Party of Ideas

post from Daily Kos on 18 January 2008 07:07:35 PM. © Daily Kos

I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Bill Clinton:

Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas.

Huh. I didn't see the part where Obama said the GOP's ideas were "all the good" ones.

In fact, Obama isn't saying anything that couldn't come straight out of Crashing the Gate -- that the GOP build a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that used its think tanks to create ideas, a media machine to sell those ideas, and a modernized campaign operation to win elections on those ideas. Yes, the GOP was the party of ideas. They were crappy ideas. But they were "ideas".

That's not controversial, so I'm not sure why the Clinton campaign is making such a big deal out of it.

Especially "welfare reform" Bill Clinton.

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Generations

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 18 January 2008 06:59:53 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

I have a bit of a fever (getting over the flu), so pardon me in advance if this essay becomes rambling and strange.I rarely read about the candidates for President, whether it be on the blogs or in the traditional media.I stated elsewhere, in some essay[...]

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Surge: Many More Americans Say War Going Well

post from IraqSlogger.com on 18 January 2008 06:58:24 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

Here's a PDF of the 26 pages of poll results:

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Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!

post from Daily Kos on 18 January 2008 06:54:08 PM. © Daily Kos

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

America to celebrate YAY! Day festivities on Sunday

Everything on Sunday is cancelled except drinking, debauchery, merriment and football. I'm declaring it a national holiday.

Sunday, January 20th, will mark one year until Bush and Cheney leave office. Just think: every calendar day that passes from Sunday on will be the last one they serve as president and vice president.

January 21st will be their last January 21st.
March 18th---the day we invaded Iraq---will be their last March 18th.
May 1st---"Mission Accomplished" day---will be their last May 1st.
June 20th---"Last throes of the insurgency" day---will be their last June 20th.
September 2nd---"Heckuva job, Brownie" day---will be their last September 2nd.

Date after date will pass, never to again exist under the dark cloud of this greedy, crony-filled, incompetent, lying, power-mad administration. This fact alone---despite war and recession and constitution-shredding and the knowledge that one year of Bush/Cheney is like 5 human years---will produce a little daily rainbow in my brain. A little spring in my step. A little tingle "down there" (in my toes, you pervs).

So I'm declaring Sunday a holiday: Yes--A Year! Day. ("YAY! Day" for short.) I urge you to spend some quality time with your loved ones, pop open a bottle of champagne, and celebrate the last gasp of a president whose number-one priority these days is ending his term at 45% approval. We have two words to say about that: good luck.

Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

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In Praise Of A King Of Cultural Kitsch

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 18 January 2008 06:47:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

Finally, I cannot let this week conclude (more or less) without observing the passing of Richard Knerr (pictured), the co-founder of Wham-O Inc., makers of frisbees, super balls, silly string, and all kinds of other utterly mindless toys which I enjoyed with my friends growing up in a long-gone era, as we tortured ourselves ceaselessly without the aid of any electronic gadgets whatsoever.

Of course, as it turns out now, the company he and childhood friend Arthur ?Spud? Melin founded in 1948 is now owned by Cornerstone Investments Overseas Ltd. of Hong Kong (Melin died in 2002).

Well anyway, thanks for the fun while it lasted, guys.

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Obama and America's Case of Reagan Idolatry

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 18 January 2008 06:45:44 PM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

I nearly fucking choked on my coffee this morning when I saw that Barack 'The Ringer' Obama invoked none than Ronald Reagan in a favorable manner when talking about agents of change and seemed to make the comparison between himself and the foul democracy hating monster that somehow rose to the point where there is actually an effort by some lunatic fringe groups to have his head added to Mount Rushmore. I mean what the fuck? Perhaps the ambitious Obama misspoke but despite whatever levels that he would stoop to win in Nevada invoking Bonzo's better half is only going to ensure that he will soon exceed Queen Hillary in toxicity with the party base. Shit, to me Ronald Reagan is nothing short of the herald of the fucking Antichrist and the mere mention of his loathsome name jacks my blood pressure up into dangerous territory. If there was ever any one person more responsible for the looming economic catastrophe, the intentional dumbing down of America, the secret government operating without any sort of accountability and the moral rot that has infected this once thriving nation it was Ronald Reagan.

