The Hits Just Keep On Coming For President Obama

The troops in Iraq will be home for Christmas. Making good on a campaign promise, President Obama announced today that all American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year. This war that cost us dearly in blood and treasure — 4,400 troops killed, 32,000 wounded, and more than $1 trillion spent, for what? — was one of choice that should never have been waged. A Republican president, George W. Bush, is responsible for this monstrous unfolding atrocity. President Obama had the unwelcome task of cleaning up after Bush-Cheney. That he did.

One of Dylan Ratigan's lovelies, Karen Finney, said "see what this President can accomplish without Republican obstructionism." Chris Matthews said this is "mission accomplished without the banner." And Dylan Ratigan said we were "kicked out." Col. Jack Jacobs schooled him by noting the President looked "quite presidential" cutting short our time there once a deal ensuring troop immunity from legal prosecution fell through, saying in essence, "Fine, we're outta here. Good luck." Pay attention, Ratigan: It wasn't this President's war, he opposed it from the start, and made a campaign promise to get us out of there by this time. Can you say, "another promise kept" without gagging? (Hmm ... Get thee to Fox, Dylan, where you'll find the proper climate to be a pretend libertarian "journalist" and Obama hater.)

Meanwhile, Gramps McLittleMac was still reliving his last presidential campaign: "Today marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world. This decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq." Yo Gramps, go reminisce about your "ranch" time with "interesting" dead dictators as time goes by ...

Who Would You Rather See Leading Our Nation Today?

These Republicans have absolutely no scruples nor dignity or class. None whatsoever. The killing of Moammar Khaddafi, however it went down, was a great foreign policy success for this President's administration, and one more notch in his relentless hunt for terrorists, far outpacing the Bush-Cheney regime in singleminded disruption of terrorist networks and the elimination of Al Qaeda's top leadership. Khaddafi was a brutal dictator and a terrorist with PanAm 103 American victims' blood on his hands. He may have cut a "never mind" deal with the Bush-Cheney regime to renounce terrorism, cooperate with the U.S. in hunting Al Qaeda in exchange for coming in out of the cold — a slap in the face to the families of the PanAm 103 bombing victims — but it was a deal the Obama administration never felt obligated to "honor."

Quite the contrary, when the Lybian Spring uprising began and Khaddafi threatened his own people, President Obama took decisive action to stop it, and never looked back. The President made all the right moves despite outrageous Republican carping from the sidelines — forget the axiom that foreign policy criticism "stops at the water's edge" — with the unmitigated gall to complain that President Obama (a) should not have intervened, (b) acted too slowly, (c) led "from behind" allowing the French and British to take the point, (d) and yet the much-maligned French (remember "Freedom Fries"?) and British deserved all the credit once the dictator was killed while the President got nothing but grief.

Professor Cornell West said that if this President walked on water the Republicans would say he couldn't swim. And Andrew Sullivan said that if Mr. Obama were a Republican he'd be on Mount Rushmore. It's mindbending that these ratbastard Republicans are bitching about, frankly, a presidential strategy so flawless as to deserve the brilliant adjective, concluded in a matter of months at relatively little cost, no boots on the ground, and no U.S. casualties. They were consistently wrong, as we can see from their stupid carping dating back to the beginning of this collective NATO action.

One thing about Democrats: We're not big on hawking wars, we don't like them, and our instinct is to get in there, do what we need to do, and get out. But once we commit, look out. These Republicans are pathetic in their chest-thumping triumphalism, premature declarations of victory, and jingoistic trash talking. Really, they should STFU already, considering this President is still trying to wind down THEIR WARS eight years later. John McCain, in particular, one of the few among these ratbastards with military experience and a war record, is a pathetic caricature of his old self, and the very antithesis of the Republican warrior-politician so ably represented by the statesmanship of President Dwight Eisenhower.

Perry (Hearts ... NOT!) Romney: The Soundtrack of Their Lives

Khaddafi's Bloody Death: A Drone Strike?

There are troubling questions about the role of the U.S. military in the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Khaddafi. The video we've seen of a bloodied but still alive Khaddafi being manhandled by the rebels onto the hood of a jeep, shortly before his death ostensibly en route to a hospital, happened after his convoy was hit by a U.S. drone as the convoy attempted to escape the town of Sirte where Khaddafi was holed up. Preliminary reports are that the drone disabled several vehicles and a wounded Khaddafi crawled into a ditch where he was later found by the rebels. This lays bare the claim by the U.S. that it does not target foreign leaders. It bolsters the President's bona fides as a macho foreign policy leader who, unlike his predecessor Bush-Cheney, has selectively targeted America's enemies. However, the just outcome for post-Nuremberg international law would be the capture and trial of Khaddafi. One wonders also how much Hillary's drop-by visit to Libya just a day or so ago, in which she stated bluntly the hope Khaddafi would be "captured or killed" was not somehow anticipated and staged. (Caution: This is graphic video uploaded from Al Jazeera that was shown on news networks such as MSNBC and CNN.)

One thing's for sure: The outlines of the Obama Doctrine — this blog was among the first, if not the first, to pen it right after the U.S. action in Libya — have become clearer today: Don't mess with America because we've got a badass President who will track you down and get you. This President has flexed American muscle more adroitly than any U.S. president since World War II, the last just war we won, and FDR-Truman. That's pretty good company. But it's also a dangerous course fraught with peril. Good thing Mr. Obama is not only brilliant, but restrained and forceful, a complete turnabout from the strike-first-ask-questions-later "cowboy foreign policy" of Bush-Cheney.

58 Second Flat (Read Fast) Post-GOP Debate Analysis: A Parade Of Imbeciles

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Indeed, to call this current field of GOP presidential candidates a sorry bunch of humorless clowns and leave it at that would be an insult to Chaplin and his noble profession. With that in mind, here are some of the STUPIDEST things any politician running for president on a major party label has ever said:

It wasn't even Herman Cain's "apples and oranges" to describe his ridiculous "9-9-9" tax overhaul hatched by a small town accountant that would hammer the poor, kill the American auto industry turning U.S. dealerships into used car lots since the tax would apply only to "new" not "used goods," and likely turn eBay into the world's largest supermarket. Nor was it the tired old Republican "wholly owned subsidiary" of Big Oil mantra pushed by their corporate lackey Rick Perry that we can drill, blast and extract our way to energy independence, if only the EPA and its pesky clean air, clean water, clean rivers, clean environment regulations would simply disappear. 

