Rightwingers On The Wrong Side Of The Cultural Divide Again-- Avatar Gets The Thumbs Down In Wingnutia

The choice is ours: lobbyist shills or a proven patriot

Last week I was in Tirana, capital of Albania, and I kept trying to see Avatar. Every performance was sold out. The movie, already the 4th highest grossing film in history, has brought in over a billion dollars worldwide. It will get lots of Oscar nominations, including "best picture," but I bet it's bigger in Albania than in Alabama. As Patrick Goldstein put it in yesterday's L.A. Times, Avatar arouses conservatives' ire-- Conservatives are blind to the 3-D blockbuster's charms.

But amid this avalanche of praise and popularity, guess who hates the movie? America's prickly cadre of political conservatives.

For years, pundits and bloggers on the right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance with Middle America. They have reacted with scorn to such high-profile liberal political advocacy films as Syriana, Milk, W., Religulous, Lions for Lambs, Brokeback Mountain, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition and Good Night, and Good Luck, saying that the movies' poor performances at the box office were a clear sign of how thoroughly uninterested real people were in the pet causes of showbiz progressives.

Of course, Avatar totally turns this theory on its head. As a host of critics have noted, the film offers a blatantly pro-environmental message; it portrays U.S. military contractors in a decidedly negative light; and it clearly evokes the can't-we-all-get along vibe of the 1960s counterculture. These are all messages guaranteed to alienate everyday moviegoers, so say the right-wing pundits-- and yet the film has been wholeheartedly embraced by audiences everywhere, from Mississippi to Manhattan.

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises. ... Think of Avatar as Death Wish for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you... hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen." He goes on to say: "You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie's politics-- about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq. ... The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism-- kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much credit to take Avatar-- with its... hatred of the military and American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way uncool-- at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now."

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, took Cameron to task on another favorite conservative front, as yet another Hollywood filmmaker who refuses to acknowledge the power of religion. Douthat calls Avatar the "Gospel according to James. But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, Avatar is Cameron's long apologia for pantheism-- a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world." Douthat contends that societies close to nature, like the Na'vi in Avatar, aren't shining Edens at all-- "they're places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short."

There are tons of other grumpy conservative broadsides against the film, but I'll spare you the details, except to say that Cameron's grand cinematic fantasy, with its mixture of social comment, mysticism and transcendent, fanboy-style video game animation, seems to have hit a very raw nerve with political conservatives, who view everything-- foreign affairs, global warming, the White House Christmas tree-- through the prism of partisan sloganeering.

Here at DWT we know Doug Tudor as a progressive running for Congress in Polk County, Florida (FL-12). But he is also a highly decorated career Naval officer who wound up serving as the Flagwriter for General Tommy Franks, General John Abizaid, and then Admiral William Fallon, each, consecutively, Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command. His military biography is worth taking a look at. Doug and his wife saw Avatar yesterday and he told us he thinks right-wingers are crazy for criticizing the film as anti-military. His perspective:

In a sentence, Avatar is about a crippled former Marine’s disillusionment with a corporate deployment he takes on a distant planet and the consequences of that disillusionment.
 
Almost to a person, a troop, post-deployment, has a different perception than he or she did before the mission. Part of that different perception is usually disillusionment. 
 
When one is being ordered to face possible death, one desperately wants to believe the hype. Once one is on the other side of the mission, reflection often allows one to see the total and unadulterated bullshit of the propaganda prior to the deployment. Some veterans may consider themselves too loyal to admit that fact, but others of us veterans are too patriotic not to shout it.
 
For the wingers who believe this movie is anti-military, especially those wingers who never served, I can only ask that you understand the movie has absolutely nothing to do with America’s military. It has all to do with the widening use of corporate mercenaries with military capabilities. Don’t think Green Beret, think Black Water. Don’t think USMC, think XE. Most of all, please think!

Doug is running for the open seat being vacated by Adam Putnam. But before he can take on the Putnam clone the GOP is putting up in November, he needs to beat a reactionary Blue Dog, Lori Edwards, being financed by the same Blue Dog caucus that has wreaked so much havoc on Obama's agenda for change this past year. There is every indication in the world that Lori Edwards, if ever elected to Congress, will be voting with the GOP as frequently as her sponsors, from Bobby Bright (AL), Allen Boyd (FL) and Travis Childers (MS) to Heath Shuler (NC) and John Barrow (GA). Please consider giving Doug a hand so he can dispatch this Blue Dog-- already playing footsie with lobbyists and corporate slimeballs-- back to the pound.



One more thing, everyone who donates to Doug's campaign today through the Blue America page (regardless of amount) will be entered into a drawing to win one of 3 autographed DVDs of Robert Greenwald's incredible film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price.

Jim DeMint Still Too Scared To Debate Eric Massa

2 proud sons of South Carolina who made different decisions about what to do with their lives

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint was born in Greenville in September, 1951. Eight years later, September, 1959, Eric Massa was born in Charleston. Two sons of South Carolina-- but on very different tracks. The son of a career naval officer, Eric Massa's life has been dedicated to serving his country. Long before being elected as the congressman from an Upstate New York district, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and then served in the U.S. Navy for 24 years, wrapping up a distinguished military career as aide to NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark. He ran for office as a staunch supporter of working families, particularly in regard to universal health coverage and the kind of FAIR trade that encourages domestic job growth, rather than the misnamed "free trade" that has seen millions of good-paying American jobs shipped overseas.

DeMint is the product of a tragic divorce and a hellish religious education. Though a right-wing hawk, he carefully avoided the Vietnam War and military service and, after college and its many deferments, went to work doing marketing research, starting his own firm and always known to be in pursuit of financial advancement. He ran for Congress on a platform extolling greed, selfishness, dog whistle bigotry and elitism.

