A Chicken Is Not Pillage

Welfare Queens

There was a letter in the local fish-wrap just recently warning people that kvetching about Exxon's record profits (new records set in 3 successive years) showed an ignorance of how profit margins work, and expose us to the sin of Envy.  It's the latter point that I laughed at most harshly.  Ya' see, the rich have rigged the game in their favor, and to *not* recognize that is just simply stupid.  It's not envy.  It's the crushingly certain knowledge that you have too little, and what you have the richest will find a way to take.  They'll even use your government to take what you have so they don't lose what they've already stolen. 

E. J. Dionne puts it best:

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard.
...
The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.

Enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. Good God, you don't expect these people to trade in their BMWs for Saturns, do you?

In a deal that the New York Times described as "shocking," J.P. Morgan Chase agreed over the weekend to pay $2 a share to buy all of Bear Stearns, one of the brand names of finance capitalism. The Federal Reserve approved a $30 billion -- that's with a "b" -- line of credit to make the deal work.

The Horror!

 

Just like that, some people’s stakes of $100 million or more in Bear were ravaged, and senior executives like Thomas A. Marano, the head of mortgages, and Bruce Lisman, a co-head of equities, were furious. Entering the weekend, Bear executives felt confident that the firm could be sold for several billion dollars, if not more. But $236 million — how could Bear have sold for such a price? Why didn’t the firm seek financial help earlier, they and others asked,
...
For James E. Cayne, the firm’s chairman and former chief executive, holding on to his Bear stock was a point of pride, and he rarely, if ever, sold. A billionaire just over a year ago when Bear’s stock soared past $160, his 5.8 million shares are now worth about $28 million at Monday’s closing price of $4.81.

I've been saying for years that pandering to the rich (trickle down economics) was  just one more way to heap their burden on your own back.  How does the load feel now?  I even warned (though probably poorly) Geeguy and his readers that distributing wealth to the companies getting rich off the Iraqi boondoggle, while borrowing money at enormous rates to foster the illusion that 'we're just like them in our riches' was going to come back and bite us right in the ass.  Notice, that would be "bite us", not the Wall Street banking Welfare Queens.

Mr. Cayne will have to make do with his $28,000,000.  Many of his employees, very much like investors in Montana Power, are now in indentured servitude to the riches of the richest.  WE, you and I, are too.  We've just underwritten the loans of all those poor dupes who borrowed money on false promises  (kinda like the President, except he only promised to pay back our money.)  Geeguy is waking to the idea that the rich own our asses because we will be required to service them. 

Me?  I'm just tired of this shit.  And it's going to get worse.

Citizens United ... Not This?

Oh, yeah.  Sexism is certainly dead in America and has nothing to do with the current campaign for President.

Right.

Racism is dead, too, or haven't you heard?

"Some Perspective Is Necessary"

John Edwards makes me ... uncomfortable.  I really appreciate that there is a anti-corporate stand-out among Democratic candidates; sincerely I do.  But maintaining one's credibility as a  'stand-out'  often means going to unnecessary extremes.  John Cole notices just such a moment of thoughtless extremism from John Edwards in the Nevada debates.

Edwards took time to clarify that he was the only one of the three to outright oppose nuclear energy. Considering Edwards’s positions on global warming, energy independence, and “Big Oil”, it is baffling that he would dismiss nuclear energy out of hand.

I truly nod in agreement with Cole's assessment:

Excluding nuclear energy from the possible ways to fulfill our energy needs in the future immediately makes you an unserious person, in my book.

Mine too.  I had every intention (born of almost sad resignation) of blackening the oval for Edwards come June, knowing full well that it wouldn't matter.  But the more he attempts to draw distinction between himself and the other Democratic candidates, the more he accepts ideologically 'pure' and hence unsound and unserious positions.  He appears more and more to be playing a game of 'win at all cost', and refusing to think of the practical or pragmatic.  This is only one more example of that phenomenon.  In my happy universe,  ideological purity is the game of the Republicans; they are after all, conservatives.  It goes with their territory and they're welcome to it.  In the real world, it leads to black and white thinking, it speaks of and begs for failure.  It opens the door to unseen consequence and leaves one a slave to the reactions born of a complex and changing system we call "living".  And all the while I paint the Republican party with that brush, I know full well that some Democrats find that level of extremism enticing and necessary.