Here's Teh STOOPID, a sampling of the "awesomeness" of Ron Paul as Rachel put it in a moment of total mind-melt — Ron Paul who said abortion was the "ultimate government tyranny" and equated Social Security to "slavery" was, curiously, the one who sometimes made sense ... Hello, anybody home?:

Ron Paul: (On "really not" keeping kids on their parents' health insurance until age 26.) "There’s been a lot of discussion about medicine, but it seems to be talking about which kind of government management is best. Our problem is we have too much. We’ve had it for 30, 40 years. We have Medicare. We have prescription drug programs. We have Medicaid." Yes ... and your point is? 

Paul: "But if you want better competition and better health care, you should allow the American people to opt out of government medicine" and "the way to do this is to not de-emphasize the medical savings account, but let people opt out, pay their bills, get back to the doctor-patient relationship."

Setting aside the fact that there is no "government medicine" (it's a private for-profit insurance system) except for the VA and modern MASH units performing miracles on the field saving the lives and limbs of our warriors ... would that we, civilians, were so lucky as to have that awesome "government medicine" at our disposal. No, we have to deal with the private insurance system, if we have any insurance at all. I suppose this libertarian twit wants us to pay for open-heart surgery or chemotherapy with chickens, too? But Paul's unnatural appeal to progressives comes from statements like these which, to quote Rachel, sound real good "in the abstract":

Paul: "Well, I think we’re on economic suicide if we’re not even willing to look at some of these overseas expenditures, 150 bases — 900 bases, 150 different countries. We have enough weapons to blow up the world about 20-25 times. We have more weapons than all the other countries put together essentially. And we want to spend more and more, and you can’t cut a penny? I mean, this is why we’re at an impasse. I want to hear somebody up here willing to cut something. Something real."

And here, Paulie attacks their deity Ronald Reagan which, admittedly, is probably the high point of his weird career, setting the morons in his midst straight; he'd had just about enough of  the idiot Herman Cain saying first, that he'd negotiate for hostages, and the next day:

Cain (stupefyingly moronic): "No, I — I said that I believe in the philosophy of we don’t negotiate with terrorists. I think — I didn’t say — I would never agree to letting hostages in Guantanamo Bay go. No, that wasn’t — that wasn’t the intent at all."

 
Gingrich (piously): "Just very straightforward. Callista and I did a film on Ronald Reagan. [KA-CHING, KA-CHING ... get your credit cards out, Teabaggers] There’s a very painful moment in the film when he looks in the camera and says, 'I didn’t think we did this. I’m against doing it. I went back and looked. The truth is, we did. It was an enormous mistake.'"

Paul: "Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to make a statement. I want to ask a question. Are you all willing to condemn Ronald Reagan for exchanging weapons for hostages out of Iran? We all know that was done."
 

Santorum: "That’s not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one."

Paul (sarcastically): "Oh, they were our good friends back then, huh?"

Santorum (blabbering): "They’re not our good friends. They’re — they’re — they’re a sovereign country, just like the — the Palestinian Authority is not the good friends of Israel."

Paul: "He [Ronald Reagan] negotiated for hostages."

 

Thumbs up, Paulie. But then he reverted back to the same-old same-old libertarian mantra: cut aid to Egypt and Israel because in Egypt the Arab Spring produced a "more hostile regime." That's just not so. In fact, the Arab Spring validates the foreign aid we have been giving Egypt through the decades as a moderating force with a pro-American population in a region that is otherwise fiercely hostile to Israel (and therefore America) and is a tinderbox for conflagration. For Paul to say foreign aid makes Israel "dependent" on us is actually the point, isn't it, if we want to exert any influence on Israel to reach a peace agreement with its neighbors. 

Since aid to Israel is overwhelmingly military it has little to do with Israel getting its "sovereignty back" as a function of its "dependent" economy (?) — the same old Paulist libertarian refrain.  It has everything to do with Israel's capacity to protect and preserve its sovereignty through military security, which is where the preponderance of U.S. aid to Israel goes. Not all foreign aid is worthy of praise but neither is it a handout — it is an instrument of U.S. foreign policy; its purpose is to protect the U.S. national interest in benign and positive ways, through peace not war. At its best (rebuilding Europe and Japan, keeping the peace between Israel and its neighbors, extending the hand of friendship through the Peace Corps, and paying to denuclearize huge nuclear arsenals in the former Soviet republics to keep them from falling into terrorist hands), U.S. foreign aid packs a tremendous punch and return on a very modest investment to peacefully secure our national interest worldwide. 

Paul: "And — and look at what’s the result of all that foreign aid we gave to Egypt? I mean, their — their dictator that we pumped up, we spent all these billions of dollars, and now there’s a more hostile regime in Egypt. And that’s what’s happening all around Israel. That foreign aid makes Israel dependent on us. It softens them for their own economy. And they should have their sovereignty back." 

Ron Paul is a Republican gadfly in the good sense of the word, and the highest expression — or at least, the most self-evident one — of the inherent silliness of so-called "libertarianism." The other candidates on that stage are know-nothing morons, neo-fascists, and religious zealots. So maybe Rachel's mind-melt exuberance for Paul is because he tends to humanize them, somewhat ... He's that silver lining she's always looking for among these demonic Republicans.

The strain of xenophobic isolation running through the Republican Party today is not very different from its isolationism during World War II when the wingnut elements of Republicanism actually admired Hitler and Mussolini. Others, like Paul, believed in the fortress America idea of retreat from the world. In this fantasy world, U.S. isolation doesn't lead to Nirvana. There are lots of bad actors ready to step into the void.

Okay, Rachel: time to come down to earth from your Glenn Beck/Ron Paul fandom planet.

 
There were too many stupid, ignorant statements to count in this debate. Its high ratings may cut both ways. Although to some of us these people expose themselves for the utter morons and imbeciles they are, faith the viewing public stuck as it is on "reality TV" — a definite oxymoron here — will see it that way too is a leap we should not take, considering that on the other side of the podium the Idiot Punditocracy sits poised to analyze these words of GOP "wisdom." 

