Blind Boy Bob: The Ragin' Cajun CFO

post from The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks! on 14 March 2006 08:59:48 PM. © The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

In Sunday's rant we introduced a little piece of imagery that seemed to resonate with some of you. In describing the weekend Republican shindig in Memphis, we mused that the sight of a Republican listening to the blues on Beale Street - the home of the blues - would be an odd sight indeed.We were thinking about that image while stuck in traffic this afternoon and began to wonder exactly what a Republican bluesman would look like. Here's the picture we painted in our head: * Name: Blind Boy Bob (aka, "The Ragin' Cajun CFO"). * Hometown: Stamford, CT. * Age: 63. * Size: 5' 11' tall and approximately 256 pounds. Dresses right. * Race: White, but very tanned and leathery. * Hair: Silver with a huge bald spot showing the distinct impressions of hair plugs. * General Appearance: Dark Brooks Brothers suit with fashionably slight fraying at the cuffs. Power tie bearing a stain from a spill of Quinta do Noval 2003 Vintage Port that occurred after the braised lamb shanks at Le Cirque. American flag lapel pin on his right lapel and an RNC elephant pin on the left. New York Stock Exchange Member tie tack encrusted in delicate diamonds. Well worn black, but very shiny wingtip shoes. Brown Borsalino Como hat with a badly broken brim. Wayfarer sunglasses attached to a gold chain around his neck. * Bling: Mammoth Yale Law School class ring on his right ring finger. Left ring finger bears a light spot from wedding ring recently taken by his 46 year-old ex-wife in a divorce settlement. * Instrument: Very old and scratched Gibson Western classic guitar named "Bunny" after his childhood sweetheart. Wears specially designed pewter finger picks to cover his daily manicure. When playing numbers requiring a bottleneck, he uses the neck from a bottle of 1970 Lafleur wine, specially reworked by his personal glass artisan at the Lennox crystal works. * Travel Arrangements: Rides to gigs in a standard Greyhound bus, but buys out all the seats because the other passengers are always, "smelly" and has the interior steam cleaned before he will enter it. * Sample Set List: 1. "The Crash Came Early One Mornin' and I Was Caught Sellin' Short" 2. The "I Been Indicted Blues" 3. "I Swung My Club, But I Missed My Putt (One Mornin' at St. Andrews)" 4. "Drivin' Mizz Titleist" 5. "Them Income Tax-Captial Gains-Piss Me Off Blues" 6. The "Let 'Em Eat Cake, But Not Before I Get My Piece Rag" 7. "Don't Worry 'Bout Them Lil' People Blues" 8. "My Ex-Wife's a Bitch Rag" 9. "She Popped My Cork, But The Champaign Was Flat" 10. "The Cost Cuttin' Cuss From Crawford (Texas Swing Mix)"Yeah, that'll about do it.Tech Tags: humor politics republicans blues+music omnipotent+poobah

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USA Today Buries the Lead, Botches the Rest

post from TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed on 14 March 2006 05:29:00 PM. © TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed

In a wildly misleading front-page story that the Right will love, the Nation’s Newspaper kicks off with this eye-catching lead, “A sweeping expansion of social programs since 2000 has sparked a record increase in the number of Americans receiving federal government benefits such as college aid, food stamps, and health care.” A sweeping expansion? Has conservatism really been compassionate after all?

Er, nope. But unfortunately, it isn’t until the next-to-last paragraph of the story when Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is offered an opportunity to offer a succinct dose of sanity: “the growth in the number of people in many programs is due to a rise in the poverty rate from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.7 percent in 2004, the most recent year” for which data is available. So here’s a much more accurate lead: “Enrollments in programs like Medicaid and food stamps have mainly gone up significantly because the economy has stunk for Americans at the bottom of the income ladder over the past five years.”

[POSTSCRIPT]: I see Jonah Goldberg cited the USA Today article as authoritatively demonstrating that Bush isn't a true blue conservative.

Nonetheless, the front page says the three major reasons for higher enrollments in benefit programs are: 1) Expanded eligibility criteria (like dropping the value of a food stamp applicant’s car), 2) Increased participation (“The government has made applying for benefits easier, prompting more eligible people to get them”) and 3) The 1996 welfare reform act (left unexplained is why a bill enacted four years before the beginning of the time frame studied has anything to do with changes from 2000 to 2005).