Now in the U.S. Senate, DeMint is the leader of the obstructionist bloc that has formed around the idea of doing everything in their power to hinder the normal functioning of government in the hope of sabotaging Obama's presidency. As we pointed out on Monday, more and more Americans are losing patience with DeMint's cavalier attitude towards the security of the country as he pursues his partisan agenda. His Democratic opponent for the South Carolina Senate seat, Chad McGowan, has called on DeMint to stop putting his politics ahead of the nation's safety. Alan Grayson and Rush Holt have deconstructed the right-wing talking points that try to project Republican national security failures onto President Obama. Massa has gone even further, calling DeMint out as a coward and challenging him to a national security debate. On the Ed Schultz show a few days ago, Massa even offered to do it on DeMint's home turf (Fox News) so he would feel less frightened. Yesterday he did a video for Crooks and Liars reiterating the thus far unanswered challenge to the chickenhawk DeMint:



Republicans have targeted Massa and he's up against a multimillionaire self-funder. If you can help this courageous American hero, please contribute to his re-election campaign here.

Chris Dodd Retiring-- Harold Ford Maneuvering

Michael Moore got his scalp. Chris Dodd, who polling showed was a dead duck for re-election, will retire Chances are Connecticut's very popular Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, will run for Senate and easily beat whichever one of the increasingly right-wing misanthropes the GOP vomits out. It's ironic that it was Dodd who was forced out as a Connecticut senator rather than the most despised man in Connecticut politics, Joe Lieberman. Luck of the draw! I do want to add, however, that Dodd wasn't exactly some towering liberal. His career long voting record on substantive matters paints a clear picture, right in the center of the Democratic Senate causus, the 29th most progressive member among the 59 Democrats. His 85.13 score on substantive issues lies between the voting scores of arch-conservatives like Mark Pryor (AR- 70.45), Tom Carper (DE- 70.70), Joe Lieberman (CT- 72.50) and Evan Bayh (IN- 74.03) and actual liberals like Sherrod Brown (OH- 96.56), Jack Reed (RI- 95.68), Bernie Sanders (VT-95.06), Dick Durbin (IL- 94.04) and Barbara Boxer (CA- 93.81).

And in other news today, one of the most corrupt and reactionary Democrats to ever worm his way up the chain of command, DLC president and defeated ex-Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford has barraged New York media with an armada of trial balloons for a run for the Senate against incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand. Gillibrand was a bit too conservative as a freshman House member from a Republican upstate district-- though never nearly as conservative as Ford, who represented a solidly Democratic district (Memphis)-- but she has been a solidly progressive senator. Ford is certainly to the right of Joe Lieberman and he would be the worst catastrophe Democrats could face in 2010. Despite all the hootin' and hollerin' on Morning Joe today, I doubt he'll run.

Good video update from Connecticut TV:

Happy(?) Anniversary, Dawn Johnsen!

by Mary Jean Collins

Today marked a little known but important anniversary for the Obama Administration. One year ago today, President-elect Obama announced that he would nominate Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel.  

Johnsen’s resume is impeccable and she’s earned a reputation as a lawyer who puts the rule of law above policy preferences-- good qualifications for a job whose main duty is to tell the President what the law does and does not allow him to do.
  
But now, a year after her name was announced, Johnsen is still sitting in nomination purgatory, and the GOP is plumbing new depths in their pettiness and obstruction. 
 
There’s no question that Johnsen is qualified for the job. She already served as acting head of the OLC during the Clinton administration, and former OLC heads from both parties have supported her nomination. In 2004, after Bush administration torture memos came to light, she organized an impressive panel of former OLC lawyers to craft a widely praised statement of principles to guide the Office going forward. 
 
Despite the fact that Johnsen was voted out of the Judiciary committee in March, she’s still waiting for an up or down vote on her nomination (a vote she would certainly win.) Before Christmas, when the Congressional term ended, the GOP even refused to allow her name to stay on the docket of Senate business. Instead, they forced the Senate to send her nomination back to the President who will renominate her later this month. The maneuver doesn’t mean that Johnsen is less likely to be confirmed (despite the gleeful spinning of right wing commentators and the concerns of some worried progressives) but it does illustrate the treatment Johnsen has received from Senate Republicans.
  
Of course, no one should be surprised that the GOP is working overtime to block her nomination. First of all she has the temerity to be both pro-choice (she used to work for NARAL) and anti-torture (she criticized the disgraceful torture memos which laid out the flawed legal justification for torturing for torturing prisoners, points on which even former Bush Administration officials and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham agree). And second, as People For the American Way pointed out last month, Senate Republicans have been busy setting new records for obstructionism wherever they can. 
 
But, as usual, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Both Senate Democrats and President Obama have been slow to stand up for Johnsen and against partisan obstruction. Republican Senator Richard Lugar has already said that he’ll vote to confirm her and it should be out of the question for any Democrats to support the filibuster of an executive branch nominee from a president of their own party. 
  
Later this month, President Obama will send Johnsen’s name back to the Senate. Instead of letting the nomination languish, Democratic leaders-- and the President-- need to make clear that they’re in charge and call the GOP’s bluff. The votes are there. Once they decide that Dawn Johnsen and the rule of law are worth fighting for, they’ll probably discover something quite useful. 
  
They’ll win. 


UPDATE: Obama's Efforts At Justice Department Seem To Be Going Nowhere

David Ingram wrote at the National Law Journal today that only 3 circuit and 9 district judges have been confirmed in Obama's first year and that new leadership at his legal shop-- Robert Bauer-- needs to "reinvigorate the administration's efforts to shape the federal judiciary."

The U.S. Senate ended the year having confirmed three nominees to federal circuit courts, half as many as were confirmed during President George W. Bush's first year. Among nominees for district court judgeships, the difference is even more stark-- nine won confirmation during 2009 compared with 22 during 2001. Six circuit nominees and four district nominees have passed through committee but not received a vote in the full Senate.

At the U.S. Department of Justice, Obama has filled 12 of the top 15 positions while Bush had people in all the department's top positions by this time. Three nominees have stalled. One is Duke Law School professor Christopher Schroeder, who would head up the Office of Legal Policy, a key slot for vetting nominees for the judiciary. A fourth vacancy will open up when Deputy Attorney General David Ogden returns to private practice in February.

