mondrian’s neon fantod

Oh, it’s funny. Very, very funny.

I’m not talking about the shrub, because he just makes me angry, but I will note that he seemed to be working his way towarsd the “Look at me, I’m mister friendly” mode that he used when he was governor here in Texas. Anyway, what this post is really about is Senator Webb’s Democratic Response. What do I have to say about it? Nothing that the Senator himself didn’t say. And if you didn’t watch it, do so now:

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=GjZ_pVR1mbk
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=vpVgD2srqog

You’ll be excused for whatever parts of your body drop off at the sight of an American politician who isn’t a liar or a self-serving weasel.

Perhaps you heard about Republican Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia and his bellyaching over the fact that apparently the incoming Democrats are going to try to get Congress to work – horror of horrors! – a five day work week. In case you didn’t, though, here’s what he said:

“Keeping us here eats away at families,” the Georgia Republican told The Washington Post. Hoyer and the Democrats who will soon take control of the House, Kingston charged, “could care less about families – that’s what this says.”

Well, here’s what liberal blogger Nancy Greggs had to say in response:

Representative Jack Kingston
2242 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Having read your quote of last week in response to the announcement that under the newly elected Democratic majority, you will be working a five-day week as opposed to your traditional three-day workweek, I have to say that I truly commiserate with your desire to spend more valuable time with your family.

As you so graciously put it, “Keeping us up here eats away at families,” and who could possibly argue with that statement?

When one thinks about all of the people who will not be spending time with their families, especially as the holidays draw near, it is a truly depressing state of affairs.

There are those who, thanks to your support of this president and his policies, will be missing family members who they will never see again, because they died in Iraq fighting for that Noble Cause we’ve heard so much about. I’m sure that many of them would be willing to work 12-hour workdays, without a single day off for the rest of their lives, if they could spend one day, or even one hour, with their child, their spouse, their best friend who is no more.

There are those from New Orleans who will not be spending any time at home with their families, because their homes no longer exist. They were destroyed while you and your colleagues did nothing, and still stand in ruins in a city that waited for assistance that never came.

There are those who cannot spend time with their families because they now have to work two jobs, sometimes three, in order to make ends meet, while your party supported the outsourcing of the one good-paying job they used to hold.

There are those who cannot see distant relatives as frequently as they used to, because the price of gas has made driving long distances unaffordable, in spite of the tax breaks you supported for the oil companies and their record-breaking profits.

There are others who cannot afford to travel because they are paying for the prescription drugs their elderly parents need to survive – drugs on which, due to your party’s endorsement, pharmaceutical companies reap enormous profits without having to offer any discounts to those in dire need.

And sadly, there are those whose families were scattered when they fell below the poverty level under your party’s rule, families that can no longer afford to stay together under one roof – unless it is the roof of a cardboard box on a street corner, or the roof of an abandoned car.

Yes, there is nothing more important than being able to spend more time with one’s family – especially someone like yourself, who has worked so tirelessly for the good of your constituents, and for our nation as a whole.

One can only imagine how exhausting it has been to spend three days per week rubber-stamping Bush’s every whim, trying to act busy when you are supposed to be exercising oversight and are instead doing nothing, staying ever-vigilant about your colleagues lest you get caught up in the corruption that seems to be rampant among Republican elected officials these days.

No one would dispute the fact that bearing such a heavy workload for three days out of every seven would require long periods of relaxation with your family.

I would strongly suggest that if the Democrats are going to insist on a full workweek for the paltry $165,200 they pay you (plus benefits, pension and perks), perhaps you should just hand in your resignation now. I have no doubt that a hard-working American like yourself will have no trouble finding more reasonable employment in the booming economy that you and your party have worked so hard to create.

In closing, I would be remiss if I did not mention your statement that “the Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”

Well, that’s the Democrats for you, and you should have seen it coming. They are just too focused on making things better for all American families to devote their time exclusively to you and your family. What a bunch of uncaring, unpatriotic bastards.

I sincerely wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year, and hope I have not ruined your family togetherness by reminding you that your family is not the only family in the country experiencing rough times.

Yours with all the respect you rightfully deserve,
Nancy Greggs

Visit Nance Rants for the aftermath and all.