Some, at least, had enough self-respect not to say anything nice about this spectacle. Herman Cain, from start to finish, was a parade of utter stupidity. And Michele Bachmann is certifiably insane. Appealing to the inbred xenophobia of their lunatic fringe audience/voters, the candidates made much about cutting "foreign aid" which constitutes less than 1% of the U.S. budget, conflating  it with the trillion spent on the unnecessary Republican Bush-Cheney war in Iraq and our deepening quagmire in Afghanistan. This statement from Bachmann, in particular, which no one seemed to notice, stood out big-time for me:

Bachmann: "Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations."

Madam President Bachmann: Please to tell, who in your fantasy administration will be drawing the short straw as unfortunate U.S. envoy that delivers to the Iraqui and Libyan governments a bill to "to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations"? Hmm ... Let's see now: We invade a country (Iraq) which had nothing to do with 9-11, and was actually a buffer against Iranian expansionism in the region, depose their brutal dictator (who had nothing to do with 9-11 and had no ties to Islamic fundamentalism) at a cost to the Iraquis of, conservatively, 150,000 innocent dead civilians, many of them killed by our own WMD as so much "collateral damage," and many more than Saddam ever killed at the height of his brutality. And to Lybia, maybe we demand a discount on the oil the transnational corporations have been exploiting for decades? 

Yeah, I can see them taking it really well. Especially the Iraquis. Do human beings have a price when they're not Americans? Because our debt may start adding up exponentially. Perhaps the Iraquis will politely double and triple down on Bachmann's bill. That is, if they don't get kind of mad and behave, well, like the Spartans:

After Tonight's Debate, New Frontrunner For GOP Nomination Emerges

Wingnut Dance of The Devils

To David Byrne and Brian Eno's Mea Culpa:

QUESTION: What do wingnut bigots have in common when caught "joking" about killing Latinos with electrified border fences or analogizing our President to Hitler?

ANSWER: They call it a "joke;" bigotry is just another "joke" in Rightwingville — this is true, these people are really, REALLY SICK and the bigotry they express privately EVERY DAY sometimes comes out in public. This is the way these people roll. Their version of an apology has the qualifier "IF" because they honestly cannot imagine how anyone wouldn't find this oh, just ROTFLMAO!

"MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA," say the SICKOS ... "IF I OFFENDED ANYONE ..."

OCCUPY WALL STREET WATCH: Chris Matthews, Quotable ... Naturally

“It’s amazing to see. It’s almost like you’re hearing L’Internationale — not to disparage this effort.”

~ Our good friend, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, host of Hardball.

You didn’t disparage it at all, Chris. And since you asked for it, here it is in that wonderful scene from REDS, Warren Beatty's masterpiece chronicling the life of John Reed, American revolutionary communist, journalist, writer of Ten Days that Shook the World, about the Russian Revolution. Diane Keaton plays his lover, socialite Louise Bryant, who leaves her Wall Street life behind to join Reed's own version of Occupy Wall Street in Greenwich Village, ever the home of liberals, progressives, revolutionists, and artists. How many John Reeds and Louise Bryants do you suppose are encamped in Liberty Park, and throughout this great land where the OWS demonstrations have sprouted? John Reed LIVES!

Herman Cain: Lone Speed Wins — Cheap Speed Stops

In horse racing, it's axiomatic that "lone speed," the frontrunning horse with an uncontested lead, is always a dangerous threat to "steal" the race on the front end over its better regarded competitors. It remains one of the best bets in racing. All the same, astute handicappers assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the field can easily spot cheap speed versus the real thing. Just scan the past performances and you'll notice faint-hearted frontrunners who wilt, give way, or stop no sooner are they challenged by a determined competitor galloping down the lane.

Before the big race, media "analysts" of the Idiot Punditocracy pontificate about the outcome and review the various race scenarios: There's the "pace scenario" in which the impact of "early" and "late" speed is assessed to determine a "race shape." There's the "class of the field" scenario, determined by lifetime earnings divided by wins. For example, the winners of mayoralty races in hick towns or the CEOs of pizza chains are classified as low to mid-level claimers compared to stakes competitors who win governorships — NY, TX, CA, IL, MA are Grade I stakes; FLA Grade II; Utah and Alaska, ungraded stakes; senators from OH, IL, NY, TX, CA, MA are Grade I contenders; PA, NJ, MI, CO, WI Grade II; smaller state candidates, Grade III or ungraded stakes (Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming, for instance); and finally, all members of Congress regardless of state of origin belong in ungraded stakes at best, or Allowance company.

Idiot Pundits and the confused Republican betting public have reached an early consensus, that this is an exceptionally weak field for the Grade I GOP Presidential Stakes. They all agree that there are more pretenders than contenders. The Prentenders, with no chance of winning the race, are: Michele "LA FILLY LOCA" Bachmann; gimpy, overweight Newt "EL VIEJO RAZA BLANCA" Gingrich; Jon "EL CABALLO INVISIBLE" Huntsman; and Ron "STRAW-POLL-MAN" Paul. But the "contenders" are weak and suspect as well. Willard Mitt Romney has the weakest possible Grade I credentials; plenty of in-the-money finishes at the level with only one Grade I win in Massachusetts. When he challenged one of the greatest thoroughbreds of our time, Ted "LION OF THE SENATE" Kennedy, in a Grade I showdown, Willard faded badly in deep stretch. You might even say he collapsed like an outclassed "non-winners of one" Allowance horse. Ted won like the legitimate 1/9 favorite he was.

 So Willard occupies that murky contender/pretender zone that represents one of the most profitable angles in horse racing: The "false favorite." The false favorite is the racehorse that becomes the favorite of his field not on the strength of his own merits but based on the demerits of his competitors. The betting GOP public rarely bets Willard with confidence. Instead, they assess the strengths and weaknesses of the field and land on Willard by a process of elimination. Astute handicappers will then "TOSS OUT" Willard in search of the surprise winner of the GOP Presidential stakes, usually an "outsider" with "hidden class" who takes a BIG step-up in class and rewards his or her supporters by finishing first at the wire at generous odds.