Two primary factors have contributed to gridlock in the Senate. Republicans have used the Senate's quirky rules-- including a requirement for unanimity before a vote can be scheduled-- to delay confirmation votes, while Democrats have chosen to spend their time on other issues, such as health care, rather than use their 60-member caucus to force votes. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said moving nominees just hasn't been a priority and there's no indication when that will change.

...In a possible sign that their confirmations are not imminent, DOJ nominees Schroeder and Indiana University Maurer School of Law-- Bloomington professor Dawn Johnsen are scheduled to teach classes next semester. Johnsen, picked for the Office of Legal Counsel, has been criticized by Republicans for her advocacy on behalf of abortion rights and civil liberties. Schroeder has taken heat for agreeing with Obama on the role of empathy in judging, among other views.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. told reporters in October that Johnsen's nomination has been pending "far too long." Her one-year anniversary of being named is Jan. 5. Schroeder was nominated June 4. Schroeder declined to comment for this story, and Johnsen did not return a call requesting comment.

America's judge, "Dopey Dick" Posner, discovers Keynes -- as "Chicago School" econ artists turn to macramé and flower-arranging

Here come da judge: In that pose of pontification (with his mouth closed, no less! if only he'd actually learned to keep his trap shut), where else could this photo come from but charlierose.com? America's judge has a hot tip for your economics reading list: some guy named Keynes.

"Until the banking crisis erupted, Posner hadn't bothered to investigate [Keynes's] 'General Theory.' When he picked it up, he was greatly impressed by the economic insights and practical detail it contained. 'Even though it is kind of loose -- it doesn't dot all the"'i"s and cross all the "t"s,' Keynesian economics 'seems to have more of a grasp of what is going on in the economy,' Posner said to me. Much of modern economics, by contrast is 'on the one hand, very mathematical, and, on the other hand, very . . . credulous about the self-regulating power of markets. That combination is dangerous.'"

-- from John Cassidy, "After the Blowup," in Jan. 11 New Yorker

(article abstract here; article online only in digital edition)

by Ken

I've never gotten the Richard A. Posner Industry. Here's this guy who's maybe a sixth-rate intellect and has somehow set himself up as the world's greatest judge and authority on all matters political, legal, and economic. (I've probably left out six or a dozen of his areas of supposed supreme expertise. This could wind up on the midterm, so you might want to check out his book titles. You gotta be a expert to write a book, right?) And an entire industry of make-believe journalists and academics have gone along with the gag.

I'm sure in Dopey Dick's mind, the only reasons he's not on the Supreme Court are:

* He's too smart.

* He's too outspoken.

* Any court he's on is already as supreme as it can stand to be.

Of course what he really is is a dismal, grinding hack regurgitating mindless right-wing platitudes. Maybe the one thing that's truly remarkable about Dopey Dick, that one-man morass of intellectual mediocrity, is that he's managed to pull off this scam of scams with so little to back up his claims to attention. About all I could ever figure out was the sheer audacity of his lack of self-doubt. In the land of the pseudo-intellectuals, the phony who banishes all lack of certainty from his vocabulary has a shot at being king. It's the sort of thing that made Rudy Giuliani, well, Rudy Giuliani. Mediocrity with a bullwhip.

But we're not here to bury Dopey Dick. Oh, we're here to make fun of him as opportuniity presents itself, but our real business is the slash-and-burn job John Cassidy has done on the once-lordly "Chicago School" economists, whose shining star sank out of sight along with the economy in August 2008, in a modestly presented "Letter from Chicago" in this week's New Yorker.

It's Cassidy who, in a fit of mad inspiration, leads off with "Dopey Dick" Posner, who, especially since the departure from this vale of tears of Milton Friedman, the Chicago ideological supremo who made tyrants tremble, or more likely cream in their pants, has emerged as something between the intellectual godfather and the furry mascot of the Chicago School. In the wake of Icky August, it appears that Dopey Dick has done what rats have been celebrated for doing since time immemorial: jumped ship.

Here's how Cassidy presents Posner:

A lawyer by training, Posner is also one of the country's most influential economics writers. In his 1973 treatise "Economic Analysis of Law," he applied the maxims of free-market economics to the courtroom, arguing that enforcing economic efficiency ought to be a primary goal of judges. Posner, who was then a young professor at the University of Chicago Law School, helped create the law-and-economics movement, which has populated many of America's courts with judges of similar mind. In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and since then he has written more than two dozen books, including one defending the 2000 Supreme Court decision that gave George W. Bush the Presidency.

Earlier this year, Posner published "A Failure of Capitalism," in which he argues that lax monetary policy and deregulation helped bring on the current slump. "We are learning from it that we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails," Posner writes. "The movement to deregulate the financial industry went too far by exaggerating the resilience -- the self-healing powers -- of laissez-faire capitalism." Posner also accuses professional economists, including some of his Chicago colleagues, of being "asleep at the switch." In September, he came out as a Keynesian; in a long piece in The New Republic, he hailed "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money," which John Maynard Keynes published in 1936, as a "masterpiece," saying that "despite its antiquity, it is the best guide we have to the crisis."

It seems that in A Faillure of Capitalism, the new book, Dopey Dick names names, meaning those of a number of his Chicago colleagues of the "After Milton" era.

During our conversation, Posner questioned the entire methodology that [Chicago economist Robert] Lucas ["one of Friedman's most eminent successors"] and his colleagues pioneered. Its basic notions were the efficient-markets hypothesis, which says that the prices of stocks and other financial assets accurately reflect all the available information about economic fundamentals, and the rational-expectations theory, which posits that individuals and firms are hyper-intelligent decision-makers who have a correct model of the economy in their heads. In rational-expectations theory, the economy is represented in very simplified and spare fashion. Many models, includng some relied on by the Fed and other central banks, don't even feature banks or other financial intermediaries. In Posner's view, older, less dogmatic theories better explained how the problems in the financial sector dragged down the rest of the economy.