I heard Dean Baker on the Sam Seder Show on Air America my way into work this morning. He’s released his latest book, The Conservative Nanny State as a free ebook. It contains information and insight such as this:

As this book has argued, it is ridiculous for progressives to embrace a position that puts the government acting in the public interest in opposition to the market. The market is an incredibly powerful force. Good policy seeks to harness it in ways that produce desirable social outcomes. It is much easier to have the river flow in the right direction, than to try to block its path and have it flow backwards. The nanny state conservatives have spent the last quarter century putting in place a set of policies and rules that ensure that the river flows in a way that sends income upwards. If these rules are not challenged, then it will be impossible to design policies that ensure that the bulk of the population enjoys a decent standard of living.

It is also ridiculous to claim that conservatives don’t like government or that they don’t run it well. It is true that conservatives don’t like big government social programs, but that is because they want to redistribute income upward and big government social programs are designed to provide security for the entire population. But conservatives are enthusiastic supporters of the big government policies that send income flowing upward, and they are quite effective in running the sectors of government that bring about this end.

In the Reagan and Bush administrations (as was also the case in the Clinton administration) there were no serious problems with foreign doctors or other highly paid professionals practicing in the United States and competing down the wages of U.S. professionals, as the government quite effectively limited such competition. The Fed has been quite successful on several occasions in raising interest rates and keeping millions of people from holding jobs. Pfizer, Microsoft, and Time-Warner have been able to have their patents and copyrights successfully enforced not only in the United States, but increasingly across the globe, as U.S. trade negotiators have forced other countries to provide stronger patent and copyright protection in recent trade agreements. The nanny state conservatives even gave the government an enhanced role as a bill collector in the bankruptcy law that Congress passed in 2005.

The reality is that the nanny state conservatives want a big role for the government in the economy and they are very effective in managing the government when it comes to having it do the things that they care about. They might not do a good job in saving the people of New Orleans from a hurricane, but saving poor people is not the agenda of the nanny state conservatives. Their agenda is making sure that no one mass produces copies of Windows without Microsoft’s permission. Enforcing this type of monopoly, and other interventions that distribute income upward, is the role for government preferred by the nanny state conservatives, and the government performs these functions very well under their watch.

In addition to being essential for the effective design of government policy, reframing the debate is also crucial for the prospects for political success. The basic point is very simple: if progressives argue their positions using a script written by conservatives, then we lose. If we argue about “free trade” agreements, which have as one of their primary purposes increasing patent and copyright protection, then we start with a huge disadvantage. Even worse, progressives will sometimes talk about restricting drug patents (as in requiring compulsory licensing for essential medicines) as a form of interference with the free market. The hearts of the nanny state conservatives must be filled with joy when they hear their own rhetoric spouted passionately from the mouths of their political opponents.

The nanny state conservatives have largely been running the political show in the United States over the last quarter century. This is due in part to the fact that the liberal/progressive opposition has been so incredibly confused in trying to lay out an alternative framework. At the moment, there is nothing on the table that passes the laugh test in either its policy coherence or political appeal.

In order to have any hope at succeeding, we will have to move beyond the political framing of the nanny state conservatives. Many people have become comfortable with the framing “we like the government, they like the market,” but it is both wrong and politically ineffective. If liberals/progressives insist on adhering to this framework, then they guarantee themselves continuing failure in the national political debate. This framing would be fine if the point is to simply show up and be the perennial losers of national politics, but if the point is to actually change the world in a way that makes it better for the bulk of the population, then we must be prepared to move beyond the ideology of the conservative nanny state.

So if you’re interested in approaching political and economic debate from an educated, left-leaning perspective, you should probably download the ebook and read it. No, really. Read it.

It seems worth noting…

Ortega wins in Nicaragua.

Mr Ortega has seen 16 years of conservative governments and says he wants an end to “savage capitalism”.

But he says his revolutionary days are behind him – and his main priority is to secure foreign investment to help to ease widespread poverty.

Maybe that same spirit of helping the less fortunate is rising again here in the US as well. It sure feels like it today.

Ring the fire bell, granny! Someone put the brakes on the fascists!

And for once it wasn’t just one lone, bold voice on the Senate floor or something equally noble yet saddening. Nope, it was a majority of the American people that turned out to the polls yesterday who said “Hey, let’s slow down and have a little oversight, here. Heck, maybe even some change and accountability.”

