient homes, marginal oil wells and alternative vehicle refueling property. Alternative-energy industry lobbyists calculated correctly that Republicans would not bring down the tax bill over a few energy credits.

And billions in subsidies for polluting and wasteful ethanol producers remain intact.

Racing to the bottom

Among developed nations, we’re now “average” in education,  a “C” student so-to-speak.  Not much consolation that we’re just ahead of Mexico and Turkey.  And our life expectancy has fallen for the first time in 25 years.  On the good news side, at least we are no longer leading the world in carbon dioxide emissions, China now has that dubious role…no wait, mixed blessing, that’s due to the fact that China may soon surpass us in manufacturing.

Well at least we are still #1 in national debt!

House passes symbolic bill to reject President Chamberlain’s non-deal on tax cuts.  Why symbolic?

The vote is, indeed, non-binding.

Plus,

“The vote, which was conducted with something less than a full caucus present, was as much a repudiation of the substance of the deal as the White House’s handling of it”

So the Dems go on record as bitching about the capitulation, and the ones who don’t want to go on record are conveniently out of the room.  Welcome to the next two years in the House.

*Update 12-11-10* Out comes the lard, spread on the slops to attract the pigs to the trough!  Nothing like pork-barrel politics and earmarks to bring the two parties together!  You still believe the Dems will actually stand up to Obama’s “Raw Deal”?

*Update 12-13-10* Okay this is freaky – the frickin’ Tea Baggers agree with me!

No I can't!

Remember all the comparisons to FDR and Kennedy after Obama got elected?  Up until now I’ve been thinking Clinton II, but my god, he can’t even have a show down with the minority Repugs over extending the unpopular tax cuts for the rich!  I’m with Howard Dean on this one.

*Update 12-8-10*  I caught President Chaimberlain’s little press conference, where he came running out waving his agreement to give the Repugs everything they wanted in exchange for a signed agreement stating they won’t ask for anything more.  Listen dude, I think we all know D.C. is all about compromise, but we expect something in return.  Maybe you should step down so we can see what Biden could do.

None of this for you, Wisconsin!

I’m sure you all heard about Russ Feingold being evicted from his U.S. Senate seat by Wisconsin voters last week.  What you may not know is that Wisconsin elected a Republican governor as well, and he’s accepted his victory with all the grace divisive partisan bluster we’ve learned to expect from the GOP:

Gov.-elect Scott Walker is determined to bring major changes to Madison — seemingly even before he takes office next year.

Walker, a Republican, has asked Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration to immediately stop some of its key policy initiatives . . .

In a letter sent Wednesday to Department of Administration Secretary Daniel Schooff, Walker urged the current administration to freeze implementation of the federal health care law — an issue Doyle is especially passionate about — and suspend contract negotiations with state employees . . .

That the health-care law hasn’t even begun to be implemented yet (since it doesn’t go into effect for two more years) doesn’t matter to Walker — this is all about showboating and posturing.  Which is the only thing that matters to Republican politicians, aside from rewarding campaign contributors:

Scott Walker wants Wisconsinites to believe that Wisconsin can take federal money that was allocated for construction of a national high-speed rail network and use it to build roads. . . .

Not according to Congressman Tom Petri, a Fond du Lac Republican who is a veteran member of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. While Petri was a Walker backer in the recent election and says he sympathizes with Walker’s plan, he says he can see little hope that Walker’s scheme will get any traction.

Despite what the governor-elect is claiming, his fellow Republican Petri says the money already has been set aside specifically for building up America’s rail infrasructure. If Wisconsin does not want the money, there are other states that want to spend the $810 million to create jobs and position themselves to compete in the 21st century.

Walker is rejecting the money unless he can spend it on his pet projects — or, to be more specific, on the pet projects of his campaign donors in the road-building industry.

Again, Walker certainly couldn’t care less about the fine points of legislative requirements — you can bet that he’ll bluster vaguely about “red tape” and sinister liberal forces that prevent him from steering the federal money to his benefactors.   If the Spanish railcar maker that was going to build a plant in Wisconsin follows the money instead and takes its jobs to Illinois, it’s of no consequence to the new GOP governor; he’s not there to serve the average citizen.

Which is why Republicans are so fiercely disciplined when it comes to messaging.  They have to be in order to cover up their policy agenda.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

As you undoubtedly know by now — especially if you’ve had the misfortune to be near a TV tuned to a cable news station in the past 24 hours — al-Qaeda appears to have made another half-hearted plea for relevance, somewhat harebrained in keeping with most of its latter-day attempts at U.S. terrorism (“Let’s send packages with protruding wires from an Arab country to Jewish synagogues in America… no one will suspect a thing!”).

For a demonstration how professionals operate when they want to undermine a democracy, see the Washington Post today:

… new political groups have sprouted like mushrooms in the final weeks of the 2010 campaign, dumping tens of millions of dollars into House and Senate races and, in many cases, avoiding the need to tell voters who is funding their activities.

The frenzy is possible largely because of federal rulings making it easier and more advantageous to set up “super PACs” […] with no limits on fundraising or spending. More than three dozen super PACs and other political groups began spending money for the first time within the past ten days, according to a Washington Post analysis of FEC records.

The surge underscores the outsized role played this year by independent interest groups, which are expected to spend as much $500 million on the midterms. Some political committees are so new they don’t have to reveal details about their backing until after the election; others operating as nonprofits will never have to disclose their donors.

The story by Dan Eggen is accompanied by a broader piece on the radical-right Supreme Court that has enthusiastically facilitated this situation:

Almost from the moment Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the bench five years ago, the court’s conservatives have acted systematically on their deep skepticism of campaign spending restrictions. They repeatedly have questioned the ability of Congress to restrict the role of wealth and special interest involvement in elections without offending the First Amendment guarantee of unfettered political speech. . . .

. . . [Trevor] Potter, now president of the Campaign Legal Center, which supports campaign finance reform [said,]“Citizens United put a Supreme Court good-housekeeping-seal-of-approval on corporations being allowed in elections.”

. . . “While American democracy is imperfect,” [dissenting Justice John Paul] Stevens wrote in his 90-page opinion, “few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, but colleague Antonin Scalia took up his pen to specifically answer Stevens.

“To exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy,” he wrote. “We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.“

I’ll bet you never knew that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to enshrine the dominance of “the principal agents of the modern free economy,” rather than that silly nonsense about all men being created equal.

I’m sure, though, that future history books will correct this oversight.  Just as soon as education is privatized, just like our elections have been.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)