If you'd ever wondered why our public discourse on the issues of the day seems so ridiculously retarded then I recommend Howard Fineman's latest piece because it explains a lot about how members of our elite press corp view the country's political process.  Fineman moves away from the old "horse race" analysis to the new "high school musical" analysis which basically says that the political process is typified by all the unbearable stereotypes that so annoyed you in high school. 

In effect, that political process is juvenile and unserious and you really shouldn't give a damn because you're screwed either way. This especially holds if we're only talking about the 2008 Democratic Primary, because I gotta tell ya I have a hard time seeing Fineman give John McCain the kind of send up he does Al Gore, ie. "... the ultimate goody-goody but who had grown a beard, made a film and dropped out to attend the School Without Walls".  

Dirty hippy or beatnik references seem a little dated to me but hey, I don't work for GE/NBC/Newsweek nor do I get paid for juvenile crap like this... kinda what you'd expect from say, the annoying editor of your high school yearbook.

(h/t Kevin Drum)

And Big Pharma isn't interested in funding the research trials because they can't make enormous profits off of the potential cure?

I don't know what will happen or whether DCA will be the next medical breakthrough but I think this is just wrong on so many levels.  For an industry already heavily subsidized by you and I through exorbitant drug prices that  fall heaviest on American consumers, a large dose of federally subsidized drug research and a broken patent system that encourages the production of "me-to" drugs over actual innovation, you'd think that ponying up for an inexpensive cure would at the least be a good PR move, but evidently no.  Mr. Michelakis will hopefully find government funding for his research but don't expect to see commercials for DCA anytime soon. 

I could be wrong but it seems that a couple years ago when the NSA's secret warrantless wiretapping program was suddenly made public, any calls that it be brought into compliance with current law was tantamount to aiding our enemies in the destruction of the United State of America.  Going to a FISA court, even if several days or weeks after taking action, was too slow; the President already had the power to order domestic spying and anything else dangerously impeded our global war against terrorism, dammit! 

Okay, so what happened that made them suddenly say that the NSA program will now be regulated by the FISA courts?  I'm confused...have we lost the GWOT or something?  Judicial review....OH, THE HORROR!

Although it is not clear what's happening there are a lot of moves being made by the White House on the Judiciary front that seem to signal that they are going on the defensive.  Why, you say?  Well first we had Harriet Miers resigning as White House Counsel and her replacement by Nixon and Reagan administration veteran, Fred Fielding, someone with a lot more experience managing congressional oversight and scandal. 

Next, and possibly the most serious change, is the removal of a number of prominent U.S. attorneys many of who were overseeing investigations of a number of top Republican lawmakers and their associates.  Worst of all those attorneys were replaced without Senate authorization with the White House choosing a little known provision in the USA Patriot Act to ram the changes through.  Needless to say, many of the new appointees are long on political loyalty to the President and short on legal or courtroom experience. 

To add to the mess, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, is suddenly on a rampage giving speeches about the evils of "judicial activism".    I could be wrong but trotting out well-worn stale political rhetoric about the judiciary as some sort of preemptive defense is just lame.  Better arguments could be made that Presidents should never pick their long time political patrons/personal lawyers as Attorney General.

Any of you lawyers, notice any other trends out there?

"... for the first time in my life, Mr. Oreo cookie- without the chocolate on the outside- can understand why people celebrated when O.J. Simpson was acquitted."  What? 

Glenn Beck must be filling out some sort of new conservative media commentator quota at CNN and ABC because I can't fathom how someone with such an amazing penchant for wacko inflammatory statements has stayed on the air so long.  What we have here is someone who loves the sound of his own voice and one of the more annoyingly asinine new faces on television, but a leading cultural commentator with with a distinct voice.... ah, no. 

I leave you with Jon Stewart's astute assessment of Beck after he challenged the patriotism of new Rep. Keith Ellison:

 Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking! 

Now, if that's what the networks were going for, then they've got the right guy!

How unpopular has George W. Bush become?  Extremely.  Mr. Bush has hit that point that he is so unpopular that the more we see him or hear from him, the farther his numbers go down. 

The White House political office has to be bumming because you know all the lead up to last week's speech was an attempt to make the President more visible and relevant after the drubbing his party took in the midterms, which frankly can also be laid at the feet of Mr. Bush. 

Someone's going to have to retire that, "The President remains popular" refrain because when your number have been below 50% as long as W's (over a year and a half) they rarely come up significantly and more often then not sink lower.  Good thing the White House doesn't place much faith in polling.