Of course, there’s nothing stopping the shrub from delcaring all the new congressional democrats “unlawful enemy combatants” and shipping them off to black sites in the former soviet republics (or maybe just asking Dick take them all hunting), but today must be about optimisim. Tomorrow we can worry about the road ahead, and all the work that must be done do undo the damage wrought upon the Republic by the bad guys. Tomorrow you can worry about all the negatives you want. But today, this one bright day, let’s just be happy that people spoke out against this corrupt regime using the peaceful voice of (mostly functional) elections. Because surely that’s part of what makes America great. And today we can be proud to be Americans.

Shut up and go watch this.

Or, you can read the transcript right here… (shamelessly stolen from the good folks at crooksandliars.com)

And finally tonight, a Special Comment.

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered towards the edge of the cliff, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.

The Congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in mid-air, and smashed its metal point, across the Senator’s head.

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Senator Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him, and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding, on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him, only because his cane finally broke.

Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

In point of fact, it might have been the moment — not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Senator Sumner – but when voters in Brooks’s district started sending him new canes.

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

There is no line this President has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party, in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced — or laughably transparent.

Senator John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000 — just as millions of us, have been too cordial ever since.

Senator Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor, he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that quote “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can get stuck in Iraq.”

The Senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas;the state of denial;stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded, by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize — to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase “appearing to be too stupid” is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here:

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid — but honest.

No; the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Senator Kerry said to fit your political template. That you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops — or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario; that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you, and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political — to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either — that the insult, in fact, is you.

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.

Thus the President will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

This President must apologize to the troops — for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, quote “look like just a comma.”

This President must apologize to the troops — because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

This President must apologize to the troops — for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence, at a banquet, while our troops were in harm’s way.

This President must apologize to the troops — because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

This President must apologize to the troops — because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months.

This President must apologize to the troops — for getting 2,815 of them killed.

This President must apologize to the troops — for getting this country into a war without a clue.

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology… for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

—

We will not receive them, of course.

This President never apologizes.

Not to the troops.

Not to the people.

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Senator Kerry was wrong about the Press Secretary.

Mr. Snow’s words and conduct — falsely earnest and earnestly false — suggest he is not “stuffed” – he is inflated.

And in leaving him out of the equation, Senator Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Senator McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context, even more disturbing: Mr. McCain demanded the apology, while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how, quote “many of the have lost limbs.” He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there: Tammy Duckworth.

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

And exploit all the veterans, and all the still-serving personnel, in a cheap and tawdry political trick, to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the President had been stupid.

And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased, or gullible, or lazy newscasters, nodded in sleep-walking assent.

Senator McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend; another his fellow veteran, leg-less, for whom he should weep and applaud, or at minimum about whom, he should stay quiet.

That was beneath the Senator from Arizona.

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured — out of a desperation, and a futility, as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Senator Sumner.

This, is our beloved country now, as you have re-defined it, Mr. Bush.

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran, in defense of military personnel, whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party’s advertisements against Harold Ford.

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bi-partisanship — of Michael J. Fox — yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it.

“It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.”

Where on earth might the First Lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?

“How ever they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq , “their approach comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses.”

No manipulation of feelings there.

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the First Lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

Winning in Iraq, sir.

Winning in America, sir.

There, we have chaos: joint U.S./Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias — and the Americans have been ordered out by the Prime Minister of Iraq… and our Secretary of Defense doesn’t even know about it!

And here — we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit, that somehow permits a President to say, quote, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.”

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

Instead of “declare victory — and get out”… we now have “declare victory — and stay, indefinitely.”

And also here, we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition. True domestic terror:

– Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

– Braying newspapers applaud, or laugh, or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

– A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” — that was openly available on the internet.

– One radio critic receives a letter, threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained — and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

– And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican Senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the Senator’s supporters, and thrown to the floor, in full view of television cameras, as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent and the rage of the day Preston Brooks found Senator Charles Sumner.

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax. Nor undermine the FBI’s case. Nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times. Nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller. Nor beat up a man yelling at Senator Allen. Nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox. Nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

No, you did not.

And the genius of the thing, is the same, as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

All you have to do, sir… is hand out enough new canes.