Categorical Aperitif

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 10:42 AM 0 comments

Mark Fiore has a hilarious take on the TSA controversy.

// posted by nash @ 10:36 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:12 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 4:15 PM 0 comments

That's digby, on Jim DeMint. I just realized that the phrase appears only in the URL, which is a shame, 'cause it's a good one.

// posted by nash @ 4:11 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:23 AM 0 comments

Johann Hari, with your happy thought for the day (links added):

Karl Rove - who was George W. Bush's chief spin-doctor - boasted this year: "Climate is gone." He meant it is off the political agenda, but in time, this statement will be more true and more cursed than he realizes.

It's in this context that a new, deeply pessimistic framework for understanding the earth's ecology - and our place in it - has emerged. Many of us know, in outline, the warm, fuzzy Gaia hypothesis, first outlined by James Lovelock. It claims that the Planet Earth functions, in effect, as a single living organism called Gaia. It regulates its own temperature and chemistry to create a comfortable steady state that can sustain life. So coral reefs produced cloud-seeding chemicals which then protect them from ultraviolet radiation. Rainforests transpire water vapour so generate their own rainfall. This process expands outwards. Life protects life.

Now there is a radically different theory that is gaining adherents, ominously named the Medea hypothesis. The paleontologist Professor Peter Ward is an expert in the great extinctions that have happened in the earth's past, and he believes there is a common thread between them. With the exception of the meteor strike that happened 65 million years ago, every extinction was caused by living creatures becoming incredibly successful - and then destroying their own habitats. So, for example, 2.3 billion years ago, plant life spread incredibly rapidly, and as it went it inhaled huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This then caused a rapid plunge in temperature that froze the planet and triggered a mass extinction.

Ward believes nature isn't a nurturing mother like Gaia. No: it is Medea, the figure from Greek mythology who murdered her own children. In this theory, life doesn't preserve itself. It serially destroys itself. It is a looping doomsday machine. This theory adds a postscript to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest. There is survival of the fittest, until the fittest trash their own habitat, and do not survive at all.

But the plants 2.3 billion years ago weren't smart enough to figure out what they were doing. We are. We can see that if we release enough warming gases we will trigger an irreversible change in the climate and make our own survival much harder. Ward argues that it is not inevitable we will destroy ourselves - because human beings are the first and only species that can consciously develop a Gaian approach. Just as Richard Dawkins famously said we are the first species to be able to rebel against our selfish genes and choose to be kind, we are the first species that can rebel against the Medean rhythm of life. We can choose to preserve the habitat on which we depend. We can choose life.

I hope everyone is enjoying the Thanksgiving weekend. Ha.

// posted by nash @ 8:18 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:12 AM 0 comments

I see that Greg Mitchell is asking readers to send suggestions for a list of 30 Biggest Media Heroes to complement Salon's list of the 30 Biggest Media Hacks (I haven't had the strength to peruse the whole thing yet); voting ends "late Friday," i.e. today, so get your suggestions in quickly. Here's thirty off the top of my head, in no particular order:

• Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler)
• Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, and everybody at Democracy Now!
• Robert McChesney
• David Brock
• Eric Boehlert
• Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman (for Manufacturing Consent in particular)
• FAIR (everybody there)
• Media Matters for America (everybody there)
• Robert Parry
• Jon Stewart + the writers, performers, and crew of The Daily Show
• Stephen Colbert + his writers and crew
• digby
• Glenn Greenwald
• Dean Baker
• Paul Krugman
• The Yes Men
• Tom Tomorrow
• Danny Schecter
• Matt Taibbi
• Naomi Klein
• Atrios
• David Sirota
• Greg Palast
• Michael Moore
• Jim Hightower
• Norman Solomon
• Jay Rosen
• Greg Mitchell
• Jean Kilbourne
• Robert Jensen

// posted by nash @ 9:08 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 5:39 PM 0 comments