You see, the oddsmakers are the Idiot Punditocracy, and as anyone who reads this blog will know, they are the WORST linemakers in the business. But here's the thing about false favorites. Just because they are so branded doesn't necessarily mean they're destined to lose. In fact, they win more than their share of races, backed by a jittery group of institutional "chalk players" — unimaginative favorite "investors" and heavy favorite "bridge jumpers" who sweat bullets as their shaky false favorite staggers home barely a nose ahead of some dark horse longshot, at the line. That is, until the false favorite loses. Because the easiest way to defeat the false favorite is to run him or her at a higher class level.

In horse racing, it is also axiomatic that Grade I horses beat Grade II horses and Grade II horses beat Grade III horses. Eventually class will out. So while a false favorite like Willard may have his way with this weak GOP field in early prep races leading up to the Big Show, the Great Presidential Derby run every four years, his suspect class will be tested by the best of the best once he gets there. And false favorites do not fare well in such an environment. No matter how good their trainers and connections are. (Although trainers and handlers sometimes perform minor miracles with fledgling horsepower if they're significantly more competent than their counterparts. Bad trainers don't win races, but they can keep a great thoroughbred from achieving its full potential.)

Willard's backers know all this, and they're not happy. They've made a pragmatic choice to back Willard as a Grade I horse with a steady but unspectacular record, who trains well in the mornings (A "morning glory" that follows eye-popping AM workouts with dull PM races?) and is eating his oats. They want to win. They want to cash in on their investment. And If they get off Willard now for some chimera that proves to be a flash in the pan, they may be shut out. But after all is said and done, the race still has to be run and it's up to Willard to cross the finish line first. Which is where it got "fascinating" for the Idiot Punditocracy, whose quest for the anti-Willard became the obsessive need to redeem their faux favorite analysis. Not one of them saw Herman "THE $9.99 PIZZAMAN" Cain coming.

Casting about for someone who could "beat" Willard, they landed on Texas Governor Rick "CRAWLED OUTTA MY RACIST ROCK" Perry. He was the "main rival" on paper, the "dangerous" counterpart to the "morning line favorite" with promising credentials: Never lost a race, moved up the class ladder easily stomping all who opposed him. Okay, so he won only state-restricted stakes races ... but still. When Perry entered the race, he instantly became the phenomenon known in horseracing as the "overhyped horse." The Idiot Punditocracy embraced Rick "THE RACIST ROCK" Perry as the "hot horse" and immediately made him the odds-on favorite. Those who knew this horse best were skeptical, but their voices were drowned out by the hype. The anxious GOP betting public fell in line, in its growing anxiety to find the anti-Willard.

The Perry "hot horse" hype was soon hoisted on its own petard. You see, there's no such thing as reliable "inside information" that could possibly substantiate the hype. As the GOP rumor mill ground out the Perry "super horse" fantasy, the public was quickly disabused of its grand notions once the race started. Contenders and pretenders lined up before the race. Gingrich tottered; Bachmann snorted; Paul cavorted; Huntsman doddered — the pretenders, true to form. Willard the veteran was well behaved and "professional."

But when Perry moved up to the line his backers were shocked. He looked washy and nervous, he fought his bit and refused to enter his stall until pushed in. Once inside, Perry swooned catatonically. When the race started he cleared his slower rivals as Gingrich flopped, Huntsman crawled, and LA FILLY LOCA bolted — backwards. But then Perry the "hot horse" stumbled out of the gate and began running rank and erratically down the backstretch.

OH MY.

Meanwhile, Willard the tepid favorite broke cleanly, settled in near the rail, and saved ground. A typical though unspectacular start for the veteran campaigner whose backers were still sweating profusely despite the fact their horse was meeting the weakest field so far in his career. The Beltway Boys, Chris, Chuckles, NostraLawrence, et al enjoyed themselves immensely handicapping the race, but this was no fun at all for the "inside money" backing Willard. "Please don't flatten out, please no seconditis, please, please, please" ... they prayed.

Amid the fog of racing, no one paid much mind to the streaky PIZZAMAN breaking from the outside post with lots of high-carb EXTRA CHEESE early speed. Suddenly PIZZAMAN jumped out front in the solo lead. Uh-Oh. This was not the pace scenario anticipated by the Idiot Punditocracy. They had been hawking the Perry "hot horse" allure, and had dismissed Willard as a "plodder," steady but unexciting. Their "analysis" had visualized a suicidal speed duel for the early lead between LA FILLY LOCA, PIZZAMAN, and RACIST ROCK Perry jockeying for position, eventually burning themselves out having "softened up" the strongest "base speed," deemed to be RACIST ROCK Perry, for Willard sitting a perfect trip just off the hot pace to pick up the pieces around the turn. Another scenario had the RACIST ROCK breaking strongly, taking the lead with a burst of speed, and settling in as Willard chased him all the way without gaining ground. "Philly" Chris Matthews favored the latter scenario, arguing that "conditions" favored RACIST ROCK's crazy LUNATIC FRINGE running style.

No one had seen the dangerous LONE SPEED horse PIZZAMAN coming as he cleared all rivals in 9-9-9 tick increments. "HA!" Yelled Chris, apropos of nothing. Chuckles feverishly consulted his charts — had he missed something? His unique "inside access" clients would be furious with this new twist. No one had paid much mind to the railbird TEA PARTY two-dollar bettors who had quietly poured money on PIZZAMAN's nose, making him the post-time favorite when all bets were closed. NostraLawrence sat back with a wily grin, looking to all the world as if he'd known the race would develop this way all along. He unsheathed his iPhone and said, "get me REWRITE."

Chris: "Is PIZZAMAN for real?" Chuckles spread his palms and hunched his shoulders noncommittally. NostraLawrence declared confidently: "Cheap speed. He'll throw in the towel down the lane. Never makes the distance."

Chris: "HA!?!"

Republicans HATE Women AND The Post Office: What Can Be MORE UnAmerican?

The outrages keep piling up, don't they. When we can't distinguish Rachel's reporting of the latest Republican outrage from the Cialis commercial, you know, the part where the horny couple smilingly tells us all the ways the little blue (?) pill KILLS dudes who can't get it up, then it's time for Uncle Mike's "have I said yet this hour how much I HATE these Republicans?" to kick in — for us to maintain our sanity. Here's Rachel cheerily reporting how ante-dilluvian Republicans want to remove fluoridation from our water supply, restrict our most sacred franchise, the right to vote, and effectively KILL women by denying them life-saving health services. This Republican HATRED for women, this open-ended misogyny, is virtually ignored or written off as a mild symbolic act of Republicans just being Republicans (hahaha) and it's no biggie because the Senate will never pass it. Andrea Mitchell, WHERE'S YOUR OUTRAGE?! The Beltway Media is so beneath contempt, it's effectively under the radar.