I can still feel my bile rising every time that I think of that macabre weeklong orgy of national mourning during which the Gipper's carcass was hauled around like some bizarre transmutation of Weekend at Bernie's and a Soviet funeral with vodka soaked hordes lining the streets of Red Square. The state/corporatist media was 24/7 with pinheads spewing platitudes about the great one while anyone who was fucking sane was just trying not to spew their cookies. It was a national fucking embarassment!

Mr. Obama has just lost whatever credibility that he had with me and now is as toxic as Hillary as a candidate for this unbelievable bit of pandering that Reagan: "changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not" Which is at least technically correct, Dutch's 'trajectory' was to launch us all straight into the shitter and his manic frenzy to deregulate everything was what allowed the Wall Street thieves to eventually pull the chain with their subprime trickery, their hedge funds, collateralized debt obligations, pathological offshoring binges and speculation so obscenely out of touch with reality that the marrow is being sucked out of our bones daily along with the money in our overstretched bank accounts.

Reagan also dumped the fairness doctrine leading to the onslaught of right-wing propaganda and the nurturing of the festering hatred that permeated the heartland after Reagan's sanctioned smashing of unions and the voodoo economic policies that led to the farm crisis, the savings and loan fiasco and the rolling back of the New Deal. Add to that the ugly fact that his foreign policy left a trial of corpses (0ften brutally tortured) across the southern hemisphere, he cut deals with Saddam, the ayatollahs in Iran and enabled Ollie North to plot the internment of Americans with the then shocking REX 84 program that would provide a shining example to the much more draconian abuses of the neocon Bushreich.

Not content with just playing that little Orwellian linguistic trick the darling of the Oprah drones and other useless easily impressed lemmings went on to say of the Gipper:

"He tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, 'We want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing'

For that matter so did Hitler.

The worst possible thing that America can ever do is to be allowed themselves to be duped by another Pollyanna pimp peddling preposterous folderol like Reagan again and a front runner for the Democratic nomination is risking party suicide if he ends up winning the nod and continues to tacitly endorse Ronald Fucking Reagan. I can pinpoint the demarcation point from planet Earth for America to within seconds of when Reagan slimed into the White House riding in on a wave of bogus nostalgia, revisionist history and bombastic rhetoric that made a country that was finally beginning to come to terms with a less than rosy recent history buy that happy horseshit hook, line and sinker.

Americans then began to retreat into their local megaplexes to see the Vietnam war won by Rambo and Chuck Norris, Gordon Gekko become a model of how to do business and the word liberal to be turned into the most vile of all pejoratives. Americans also bought VCR's and rushed out to have their homes fitted with cable and satellite television which would be the delivery devices for the E crack that would lull them into a false sense of complacency, brainwash them into buying shit that they didn't need and couldn't afford and to be indoctrinated into the notion that our enemies were everywhere. The mindfields were being plowed in anticipation of the seeds that would be planted with 9/11 as the day when the reset button was hit on America and the balls out descent into fascism would reach freefall speed.

That Ronald Wilson Reagan is some sort of iconic American figure is a hoax of the worst kind and we have an entire generation that has been wasted as a result of buying into that big lie. Shame on Barack Obama and shame on every other official who continually invokes Reagan as though he were some sort of national father figure when nothing could be further from the truth the man was a pox upon us all and to portray him otherwise is intellectual dishonesty in the extreme.

Now I make it a habit to never endorse political candidates but guess which one has just been added to the list of those who I wouldn't. At least John Edwards who the corporatist media treats like a three-headed leper had the sense to come out and denounce this as the rank bullshit that it is.

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http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=20544

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Reagan Not One of Clinton's Favorites

post from Taylor Marsh on 18 January 2008 06:40:33 PM. © Taylor Marsh

Reagan Not One of Clinton’s FavoritesCan we please stop this nonsense? Of course not. So one more time into the oppo push back breach (link added).After Obama’s ridiculous caught on tape slobbering moment over The Gipper, his team is doing[...]