Lucas, it turns out, declined via e-mail ("I don't want to do this") to participate in Cassidy's inquiry. And Cassidy found a couple of Chicago old guardsmen, Eugene Fama and his son-in-law, John Cochrane, who, like crusty old Bolsheviks long after the fall of Communism, continue to cling to the one true credo. Fama actually takes pride in having theories he believes in criticized by Paul Krugman. "My attitude is this. If you are getting attacked by Krugman, you must be doing something right." Cochrane, pressed on the subject of Keynesian economics, points out, "We threw it out for a reason. It didn't work in the data." Ah yes, the precious data.

But then there's Nobelist James Heckman (Cassidy notes that since 1974 "more than a dozen scholars associated with the U. of C. have been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences"), who told Cassidy: "Everybody here was blindsided by the magnitude of what happened. But it wasn't just here. The entire profession was blindsided."

The first statement ("Everybody here was blindsided by the magnitude of what happened") is easy enough to believe; the second ("But it wasn't just here. The entire profession was blindsided") is nonsense. Apparently by "the entire profession" Heckman means people like him -- and certainly not people like, say, Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz, not to mention Dean Baker.

Gary Becker, a 1992 Nobelist, was a little more careful.

There are a lot of things that people got wrong, and I got wrong, and Chicago got wrong. You take derivatives and not fully understanding how the aggregate risk of derivatives operated. Systemic risk: I don't think we understood that, either -- at Chicago or anywhere else. Maybe some of the calls for deregulation of the financial sector went a little too far, and we should have required higher capital requirements.

However, Becker quickly noted, "That was not just Chicago. Larry Summers when he was at Treasury supported deregulation." As indeed he did. At least Becker doesn't try to pretend that "the entire profession" supported deregulation. He just doesn't choose to think about the economists who didn't.

Eventually Cassidy found his way to Raghuram Rajan,

a forty-six-year-old Indian-born scholar who is one of the few economists who warned about the dangers of a financial crash. At a conference organized by the Fed in 2005, he said that deregulation, trading in complex financial products, and the proliferation of bonuses for traders had greatly increased the risk of a blowup. Senior Fed officials and other prominent economists dismissed his concerns. Lawrence Summers said that Rajan's critical tone supported "a wide variety of misguided policy impulses."

Rajan, who was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2006, describes what happened as "a systemic breakdown, and we need to look more broadly at why it happened." He argues in the book he's working on "that the initial causes of the breakdown were stagnant wages and rising inequality," which created "an urgent demand for credit" among middle-class households "lagging behind the cost of living." Are you hearing this? Once upon a time Uncle Miltie would have had you run out of Chicago for mouthing left-wing claptrap like this.

Ironcially, the panic that ran through the Chicago gang a year ago has in good part subsided, because of government intervention. (Take that, Uncle Miltie!)

Thanks to government action on an enormous scale, the banking system has been stabilized and the U.S. economy is expanding, if at a moderate pace. Ironically, the rescue program has taken some of the heat out of the economic debate. In Chicago, as elsewhere, most economists have returned to their own research projects. "If this recession had got a lot worse, we would have seen two major things," [Gary] Becker said to me. "Much more government involvement in the economy and a lot more concentration in economics on understanding what went wrong."

Huh? You mean the boys, at Chicago and elsewhere (and they do seem to be all boys), are not concentrating on what went wrong? Of course we already knew that Becker's economic universe doesn't extend much beyond people who think the way he does.

"Dopey Dick" Posner knows better.

"Rational expectations and strong views of efficient markets have taken a terrific hit," Posner pointed out to me. "Keynes is back, and behavioral finance is on the march." Outside of Fama and his followers, it is hard to find anybody, even in Chicago, who believes that speculative bubbles aren't a serious problem, or that the U.S. economy automatically adjusts to full employment. And even most of the diehards now support efforts to regulate Wall Street more effectively.

I'm guessing that this will still come as news to the great minds of the Republican Party, and to many of the economically captive minds in Congress. And this comes only from the mouths of what's left of the Chicago gang. We never do hear from or about economists elsewhere who were saying all along that these people were full of shit.

And I do wish Cassidy had taken one more careful look through his notes. Surely at some point in their conversations Dopey Dick said something along these lines: "You know, man, until this mess I really had no idea how full of shit I was. I've been sounding off for decades now without a damn clue what the hell I'm talking about. It's a wonder anybody paid the slightest attention to me! I was so full of shit all these decades, I was a walking plumbing emergency waiting to happen."

Could you just give it one more look-see, John? Surely the judge must have said it at some point. Here, let me just riffle through your notebook. It's got to be there, wouldn't you think?

#

Will Dirty Dick Pombo Wind Up Back In Congress?

The least populated part of California's 11th congressional district-- the far eastern part of the district-- borders on the 19th CD, the district George Radanovich announced he would be giving up. Radanovich is old and tired and he didn't want to have to face a political hack playing up to teabaggers, former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson. So he announced he'd be retiring-- like so many other House Republicans (14 so far) who just don't want the hassle of running against extremist teabaggers (South Carolina right-winger Henry Brown being the latest) in bitter primaries. But before he announced he was retiring, Radanovich stuck it to Patterson by getting termed-out state Senator Jeff Denham to agree to run. Fresno City Council Member Larry Westerlund is also interested in running and yesterday the former 7-term congressman from CA-11, defeated Dirty Dick Pombo announced that he's running and ex-Secretary of State and perennial candidate for one thing or another, Bill Jones, hinted that he would run too.

I don't think any of these people actually live in the 19th CD. Westerlund and Jones live in the wrong half of Fresno, which is split between the 19th and 20th. Pombo lives on his ranch in Tracy, nowhere near the district. Denham's senatorial district is partially in the 19th, but that isn't where Denham lives. And the teabaggers in the district, who are a powerful force inside the GOP there, are wary of all the candidates as being too establishment and too likely to sell them out.

Michael Der Manouel Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Club of Fresno County, promised that every prospective candidate will emerge "bleeding" from their interview session with the conservative Republican organization.