As if that weren't enough, the Republican Party inserted a poison pill back in 2006, in the Lame Duck session of Congress, before Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over, to KILL the U.S. Postal Service, privatizing it to swell the for-profit coffers of FedEx and UPS. And for you Constitution-loving Teabaggers, the Post Office is enshrined in and predates the Constitution, and Founding Father Ben Franklin was its first Postmaster-General. More to the point, the heavily Republican "Dogpatch" Tea Party rural enclaves, where Democrats are called "socialist" devils, prepare to be ROYALLY SCREWED by the Republicans, not only with higher costs (how many of you can afford UPS or FedEx?) but with the salient fact that, while the Post Office, which doesn't take a nickel from the taxpayers, is required by statute to service the smallest of backwaters, FULLY A QUARTER — 25% — OF RIGHTWINGVILLE IS NOT SERVICED BY FEDEX AND UPS.

FUCKING MORONS. SEE HOW MUCH YOU LOVE YOUR TEABAG ANTI-GOVERNMENT EXTREMISTS IN CONGRESS WHEN YOUR POST OFFICE IS CLOSED AND 120,000 POSTAL WORKERS ARE THROWN OUT OF A JOB, AND YOU HAVE TO DRIVE 90 MILES FOR POSTAL SERVICE AT A HIGHER COST!

Senior Statesman of The Protest Movements Decodes OWS

Keith Olbermann who has been on the vanguard of the Occupy Wall Street media coverage, not coincidentally the political story of the year (although you wouldn't know it watching the bloviators of the Idiot Punditocracy), elicited the wisdom and cutting edge analysis of the iconic Tom Hayden, one of the leading figures of the protest movement — writ large — of the Sixties. Indeed, one Tom Hayden segment is worth a thousand overwrought sputterings of the Beltway Media. Consider the various scenarios laid out by Hayden — in particular the suggestion that if 10 or 20 thousand protesters were arrested in a peaceful civil disobedience action, they could effectively grind the system to a halt simply by demanding individual jury trials of their peers. (Do you suppose Mayor Bloomberg was listening in when he backed down from a park eviction confrontation this morning?) Or the advice he has for President Obama, which seems to have eluded the White House politicos: End the wars — one trillion saved; end the Bush tax cuts — another trillion; a "special adviser" on Wall Street is good — how about a special prosecutor; and "laying down the gauntlet" which is another way of demanding from this President bold, decisive action on the domestic front, his carpe diem moment of which Ron Suskind (as I was saying, not having read the book) noted on Rachel, there are intimations, as yet unfettered.

The President and the Democrats need to step up to the plate. The people demand it. Comically, OWS has the Idiot Punditocracy and many Democratic politicians in knots because they don't have a neat little list of demands. Take a look around, imbeciles. What do you see? A ravaged middle class, bailed-out criminals on Wall Street giving themselves extravagant bonuses with our money and using it to purchase Congress while throwing millions from their homes and trampling on the "American Dream" for the rest of us. What's the PREGNANT question hovering above the OWS movement? Here's a hint, MORONS: "Where's the accountability, where's the justice?" And for the President to say in his presser, a question that went largely unreported by the Idiot Punditocracy, that "no laws were broken" just isn't good enough. We're still waiting on Eric Holder to show the same dedication he has chasing down terrorist plots from Iran to chase down the criminals on Wall Street. And don't give us insider trading convictions; that's tinkering around the edges. Don't ask us to applaud the SEC for once doing its fucking job! We're still waiting on our government to start taking concrete actions on behalf of the American people to right the wrongs that engendered the OWS movement. Otherwise the Ayatollah's claim, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant is a ruse to divert attention from OWS, might even gain traction.

A Rational Person's Reaction As Rachel Reports One Pernicious Republican Outrage After Another

3 - 2 - 1 — GO MIKE!

[Insert latest Republican outrage here.]

READ ALL ABOUT IT! INSIDE "OCCUPY WALL STREET" ... O.M.G!

Here's an OCCUPIED Wall Street Journal I can support — and these talented kids cranked this knockoff out in no time flat; eat your heart out, Rupert Murdoch.

SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK 'N ROLL! Sadly, NO ... ASSHOLES Ron Christie and Sean Hannity are spouting misinformation on MSNBC & FOX ... AGAIN! And I was so looking forward to a good ol' fashioned Bacchanal-in-the-Park ... ah, well.

Pay attention, Teabaggers ... Here's how a REAL GRASSROOTS demonstration takes flight. While you're wasting energy adjusting your fat asses on your lounge chairs and drinking beer off the cooler within walking distance of billionaire Koch-Bros funded buses and fattening fast food treats, these kids have a newspaper, a media center, a canteen, clean hand-me-down clothes for overnighters, and really creative NON-RACIST signs and posters ... Hmm. If banks/corporations are "people" what's their race and ethnic heritage?

Hat tip to Telemann in NYC for on-the-scene coverage.

NEFARIOUS IRAN PLOT: Hey, Isn't This "OCTOBER SURPRISE" One Year Too Soon?

Just saying. Hmm ... Democrats and their exquisite sense of political timing. Ah, never mind.

191 Second FLAT Post-GOP Debate Analysis: Perry Makes His Case ... In Song!

For the GOP Dogpatch crowd, aka ... the TEA PARTY! With a little help from ... Newt?

What A REAL Democrat Sounds Like, And What The 60s Can Teach Us About Occupy Wall Street

Watching this AWESOME partisan takedown, I can't help but wonder what happened to today's Democrats, from the top down? Can you imagine how JFK would have reacted to today's obstructionist right wing Republicans and what he'd say about the CIRCUS spectacle witnessed last night in the Republican debate? It might go something like this:

And can you imagine President Kennedy EVER behaving as Mr. Obama has for the past two years toward these Republicans in Congress? They blame the President, unfairly, for the plight of the economy now, as we teeter on the edge of a double-dip recession, and desperately need another boost of Keynesian stimulus to the economy, a lá FDR's Works Project Administration. But no. The plutocrats and corporations are in charge. And they just LOVE using this country as a host for the Chinese infection.