It isn't necessary, not at all.  As Cole rightly points out, some perspective is.

Whatever Is To Do?

(First, and completely beside any point ... Happy Birthday!  Thought I forgot, didn't 'ya?  You're what now ... 83?  Heh!)

It might actually shock and surprise the notorious MarkT to find that he doesn't reside in a place of political disillusionment all by himselfs.  I know he's staked that out as 'his ground', and often assumptively defends it like a badger guards it's burrow.  He really needs to take heart (or lose it even more) because he's not alone; we're all kinda screwed here.  The vast majority of Americans want out of the charade that is our Middle Eastern endeavor, the overwhelming majority of us don't want to be force fed a religious or moral righteousness, and we really don't want to be screwed with by our government ... in the way that the Bush administration has so incompetently done over the last seven years.  In short, we don't the Republicans; they suck.  We do seem to prefer Democrats as long as they don't show that they suck every bit as much as Republicans ... which much of the leadership has done.

We, The People, have really lost control here.  Kossack Hunter sums it up very very well.

In battle after battle the House and Senate Dems have made it crystal clear that they do not give a flying shit about their base. They wish we'd just curl up and die. They're happy to have the free help spreading their points, but that help does not reciprocate in any way. There's not a damn thing they'll do on our behalf, or on behalf of the voters who made their regained power possible -- not one thing. They'll even sell out Move On by name -- and all in fear of this mythical overwhelming conservative tide of voters who will wag their fingers sternly and supposedly dangerously at the slightest provocation. They spend a hell of a lot more time worrying about what the racists think about brown people, and the religious extremists think about non-extremists, and the corporate lobbyists think about corporate needs, than they've ever once worried about any of us. Their strategy is all about placating, of all fucking things, the Republican base. That's who they're absolutely obsessed with: making sure the Republicans aren't mad at them, that thirty percent of voters who would rather join militias and drift off into the countryside than vote against hardcore Republicanism anyway.

...

It is the same story as always: the Democrats do not care about their base because they know full well we've got nowhere to go. But still, they push too far -- I am hardly a leftist, and am more to the point usually a painstaking pragmatist, willing to accept small victories over no victories at all, but they have at this point got even me thinking it's a waste of time to work with them.

...

What strikes me at the moment is just how devoid of true, inspirational leaders the current party is. We've got nobody, at least not that is a household name. Kennedy?  A longtime liberal and a fine speaker, but hasn't been able to accomplish a whole lot.

...

Hillary Clinton seems to studiously avoid even the shadow of a hint of a larger vision, and Edwards could not get the press to like him if he personally had sex with every one of them. Obama is indeed a fine speaker, but is at his best in well-crafted speeches in service to no particularly concrete or substantive goals -- and those goals he does most passionately espouse, like chastising fellow Democrats for not more emphatically embracing religion, are the stuff of uninspiring Broderesque conventionality. We have faced the most incompetent, corrupt, scandal prone, and indictment-laden administration in recent history, and yet we still must from all corners hear paeans to working together with the worst of the worst, and compromising with the bigoted, and bridging the gap between our moderate party and the one that has been purged of nearly all but the most single-minded of extremists.

(As always, I strongly and passionately urge you to read the whole thing.)  Of the sad things Hunter describes, I haven't had a doubt for some time now.  However, unlike MarkT and a to a large degree Hunter, I find patience to be a greater virtue in this situation than I do cynicism.  That does not mean blind obedience to the Democratic party.  What it does mean is rational pragmatic balance of assumptions.  I do believe that Hillary Clinton would keep her promise to relinquish Administrative powers back to Congress.  That's a step in the right direction.  It also isn't what we want accomplished.  I do believe that John Edwards would work tirelessly on his agendas and fail miserably because of Congressional opposition and political spite.  I believe that Obama would talk a great game, and make no difference whatsoever at all.  His core values remain the status quo, religiosity and toughness in the face of insults to a hollow ideal of America ... oh, and OPRAH!