"We're so sick of phony Republicans that the Lincoln Club will be the toughest interview anybody has to go through," Der Manouel said. "If you're not going to go there with a pitchfork in your right hand and strong principles in your left, don't even bother to file."

Der Manouel -- who lost to Radanovich in the 1994 Republican primary-- noted that Denham, Patterson and Westerlund are either current or former elected officials. "There's got to be at least one person that runs that just brings with him a big business background and doesn't need the job," Der Manouel said.

Pombo doesn't need the job, at least not financially. Psychologically, on the other hand, he certainly has that ole craving. Funny he's not running to try to win back his old seat where everyone knows him. I guess that's the point though. Widely considered one of the most corrupt and extreme Republicans from the freewheelin' Bush-Abramoff-DeLay days, Pombo needs to go where he isn't too well known.

a brief refresher on Pombo. Elected to Congress in 1992, he routinely pounded his Dem opponents, often getting around 60 percent of the vote, despite serving in a Democratic-friendly district that was a mishmash of suburban Bay Area and Central Valley. But in 2006, he was the only incumbent Californian to lose his seat.

How? With the joint help of the liberal netroots, tons of volunteers from the Bay Area and enviro activists, Pombo was tossed from his seat in 2006 by newbie Dem Jerry McNerney. He was pilloried for his environmental record-- the League of Conservation Voters named him one of their Dirty Dozen (members of Congress) in 2006-- and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named him one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" in 2006.

Looks like there's going to a tough GOP primary in the Valley.

Is there a chance for a Democrat? Not likely. The PVI is R+10. Obama only took 46% of the vote, while Radanovich ran unopposed last year and won with 60% in 2006. The two Democrats in the race now are Les Marsden (who sounds like he'd head right for Blue Dog country) and Loraine Goodwin (who sounds more like an actual Democrat). On paper neither looks like they'd have a chance against any of these GOP heavyweights in this prohibitively Republican district. So... just get out the popcorn and sit back and watch the mean-spirited, hypocritical Republicans rip each other to shreds.

GOP Digs Deep Enough To Come Up With Some Hopeless Schlub To Run Against Alan Grayson

Last night Alan Grayson was on MSNBC again, kicking Dick Cheney and misleading Republican talking points in the teeth. It drives GOP propagandists insane when they hear a cool, collected, knowledgeable, self-assured and fearless Democrat-- whether Alan Grayson, Eric Massa, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich or Barbara Lee-- obliterating the deceptive platform on which their house of lies is built. Speaking of Cheney's latest eruption, Grayson turned the tables:

They failed us. The greatest attack of terrorism in American history happened on their watch. We have nothing to be defensive about... When Ross Perot was talking about that crazy uncle in the attic, I think he was talking about Cheney.

When asked if he's ready to be attacked by Republicans, Grayson pointed out that he's attacked by them all the time. The GOP and the media barons who work hand in glove with them never let up on him. "As Franklin Roosevelt said, 'I welcome their hatred.'"

Meanwhile the RNCC has been running around like a chicken without a head trying to persuade a credible candidate to run against the much-loved Grayson. Today, apparently, their 25th choice, a mediocre state Rep from outside the district, Kurt Kelly, decided to give it a try. He joins a huge fielded of misfits, clowns, publicity hounds, extremists and teabaggers who have signed on as GOP candidates-- and he certainly fits right in. His first press release is a pathetic mess, claiming "the people of Central Florida deserve a Congressman with a business background who knows that money spent by the federal government in Washington isn't play money, but rather hard-earned money taken out of each of our paychecks," apparently unaware that Grayson's business and economic background have made him the most effective member of Congress as a watchdog for that hard-earned money.

From a working class family, Grayson put himself through Harvard, graduated summa cum laude (and Phi Beta Kappa) and then worked as-- sorry Kurt-- an economist, before returning to Harvard Law School. He then went on to become a law clerk at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, working with a broad spectrum of judges, from Abner Mikva and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to right wing firebrands Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. Before running for Congress-- and ousting a hapless Republican incumbent (172,854- 159,490) in a Republican district-- Attorney Grayson was described by the Wall Street Journal as "waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq." With a Bush Regime unwilling to take on contractor fraud, it was Grayson who took on the role of protecting taxpayer dollars against corporations who saw the Iraq War as an opportunity for unregulated self-enrichment. Kurt Kelly will have to find a very different tree to bark up if he wants to attack Alan Grayson, the man who wrote, shepherded and passed a bill-- as a freshman to link all bonuses paid by companies that had received funds under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to performance, and was finally able to get Ron Paul's Fed transparency bill to pass the House Financial Services Committee despite opposition from the entire bankster power bloc.

I'd say if Kelly wants to attack Grayson-- beyond just typical GOP smear tactics-- he could always point out that Grayson was one of only 32 Democrats who opposed the president on a supplemental budget to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If you'd like to help Grayson stave off GOP attacks, the Blue America goal of raising $35,000 for Grayson's campaign is at $34,719. It wouldn't take more than a handful of contributions to put it over the top. Other than that... well, he could attack Grayson for not supporting Kelly's plan to levy a $1 billion regressive tax on the Internet.

12 Days of Christmas Scorn: Day 12 -- The Year That Couldn’t End Soon Enough Edition

As we all know, government can't do anything right, except --

by Noah

1. KOOK SLOGAN OF THE YEAR AWARD

“The Government Can’t Do Anything Right.” I've already covered wingnut signage, but this not-so-well-thought-out piece of wingnut gibberish was trotted out incessantly over the past year across the board by an endless parade of Teabaggers, sniveling rodentlike congresscreeps, and their robot puppet legions in the media. As we all know, it was used as an all-encompassing “reason” to oppose healthcare and insurance reform ("government healthcare" to the brain-cell-challenged), particularly the concept of a public option or anything that might have a prayer of making the insurance companies at least act honorably.

Social Security and its supposed problems are often trotted out as part of the anti-public-option zombie mantra. The fact is (oh no, not facts!), though, that the Social Security Administration has never missed a payment. You apply, you get -- works for me! They’ve done it for almost 80 years now. Not many businesses can match that. You see (if you want to), government can work. I know, you’re probably thinking that it didn’t work so well in recent years. Well, all these lousy presidents in a row will do that.