Yet it was the President's passivity in the face of what many economists warned were half-measures on stimulus, and his terrible choice of an economic team, rewarding an arrogant sexist like Larry Summers and a Wall Street lapdog like Tim Geithner with the highest, most influential positions, while the guys who were REALLY right — Austan Goolsbee and Jared Bernstein — were benched, with no power even of the persuasive variety to influence policy, that has us in our current fix. The fix wasn't nearly big enough to fix the economy. History will show us, but it's clear already. And that's entirely on President Obama.

David Halberstam's seminal book The Best And the Brightest, chronicles the Kennedy-Johnson administrations' inexorable slide to war in Vietnam, a tragedy for which this nation paid with 58,000 American lives and which, in a way, opened the door to the right's power grab. Halberstam once described how one man within Johnson's inner circle tried unsuccessfully to pull us back:

"George Ball was the number two man in the State Department in the Johnson years. He had been a lawyer in France during the first part of the Indo-China War when the French were fighting the Vietnamese and losing. And it made him very wary of American intervention there and as such, he made a strong case against sending combat troops. It was a lonely business; he believed that Johnson was listening to him and taking him seriously but in the end, the forces for escalation were too strong."

We hope President Obama may be more successful winding down our devastating involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, though, while the President is intent on not repeating the errors of Vietnam, it is on the domestic front, the don't rock the boat or upset Wall Street economic de-escalators on the President's team who are most responsible for our current economic downward drift. Goolsbee and Bernstein played George Ball's role in this administration, with the same result. They were unsuccessful in moving policy toward stronger economic stimulus — the imperious Larry Summers ignored them, and worse, female economic advisers were to be seen and not heard.

The President, it seems, set aside the political instincts that served him so well during the 2008 campaign while comfortably ensconced in his fraternity of Harvard pals. Summers shut down all dissenting views and sneered at critics like Paul Krugman. (To be sure, a Nobel Prize for economics isn't in Summers' future.)

President Obama's handling (or mishandling) of the economy is analogous to Johnson's tin ear on Vietnam, surrounded by a coterie of Ivy League hawks with one sole outlier, George Ball. Jared Bernstein and Austan Goolsbee were the George Balls of the Obama administration, but with less influence. And they're gone now; defeated by the toxic climate in Washington, or the fact that Summers crapped all over the joint and waltzed right out of there leaving them to clean up the mess. Geithner remains. But he's like the President's little brother. Obama likes him, protects him — they're the same age — empathizes with the searing criticism Geithner takes from all sides. It's as if Geithner's the economic lightning rod that validates the President's economic policy (in his own mind), the old adage that if both sides are criticizing you, then you must be doing something right.

The President has often put it in these terms to justify his conciliatory approach as the correct one toward a nest of Republican vipers  — encouraged by the Idiot Punditocracy, who can hardly wait for the chaos of a Republican in the White House. (If you look hard enough, you can actually see Chuckles Toddy salivating.) Mr. Obama is working hard to mend fences with progressives, years too late, and pushed back by multiple self-inflicted penalties to the one-yard line. He has frustrated and infuriated his liberal base (don't believe the polls, people are more complicated than that), who said all along he should fight back — like Kennedy. We were right, of course, and now he faces a long, hard drive to score his re-election.

Obviously, and truthfully, President Obama is no economist (which should have set off political warning bells in his mind like, e.g., "am I being rolled?") but he was comfortable in his Harvard fraternity of conservative economists — who had pushed for the very deregulatory policies that got us in this mess — just as Kennedy was when he assembled his own team around Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, whose belated mea culpa over Vietnam was a singularly pathetic near-deathbed confession. But we never got to know whether Kennedy would pursue the same destructive escalation in Vietnam. There were tantalizing clues that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam.

For once, the Idiot Punditocracy is correct in its assessment that the state of the economy will determine whether President Obama is re-elected. Isn't it a bit premature for the President to claim no laws were broken by the Wall Street criminals (in the legal sense of the word) who brought this economy down? Maybe he was too busy to read Matt Taibbi's articles. The President should really get out of his "bubble" more often.

Chris Matthews hosted a couple of 60s revivalist segments on Hardball earlier this week, no doubt inspired by the sight of thousands of 21st century hippies on the streets of our nation, peacefully demonstrating against corporate greed, income inequality, and a host of other injustices. Very much like the 60s demonstrations. Chris could have booked any number of objective Republicans (like his buddy Ed Rollins, for instance) but instead, quite deliberately I think, he gave free rein to GOP attack dog Ron Christie to launch into a stream of 60s-like establishment slurs against the peaceful, diverse, middle class Occupy Wall Street demonstrators:

I guess my first emotional response is, I feel your pain. I understand where you're coming from, but GO GET A JOB.

I think when you find a lot of people who are coming to New York City, college Students who are out having sex on the lawn, people who admit that they`re there just to be part of a good time, people who are taking drugs, people who are breaking the law, yes, I think they need to go get a job.

MATTHEWS: You first, Ron. You smelled the crowd, you saw them. You know what we're talking about visually, right?

CHRISTIE: Yes, I do. And it's just a disgrace. I think people have the obligation, if they're upset with the government, they have the lawful petition right to say, hey, this isn't right. But they don't have a right to urinate on the lawn. They don't have —

MATTHEWS: Yes, but they're not mad at the government, they're mad at Wall Street. They seem like they're mad at the business people.

CHRISTIE: Well, their anger is misplaced. But if they actually really want to be angry at somebody, I would suggest their elected officials in Washington, D.C. who can't get it done. I'd be angry at this administration —

MATTHEWS: You know, Ron, there's really a historic precedent for this. I mean, going back to the beginning of our republic, people from the West have mistrusted the big New York bankers, I mean, as Andy Jackson stuff. This isn't un-American, is it? But how do you put it in our history? The stuff in New York right now?