Glenn Greenwald is half right in his blistering attack on the Mark Ames/Yasha Levine Nation piece on the suspiciously sudden wave of anti-TSA outrage: the parts about John "Don't Touch My Junk" Tyner do reek with guilt-by-association sleazery. But Tyner is their subject really only for the first third of the article; the next third reviews some other TSA-related scandals involved self-professed "libertarians" that turned out to be set-ups or Drudgified misrepresentations—and wherein some of the involved parties had connections to Koch orgs and the like. And it ends with what is always good advice in Tea Party America:

So now let's take one more look at the TSA hysteria, and re-evaluate if we should continue to simply accept the surface narrative, or consider what we might learn by looking beneath the surface. Because everywhere you look, the alleged victims' stories often turn out to be false or highly suspicious, promoted by lobbyists posing as "ordinary guys," and everywhere the cast of characters is always the same: drawn from the cult-ish fringes of the libertarian movement, with trails leading straight to the billionaire Koch brothers' network of libertarian think-tanks and advocacy groups.

We could take it all at face value and just trust that they're all "ordinary guys." Or we could ask, "Who profits?

// posted by nash @ 8:27 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:22 PM 0 comments

Tom Delay found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

It's (time for The) Hammer (to do some) Time.

// posted by nash @ 7:18 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 1:27 PM 0 comments

"Elite opinion has been slow to recognize this reality."

// posted by nash @ 7:32 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:30 PM 0 comments

I was sad to hear via this morning's Democracy Now! that Chalmers Johnson had died over the weekend. After being introduced to him thanks to TomDispatch, I read his Blowback Trilogy with great interest (having been born in the empire myself when my dad was still in the Air Force). Some interesting bio here (albeit in dire need of editing), and a treasure trove of stuff at the aforementioned TomDispatch.

Thank you, professor, for helping me to understand what a non-imperial America might look like—and why it might be vastly preferable to the sclerotic, unwieldy beast we've come to know and fear.

// posted by nash @ 7:24 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 4:16 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:04 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:33 AM 0 comments

John Nichols notes that Dennis Kucinich is asking to be made the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform—because he's got the fire in his belly to push back against the coming wave of politically motivated attacks on the Obama administration that incoming Republican chair Darrell Issa has pretty much promised to unleash. Kucinich has already hit back with a tart letter calling out Issa for "wild and unsubstantiated charges" about stimulus spending and pledging to cooperate with Issa "when, and only when, he proceeds in an even-handed manner which demonstrates basic fairness and respect for due process." Clearly, Kucinich learned a thing or two from the Clinton years.

Would that more of his party exhibited a similar educability.

// posted by nash @ 9:27 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:10 AM 0 comments

From the ProRev:

See Sam's American Indicators for more.

// posted by nash @ 9:07 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:27 PM 0 comments

Do not miss Pat Metheny's thoughts on Kenny G. A taste, re. KG's temerity in overdubbing Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" (I had no idea he'd done that, and indeed, the mere thought is painful to me):

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

// posted by nash @ 3:23 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:38 AM 0 comments

Today's Howler does a magnificent job of pointing out how the punditocracy's usual suspects are falling predictably into line re. the Catfood Commission—and dismissing its various left-leaning critics, such as, oh, a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, with scoffery and condescension rather than, you know, addressing their arguments. (See also Dean Baker.)

Bob remembers Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, but I can't help but think instead of her in Gaslight. The pundit class seems chock-full of Charles Boyers, clean and telegenic on the outside, mean and avaricious on the inside, trying to browbeat the reality-based into doubting their own reason.

I know that Ingrid Bergman wins in both cases, but dammit, we don't have her cheekbones.

// posted by nash @ 8:15 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:42 PM 0 comments

"If you want to understand why America" is the above, says Matt Taibbi, "just look at the way a manufactured movement like the Tea Party corrals and neutralizes public anger that otherwise should be sending pitchforks in the direction of downtown Manhattan":

There are two reasons why Tea Party voters will probably never get wise to the Ponzi-scheme reality of bubble economics. One has to do with the basic sales pitch of Tea Party rhetoric, which cleverly exploits Main Street frustrations over genuinely intrusive state and local governments that are constantly in the pockets of small businesses for fees and fines and permits.