The folks over at Huffington Post did a run-down of President Bush's 60 Minute interview and found that he got stuck on the word "decisions", as in "I like making decisions."  Sadly, Scott Pelley could not move himself to tell the President that while he got a way too much credit for "liking to make decisions" maybe four years ago, more recently people have come to realize his decision-making ability pretty well sucks and wish he would stop.

Shorter David Brooks:  "Damn the Democrats for not coming up with a "serious" alternative plan that the White House would definitely ignore, because now we're stuck with the Bush plan.  Let me show you how we got here...."

There have to be other ways to try to puff up your middle-brow conservative credentials than saying this crap over and over again.

Christ, what a disaster.  He's only been back a short while and the damage caused is already starting to pile up.  And the funny thing is that Joe Lieberman is such an arrogant elitist prick that he thinks everything he says and does is somehow saving the country from itself. 

Any chance the people of Connecticut will revisit and rethink their choice of Senator sometime in the near future?  Please??

I know the White House never worries about these things, but you'd think they'd be a little concerned now that the President isn't even getting applause giving his "let's go kick some terrorist ass" speech on military bases? 

  Serious 1. a. Of persons, their actions, etc.: Having, involving, expressing, or arising from earnest purpose or thought; of grave or solemn disposition or intention; having depth or solidity of character, not light or superficial; now often, concerned with the grave and earnest sides of life as opposed to amusement or pleasure-seeking.

Okay, there are several definitions of "serious" but I get majorly confused when its applied to the current situation in Iraq.  I was particularly taken aback when I watched the Brooks and Shields segment on the News Hour last night and David Brooks emphatically declared that the Democrats did not have a "serious" alternative plan for Iraq so they basically needed to find one or support the President.  When asked why the Democrats had to come up with a proposal given they have no power to implement any sort of policy or strategy, he answered, "Because they are Americans." 

Now I don't know about David Brooks but it seems to me that there are a lot of alternative proposals out there: the Iraqi Study Group proposal, federalizing Iraq or dividing it into three different countries, strategic redeployment of forces, etc.  There are a ton of alternate proposals out there but no notion of what makes them "serious" or "not serious" according to David Brooks and other conservative commentators.  I suggest that saying a proposal is not "serious" has less to do with whether or not it works or was conceived in all earnestness and more to do with whether or not you agree with the proposal.  For years despite thousands of position papers and plans put out by Democratic politicians or liberal/progressive think tanks on any number of issues the refrain was the Democrats had "no plan", but now that they hold the House and Senate, they suddenly have "no serious plans."  Make sense? 

An alternate explanation is that to be "serious" means the willingness to needlessly risk the lives of thousands over and over again with little actual hope of making a difference in an already failed policy situation.  I personally think this is what Brooks and others mean when they use the word "serious" and suggest that most of the rest of us would use a different word: insane.

When Johah Goldberg says "not long ago", I think he means two to three years ago.  I don't know if I consider Jonah a "big picture" kinda guy but if he's talking about the entire sweep of human history, then I guess technically he's correct?  Man, how time flies....

If Bob Novak is to be believed (risky proposition), even Republicans in Congress admit that Condoleeza Rice's mismanagement of the State Department has effectively crippled American diplomacy in a number of areas.  No word yet as to whether this influenced our "new strategy" in Iraq.  Sorry to everyone hoping for some sort of diplomatic magic in the Middle East. 

A couple days ago I mocked all the faux outrage generated by the announcement that Congress would work a couple four day weeks in a row.  This of course ran counter to the House Democrat's pledge to work five days a week and apparently the media got a good snicker out of the report that the House Leadership called off Monday's session because of the BCS national championship game.  I didn't think this was so earth-shattering seeing as Congress has only been putting in two day work weeks for several years now, but now apparently the whole story is a load of crap. 

Turns out that despite some bad jokes from Majority Leader Hoyer to the contrary, no sessions were scheduled for Monday so that House members of both parties could study all the legislation that will come up this week.  Hoyer said as much on the floor of the Congress last week and Nancy "What's the BCS mean?" Pelosi confirmed it during statements made to the media on Monday.  Evidently it only took a phone call to straighten it all out so its amazing how this story had legs earlier in the week. 

After years of bills rushed to the floor in the middle of the night containing provisions not originally voted on in committee, a better story would have probably been the new phenomenon of the House Leadership actually giving members time to read the bills they'll be voting on.