CHRISTIE: I don't think it's un-American. I think, frankly, of our history, this looks a lot to me like 1968 -- a lot of people coming out against the Vietnam War, a lot of people protesting. The difference here, though, when you look at Eric Cantor's use of the word "mob," Chris, I looked it up on Webster's before I came on tonight. A mob, according to Webster's, is a large and disorderly crowd. What you have in New York City is a large group. Some of these folks have been disorderly. By definition, that's a mob. You didn't see the same sort of activity with the Tea Party. [Huh?! Whaaa ...? Excuse me?!]

And this allegation that Nancy Pelosi just had me that had me so angry, I was at that Tea Party rally when she said that members of Congress were spat upon. I was standing right there, I saw these members of Congress, who are the members of the Black Congressional Caucus, I didn't see a thing. [Right. HEAR no, SEE no ... but speak plenty of EVIL on Hardball.]

So, if she's got some proof, I'd like to see it. But denigrating the Tea Party, who have been largely peaceful in their demonstrations, is nowhere near analogous to what we're seeing in New York. [Huh?! Whaaa ...? Excuse me?! Are we going to relitigate what we've all seen on tape, despite Andrew Breitbart's attempts to whitewash it?]

MATTHEWS: OK. You may be right, [No, Chris. You brought this asshole on to insult tens of thousands of your viewers, with impunity. It's your responsibility to set the record straight.] but you're wrong about the 60s. I loved them, they were fabulous. And I love -- I didn't like the assassinations, obviously. But the other part of the '68 experience was incredible. [To quote Christie, "if you've got some proof, I'd like to see it." I think the 60s you're talking about — Summer of Love in San Francisco, 67 — is all in your head, pal.]

Then the next evening Chris tried to make amends for his reactionary verbal bacchanalia with Ron Christie by hosting Ron Reagan, a really lovely guy, to speak some more of the OWS demonstrations. But not before injecting his bias with this inflammatory tease:

"Can the Democrats embrace the Occupy Wall Street protesters? Should they? If they jump in, as one person pointed out, what happens if the protesters start throwing garbage cans through the windows, or worse?"

What's really creepy about comments like these, coming from Beltway luminaries like Chris, is that it shows just how brainwashed they are by the right wing hysteria over the OWS demonstrations. I'm convinced Chris internalizes this shit from Bill O'Reilly and other wingnut propaganda sources, and then spouts them on his show, on a supposedly "liberal" network. It's just one more example in hundreds, daily, of how much the Beltway Media is in the thrall of Fox right wing propaganda.

FYI, Chris, while the demonstrations have been orderly and peaceful, right wing provocateurs have infiltrated them to cause disruption and then blame the chaos on OWS. The same pattern occurred in Wisconsin, and everywhere people have gathered to rage against the corporate right wing machine that is destroying their lives. Keith has covered this, and Rachel too, showing Breitbart protegé James O'Keefe walking the crowds looking to promote trouble for his heavily edited video hit jobs. Hardball? Crickets. That is, until a wingnut provocateur creates an incident, in which case Chris will go hysterical. After whimsically declaring his faux flower child bona fides, Chris goes Archie Bunker ... and good on Ron for replying in kind:

MATTHEWS: Ron, what are your impulses when you watch those people up in New York. I mean, we have gotten different pictures of them. Do you feel for them? Do you think — do you wish like, in the summer of 67, we all felt we were all out in San Francisco? Is this something you wish you were a part of? Do you sense there's a downside for the Dems if this stuff gets more rowdy, if you will, rougher up there and other places besides New York?

REAGAN: Well, yes. Imagine — imagine what would happen if people at these Occupy Wall Street groups should start showing up with assault-style weapons and talking about Second Amendment solutions. Yes, then I`m sure the roof would come off, wouldn't it?

I thought Chris was a guard, or something, during the 60s. To be fair, he did the Peace Corps too, which is a great thing. But as far as Chris's political "evolution" (watch out for people whose views "evolve" or who switch horses in mainstream, well into their adult lives) to the "40-yard line" or whatever, well, that's anyone's guess. Here's how I see Chris in the 60s, face-to-face with Bobby Kennedy. Chris plays the part of the sheriff:

When Chris, the Zeitgeist sponge, said "... nor do I want political flourishes — gestures that give joy to the left or the right"... perhaps he was referring to Congressman Alan Grayson's takedown of his  buddy, P.J. O'Rourke. Well, you know, Chris — when you host a ratbastard like Ron Christie, who comes on your show to insult the 24 million Americans who can't find a fulltime job and who now swell the throngs of the OWS demonstrations, the minute you cut Christie his "political analyst" check, in effect doubling down on the insult, that's something for which you and MSNBC ought to be ashamed.

It's Because You "Aim So High" That We LOVE You, Rachel

And also because Glenn Beck seems to bring out the totally adorable in you. Watch this segment, folks, and I challenge you not to go "YES!" with a fist pump and your own celebratory end zone dance. Because, you know, I've never found wingnut comedians like P.J. O'Rourke very funny. Their brand of "comedy" relies on a meanness which makes light of the struggles of the least fortunate and most vulnerable among us which is really ugly. Not funny, pal. Just plain ugly. Watch the takedown. It's awesome and it got a standing O from the audience and a "TOUCHDOWN!" sign from Bill Maher, which was SUPER COOL. Watch; this is just great:

Chris Matthews Remedial Ed: Get Some Better Guests, Willya ...

Chris:

(a) It's Demo-CRATIC National Committee, NOT Demo-CRAT — shame on you;

(b) If you're going to bring on a WINGNUT shark, LIAR, SOPHIST, like Ron Christie to smear the OWS demonstrators while you stand by like a dolt, at least match him up with a WORTHY opponent. Steve Kornacki?! Gimme a fucking break. You know, Joan Walsh is from Salon too; top-level, for a reason. Plus, she ALWAYS gets the best of Christie and totally UNHINGES him. She speaks well for progressives, has one of the best BULLSHIT radars around, and ALWAYS sets the record straight. Look at it this way: At least it makes for good TV.

What, now you have wingnuts booking your guests, too? That was a shameful segment worthy of Fox, but not Hardball standards, such as they are (which seem to be slip-slidin' away.):

Notes From The Fringe: Krugman, Fat Cats, Hitler, et al ...