Regulations have been shredded. Jobs have been moved out of the country so that our corporations can avoid laws that police child trafficking for slave labor -- you know, issues and things like that. Dubya gutted the Food and Drug Administration, and the next thing you know, spinach doesn’t turn you into Popeye the muscleman, it turns you into a corpse. Mining companies are told not to worry about the enforcement of safety laws, and miners die in cave-ins. With things like that, I suppose one could get cynical about government. Hell, I didn’t even mention Iraq or a so-called president not reading memos that were vital to our security. But Social Security works, so why hold that up as an example? Its only funding problems are due to irresponsible looting of funds to pay for pet projects and pet wars. That can be fixed just by ending the looting.

Just imagine if McCain had won, and Phil “Let’s Privatize Social Security” Gramm was Treasury secretary. Geithner’s bad enough. Social Security tied to a down market? I don’t think so! So government can do things right. Do away with the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts for the top two percent, and it will do even better.


2. THE SET A THIEF TO CATCH A THIEF AWARD

To President Barack Obama, for choosing Timothy Geithner for his, and our, Treasury secretary. I realize that when President Obama took over, it was like that FBI agent in Snakes on a Plane, trying to save as many people as he could in a seemingly hopeless situation not of his making. So the theory is, get a guy who was at the height of Wall Street when all the criminal activity was rampant. Who knows better where the bodies are buried?

But Timmy G never started a business or had to meet a payroll, and along with Harvard moron Larry Summers, he probably didn’t even know anyone who had. That’s the biggest problem with government officials and senators. They only hang out with the upper-class-twit crowd. Few of them have any experience with the worry of making ends meet, or even worrying about the future. So they don’t. They simply don’t know what life is like for most Americans, nor do they care, as long as the K Street ca$h is flowing their way. The way they see it, the K Street Bribery Squads are their constituency. Let’s face it, they certainly don’t spend much time even being aware of people who make less than a million a month, or at least a year, so how the hell are they going to be sensitive?

So it has become a case of the fox guarding the henhouse, all made legal by the foxes. This is the kind of situation that should make someone like Barack Obama special, if only he remembered where he came from.


3. THE IT'S THE LITTLE MAN THAT MAKES THE DECISIONS AWARD

To John Edwards. He had the smarts. He had the hair. He had the charm. Talk about misusing assets! He also had a great wife behind him. He actually was a contender. Now he’s a bum. He coulda been president. At the very least, he would have made a hell of an attorney general. Loser.


4. THE GOLDEN JACKASS AWARD

No award ceremony would be complete without a lifetime achievement award, and this is mine. The Golden Jackass is given to someone who has dedicated his or her entire life to nihilistically spreading a virus of hate, through such qualities as snobbery or disdain based on class or ethnicity, divisiveness, sociopathy, and/or general psychosis. The award is given to someone who may not be heard from so much anymore, someone who doesn’t matter so much anymore, someone whose 15 minutes of fame are up, or someone whose shtick just doesn’t get over as well anymore, yet who has blazed a path of toxicity for others to follow and build upon before the insecurities of his/her inner child took over and the public began walking away; walking on down the avenue to see the next car wreck of humanity.

This one’s for you, Ann Coultergeist. Yes, this one’s for you. We don’t care if you are a man or a woman or a little of both. Your mindless cackle will still sound the same as you spend the rest of your days in continued physical and mental decay straitjacketed in your private room at the Sean Hannity Memorial Hospital for the Deranged, drawing self-portrait stick figures on the floor with your snotty nose. Be a good little whatever-you-are and stop the bitching, or we’ll throw you in with the others -- you know, those people who just aren’t up to your bigoted and hateful standards. Do you see all of your hate and bile taking its toll as you gaze narcissistically for hours in your shattered mirror? We do. When you finally croak, we will take you out and stake you up in a giant cornfield in Nebraska. You will have finally found productive work for which you were suited all your life. Not even the children of the corn will venture near.


5. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for:
THE ASSHOLE Of THE YEAR AWARD!

Ah, so many to choose from! Everyone at Fox? Rupert Murdoch himself? Ken Lewis? Possible, but I happen to think that this award should go to a cretin who has the position and the power to more directly do good but willfully, and with great contempt for others, chooses to do the opposite. It should go to someone who might as well be a horrid disease that escaped from a petri dish in a top-secret lab somewhere. Rahm Emanuel? The $enator whose very name rhymes with asshole, $en. Chuck Grasshole? "Joe the Bummer" Lieberwhore? Ben Nelson? The cultists of the C Street Cell?

You, dear reader, can give it to all of them if you like, but to me one man rose above all others, and he will be the lightning rod for my anger. One man started the demise of true healthcare and insurance reform. One manthug both included his mistress on a list of candidates for a U.S. attorney post and made sure to abuse his bought-off power to assure that single-payer was off the table. Who says these clowns can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? One man tyrannically used his bought-off power to prevent the words even being mentioned in his presence. Ladies and gents, the man whose name now and forever will mean "asshole":

Max Baucus.

When Majority Leader Harry Reid called a press conference to announce that the Senate plan was ready, right down to the last loophole, the gutless Baucus was nowhere to be seen. He dared not show himself, using his mother’s health for an excuse not to be there while so many other perpetrators of the farce were. Well, Max, I’m sure her claims don’t get turned down, do they? Oh, wait. She’s on a government single-payer kind of plan called Medicare, isn’t she? Future generations of children might well use "Baucus" as a playground curse word.

Future generations of children might have their mouths washed out with soap for shouting his name in frustration or anger. And future generations of children will grow up with substandard health care because of this money-grabbing, bribe-taking piece of crap who has tarnished the very meaning of being a senator and who dishonors the building he works in. It’s only fitting that this year’s Scorn Awards begin and end with Max Baucus. Somehow I don’t think generations of American soldiers spilled their blood on faraway beaches for this.