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Sounds Like Justice Was Already Done

I?ve been meaning to take note of an excerpt in this New York Times story written when Dubya visited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but this is the first chance I?ve had, so?

Mr. Bush?s tour of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, and his trip to Galilee on Friday produced the not-so-revelatory headline, ?Remembrance and Faith in the Holy Land.?

That item opened with a tantalizing clause ? ?After a later-than-usual dinner at Prime Minister Olmert?s residence ...? ? but Mr. Gillespie dished no more, even though the dinner was, the Israeli accounts said, a raucous affair. It was said that Mr. Bush buttonholed two wavering members of Mr. Olmert?s cabinet, while an Israeli lawmaker buttonholed Mr. Bush about the case of the American spy Jonathan Pollard, to Mr. Olmert?s chagrin.

It turns out that there has been a movement afoot for some time to free Pollard and allow him to emigrate to Israel (news to me anyway), and the Israelis have even granted him citizenship in an effort to expedite matters.

And this notes a time under President Clinton when he appeared to waver on the matter of freeing Pollard; this is a freeper site, I know, but the article was written by Sy Hersh, who has impeccable credentials on this stuff as far as I?m concerned. He states the following?

The President's willingness to consider clemency for Pollard so upset the intelligence community that its leaders took an unusual step: they began to go public. In early December, four retired admirals who had served as director of Naval Intelligence circulated an article, eventually published in the Washington Post, in which they argued that Pollard's release would be "irresponsible" and a victory for what they depicted as a "clever public relations campaign." Since then, sensitive details about the secrets Pollard gave away have been made public by CBS and NBC.

In the course of my own interviews for this account, the officials who knew the most about Jonathan Pollard made it clear that they were talking because they no longer had confidence that President Clinton would do what they believed was the right thing -- keep Pollard locked up. Pollard, these officials told me, had done far more damage to American national security than was ever made known to the public; for example, he betrayed elements of four major American intelligence systems. In their eyes, there is no distinction between betraying secrets to an enemy, such as the Soviet Union, and betraying secrets to an ally.

Officials are loath to talk publicly about it, but spying on allies is a fact of life: the United States invests billions annually to monitor the communications of its friends. Many American embassies around the world contain a clandestine intercept facility that targets diplomatic communications. The goal is not only to know the military and diplomatic plans of our friends but also to learn what intelligence they may be receiving and with whom they share information. "If a friendly state has friends that we don't see as friends," one senior official explained, sensitive intelligence that it should not possess -- such as that supplied by Pollard -- "can spread to others." Many officials said they were convinced that information Pollard sold to the Israelis had ultimately wound up in the hands of the Soviet Union.

Also part of the Pollard story is a 46-page classified document from former Reagan Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the contents of which were not shown to Pollard's attorneys at his trial. Weinberger called for severe punishment, and the memo, still classified, is widely cited as a major reason that the judge ultimately sentenced Pollard to life in prison without parole for espionage (Weinberger said he thought Pollard's treatment was too harsh before he died, though).

But for me, aside from setting a terrible precedent, I think leniency to Pollard is wrong. And just because our ?friends? the Israelis are upset over Pollard?s treatment, it doesn?t make releasing him the right thing to do.

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http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2008/01/sounds-like-justice-was-already-done
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On The Ground In Vegas Open Thread

Bumped -- Jonathan I'm back on the ground in Vegas to cover tomorrow's caucuses. I'm here with David Dayen from calitics (also over at digby's place) preparing to head out to see Bill Clinton at a local Y, Barack Obama at UNLV and then Hillary and Bill[...]

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Rothenberg on the House: 35 GOP Seats in Play, 26
Dem Seats

The Rothenberg Political Report has released its latest House race rankings (with 35 GOP seats in play and 26 Democratic seats in play. They look like this (note that in the charts below the GOP controls each district on the left and the Democrats the[...]

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