To the extent any of those factors are valid at all, they have had a marginal impact. There’s been no “sweeping expansion” of any social program since Bush took office, except for the Medicare drug bill (which didn’t take effect until after the paper’s 2000-5 time frame). Medicaid enrollments have mainly gone up because more people have fallen below the eligibility thresholds while losing health insurance at work--most states have cut back their eligibility requirements rather than make them more generous. Food stamp enrollments have mainly gone up because, again, more people have fallen below the eligibility thresholds --though some administrative changes have helped modestly.

The whole story is basically a mess. For example, the front page graph shows enrollment in 25 “federal aid” programs is up 17 percent, increasing from 263 million to 307 million. That’s quite something, considering that there are only 300 million U.S. citizens. Oh, right, there is a note in agate type to the effect that some people participate in multiple programs. But what then is the logic behind combining numbers for age-dependent universal programs like Social Security and Medicare, to which recipients have paid dedicated taxes, with means-tested safety net programs? And if one person falling into poverty can add three, four, or five to the enrollment count of safety net programs, disproportionate
ly elevating percentage increases, how are readers supposed to begin to make sense of what that number means?

The story concludes by quoting Minnesota Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht, saying that the number of people in “such programs” should not be growing when unemployment is near a record low. “The food stamp program just grows and grows and grows…It’s probably time to revisit food stamps.” USA Today just gave a nice boost to his bogus cause.

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Religion and politics

post from The Daou Report on 14 March 2006 05:14:00 PM. © The Daou Report

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Judge Plans to Order Google to Turn Over Data to
U.S.

post from The Daou Report on 14 March 2006 05:13:00 PM. © The Daou Report

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n=20779cec0a45025f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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Censure Resolution goes to Judiciary Committee;
Democrats turn on Feingold

post from Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald on 14 March 2006 04:47:00 PM. © Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

Thersites at Vichy Dems has some great analysis about this AP article, which reports that Feingold's Censure Resolution has been referred to Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee for a vote. And Thersites also reports, based on this Raw Story article, that numerous Democrats are anonymously and rather petulantly attacking Feingold for having introduced the resolution -- the single most important and courageous act I can recall from a Senator in a long time -- because they are afraid (as always) that Republicans will use it to attack them as weak on national security and depict them as being best friends with The Terrorists.

If these Democrats are afraid of a 34% dying Presidency, what aren't they afraid of? The good news is that Feingold seems as willing to stand up to these frightened Democrats as he is to take a stand in defense of our country's principles from the Bush Administration's relentless assault on those principles:

"I look forward to a full hearing, debate and vote in committee on this important matter," Feingold, D-Wis., said in a statement. "If the committee fails to consider the resolution expeditiously, I will ask that there be a vote in the full Senate" . . . .

Feingold, defending his censure plan today on Fox News, said: "I?m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president?s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide?too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they?ll say we?d better just focus on domestic issues?[Democrats shouldn?t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question administration, you?re helping the terrorists."

Russ Feingold is definitely the most unpopular person in Washington right about now, which is an enormous compliment. He is making Republicans extremely uncomfortable by keeping the spotlight on the fact that the President broke the law right at the moment when most people in Congress from both parties had tacitly agreed to look the other way and forget the whole thing ever happened. And he's making most Senate Democrats even more uncomfortable because he's not allowing them to quietly crawl away from the President's law-breaking without taking a position one way or the other as to whether they condemn that behavior.

No matter what else he achieves, Feingold has singled-handedly catapulted this story back to the top of the news cycle, where it belongs. Despite itself, the Senate spent the last two days forced to debate the President's law-breaking. And now the Senate Judiciary Committee has another live matter relating to the NSA scandal in front of it, making it that much more difficult for the whole thing to just fade away or for Specter and company to just sweep the whole thing under the rug. Clearly, Feingold isn't going to let it just fade away. And anyone who cares about the rule of law and maintaining the basic principles of our system of government ought to have as a top priority supporting him in that effort.

It is truly amazing, but not at all surprising, that Democrats are doing Karl Rove's dirty work by swarming around and anonymously attacking Russ Feingold. But he doesn't seem to care. He seems to care a lot more about defending the principles for which he's taken a stand than allowing national politicians in Washington to proceed comfortably along with their standard self-protective games. That, of course, is exactly why he's the most unpopular person in Washington.

And, at bottom, what this whole episode illustrates, yet again, is that if Democrats want to be perceived as strong, and if they want to lose the albatross of being pereceived as weak, what they have to do is extremely simple and clear -- stop being weak and be strong. Who appears stronger and more resolute right now -- Russ Feingold, or the Democrats scurrying around in the dark, afraid of their own shadows and petrified of standing up to a weakened President who got caught breaking the law?