None of these are good options, though one at least offers baby steps of progress.  Any who have read what I've written over time would know that I believe the next President to be a sacrifice before whatever Gods of Democracy still have any compassion for us after the disaster that the Worst President Ever and the Cheney-bot have handed us as legacy.  The highest hope, my greatest optimism, is that one will steer us in the correct direction and give the people a modicum of control back.  There is a dim hope that any of the Democrats who could win would or will do that.  There is *no* hope that any of the Republicans will ... save one.

I'm getting a Jones on for Ron Paul.  He has the greatest possibility for impact should he run as an independent.   His ideas of getting us out of costly and offensive foreign involvements are spot on, to my ways of thinking.  He could, and truly would, be the happy sacrifice that is needed to wake this country up from the idea that all things will just get better if we clap a little harder. 

The bad:  He's a little extreme.  No, he's a lot extreme, and that's not bad if one desires a corrective shift from a complexity singularity (if you don't know what I'm talking about, then tough.)  He's anti-women.  Not really, but that's a whole 'nuther argument in itself.  He would be ineffective.  Yes, he would.  He'd be *really* ineffective, the likes of which Edwards could only hope for ... of one is expecting the same effect that we have seen time and again, which is increased complexity, diatribe and general malaise to our political system.  He would be very effective at shaking things up, simplifying the discourse, and solidifying what Americans really believe.  I think most of us would end up hating him, but that can unify us a lot more than people think.

The good:  we might actually end up with a more equitable tax code.  He's more rabidly against corporate welfare the Edwards is.  The people might wake up and realize that we are the strength in this nation.  The Commander in Chief Paul could order our wasted money and lives out of the Iraqi cesspool.  Let the Iraqis clean up their own goddamned mess.  And, one of the main reasons I'm starting to like Paul?  With some people, who desperately need it, he will shake their Pillars of Heaven.  There's folk out there who hate Ron Paul because he has no respect for their sacred cows.  My response?   Mmmmmm ... steak.  (For the record, I like Hillary Clinton for much the same reasons.  It's time this country's mythologies got an enema.)  And the best thing about Ron Paul is this, he is the only candidate running who has the potential to motivate this country's cynical and hopeless electorate to appease him, or oppose him.  Not even Bush could do that to the degree that Ron Paul could.  As a  hopeful Democrat, I ask this:  why offer people oppression lite or oppression heavy?  Let's go straight to the edge.  Liberty or death.  It's time we all choose.

Before those with no sense of irony or sarcasm waste a shitload of bytes telling me how awful I am, let it be known:  as things stand right this second, come June I will vote for John Edwards, for the third time in my life.  But, in the contradictory mish-mash that lives in my head, Clinton's stock is rising fast.  Strangely, so is Ron Paul's.  We are not helpless here, even as Democrats who recognize when we might be helpless.   Steadfast Republicans?  Well, they're helpless.  Give up on them.  But we needn't give up on ourselves.  If it takes an extremist President to light a fire under a milk-toast Congress, well I'm just having a hard time seeing the downside to that.

This Is What Should Matter

I interrupt the normally scheduled flypaper test in order to discuss something that should really matter to Americans.

By now, many of you know that my brother was illegally targeted by the city administrators of Dillon, Montana, leading to his arrest.  I don't use the word "illegally" in any glib manner at all.  What Malesich and Troedsson did was flat out illegal.  I'm researching it on my own right now, but I do know that at least one of my sometimes-readers already has access to the info, and would serve himself, my brother and the community of Montana to email me with it as well.   That way, I will risk or stake my own limited  reputation as to the facts of the case and law.  No one else need risk anything.

Allow me to get a tad personal here.  I had warned my brother against the evils of small town politics.  I knew his license was suspended, and strongly suspected that if anyone were to attack him, that would be the method.  Make no mistake, I warned Moorcat of these concerns.  Sure enough, small-town politics proved true to form.  Petty  little men performing petty little stunts to bolster their petty little egos. And aren't we all just goddamned proud  to call such our 'civic leaders'?   I haven't responded about this incident to my brother, or online, not because I don't care, but because I am just so disgusted at the predictable nature of the worst of humanity.  I knew that my brother would "do the right thing", stand tall before the man, and accept his punishment.  I've seen another brother do the same in the past.  That, in large part, is why I love and respect them both.  At no point do I call this justice, and that makes me physically ill.