The other reason is obvious: the bubble economy is hard as hell to understand. To even have a chance at grasping how it works, you need to commit large chunks of time to learning about things like securitization, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, etc., stuff that’s fiendishly complicated and that if ingested too quickly can feature a truly toxic boredom factor.

So long as this stuff is not widely understood by the public, the Grifter class is going to skate on almost anything it does -- because the tendency of most voters, in particular conservative voters, is to assume that Wall Street makes its money engaging in normal capitalist business and that any attempt to restrain that sector of the economy is thinly disguised socialism.

More.

// posted by nash @ 7:39 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 4:26 PM 0 comments

Mark Morford has written a letter to the Tea Party.

Let's be perfectly clear: The modern Republican party has one masterful, godlike skill unmatched by any other org in this century: Its leaders are geniuses at deceit, at leading throngs of blind believers into rabbit holes of war and fear and factual inaccuracy, often using an aggressively dumbed-down form of Christianity as a trump card. Sexual dread, mistrust of youth, of women, of gays, foreigners, of the ever-changing cultural landscape? It's in the DNA. And the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin.

And the Dems? The Dems wish they could be that masterful. Progressives are just terribly weak in fearmongering. There is something about the liberal spirit that values independent thought and self-determination, that defies screaming eye-glazed megachurch groupthink dread. This makes it tough to hold power for very long. It's so much easier to rally around sameness, conformity, institution, fear of the Other. Right, Karl?

Proof? Look no further than the GOP's leaders and mouthpieces: Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Fox News and even newly minted Senate demigod Mitch McConnell, et al. There are almost no liberal equivalents to these professional liars, warmongers, kingmakers and overlords. In the category of media and message manipulation, the libs have proven disastrous.

I take it back. Not all red-leaning voters this election are hereby screwed. If you're tremendously wealthy and/or run a very large corporation, you're feeling damn good right about now. Wall Street is giddy like Charlie Sheen in a Bangkok brothel, eager for more deregulation, bigger bonuses, less oversight. The CEOs of every oil company in the world are positively orgasmic knowing that their GOP breathren will now asphyxiate all attempts at new environmental legislation and regulation. And so on.

But if you are a lower to middle-class Republican, Tea Partier or flip-flopping indie voter, you are now in the most delightfully ironic position of all -- you think you just voted yourself more voice, when in fact you voted for far less. You think yourself a lion; you're actually the meat. You actually just voted yourself an even lower position on the food chain. Congratulations.

// posted by nash @ 4:06 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:54 PM 0 comments

Dennis G. at Balloon Juice makes a connection between unctuous pseudo-Christian con man Ralph Reed and the infamous Andres Serrano photograph Piss Christ that damn near made me spew some of my own fluids all over the keyboard (emphasis mine):

Sister Wendy hits on the connection of Piss Christ to Ralph Reed. Now some might remember that Reed and his Christian Coalition used the controversy as a way to fund-raise and promote their organizations. They continued to beat their drums about Serrano and Mapplethorpe for over a decade and if pressed today you can be sure that they would bring it up again if it might help a few more rubes to transfer money from their pockets to Ralph and his cavalcade of grifters. While their endless con in the pursuit of power and wealth is of interest—it is Ralph’s deep anti-Christianity that really ties the little prick to Piss Christ.

For Ralph’s entire career he has been pissing on Christ, the teachings of Jesus, the notion of Christianity and anything of value that people of faith might hold dear. I’ve come to think of Serrano’s Piss Christ not as an image Chirst [sic], but rather a portrait of Ralph Reed and his twisted soul. It is Reed’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” as it were.

Reed should be in prison for his many crimes, but unlike his old pal Jack Abramoff, Ralph got a sulfur infused ‘get out of jail free’ card. And so, this professional grifter continues to run his con, pissing on Christ every chance he gets. In the run-up to the Election he was teaming up with old grifter pals like Dick Armey and Grover Norquist and new ones like the Quitta from Wasilla to run the scams he has been running for decades—to line their pockets and protect the powerful. And, as always, he claims Jesus even as he endlessly pisses on him.

