Compare and contrast this and this.

"Hey, what's phase two?"

I'm well beyond being surprised or outraged by my president calling me a limp-wristed Nazi fetishist. But even after all these years I can't get over the militant brainlessess that passes for mainstream postmodern conservative thought. It's beyond stupidity; it's a Nietzschean abyss that's as fascinating as it is horrifying.

In the grand tradition of Saint Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost causes (or perhaps Gen. George Armstrong Custer, stupid white man), I'm going to attempt to demonstrate that Rev. Wright - and more importantly the religious tradition from which he springs - has been grievously wronged.

Rather than wishing this would all go away we should be righteously angry at the system - The Man - that generated this fiasco. Or at least understand it. Because it's probably going to happen again and again in the age of character assassination via YouTube, regardless of whether Wright is put "behind us."

And I promise - this won't be a political brief for Barack Obama.

A fanatic preacher...who had been taught to read and write, and permitted to go about preaching in the country, was at the bottom of this infernal brigandage. He was artful, impudent and vindicative, without any cause or provocation that could be assigned.

Check local listings.

Fortunately, the reverend will likely not meet the same fate as Nat X when the NCGOP attempts to divine his motives. We've come a long way, baby.

If the dummocrats didn't want us driving 87, 96.5, or 102 mph, they shudda made that clear in the law

Update: How far out of bounds is an argument to be called a fascist by the freakin' John Birch Society?

"Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales."

Stellar reasoning, Dianne. And sterling leadership.

Feinstein '08. She may be a hopeless, cowardly twit.
But at least she's not Imelda Marcos.

D'oh!

...Precisely:

There has been no shortage of litmus tests in the past: abortion, gay marriage, the flag amendment—whatever hot-button issue the G.O.P. cooks up for its next election campaign. But the torture litmus test is new, and it seems to be key for lawyers. It really is an exercise in Kool Aid drinking. If you’re prepared to hedge on whether waterboarding is torture, then you might be counted upon to do anything.

Bush Derangement Syndrome turns humble schoolmarm into coldblooded apologist for unspeakable acts:

Wesley Clark fans may be interested in this interview (warning: you'll have to fast-forward through a bunch of fundraising pleas before the interview starts) in which he says the Dems have set themselves up for a fall by focusing on troop levels and such instead of wider Middle East strategy.

This series of interviews with IR scholars who predicted most everything that's happened in Iraq is also worthwhile. Particularly interesting is the one with MIT's Steve Van Evera, who notes that the press not only failed to examine the war's faulty premises but also the cultlike figures behind it. And the public still doesn't know who's advising Dick on Iran.

I've become so inured to Republican presidential candidates talking like drunken hare krishna bag ladies that this one slipped past me when it was reported. But when I watched the video, it made my eyes cross.

Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.

Putting aside the inflammatory topic and obnoxious rhetoric, what's amazing it that anyone could get away with that logic in a non-institutionalized setting.

Sausage making:

In advance of Council Bluffs some of the hacks on the bus commiserated about their reporting strategies. A loud British reporter two seats in front expressed hope that he’d get something really real. “I hope we get some real, you know, interaction with a voter,” he gushed. Others were talking with editors via cell phone about their pre-fab article theses – Thompson as the only guy who can beat Hillary, Thompson as Reagan, Thompson the too-late candidate.

Then I watched as we actually poured out into the crowd at Bayliss Park in downtown Council Bluffs, and these same guys went from Iowan to Iowan in search of the needed quotes, literally shaking audience members like fruit trees until they coughed up the right answers. The only Thompson-can-beat-Hillary guy – actually a female wire reporter – was moving quickly, trying in the 30-odd minutes we had on the ground to get at least one or two folks to say that they were supporting Thompson for the right reasons.

“Do you think Thompson is the only guy who can beat Hillary?”

“Uh, I don’t know…”

At that the reporter frowned and quickly moved on to the next local:

“Why do you support Thompson?”

“I just think he can beat Hillary.”

Sausage:

Early State Voters Respond to Fred's Message
FRED CAN BEAT HILLARY
"Added another backer, John Craggs, 60, of Altoona: 'I just think he can beat Hillary.'" (Liz Sidoti, AP, 9/7/07)

Responding to Bob Herbert's column calling out the GOP on racism, Sen. Macaca's former mouthpiece defends St. Ronnie's infamous 'States' Rights' speech in Philadelphia, MS by noting that the Neshoba County Fairgrounds isn't actually in Philadelphia.

Item: "The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp."

Item: "Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about 'politically charged' opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, 'they had them printed out on the table in front of me.'"