There is a grander scale to this, though.  No, I'm not trying to paint a picture of the little hero against the monolithic evil of authority.  That's Moorcat's job, and damned if he doesn't have a pretty good palate to work with, a palate they gave him.  The grander scale is that we should all feel revulsion, and yet we seemingly don't.  This isn't just a matter of small-town politics and political bullying.  It's a larger mindset, one that I have accepted and feel shamed by.  Others should as well.  A local chief executive manipulates his power to obtain information against an opponent, and shares that with a sniveling toady (even Grima Wormtongue was more palatable than the slobbering man-whore Troedsson).  And he justifies his illegal actions as if it were concern for community.  Is that the community you live in?  Is that the community the Constitution told you that you live in?  Is that the community you choose to live in?

No, no and no.  This is the very crap that we went to war with England to get the fuck away from.  This is the very crap that Hollywood makes hero movies about.  That is what this is ... crap.  We all know it.  I'd offer a syllogism to prove it, but not everything can be boiled down to a syllogism, according to another person who won't say crap about this crap.  No, this is precisely the crap that we agreed to prostitute ourselves, Republicant and Democant alike, when we chose the Daddy state after 9/11.  This is precisely the crap we chose when we decided that turning a blind eye to the shrill was a good thing to do.  Ignore the signs, pay no heed to the pained.  We'll all be just fine if we pull the covers abit more over our heads.

Oh no, Wulfgar is overstating again?   Am I?  We're not talking about  national security, or great and weighty matters of state.  This time, people, we're talking about you.  That's right, you.  In Bozeman, I at least have the comfort that my mayor (though he and I have butted heads) understands the dangers of localized assholes using authority with dictatorial power.  He's ag'in it, and I applaud that.  In Missoula, their panties are in a knot over email.  THE HORROR!  And yet right here in this state, there is a city administration that will break the law to send a man to prison for disagreement.  Again, ain't we all real proud?  I'm not overstating jack-shit.

In a more simple,  better, more conservative time, we'd have run Malesich and Troedsson out of the state with the tar boiling and the feathers plucked.   I know, I know,  it's easy to say that wouldn't really have happened, and your probably right if you do.  BUT, what America, what Montana, do you live in? The one that says that it's okay to be the pawns of authority, or the one that tars and feathers them?

The answer is indicative of stature to me.  Matt Singer knows the dangers of petty rule.  Jay Stevens gets the point that authority cannot be given free hand to abuse and subjugate.  And from the so-called Dextra wing in Montana, we have ... crickets.  Make of that what you will; I know what I make of it.  Conservatism isn't about struggling against authority anymore, it's about bowing to it.  I still have my naive fantasies that we, Montanans,  would chase corrupt politicians to the border.  Apparently not.

What happened to my brother is a direct threat to the liberties of all who exist under the corrupt local juntas in this state.  This should be on every blog, and in newspapers that aren't weekly.  While he campaigns, someone should at least ask McGrath about this so he can blow the usual smoke of "I'm looking into it!".  Maybe then, he will.  As dysfunctional as my family is, we will deal with the immediacy of Moorcat's problems.  But you folks have got a problem on your plate as well.  Dick-taters in Montana?  Yeah, that ought to matter.

There Is A Bigger Picture

I find myself duly surprised, in a very jarring way, when the normally knowledgeable Dave Budge grabs an issue and treats it as if it stands in a vacuum.  On those rare occasions that happens, I'm cynical enough to be suspicious and almost always assume that Dave has another agenda at play.   Those suspicions are somewhat supported by the consistency of Dave's inconsistency ... it almost always exhibits these characteristics:  a) by removing context from the issue, Congress looks bad; b)  there are appeals (weak or otherwise) to the popular sentiment that Congress *is* bad; and c) it usually involves Congress wasting time or money on things Dave doesn't favor.  The money part I definitely get; I believe we all share some of that hostility towards money being wasting on something that isn't our pet notion.  But it stands out in bold relief when Dave accuses Congress of wasting time on meaningless action; it's quite a contrast to his usual refrain that Congress is wasting time doing *anything*, and that we're all better off if Congress does nothing.