// posted by nash @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 2:56 PM 0 comments

Y'know, I keep wanting to re-read the scathing Matthew Norman review of the Dubya memoir (h/t Attaturk), but every time I try, the page loads, and then I get an error message saying

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-how-did-this-wastrel-ever-find-his-way-to-the-white-house-2129608.html.

Operation aborted.

// posted by nash @ 2:37 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 4:16 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 4:03 PM 0 comments

I almost missed Susie Madrak's post on Saturday about a Supreme Court case being argued this week that could have great ramifications for the future of class-action lawsuits. Here's the Center for Media and Democracy's primer:

The AT&T Mobility vs. Concepcion case arose from a class-action lawsuit against AT&T by consumers alleging unfair trade practices. Individuals in California signed a contract with AT&T for wireless service because they were promised free cell phones, but were later hit with hidden fees and charges. The wireless contract stated that disputes with AT&T must be resolved by an arbitrator, not through litigation; however, California law requires that so-called “arbitration clauses” do not prohibit individuals from joining with other similarly-affected persons and bringing a class-action claim. Specifically, AT&T is challenging the California law on grounds that the Federal Arbitration Act (passed in 1932 to allow an alternative forum to resolve disputes besides courts) prohibits states from mandating that class arbitration be available as a part of every arbitration agreement.

However, as stated by the Los Angeles Times’ David Lazarus, “The basic question before the court is whether companies can bar class actions in the fine print of their take-it-or-leave-it contracts with customers and employees.” If the court decides in favor of AT&T, corporations could effectively prevent consumers from bringing class action lawsuits by including arbitration clauses in all contracts, removing a legal tool that deters businesses from engaging in unfair, deceptive, or harmful practices. AT&T’s case is backed by other telecom companies as well, like the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Hmm. Think about the answers to this question: How can people keep from getting screwed by big business/corporate interests—or get justice if they do get screwed?

1. government/public regulation and oversight (to deter screwings from happening in the first place—and punish the screwers when they do)
2. personal legal action (to get redress for screwings after they happen—and hopefully to deter them as well)
3. personal action of other sorts: writing angry letters, picketing, violent retribution, etc.

As for #2, it's prohibitively expensive for most individuals already; huge corporate interests will always find it easier to afford armies of lawyers and decades of litigation than will the average wronged person. And if "tort reform," the curtailment of class-action suits, etc. make it even harder for individuals to get redress in the courts, then this means of protection will be cut off as well.

That leaves #3. But then writing angry letters, pacing with placards, and so on don't seem like much of a threat, and as for personal retribution, well, corporations will have little trouble outmuscling and outgunning the average person—and since the Right state serves property, they'll have State power on their side as well.

Remind me again: why do so many people think they're serving "liberty" by voting Right?

// posted by nash @ 9:38 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 1:23 PM 0 comments

Media Matters points out that Fox bigwigs like Hannity and O'Reilly haven't said squat about the Olbermann suspension, something you'd think they'd be lining up to crow about—but then they're hip-deep in candidate contributions and endorsements themselves, and hey, maybe they do have some residual sense of shame after all.

// posted by nash @ 8:27 PM 0 comments

But it can keep you from being swung at by Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, and/or Robert Duvall.

// posted by nash @ 6:55 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 6:47 PM 0 comments

Thrill with Dean Baker as the Washington Post turns assertion into fact—and helps Eric Cantor reinforce a Republican talking point—through a simple choice of verb!

From now on, let it not be claimed that Kaplan Test Prep Daily sucks.

Let it be acknowledged.

// posted by nash @ 6:44 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 12:41 PM 0 comments

I don't have cable, thus don't have MSNBC, thus won't be missing Keith Olbermann anyway, but it does seem suspicious that he gets suspended for making political donations when other MSNBC bloviators do the same thing without censure—and when no one says boo about the massive political donations of MSNBC's parent corporation.