I guess this is supposed to pass for wisdom:

“I’d like to find reasonable ways to limit some in a volunteer army on how long our military men and women are expected to serve, but I don’t want to vote for something that will become a backdoor deadline,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who added he was “studying” the Webb amendment to determine whether it could win his support this time around.

(202) 224-4944; 545-4253

Newt attempts to build the Wingnut T-1000, using mimetic polyalloys that, unlike the Nixon-era terminator, can reassemble the wingnut psyche shattered by contact with reality.

The piece is posited as a re-examination of recent history, but it contains not one whiff of self awareness or reflection. Note how he glibly dismisses Iraq, the biggest strategic f-up in US history, as a mere tactical error (the implication being that the GOP shouldn't be held accountable for it, just as FDR wasn't for Kasserine Pass).

He's been polishing this bit for a while, an it really is an extraordinary piece of work. As Richard Hofstadter might say, the quality of its pedantry is quite high. It's all built around the wingnut gospel that we're at war with hundreds of millions of undifferentiated Islamic fanatics who, being "irreconcilable," must either be killed or cowed into submission by bullet and bayonet.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid this dude may be on to something. All it takes to keep this madness going is a relatively small but concerted cadre of wingnuts. And if they're capable of reconstituting themselves in the wake of Dubya the Destroyer, we're in for a world of hurt for a long time to come.

Unbelievable.

Where have you gone, J. William Fulbright?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo woo woo.

Via.

Ay carumba:

Rep. Paul Kanjorski described how, prior to the vote, he and several other representatives were ushered into the Roosevelt Room in the White House and given a 90-minute, highly classified briefing by then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenant.

"They told us all kind of things. That we were under a threat and their information was as complete as possible and they (Iraq) had weapons of mass destruction" he said.

Kickbacks help screw little old ladies out of their pensions "Yield spread premiums" facilitate refinancing for economically disadvantaged. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Oh, and I hear der preznit has a solution for the mortgage crisis: giving tax breaks to rich real estate speculators to bailout Wall Street investors, in the name of helping poor families who won't see a dime. Real outside the box stuff. Whooda thunkit.

According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, President Numbnuts' war supplemental is equivalent to just under 25% of all personal income tax collected by the federal government annually.

$3.85 billion a week.* It's more than that, of course, because it won't be drawn out of the national checking account; it'll be rung up on the national credit card.

I might be able to swallow the largest single chunk of my tax dollars being blown on whiskey and sexy in one big eff-it-all Fall of the Republic bender. But no, the Magnificent Leader has decided to invest it in burning flesh, snake oil and training thousands in how to better kill my countrymen.

Matt Taibbi sums it up perfectly:

What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy.

This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

* Consider this: the Hoover Dam cost $2.4 billion to build (in 2006 dollars).

The nation's shadiest used car dealership largest mortgage lender:

A few weeks ago, the former sales representative priced a $275,000 loan with a 30-year term and a fixed rate for a borrower putting down 10 percent, with fully documented income, and a credit score of 620. While a F.H.A. loan on the same terms would have carried a 7 percent rate and 0.125 percentage points, Countrywide’s subprime loan for the same borrower carried a rate of 9.875 percent and three additional percentage points. The monthly payment on the F.H.A. loan would have been $1,829, while Countrywide’s subprime loan generated a $2,387 monthly payment...

When borrowers tried to reduce their mortgage debt, Countrywide cashed in: prepayment penalties generated significant revenue for the company — $268 million last year, up from $212 million in 2005. When borrowers had difficulty making payments, Countrywide cashed in again: late charges produced even more in 2006 — some $285 million...

[F]ew borrowers of any sort, even the most creditworthy, appear to escape Countrywide’s fee machine. When borrowers close on their loans, they pay fees [at often more than double the going rate] for flood and tax certifications, appraisals, document preparation, even charges associated with e-mailing documents or using FedEx to send or receive paperwork...

We've had this discussion before,

National median home prices have increased by more than 45 percent in the last decade (when adjusted for inflation). Average wages per worker, on the other hand, have only increased by 10 percent in the same period.

As a result, for almost the first time ever, individuals who are making the median household income cannot afford to buy a median priced home...

Gee, now that my president has deemed me not just a defeatist and friend to terrorists, but an enabler of genocide, I'm much more apt to see the wisdom in his strategy and grant him my support.

An excellent examination of last week's Wall Street miasma:

[W]hat sparked last week’s turmoil – and the dramatic intervention by central banks – was a pernicious chain of events. As it became apparent this summer that the US subprime problems were worsening and infecting a broader range of structured products, some investors in the ABCP (“asset-backed commercial paper," or short-term borrowings backed by financial assets that are deemed to have stable cash flow) market started to worry about whether SIVs [structured investment vehicles - bank-run programs de­signed to profit from the difference between short-term borrowing rates and longer-term invesment returns] were also sitting on losses.