 

Dave was polite enough in this circumstance to wear his agenda right up front.  He was taking a very broad swipe at the insanity involved in the Strawman "Political Correctness".   I could focus  almost exclusively on how he's begging the question,  but I think it's more important to noodle out why he feels the need to hide the context of this action of Congress.  His initial question implores someone to give him context, which establishes for his readers that there isn't any.

What compels Congress to pass or even discuss meaningless crap like the move on MoveOn.org, the Rush flap and now, almost a century later, a resolution that determines the Ottoman Empire committed genocide?

I'll be first to admit; that's a hella good question, if one removes the assumptions that beg the question ("discuss meaningless crap").   What would compel  them, indeed?  I don't  know that there is a definitive answer, but I know that  there are several factors involved that go well beyond Dave's assumptions of 'political correctness'.    When I first read his post, I wanted to enumerate  some of those factors, especially since I've been keeping a wary eye on Turkey since we first committed to the Great Iraqi Crusade.  However, I'm not an adept policy wonk; that takes much more time than I have to devote to blogging.  Thankfully, there are others who do have the time.

Allow me to introduce Kossack DHinMN.  As if on queue, he presents a terrific exposition of the current policy struggles Turkey faces with itself, with Iraq, with the EU, and with us.  He (?) goes into a much greater degree of detail than is needed to answer Dave's question, and some of what he goes into *should* shake the certainty of those who think Turkey is our good secularist buddy in the Middle East that Congress is so abusing ... should, but I doubt it will.  I've noticed an odd propensity for those who think that Holocaust denial is akin to insanity and criminal behavior, seem to have blinders concerning this:

"Our (Turkey's) government regrets and condemns this decision (of the US Congressional committee). It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in history," the government said.

But still, that's beside the point.  Dave's question has an answer, one that goes well deeper than Dave's obvious dislike of the people's representatives.  What is compelling the Congress who should do nothing, but will get harshed on for wasting time, is that our relationship with Turkey is at a fairly critical point.  They are using the Commander in Dunce's own flypaper argument to mess around in our private bailiwick of killen'.  This might lead to further destabilization of the region, and dammit, that's our job.  In other words, what compelled the resolution were the demands of foreign policy, and those who passed it on the House Foreign Relations Committee were (SURPRISE!) doing their jobs.

It can well be argued that what the House Foreign Relations Committee passed is a poor resolution that will hurt foreign policy.  It can be argued that the resolution is good foreign policy, and will get Turkey to back off and quit thinking they can tell the US what is true, and what to do.  The only argument that makes no sense, except in a vacuum, is that this resolution was "meaningless".

Friday Night Sprites

A few small things:

Our resident online plagiarist has graduated to complete theft of material.  Does anyone still think me wrong for suggesting that this is a Democratic plant of a website, or do you believe that a Republicant shill could truly be so very stupid?  I trend to think the latter.

Over the last day or two, Oliver has been on a gaddamned roll! 

Steve Clemons of the Washington Note is very knowledgeable about global policy and all its ebbs and flows, but he makes the same mistake in this piece for Salon that so many in the foreign policy "establishment" do. Clemons assumes that Bush would not attack Iran because it wouldn't make any sense. The problem is, these are not people governed by sanity. In 2002, as Bush and the Republicans campaigned against Democrats as to how tough they where to whip their genitals out to oust Hussein, I assumed that all the talk about invading Iraq was bravado. I seriously thought to myself: they couldn't be that stupid.

I was wrong. Really wrong. Before this administration there have presidents of both parties who have done things that people can clearly disagree about on policy, but we had a long tradition of not being completely insane in the White House. Things have changed.