Perhaps this is that "morning in America" I've heard so much about.

// posted by nash @ 9:00 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:36 PM 0 comments

I almost missed a great Carl Hiassen jeremiad on our governor-elect (h/t karoli):

Scott has spent long hours among attorneys because the healthcare firm that he headed, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., falsified patients’ bills and gave kick-backs to doctors, among other scams.

While the FBI was hauling away company records, Scott got the boot. Columbia/HCA later paid a $1.7 billion fine for perpetrating the largest Medicare fraud in the history of Medicare, no small feat.

Scott was never charged with a crime, which is currently the high point of his résumé. He left Colum-bia/HCA with a $300-million-plus severance package that is helping to bankroll his gubernatorial campaign.

The Republican leadership, which attacked Scott relentlessly before the primary, has now lined up behind him to throw mud at Democrat Alex Sink. It’s the only feasible strategy, when your own candidate has such a messy history.

Of his years as chief of Columbia/HCA, Scott says he takes responsibility for what occurred, but insists he didn’t know anything illegal was going on.

FOOL OR CROOK

The fraud was so massive and institutionalized that his statement can’t be taken seriously. If he truly didn’t know what was happening all around him, he’s an incompetent fool.

And if he did know, he’s a lying crook.

// posted by nash @ 8:32 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:58 AM 0 comments

John Nichols reviews how previous presidents, both successful and unsuccessful, have fared partywise in midterm elections and reminds us that all is not lost:

In fact, there is some evidence that losing big in the first midterm election might be better for a sitting president than losing small. Consider this: in 1978, first-term President Jimmy Carter's Democratic Party lost just three Senate seats and fifteen House seats—not so much a setback as a correction after the dramatic Democratic advances of the post-Watergate elections.

Two years later, Carter lost to Reagan and Democrats shed a dozen Senate seats (including those of Senate giants Frank Church, Gaylord Nelson and George McGovern) and 35 House seats.

It is the Carter comparison that Obama must hope to avoid.

But to do so, he is going to have to make a smart calculation. Obama is unlikely to have the robust economy that Clinton enjoyed, so triangulation and compromise are unlikely to do much more than reinforce Republican messaging. If he is smart, Obama will borrow the a page from Truman's playbook. Faced with a reactionary Republican Congress, Truman pulled out his veto pen, took to the bully pulpit and gave 'em hell.

Truman also counseled against compromise, explaining that: "Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for a real Republican all the time."

Of all the political lessons that Barack Obama will take from the 2010 midterm elections that, undoubtedly, is the most important one.

// posted by nash @ 9:55 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:59 PM 0 comments

I thought that this exchange on the loss of Russ Feingold from this morning's Democracy Now! roundtable sums up the nightmare that was Election 2010 quite nicely:

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, John Nichols, about Russ Feingold.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: The National Journal writes, "The scope of the Democratic devastation is perhaps most evident in Wisconsin. [...] Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold was ousted by Republican Ron Johnson. Democrats lost two seats in the House and control of both [...] chambers of the state legislature."

JOHN NICHOLS: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a devastating result. And, you know, look, we can sum it up a lot of ways. First off, we ought to explain that we’ve lost the one senator who voted against the PATRIOT Act, the one senator who voted against every free trade deal.

AMY GOODMAN: The Democratic senator.

JOHN NICHOLS: No, no Republican voted against the PATRIOT Act in the Senate. But the one who voted against every free trade deal, because it was bad for workers and farmers, the one who voted against going to war in Iraq and then was the first to ask for a time line to get out of Iraq, the first to ask for a time line to get out of Afghanistan, and the one who said that Bush should be censured for warrantless wiretapping.

LAURA FLANDERS: And the one who opposed the bank bailout and voted against—

JOHN NICHOLS: And voted against Geithner.

LAURA FLANDERS:—confirmation of Tim Geithner.

JOHN NICHOLS: And the only Democrat who voted against the bank reform bill, because he said it didn’t really do what needed to be done. So we have lost a pretty remarkable player.