UPDATE: A regular commenter at FireDogLake (which, by the way, is now up and running at its new location, emancipated from Blogspot), Professor Foland, reported this:

Just got off the phone after about 15 minutes with a staffer in Kennedy?s office (in Boston.) Mon dieu. Very frustrating. And this is Kennedy.

Hit absolutely the wall. Kennedy won?t support or oppose, wants a Congressional investigation. Yes, sure, facts are not in dispute, but the Senator will not take a position on the censure resolution until the investigation is complete. Yes, sure, law not really in dispute. But the Senator will not take a position on the censure resolution until the investigation is complete. Yes, sure, FBI has dropped all pretenses in monitoring political groups within the US. But the Senator is not going to issue a statement in support.

Yes, it makes it difficult for people who are outspoken to stand alone. Yes it makes the party look fractured on an important issue. But the Senator is not going to issue a statement until investigations are complete. No, of course we understand the investigations are going to be run by Republican Senators. But the Senator is not going to issue a statement until investigations are complete.

Sadly, after carefully stressing the words "the Senator", the staffer kept saying, "I think you can tell where I stand." And I could. What a mess.

I've heard reports of similar incoherence and indecision emanating from several other Democratic Senators' offices, including several who occupy very safe seats in very blue states. The preferred tool of eavsion which they're using is the claim that they need "more facts" before they can know if the President broke the law.

It should go without saying that they have all the facts they need to conclude definitively that the President broke the law. Bush himself admits that he ordered eavesdropping on Americans without the judicial oversight and approval required by the law the Congress passed in 1978. There are no factual disputes about that. Even the Administration doesn't deny any of the facts necessary to establish that they broke the law.

A factual investigation into the NSA program would certainly be nice -- in order, for instance, to find out if there are other illegal eavesdropping progams which we do not yet know about, and/or to find out how the eavesdropping power was used (something we don't know because the eavesdropping was done in secret, exactly what the law criminalizes). But no investigation is necessary to conclude that the law was broken because the law makes it a criminal offense to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial approval and that - by the Administration's own (proud) admission - is exactly what they did.

And beyond all of that, there isn't going to be an investigation, so it borders on the surreal for these Senators to say that they want to wait until the investigation is complete. The reason there isn't going to be an investigation is because the President's allies voted against it. That just happened last week, and yet Democratic Senators literally seem either not to have heard about that event or to have forgotten that it happened, because they keep saying that they want to wait for the investigation to be complete -- the same investigation that is not going to occur.

As astonishing as it is -- and I know that it shouldn't be astonishing, but it still is -- very few of these Senators are going to take any steps on their own to support Feingold's resolution. They won't unless the public demands that they do something. And Sen. Feingold has created the opportunity for the public to do that.

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Muckraking through the Ages

post from TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed on 14 March 2006 02:22:59 PM. © TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed

In honor of the launch of our sister site, TPMmuckraker, I wanted to call attention to a piece in the new issue of The Atlantic Monthly. As part of the 150 th anniversary celebration, the magazine is publishing excerpts from notable articles that have appeared there over the years. One of these, "Story of a Great Monopoly" by Henry Demarest Lloyd, was first published in the magazine in 1881. By means of introduction, the editors explain:

This was one of the earliest pieces of progressive muckraking to be published in a national, well-respected magazine—and the first exposé of the Standard Oil Trust to be taken seriously. The issue in which the article appeared sold out seven printings, and it helped bring antitrust legislation to the forefront of national debate, auguring the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

The excerpt is here and the full version here.

Over at TPMmucraker, we’re going to have our own set of links to great muckrakers/
muckraking stories in history. I myself have always been fascinated by Ida Tarbell and her History of the Standard Oil Company, and OUP’s blog has a good round-up of the Top Ten Congressional Lobbying Scandals in US History. But we’d like to know what makes your list...

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Shameful

post from firedoglake on 14 March 2006 01:50:00 PM. © firedoglake

I cannot begin to explain how much this is NOT done. When you are a governmental attorney, you must hold yourself to a higher standard in terms of ethics and maneuvering, precisely because you have a quasi-judicial position in terms of charging decisions and in terms of having the power of the state's investigative capacity behind you.The rules are that you do not, under any circumstances,

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Wheels Within Wheels: Israel Raid on Jericho
Jail Probably an Election Ploy

Ehud Olmert, acting Prime Minister of Israel and the head of the new Ariel Sharon-created Kadima party, just scored big in Israel with the mostly bloodless seizure in Jericho of six Palestinian prisoners who were allegedly involved in the murder...

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