--------

I was trying to think about why I've been bothered by the constant focus, especially among some conservatives, on the Duke rape case and its aftermath. There's no doubt that Mike Nifong is an idiot of the highest order who screwed up those student's lives considerably and he should be strongly punished. But isn't the whole reason why Duke is notable the fact that it's an outlier? We don't have a very long tradition of middle to upper class white males being victimized by the justice system. When it does come to light it does so largely because of its rarity.

-------

The traditional view, especially from folks on the online left, is that Hillary Clinton is the play it safe centrist while Obama is the progressive fighter.

But the mostly symbolic, silly and time-wasting vote on MoveOn did have an effect. Sen. Clinton and Dodd voted against stupidity (Let me know when the senate votes to condemn pro-administration outlets like Rush Limbaugh - who regularly slurs women, minorities and anyone not on the left while calling for torture and the like. He makes anything intemperate MoveOn has ever said or endorsed look like a southern belle at the spring formal. I wonder when we'll have a single Democratic senator with the balls to push a resolution condemning Limbaugh & Co.) while Sen. Obama simply didn't show up.

ODub talks the talk and walks the walk.  And, Atrios hasn't been slacking either:

All of this was utterly predictable last Spring, and blindingly obvious by August. If people want to pretend that fake media controversies which didn't move public opinion in the slightest are the reason that they're failing to do the jobs they were elected to do they're welcome to do that, but they just reveal themselves to be petty childish mediocrities with fragile egos who don't want to take responsibility for their own failures.

Congrats, losers!

---------

Reid bad, won't compromise. Of course what really has happened is that the Democrats, including Reid, wanted to find some sort of compromise bill to get "moderate Republicans" on board, but then they realized that moderate Republicans won't actually get on board with anything that could actually achieve anything in Iraq, and even if they did they don't exist in sufficient numbers (60 total or 67 depending on how you want to look at it) for an actual compromise to pass.

And just read this whole thing.

Could somebody rational (not so fast Ms. Malkin) please explain to me what is so farooking awful about Ahmahinejad's will to visit 'ground zero'?  It's a publicity stunt, and the whining mass of wingnut stupid is giving him more than he could have hoped for.  He wants to lay a wreath, for pity's sake.  So what?  What do you really think is gonna happen, wingnuts?  Do you think he's gonna pee on the hollowed dirt (hollowed only because it's the site of one of our greatest ass-kickings)?  After 9/11, Iran promised help, and offered sympathy and support.  A few short months later, some important retard lumped them into a mythological "axis of evil".  That doesn't mean that we have to buy into their anger, or the bullshit from the important retard.  Iran had jack-shit to do with the terror attacks of 9/11.  So I really want someone to rationally explain:  what's the problem here?

Folks, I can't get all worked up about this.  MoveOn put things poorly.  The wingnuts went apeshit.  Tester is correct:  let's not waste a buttload of time concerning something idiotic.  Move On.

On the other hand, the Democrats really did play right into the gambit of Republicants who are banking on the voters being dumb enough to care more about fantasy than they are that the Republicants have chosen:

A)  Our troops will serve without just rest until they die!

B)  Habeas Corpus is some foreign term that don't mean shit to Amurkins.

This war will go on and on, and we will bankrupt ourselves to fight the war without end.

Have a great weekend, folks.

Sweet Little Lies

Fred Kaplan points out what should be obvious to absolutely everybody:

President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.

The biggest fiction was that because of the "success" of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so.

Let's be clear one more time about this claim: The surge of five extra combat brigades (bringing the total from 15 to 20) started in January. Their 15-month tours of duty will begin to expire next April. The Army and Marines have no combat units ready to replace them. The service chiefs refuse to extend the tours any further. The president refuses to mobilize the reserves any further. And so, the surge will be over by next July. This has been understood from the outset. It is the result of simple arithmetic, not of anyone's decision, much less some putative success.

The emphasis is mine.  It's simple math.  130,000 + 30,000 - 30,000 = 130,000.  There will be no troop withdrawal, save in the pettiest technical sense.   It's nothing more than a bone to call off the dogs (which, by the way, is how your elected Chief Executive appears to think of you.)  Here's a hint to Congress, however; if you really want the folks back home to pay attention, draw down the one thing that Bush didn't mention at all, but matters to every one of us.  We're spending $2,000,000,000 a week in Iraq.  That has surged somewhat, but it won't go down in July of next year.  It's just gonna keep bleeding away.  Return on Success?  Bullshit. You are Congress, and have been given the fiscal reigns of the nation.  Demand a Return on Investment, or get the hell out.  Even "libertarians" might understand that  reasoning (though experience with the locals has taught me not to expect it.)