The rush to sell structured products by hedge funds facing redemptions and other investors meant those market values that could be ascertained were being marked down heavily. As a result, by mid-July some investors decided to stop buying ABCP paper from SIVs suspected of subprime exposure...

The problem could be thrown into relief when billions of dollars of ABCP mature today and on Wednesday, with great un­certainty as to whether this can be refinanced.

Everything in this market depends on investors in the ABCP market maintaining their faith in the programmes and the assets they hold. With the current rush for the exits in many structured credit markets, this faith has been evaporating wholesale. No investors are sure exactly what assets SIVs and conduits are holding, or how damaged those holdings might be.

It's easy to forget - in the face of all the free-market cheerleading we're deluged with almost every day - that Wall Street wizards are just as clueless as the rest of us.

I will sign my soul over to the DLC if they manage to pull this off.

How depressing.

Ugh. I get the intention and the political necessity of the sentiment. But is this really what sells?

I think people are hungry for a different kind of politics – the kind of politics based on the ideals this country was founded upon. The idea that we are all connected as one people. That we all have a stake in one another. That there’s room for pro-lifers and pro-choicers, Evangelicals and atheists, Democrats and Republicans and everyone in between, in this project of American renewal.

There's no way I could deliver that line without gagging. Or perhaps bursting out laughing at "stake in one another." That's why I'm a lowly wage slave, I guess.

Your mileage may vary, but I found this to be a pitch-perfect summation of the War Years.

Danner puts his finger on the key component of the wingnut worldview that's turned American politics into a room of funhouse mirrors. It's the naive abstraction of "power," through which foreign policy (and to a degree extent domestic as well) becomes a ridiculous game of playground intimidation and a test of "will" (this phenomenon is expertly explained here and here).

Thus we must "demonstrate" our "resolve" to the "terrorists;" and as Kissinger advised in the wake of 9/11, "we need to humiliate them." Ironically, this approach has accomplished precisely the opposite, demonstrating how easy it is to not only sucker the big, dumb giant into jump into the pit trap, but have him dig it with his own hands before doing so. We have, in effect, delegated our foreign policy choices to a sorry band of extremist nutbags.

Many are counting the days until Bush leaves office, but none of the current crop of GOP hopefuls have repudiated this lunacy. They (perhaps including at least one of the Dems) may in fact be worse, believing the Bushies have demonstrated insufficient "will" in the war on terra.

Myrtle Beach, S.C. - President George Bush walked onto the Atlantic Ocean during a press briefing today, as journalists watched in stunned silence.

"I had just asked him a question about escalating violence in Iraq. He started to say something, then closed his mouth, turned around and walked straight out into the surf."

Developing...

I'm not really surprised by the Iraq cave-in. But I'm genuinely baffled by this wait 'til September mantra echoed by both sides. One might think it was sparked by the anticipated "Petraeus Report," but I'm pretty sure the latter was a reaction to the mantra, not vice versa. Is it driven by the fiscal calendar?

Where did this September idea originate, and is it an indication of some back-room, bipartisan consensus?

Eric "Bearded Liberal" Alterman proclaims, "many liberals are no less woolly-headed and simple-minded about illegal immigration than they were (and still sometimes are) about welfare."

He then exclaims, "If a fence is the best way to enforce those choices [respect for the law and preventing abuse of undocumented workers], well, then, why not? For symbolic reasons? I don't care about 'symbolic reasons.' I care about reality."

That's a mighty big "if." My question is, When in human history has a border barrier/fence/wall prevented movement without the credible threat that violators will be met with violent force? I know the Michelle Malkins of the world have no objection, but are we really prepared to start shooting unarmed peasant farmers on sight?

Rick Hasen, curator of the excellent Election Law blog, examines the mysterious disappearance of the "American Center for Voting Rights." The slight of hand is dazzling.

In support of [ACVR counsel Thor Hearne's] position that voter-ID laws did not unconstitutionally suppress the votes of poor and minority voters, Hearne cited the decision of the DoJ to approve the pre-clearance of Georgia's voter-ID law, and a law review article supporting such laws, written under the pseudonym Publius.

Hearne didn't reveal that the decision on Georgia was made by political appointees of the DoJ over the strong objections of career attorneys there who believed the law was indeed discriminatory. Nor did he explain that (as I discovered and blogged about a few years earlier) Publius was none other than Hans von Spakovsky, then serving as one of the political DoJ officials who approved the Georgia voter-ID law. (President Bush later gave von Spakovsky a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission.)

Digby has more on von Spakovsky.

It's a pleasure to introduce you to the future of foreign policy. Ah hell, domestic policy, too.