The other day I stopped by my bank and while doing my banking asked my friendly banker whether they would raise fees for the "privilege" of using their money machines. He was evasive, said he didn't "hear" or "know" of anything (which usually means the opposite in such situations), then said "blame the government" for Bank of America charging five bucks a pop at the ATM machine. Thankfully, I'm not a BofA customer but once something sets me off in the realm of politics and its offspring, Fairness and Justice, it's hard to shut off the spigot.

So I checked my politics at the door, talked nice weather with my nice banker and took my leave. It never ceases to amaze me how liberals manage to exist, happily, in a state like Oklahoma. I couldn't do it. I have a hard time as it is living in a Blue state.

I remember going off on a political dissertation with my insurance agent, a single mom who should by rights be a Democratic voter but all she kept bringing up was anecdotal hearsay about poor people gaming the system. Divide and conquer. Our cultural and political conversation is so skewed to right wing nostrums that the truth — just the truth and the facts, ma'am — has an almost impossible time punching through. It takes time to knock down, to debunk, sound bite sophistries repeated as lies with buzz words like "class warfare" and "hard left" — where did Matthews come up with this bullshit? Then it hit me, of course, he watches Bill O'Reilly. Here's Bill-O The Clown browbeating, or rather, bullying the president of the AARP charging, idiotically, that it's a "left wing" organization.

Chris Matthews reminds me of the elder pundit who is revered for having 40 years' "experience" in politics when it seems, as Damon Runyon famously said in another context, it's one bad year's experience forty times over. The Michael "they keep pulling me back in" Corleone of political punditry deserves points at least for trying hard. Even as Bill O'Reilly keeps pulling him back, keeps him stupid. It's not easy being a liberal, a progressive, having history on our side. There is something to be said for ignorant bliss. Although the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression should be able to focus even the dimmest minds ... there are still so many of Lincoln's fools in this country. And they're mostly in the Republican/Tea Party ... and in MSNBC studios.

But at least we've got Paul Krugman on our side. Paul has been on a tear of late, for a political commentator, that is. Here's one more reason why he's the best of the best, in this observer's opinion — on the Wall Street/right wing/Fox propagandists hysteria over the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Isn't it amusing how these ratbastards embrace their gun-toting, racist Teabagger hordes as "patriotic Americans" but when a true grassroots movement of the left (which is really the middle and really progressive) emerges with its clarion call to Occupy Wall Street it's a "mob" that's "pitting American against American" (yeah, Cantor you scumbag, the 1% against the 99ners) and "class warfare" (of the rich plutocrats against the rest of us) and a sinister Democratic conspiracy, according to the Pizzaman, who was fine and dandy sitting at the back of the bus as civil rights history passed him by right under his nose:

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

 Kudos to Chris Hayes for slamming CNN's alpha-bitch Erin Burnett, another idiotic woman who uncovers her ignorance of everything political with a Fox blondie 'tude and lotsa cleavage:

Is it just me, or did the obnoxious libertarian sophist, liar, dissembler, neurotic politico Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC outlier from the CNBC wingnut stable —whose talking heads said the OWS protesters “let their freak flags fly” and are “aligned with Lenin” — dodge a left hook to the jaw from Big Eddie because they were at different locations for color commentary on the President's recent presser? It's too bad, because Ratigan used his MSNBC platform to promote the Tea Party and convince low information voters (can you blame them, given the crap they're fed daily?) to bring to power one of the most right wing reactionary Congresses in history, with all the attendant misery for the 99ners. Now he's trying to glom onto OWS with his hidden agenda, which includes 100,000+ signatures for a constitutional amendment to "get the money out of politics."

That's something all progressives support, in principle, except Ratigan wants to use it as a springboard to a third party, libertarian. Hosting his hero Ron Paul — another reactionary who was the original Tea Party creator/Kock money fundee — Ratigan tried to get him to sign on, musing that it's somehow related to small government. How public funding of campaigns, which progressives fully support, and is the way elections are run in social democratic European countries, amounts to "small government" escapes rationality. It isn't "big government" either; it's good government. But that's just another example of how much the asshole who hisses under his breath about the "lefty agenda" (whatever that means) is secretly committed to his own weird libertarian "agenda." You are what you are, pal. Spell it out instead of trying to make nice with liberals and progressives, whom you obviously loathe.

Remember that football coach who stood on the sidelines and tripped an opposing player as he was streaking down the playing side of the line toward a sure touchdown? That's Ratigan and his brand of destructive politics. Libertarians are sideline court jesters and trippers who acidly criticize those who are trying to move this country forward, but have nothing to show for it, because government is "the enemy." As I've said before, the reason they hate liberals is because we have a great pedigree. We built this country. We established the ground rules which allowed them to prosper. There are enduring monuments to this country — of good, inspired government and brick and mortar too — built in our name that they will never have, except in novels. Or in comedic entertainment, or less talented political agitation, like Ratigan's and Paul's. They hate liberals because we've achieved great things and they haven't. And they know it. Their irrational ideology continues to tread water, so they project. Such are the burdens of arrogant elitists.

Are you ready for some racism!?!!? Not on Monday Night Football anymore, now that ESPN (with a reluctant Fox, I suppose) made its firing of MNF racist intro songster Hank Williams Jr., has-been country third-rater and Tea Party devoteé, permanent. One, two, three (like a typical Teabagger, Williams can't count) you're outta there! Good guy Michael Smerconish is an honest independent who eloquently expresses the view of the great majority of decent Americans:

Proving there are always basement "class" acts in America, this unfortunate talentless dim son will be trying to make hay out of Hitler on The View and maybe, if he's lucky — FOR HIRE: Racists, religious fundamentalists, wingnuts in general - Rick Perry campaign — he lands this new "official" political gig:

Krugman Does Buffalo Springfield — And Hits Nail On The Head

One of the anthems of the 60s demonstrations against the Vietnam War was the Rock classic by Buffalo Springfield, which later morphed into CSN&Y, "For What It's Worth." Many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters hadn't even been born when the song came out, but as with every great piece of music it has an enduring, universal message that is as relevant today as it ever was. Notably, Paul Krugman's column starts off with the song's opening, and he nails the landing. Here's Steven Stills with a kickass solo version of the song.

Confronting the Malefactors
By Paul Krugman

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.

It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?

Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.

Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that men in suits not only don’t have any monopoly on wisdom, they have very little wisdom to offer. When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring.

A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.

Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests as “class warfare.”

But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.

And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.