Who All 'Dat?!?

I said it, yeah, unhuh I did.  Larry Craig will not go gentle into that good night ... and he shouldn't.  He is that deeply in denial that he wishes to retain the power granted him, by the very folk who revile his needs, including himself.  Things are about to get a whole lot more fun ...

To Know A Man, Know His Motives

It's not often that I get a chance to make a prediction that will likely be prove4n wrong before I get it written.  So I just had to jump on this opportunity.

Matt has a source that claims that Senator Larry Craig (R-Closet) will be resigning today.  This news has enough election 2008 implications that the story is running at the Orange Website of Doom.  I've known Matt long enough to trust him on most things, but I get the feeling that he may be wrong this time.  I don't think Senator Craig will resign (at least not without one helluva fight).  As I see it, Larry Craig has two very good personal reasons *not* to step down.

1)  He doesn't owe anybody loyalty at this point.  As quick as most Democrats were to point out his hypocrisy, or just point and laugh, the Republicans (online, in person, within and without of Idaho) were even quicker to throw this guy under a bus.  Their vitriol has been far harsher and meaner than anything coming from Democrats.  It's already had a profound effect on his life.  He's been stripped of any real Senatorial power (other than filling a seat and voting), and Romney dropped him double-quick, like any other stance or person that might hurt his campaign. 

It's not any mystery why there is such a Republican backlash/outrage over this.   It's pure self and party interest.  They want the guy gone to 'help' (that being completely relative) their electoral chances in 2008.  Now, suppose you're Larry Craig, and all of your friends have just stabbed you in the back (castrated you is a more apt metaphor.)  What the hell do you think you owe them?  Nothing.  And all you have to do for payback is ... nothing.  Stay put.  Don't budge.    Maybe it's just me, but I'm not seeing any external incentive, here, for Craig to resign.

2)  If he resigns, he admits to being gay (at least tangentially.)  This is a gay guy who just gave a speech claiming to the high holy heavens that he's so not gay he doesn't even smile.  HE"S NOT GAY!  Don't you get it?  He's not ... the gay ... he doesn't have it!  This dude is so deeply in denial that he won't take even the first step towards his greatest nightmare, being found to be moderately happy.  That road leads only one place, my friend ... Gayville!

All jocularity aside, for Larry Craig to resign is for him to admit to personal demons he simply won't face.  Everything about this episode, so far, has been everybody else's fault.   He will hang onto that Senate seat , until and unless he can find a clear way to make this someone else's fault, and exonerate himself from the accusations of manlove.  I find that sad, but still a compelling reason to believe that no resignation will be forthcoming today.

I hope you take from this a few small things.  Never underestimate the  latent homophobia of much of the mountain  west.  It runs pretty deep here.  That's not something to fear or 'hate' or hurl your vile bile upon.  It's just the way things are, at this point in time.  It can be kind of tragic (see Craig, Larry, US Senate).  It can be kind of violent (see Sheppard, Mathew).  It's a mythological hold over belief from a time that probably didn't exist.  But we're working on it.  Maybe the whole affaire de toilette will help shake a few people loose from their fears ... I kinda doubt it, but I can hope.

Now, just for your mirth and entertainment, good reader, I'm going to post this.  I won't check to see if Matt is correct and I am horribly wrong first.  Singer has an awfully good track record, so I wouldn't bet against him.  But I guess we'll see.  Either way, enjoy the show.

UPDATE:  WOOHOO! I rock.  I rule.  No resignation today.  Okay, so maybe it's tomorrow.  But still, I rock, I rule.

(Really Larry.  Don't do it, man.  You can still be totally hetero, really still totally.  All you have to do is tell the NRC to piss off, and claim your throne.  Don't resign.  You got nothing to lose.  Stick to your guns!)