Want a laundry list of why most people aren't too excited about Mr. Bush's "new strategy" then check out the this transcript from Keith Olbermann from last night. 

Olbermann: President Bush makes no secret of his distaste for looking backward, for assessing past results. 

But in our third story on the Countdown tonight… too bad.

Any meaningful assessment of the president's next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far.

So, let's look at the record:

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America.

Now, he says it is vital for America.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.

He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary…Because Saddam was a threat; Because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda; Because of terrorism in general; To liberate Iraq; To spread freedom; To spread democracy; To keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and "de-Baathified" the government. He short-changed Iraqi training.

He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment.

Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis.

Staffed U-S positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

We learned that "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it's up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.

He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, ¤elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam.

We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers.

As they stood up–we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never 'stay the course',

The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists.

The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.

And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

 Nearly two months later, the story still bothers him. "It's astonishing," he says. "The whole place went to [excrement] when they pulled U.S. troops out. And yet it was considered a success story -- that's why they turned it over to the Iraqis. All our efforts over all that time -- I don't want to say it was for nothing. All I want to say is that it hit me really hard because we invested so much time and energy in the people that lived there. I felt like I was part of the town. And a year later, to read that because the U.S. troops left, people are being executed, that hurt. That really hit home."

The thing that struck me about this article in the Washington Post is the notion that the Iraq we talk about on a daily basis is some sort of idealized notion of what Iraq really is like, its the Iraq we wished we were dealing with as opposed to what we're actually dealing with; an Iraq where anecdotally we think we've made progress and then reality comes crashing in and the whole damn thing goes to hell. 

Mark Danner had a great piece on that very same subject in the New York Time Book Review titled "How a War of Unbound Fantasies Happened, which unfortunately I am unable to link to.  One of Danner's best anecdotes from covering Iraq is of the indefatigable young State Department foreign service officer, very smart and effective, who's spent months talking with local Iraqi officials and people about the upcoming election.  From his conversations and negotiations with the local Sunni population in Al Anbar province he is convinced that the Sunnis population of western Iraq will vote to ratify the constitution and Danner thinks so highly of him that he too is hopeful.  Of course, when the results come in, 9 out of 10 Sunnis in this area vote against the constitution and we are left to muse how you can transform Iraq if the best and brightest we have in the diplomatic and military service can't even comprehend what makes the Iraqis tick. 

The AP is reporting that the "new plan" President Bush will roll out tonight isn't new.  I especially like the quote from Mac Thornberry (R-TX) about how Al-Qaeda was emboldened by the Soviet defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, as if it would have been better if the Russians had stayed in Afghanistan.  Only Texas could foist with such sage politicians as these on an unsuspecting nation.  Hey, weren't we involved in supporting the mujahideen war effort that defeated the Soviets?

What are these two grinning about?

Evidently the new game plan for selling escalation in Iraq comes down to "a choice between withdrawal or surge."  Kudos to the White House for painting things as starkly black and white as that.  Why does it seem you couldn't ask for a better strategy to switch most people from being against immediate withdrawal to being for it?  In fact, it kinda reminds me of those days when if you said you didn't think that invading and occupying Iraq would work according to plan then you were faced with the choice of "supporting the war on terror" or "supporting Saddam Hussein and terrorism".  If you tried to express skepticism as to the effectiveness of our occupation and governance of Iraq you were told that you had the choice between supporting the spread of freedom and democracy or having Saddam Hussein in power.  Man, those were good times for our national dialogue and not at all divisive. 

Nevertheless, given that the choices are so incredibly stark, I would personally ask for one more bit of reassurance from Mr. Bush: what do we do next if your plan fails?  If in fact this is an all or nothing battle, termed by some  "Stalingrad on the Tigris", and even the "architects" of the plan can't conceive of what to do if it doesn't work, could you fill us in Mr. President on what happens next if and when it doesn't work?  I'm just asking because I'm pretty sure no one at the White House or Pentagon is really talking about this and no one in the media is gonna expect you to answer it so they won't seriously pose the question. 

Not long ago you said that if you didn't think we could win in Iraq then you wouldn't keep the troops there.  That's easy to say when you think no one will call you on it but after almost every strategy and policy you've proposed to keep this quagmire going has never worked, it would be refreshing if at the end of the day you'd put up or shut up.  I know you don't agree but most of us think its really getting to be too much to ask so many to die in one blunder after another.  You have a fondness for talking about the real world and "real" people, but in the real world most of us actually try something new when confronted with constant failure.