And you ask yourself, how can that happen? Well, the fundamental reality is, in Wisconsin—I’m going to sum it up—in the night of the last US Senate debate, when Russ Feingold and his millionaire opponent were debating for an hour, the news story in Wisconsin was not the debate. It was that the last auto plant in Wisconsin closed that day, the Kenosha Chrysler engine plant. And so, they had this video of a factory closing. Now, it happened that Russ Feingold spent his entire career trying to keep that factory open, but that factory was closing on Barack Obama’s watch, on the Democrats’ watch. And frankly, I think that it’s not just Feingold. You go right over into Illinois, you see Phil Hare, a former union leader and absolute stalwart defender of working-class people, who voted against the President on a number of issues, went down, got beat, because I think that the national narrative was, Obama gets elected, he’s supposed to stand up for workers and farmers, and he didn’t, so we’re going to switch. And it did happen in a lot of states.

LAURA FLANDERS: But the question then becomes, you know, what happens next? I mean—

JOHN NICHOLS: Yes.

LAURA FLANDERS:—in many ways—and somebody used a great phrase describing Glenn Beck, one of the sort of media motivators for the tea party movements—he’s the false prophet of profit, you know. And that’s absolutely true, I think. There’s certainly racist, as I say, wing nuts, whack jobs and whitey-whiteness in this movement, but there are also people who have been vulnerable to the message: Obama’s not looking after the regular guy; we’ll look after the regular guy. Again, without a media that will say, "That’s no regular guy"—you know, Ron Johnson is not a regular guy.

JOHN NICHOLS: He’s a millionaire.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about who Ron Johnson is.

LAURA FLANDERS: A millionaire with $100,000 of BP stock.

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, this is the fascinating thing about Ron Johnson. Ron Johnson had never been involved in politics. He said that he got—he decided to run for the US Senate from watching Fox. And you actually had Dick Morris on saying, "Wow, Russ Feingold is vulnerable. Somebody ought to run against him." And Ron Johnson, watching the show, said, "Oh, I’ll do it." His entire economic training, as best we can tell, came from reading Ayn Rand. I’m not kidding. He says that in debates. He thinks sunspots cause global warming. I mean, this is a guy who’s way out there. And you say, "Well, why doesn’t the media stop this?"

AMY GOODMAN: And his wealth comes from?

JOHN NICHOLS: He married a wealthy woman.

RICHARD KIM: Spent $4 million just in the primary. And then the—

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, no, you’ve got to understand, he gave—somehow, out of this very small packaging company, he gave himself first one $5 million loan, then another $5 million loan. But really, this is the important thing, because it ties together all the stuff we’re talking about. He did put $10 million in upfront. But Karl Rove and a lot of these other people have wanted to get rid of Russ Feingold for a long time, because he’s the face of campaign finance reform. So that outside money came in in huge amounts.

And here’s the most fascinating—kind of the capper of the whole thing. On Tuesday, a day early, the Wall Street Journal wrote a dance-on-the-grave editorial with a drawing of Russ Feingold, saying, "Wow, we’re finally going to get rid of Russ Feingold!" The enthusiasm of that editorial—I encourage people to go back and read it—the enthusiasm of that editorial summed up really what was going on. Johnson spent a lot of his money, but literally millions, perhaps tens of millions, of dollars in corporate money came in to get rid of Russ Feingold.

LAURA FLANDERS: And it wasn’t just Feingold. The editorial talked about the death of campaign finance. The effort to restrict campaign contributions by corporations is dead, they said. This is the end of that liberal experiment.

Well, the next Congress should be entertaining for connoiseurs of dark comedy, anyway.

// posted by nash @ 3:54 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 1:05 PM 0 comments

My, that Glenn Beck is a veritable model of probity, ain't he?

// posted by nash @ 7:26 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:24 PM 0 comments

Leslie Savan:

More a Wake for Sanity Than a Rally to Restore It

I guess we'll see tomorrow, huh?

// posted by nash @ 7:00 PM 0 comments