AFTERWORD:
2009, THE YEAR OF STONE-DAMN-CRAZY

So that’s 2009 in a nutshell. Here’s hoping that we get through this winter of our discontent. I know some worthy people went without an award, and you’re welcome to grant your own. But, like I said in the beginning, I’m just not one of those everybody-gets-a-trophy guys. What I would like to see is that every politician who isn’t a progressive should get a primary challenger who is.

We still have freedom of speech, no matter what the likes of the firm of Prejean & Palin says, even if that free speech falls on ears that ignore our pleas. Insane people walk among us. Corporations even give them TV shows. When I was young, parents worried about young people falling under the spell of sicko, Svengali-like hucksters like Charlie Manson. Now the tables have turned, and younger people have to worry about their parents falling for the spell-weaving of TV charlatans who have gone way beyond slimy evangelists conning little old ladies into sending them a big check.

You can turn on the TV and see insanity, hate, or contempt in the eyes of the boob on the screen. The eyes are the same crazy eyes, and the stories of an evil power and racial fears are quite the same as they were 40 years ago. The difference is that the Glenn Becks of the world have a much bigger audience than Manson ever dreamed of. Ain’t technology grand?

The holiday season is now over. Tonight will be the 12th Night. War isn’t pretty. It’s sad that the biggest war is right here at home. In the Repug world of Rove and Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, reindeer really do know how to fly, not just pigs. And, both Rudolph’s nose and Santa’s coat are red, you know.

Finally, I’d like to offer the following clip as a testament to a man who actually had the courage to look out for his constituents. Sadly, he left us recently, and even more sadly, his question still screams to be answered. “Where does the greed end?”



Oh, and Sean, we’re still waiting for you to do that waterboarding thing you committed to.


THE SERIES

Day 1: Con Men, Grifters, and Outlaws Edition
Day 2: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same Edition
Day 3: Media Manipulators and Seditionistas Edition
Day 4: Teabaggers Edition
Day 5: A Circus of Horrors
Day 6: Toys in the Attic Edition
Day 7: A Circus of Horrors, Carny Row Edition
Day 8: Utter Freak Show Edition, Part 1
Day 8: Utter Freak Show Edition, Part 2
Day 9: The They Have a Right to Remain Silent, and I Wish They Would, Forever Award
Day 10: Dumb and Dumber, with a Huge Glop of Arrogance Award
Day 11: Bad Vibrations Edition
Day 12: The Year That Couldn’t End Soon Enough Edition

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Coaches are hired to be fired -- it's just more fun when it's pipsqueak Dan Snyder's team imploding

The little pipsqueak -- er, the "cool guy" with the shades, that's world-class scumbag Daniel Snyder. The other guy, that's . . . well, he's nobody now. He used to be the Redskins' head coach. Don't worry about him.

by Ken

Thank goodness for the Washington Redskins, say I as a New York Giants football fan. It's been a rough football season here in the Big Apple. After that deceptive 5-0 start, the Giants came on to show just how fine a coach the New Tom Coughlin is and veritably stank their way to an 8-8 finish. (Somehow the Jets slipped into the playoffs, but I don't know anyone who takes them seriously.)

We're a tough breed, though, us NY-ers. As bad as the Giants sucked, there has been much entertainment value this season in the truly disastrous performance of our sometime division rivals the Redskins. And there's plenty of fun in watching the Skins in agony, because you know the digestive tract of former-boy-wonder but permanent-scumbag owner Dan Snyder must be dripping acid like a leaky battery. Hurray!

Okay, it means Scumbag Dan gets to fire somebody, which probably makes his day, making him feel like some kind of a big deal. You just have to hope that reality has seeped into this awareness enough that on some level he knows how grotesquelly incompetent he has proved at running an NFL franchise, especially one as visible as the storied one in our nation's capital.

Today was the day, after a season-long death watch, when Scumbag Dan's people dropped the ax on Skins head coach Jim Zorn. They're talking about Mike Shanahan taking over, with presumably full control of the football operation, Scumbag Dan supposedly having learned his lesson. Only the Scumbag Dans of the world don't usually learn lessons, at least not the right ones. So for this Skins-hater, the idea of Shanahan working for Scumbag Dan -- I say, "Bring it on!" That should provide us Giants fans with a measure of comic relief during the struggles of whatever bozo our genius management comes up with to replace the New Tom Coughlin.

TIME WARNER CABLE PLAYS CHICKEN WITH RUPERT M

What made the Giants' season doubly hilarious was the high-stakes game of chicken Time Warner Cable was playing with a scumbag who makes Scumbag Dan look like a choirboy, Rupert Murdoch. (I believe that in some translations of the Bible Rupert makes his first appearance as a public scumbag in the Garden of Eden sequence in Genesis, where other translations have "a snake" or "a serpent" giving Eve that great advice about the apple.)

Rupert, you see, wanted that TWC should give him some astonishing amount like $4 per TWC customer for Fox "content," on the theory that somebody might be watching it. This year's year-end threat had us threatened with losing all of News Corp's TV programming, including American Idol and 24 and the entire Fox Noise Shebang.

So where, you may be wondering, is the downside? Like losing all that crap would be a bad thing? OK, sure, I would miss The Simpsons and House. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And as it happens, I've got half a dozen unwatched Simpsons episodes on my DVR, and the House episodes I could catch on USA.

Which brings us to the Giants, who being an NFC franchise are usually on Fox. But there's the joke! Miss the Giants? Hardly! They're the joke. Good riddance. Take them all, please.

MICHAEL WILBON ON "NICE GUY" JIM ZORN

Meanwhiile, on the WaPo website Michael Wilbon's got a nice column, "Zorn's long, sad vigil finally ends." He makes clear that Zorn was in way over his head as a head coach, that the Skins were in fact shockingly unprepared for NFL combat, and yet he's "an especially decent sort," who has been subjected to two years of pretty much nonstop humiliation. He describes him as "a nice person you'd rather go to dinner with than some of the more successful coaches in the NFL."