Holy Crap!  Looks like the Democrats are only going to have Congress in session four days this week because members from Florida and Ohio, including Minority Leader Boehner, wanted to go to the BCS Championship game.  Not only that they are apparently going to be in session for only four days next week... because of a Federal holiday. 

Words cannot describe the disappointment I feel.....sigh.

Memories, light the corners of my mind.   Misty golden-colored memories, of the way we were...

 “Everybody’s more sensitive,” said one contract lobbyist, who said he worries that he will have a harder time getting a seat at some decision-making meetings. “They are not going to sit in a room with a bunch of contract lobbyists.” (Roll Call)

In other news, Senator John Kyl of Arizona is now officially known as the "un-Santorum" and the K Street Project will no longer be referred to as "the K Street Project".

A year or two ago I often complained that while we talked about Iraq as a sovereign nation we did not treat it as such.  In the interim, the Maliki government has evinced an independent streak that suggests they view themselves as sovereign and don't seem interested in being seen as too close to us especially if it disrupts their own domestic political concerns.  Needless to say, the one thing that really hasn't been addressed in all this talk of escalating the war by sending another 20,000 U.S. troops to Iraq and "retaking" Baghdad is how you force the sovereign government of Iraq to go along with the plan? 

Did I mention even our main "coalition" partner refuses to go along with the plan?

Wow.  Jpod delivers a smackdown to the TV oaf Kudlow:

Larry K., you underestimate the political paradox posed by an effort to reform the Alternative Minimum Tax. If Democrats offer a genuinely serious AMT reform that manages to cut taxes for tens of millions of middle-class people, the constituency for vetoing such a reform on the grounds that it would involve a tax-rate increase on those making more than $150,000 a year could fit comfortably into a Tokyo hotel room. The problem with Democratic tax plans has always been that they end up raising taxes on the middle class and small business. If they actually try a middle-class tax cut that aids small businesspeople, it will be a revolution and could begin to break the Republican hold on the tax-cut issue.

As for the Social Security reform plan, if Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson really skipped out on his $100 million bonus from Goldman Sachs just so he could fight for this one, he's a wonderfully well-intentioned and unbelievably  self-sacrificing public servant with a vital interest in the common weal to whom, one day, I would like to sell a bridge to Brooklyn. 

Pretty much right on the mark as far as I can see.

The point of this piece at Think Progress shouldn't merely be that Sen. "Straight Talk Express" refuses to raise taxes to pay for the war in Iraq but why.  When Mr. Integrity says "I'm not sure what the point would be." he's really saying, "Al, did I mention I'm gonna run for President again?"  Frankly advocating a tax increase on your political base on top of pushing for an unpopular escalation of the war would be just too much for America's favorite Senator.

Conservatives have been doing this for years so I'm not surprise Ezra Klein nails Larry Kudlow once again:  When confronted by statistics showing the top 1% continue to gain an even greater chunk of the country's income and wealth at a rapid clip, they usually say, "but they pay most of the taxes?"  Okay, we're not talking about the same thing are we? 

Say it with me slowly, if a very small percent of the population controlled upwards of 85% of the country's financial assets plus over 50% of the national income, then they they control most of the country's financial assets and a huge chuck of the overall income.  In our system, if they have more income and financial assets then 99% of the rest of the population then they will pay a much larger percentage of the taxes!  Pretty simple. Round and round and round....

Max Sawicky notes a recent address by American Economics Assoc. President, George Akerlof, that basic human behavior often doesn't fit the "totally rational individual" tenets assumed by most economics research.  Who knows, in twenty years someone might take notice and we'll stop talking about how the economy works in such succinctly mechanistic terms?

For the people at Home Depot, Inc. I just want to introduce myself and say that if you're looking for someone of the caliber of previous CEO, Bob Nardelli, I'm your man.  I'm pretty sure that for a hair less than $210 million and all the other benefits, I too could preside over a major loss of market share in a very short period of time.

Okay, there was little controversy over the death of Gerald Ford, but Eric Boehlert does us a favor by explaining not only why Ford's pardon of Nixon aroused so much condemnation at the time (ex: Ford didn't talk to his AG about a pardon and Nixon initially got everything he asked for suggesting a deal was made) but also how much has been done to paper over our memory of those events.