Wilbon too seems unoptimistic about the prospects of the impending Shanahan regime, not least because of the degree of control he will insist on, which Wllbon insists just doesn't work in today's NFL. He takes obvious delight in the current great fortunes of another nice guy, Norv Turner, who was hounded out of Washington, only to emerge, in San Diego, as the hottest coach in the game.

And you know, it's nice to read Wilbon, rather than watching him and Tony Kornhiser shouting at each other on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. In fact my new image of sports TV is the hilarious show that Tracy Morgan guested on a couple of 30 Rock episodes ago, where the screen was split into quadrants housing four "sports guys" who simply shout simultaneously at the top of their lungs.

I would have loved to find a clip of it, but NBC seems to be doing a super-efficient job of keeping the Internet scrubbed free of any evidence that anybody is watching let alone enjoying its shows. To be fair, it probably doesn't happen very often these days. And you have to wonder, assuming the new ownership deal for NBC goes through, whether Comcast is going to be as tolerant as GE has been having the 30 Rock people savaging them week after week.

THE WINNER AND STILL CHICKEN-MASTER IS . . .

By the way, if you're wondering about the great war between Rupert M and Time Warner Cable, of course in the end TWC caved. Even after running a campaign to get us customers to urge them to play hardball in the interest of keeping cable costs down, you knew they would be afraid to face customers enraged by the loss of American Idol. So they'll raise our rates even more than they would have otherwise. TWC is a company that lives with both hands in its customers' pockets, squeezing every last penny out of us they can.

(I sometimes wonder why I hate my cable and ISP -- and now phone -- company so much, even though they provide a pretty good service. This is why: the feeling that they're always got both hands reaching deeper into and rummaging around my pockets. In my humbling experience, it's almost impossible to have a conversation with a TWC customer rep without winding up paying more.)

Although I have resolutely opposed "tiered" cable pricing, where you get charged according to which services you use rather than for the total package (the tiered pricing just seems too easy an opportunity for the cable operators to stick it to us with à la carte prices), in this case I would gladly make an exception.

In fact -- and here's my proposal, Time Warner Cable -- I might actually be willing to pony up, say, an extra buck a month for a cable lineup that's Guaranteed Murdoch-Free.


UPDATE: JUST HEARD IT ON THE RADIO --
THE NEW TOM COUGHLIN KEEPS HIS JOB!

Straight from the mouth of management. Defensive coordinator takes one for the team, but Coach The New Tom Coughlin is coming back! Just think how many Sunday afternoons that frees up for Giants fans next fall!

We're 8-8! We're 8-8!

Let's just hope the Mike Shanahan era in Washington gets off to a really horrific start! This one's for you, Pipsqueak Dan!

UPDATE II: IN COMMENTS, A FASCINATING

LOOK BACK AT PIPSQUEAK DAN'S CAREER

A couple of really great comments, including this stroll down Memory Lane as Pipsqueak Dan builds his fortune, leaving kind of nothing behind, reminding us of another famous American pipsqueak. Must read!

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Could South Carolina's Political Circus Get Any Messier? Henry Brown Announced His Retirement Today

Guess which one drives a pickup truck

Political observers may be startled to watch the race for the bottom going on among Republicans in the campaign for the open Kentucky Senate seat, where the bloodless Establishment hack Trey Grayson-- handpicked by party boss Mitch "Miss" McConnell-- has been challenged from the right by the libertarian-oriented/teabagger-coddling Rand Paul, only to see a lunatic fringe candidate even further to the right, Bill Johnson, come into the race as the "true conservative" (which these days means racist, bigoted, neo-fascist America hater). Kentucky, however, is hardly an exception in Republican Party politics this year. And it goes beyond Tennessee too.

Let's look at the dynamics behind Rep. Henry Brown's announcement of his retirement this morning. Even while chickenhawk South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint ducks a national security debate challenge from Eric Massa and starts praising Obama as he fearfully backs off his virulent pro-terrorist ravings, Brown, the oldest member of the South Carolina congressional delegation, has called it quits on his faltering political career. He was nearly beaten (52-48%) in 2008 by an openly gay, openly progressive Democrat, Linda Ketner, and this year 3 Democrats-- Dick Withington, retired Air Force Col. Robert Burton, and Robert Dobbs-- were already vying for the opportunity to finish him off. But it wasn't Democrats that made Brown throw in the towel.

He already had 4 Republican challengers jumping into a primary battle against him, each one further right than him-- and further right than Attila the Hun. Brown is a solid, dull conservative Republican whose latest bill was to "save" Christmas, was facing formidable challenges from Carroll "Tumpy" Campbell III (a son of a popular ex-governor), Mark Fava, Ryan Buckhannon, and Confederate teabagger goddess, Katherine Jenerette (AKA, "The Sarah Palin of the South"). Brown likes to brag that his voting record is the furthest right of any South Carolina congressman-- and 5 points further right than Joe "Liar!" Wilson's. Progressive Punch shows his lifetime voting record tied with Eric Cantor and Adam Putnam way at the bottom of the GOP barrel, tucked neatly between Michele Bachmann's and Virginia Foxx's-- a horrifying 0.86! But to wingnuts-on-the-rampage voting like a loon isn't enough. Sure, Brown voted against body scan machines but is he actively trying to shoot down American passenger planes-- which is what the teabaggers will soon be demanding as proof that their reps are anti-Obama enough to pass the right-wing purity test!

But worse than any of this-- even worse than the nightmare of having to campaign against the Confederate Sarah Palin-- is the likelihood that Strom Thurmond's legitimate white son, Paul-- not any of the offspring he had with his African-American mistresses-- is going to run. Most Americans who remember Strom Thurmond remember his as a venal and vicious racist who helped engineer the Republicanization of the former slave-holding states. He's loathed across America as the man who engineered the presidency of Richard Nixon. But in South Carolina, many people still revere him. And his son is very popular. If he does run-- which is likely-- he and Carroll III could well knock each other out of the race and let the Confederate Palin slip in, a true voice for teabaggery. Get the popcorn ready-- cause there's going to plenty more of this: