Meghan McCain: On Message

You didn’t really expect Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John “yes, I may have lost, but I’m still a cranky, idea-free asshole” McCain, to break news during Wednesday’s appearance on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, did you?

OK, yes yes yes, she has “taken on” Ann Coulter, saying writing out loud in The Daily Beast all the things that, well, 89% of the sentient population already knows. But hey, props where props is due: it’s not like everyone is blogging about how noxious Coultergeist is, now, is it?

So, it wasn’t “breaking” news that we got in a head-scratchingly super-sized double segment, but there was some refreshing honesty—or, if not honesty, at least a sort of self-awareness. You think that I’m going to mention hearing a McCain admit to zero understanding of “economic things”—nah, too easy. Truly old news. But, check this out:

I really think we’re on the precipice of possibly becoming a party that’s irrelevant to young people. It’s truly possible in the next election unless the right politician, the right message, and it starts with message, which I think people are missing, too. . . .

Well, Meghan, they very well might be missing the right message—there was that November election, after all—but that your Republicans are missing that “it starts with message?” We beg to differ:

[House Minority leader John] Boehner reminded Republicans that they are no longer in the business of legislating and should focus almost solely on communicating their message with voters.

Read more »

Rush, Republicans Gaze at Navels while America Looks Elsewhere for Leadership

Conn Carroll, quoting an Ann Althouse quip fed through the Instapundit filter, should know that two wrongs don’t make a, um, Next Right:

The White House, the DNC, and Americans United for Change are all apparently about to double down on their "Republicans equal Limbaugh" strategy. My thoughts on this are summed up by a comment on Ann Althouse's blog highlight by Instapundit: "Does anyone really think Team Obama's focus on Limbaugh reflects their success so far in office."

This should be the only talking point when conservative surrogates are brought on TV to talk about this compleltely [sic] fake controversy: The only reason the Obama White House is attacking Rush Limbaugh is because Obama already has been a complete failure in office. Since his election in November the market has lost 25% of its value and every single one of his policy announcements has only been followed by hundreds of thousands of more lost jobs.

Obama, the Democrats, and the left desperately want to change the subject from Obama's performance. That is why they are investing time, resources, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in demonizing Rush. How does any of this help the American people?

Representative John Boehner (Rushlickin’ – OH) seems to be reading off of the same fax (via Benen):

[I]n a carefully calculated campaign, operatives and allies of the Obama administration are seeking to divert attention toward radio host Rush Limbaugh, and away from a debate about our alternative solutions on the economy and the irresponsible spending binge they are presiding over. This diversionary tactic will not create a single job or help a single family struggling in today's economic crisis. And that is where our focus should be.

“Calculated campaign?” “Operatives and allies?” Puh-leez! The most calculated, orchestrated part of this whole hullabaloo is the daily gust of ill wind blowing from the blowhard himself—and Rush is going to ride the breeze for as long as he can.

The establishment media, never one to turn down an easy story controversy slap fight might be focused on Limbaugh—they are the ones that have asked questions of Gibbs, Emanuel, etc., after all—but "Team" Obama seems focused on fixing the fucking the disaster left to them by "Team" Bush-Cheney. The Recovery Act, the budget fixes—hell, the whole damn budget—today’s healthcare summit, Clinton’s Mideast initiative, the initiative to cut military waste, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, this week’s release of the OLC memos. . . that's what the White House is focusing on.

Where is the Republican "loyal" opposition focusing? They are busy fearmongering about "socialism," saying "no" without proposing any implementable alternatives, and seeing who can kiss Rush's butt closest to his anus.

Read more »

Before you think too kindly of House Republicans...

Let me start with an extended quote from Glenn Greenwald:

Retired New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, writing at The New Republic yesterday, makes a critical point, in a piece entitled "Celebrating the Bailout Bill's Failure":

Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today should make you cheer -- loudly.

Why?

Because the majority vote against it shows that Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class, by which I mean Wall Street and the corporations who rely on it for their financing. These campaign donors, a narrow slice of America, have lobbied and donated their way into a system that stacks the economic rules in their favor. But faced with as many as 200 telephone calls against the bailout for every one in favor, a lot of House members decided to listen to their constituents today instead of their campaign donors.

Johnston's celebration that "Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class" is probably premature given that Congressional leaders are falling all over themselves to assure everyone that this deal will pass in a few days after it is tinkered with in one direction or the other. . . . The corporate donor class and political establishment may lose a battle here and there, but they almost never lose the war, since they own and control the political battlefield.

Still, Johnston's overarching point is absolutely right. For better or worse, yesterday's vote was the rarest event in our political culture: ordinary Americans from all across the political spectrum actually exerting influence over how our Government functions, and trumping the concerted, unified efforts of the entire ruling class to ensure that their desires, as usual, would be ignored.

I like both Greenwald and David Cay Johnston a lot—I have especially appreciated Johnston’s writing on this latest manufactured “crisis”—and I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but I think both of these men are giving “We, the People,” too much credit for making our voices heard, or, if not quite that, giving they, the House Republicans, too much credit for listening to we, the people.

Though Greenwald will correctly point out that whether Republicans are listening out of concern for their constituencies or concern for their jobs is a distinction without a difference, there is another possible—and I think probable—motivation at work. It is not the fear of losing their jobs, but the desire to make political hay, to use this bailout to destroy Democratic prospects (this year, and, even more so, in 2010), that is most likely the unifying force behind the Republican revolt.

Well, that prospect, and a guy named Newt:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported this morning that conservatives may have been taking their marching orders from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who “was whipping against this up until the last minute” — despite issuing a statement supporting the bill as the vote was taking place:

MITCHELL: I’m told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, that it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know it, it was socialism. And then at the last minute comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place.

Reacting to the news, NBC’s Mike Barnicle said he had been told by congressional conservatives that the move was “the opening salvo of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign four years hence.”

That is not to say that the phone calls by concerned Americans were pointless—not at all—but it is to say that one should never assume there is the possibility of common cause to be struck with the post-Reagan Republican Party. They, like their latest standard-bearer, John McCain, are interested in power for power’s sake, and are the very embodiment of the corporate donor class-backed political establishment that Greenwald and Johnston believe took a body blow on Monday.

It is not so long ago that Gingrich haunted the corridors of power with his nasty brand of us-versus-them politics and sanctimonious hypocrisy. It was never enough that he and his party should win, it was also necessary that Democrats loose.

The man and his caucus are little changed today. If progressive Democrats want to stop the NPLB (No Plutocrats Left Behind) bill and advance a real economic fix, then they are going to have to do it themselves.

. . .

As to that final point—progressives doin’ it for themselves—there is an alternative bill with the less than compelling name “No BAILOUTS” (it’s an acronym—don’t ask) now introduced in the House. It is a mixed bag, but on the whole, much better—and much cheaper—than Paulson-plus. Sirota has a rundown and a plan of action.

The Senate plans to vote on a bill similar to the House version of Paulson with some tax cuts to woo the right and some incentives for alternative energy to then woo back liberal members. It’s still a monumental piece of crap. It will not fix the problem—though it will artificially inflate the markets for a while—in the long run, it could make things much worse. If you feel like picking up the phone today, please ignore my above cynicism and call your Senators—urge a “no” vote on this Paulson-plus plan. Instead, ask your Senators to pass the stimulus package previously approved by the House.

Then, while you’ve got that bakelite in your hands, call your US Representative, tell them of your continued opposition to a $700 billion bailout, and ask him or her to consider something like No BAILOUTS as an alternative.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

Stupid is as stupid does

Paul Krugman, writing in Friday’s New York Times, crafts a cautionary tale about the current political landscape.

[T]he debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Krugman reminds us of the lies told often enough in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media elites that happily repeated the party line, and the repercussions and recriminations that awaited those that did not. (Krugman was no doubt being self-referential. As he told a group of us last month at Netroots Nation, New York Times management came to him as late as mid-2005 and told him to “lighten up” on his criticism of George W. Bush, arguing that “the [2004 presidential] election settled some things.”) In fact, it was not until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hit home in September of 2005 that we began to see the end of the “cult of personality that lionized [Bush] as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority.” Well, at least in some circles. . . .

[T]he state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bush’s plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling — and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won’t prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains — and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

So, if we are to take the numbers PK cites at face value, we have to ask “Why?” Why does the insanely stupid “drill here/drill now” have any traction? Here’s what I believe:

When you are feeling the real economic pain caused by $4 gasoline, you want to hear something—anything—about what someone—anyone—is going to do about it. As much as I know and believe in the intellectual superiority of conservation measures and a shift away from a hydrocarbon economy, those that have to choose between, say, needed prescription medicines and a full tank of gas need something more tangible and immediate. And even though a tune-up and properly inflated tires might offer some a degree of savings at the pump, it still might feel like the government that let gas get so expensive is now telling consumers, “it’s your problem.”

As I discussed earlier in the week, I don’t think that addressing the gas price problem inside the Republican-defined “more oil/less worry” frame is ever going to be a winner for Democrats. Democrats need to link expensive gasoline to Bush/Cheney Administration policies (both re: the Cheney Energy Taskforce and the instability in the Middle East caused by the administration’s needless, reckless Iraq campaign), and they also need to introduce a plan that will ease some of the economic hardship felt by working Americans. (I suggested a restructuring of FICA, with a tax holiday for the first $10,400 earned by an individual, but I am open to other ideas.)

But there is probably another reason that an idea (no, it’s not really an idea, it’s really nothing more than a chant—a war chant) as lame as “drill here/drill now” just won’t die, and that is the breath of life that many Democrats (presidential nominee Obama included) have given it with talk of “compromise.”

And therein lies my biggest takeaway from the Krugman piece—and perhaps its true target audience, as well. As the conclusion makes clear, you can’t compromise with stupid. It doesn’t work from an intellectual standpoint, because to walk in that downhill direction only diminishes the credibility of your own stance. And it doesn’t work from a political angle because the party of stupid doesn’t ever agree to shake hands and call it a win-win. They will claim Republican victory (and Democratic defeat) on offshore drilling, funnel more money to their Big Oil benefactors, and then continue to bash and blame Democrats for the high cost of fuel.

It is a lesson that Krugman has gleaned from a bumper crop of stupid Republican initiatives over the last decade (two decades? three?)—he gets it. But if you read between the lines of Friday’s column, it seems he is asking why many in the Democratic leadership still do not.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

On electability

I have never been one to push electability as a deciding factor in a political race. It’s sort of an absurd game to try to guess what’s in the hearts and minds of others. If everyone would go to polls and vote for the candidate they honestly think is the best choice, then that alone would make him or her electable.

But what if the other side (as I will call Republicans for the sake of argument and comity) tips their hand? What if they basically telegraph whom they would love to square off against, and, conversely, whom worries them—does that change the role of electability as an evaluative criterion?

I don’t think it is a great analytical leap to say that most Republican strategists are prepping for a campaign against Senator Clinton—and I have to think they are fine with that (well, as fine as you could be working for a Republican this election cycle—that can’t be fun). Clinton is an intensely known quantity with a long and well-documented track record in the public eye. Plenty of people like HRC, sure, and indeed feel a keen affinity for her, but plenty really and truly don’t. Nationally, Sen. Clinton has the highest negatives of any top tier candidate—and those numbers have proven remarkably stable throughout this overlong campaign season.

Like I said, she is a known quantity. There are not a lot of people out there who say, “I just don’t know enough about Hillary to make up my mind.”

There’s not a lot of room on the upside, and, theoretically, there’s not a lot of room on the downside, either.

Except that there kind of is. . . .

It is relatively easy to measure what people think, but not always as easy to predict what people will do. But I’m going to take a crack at it, anyway.

The Republican brand is a mess. At present, it is now hard to see what Republicans can stand for in a public sense. Standing by Bush ain’t gonna get it done. Talking about Iraq is not something any of them would want to do. Cutting taxes is an old standby, but with so many current and looming economic crises, and the gap between rich and poor so gaping that even the establishment media occasionally has to sit up and take notice, that old saw seems elitist and irresponsible. Even immigration, supposedly the Republican’s wedge issue, is, in reality, a disaster in the making: polls show most voters don’t think this is a top concern, and the hatemongering nativist bigotry will likely drive more voters to their opponents than it will galvanize any faux-populist groundswell.

The only thing I can see unifying the Republicans next fall is fear and loathing—an nothing seems to turn up the bass on the Republican noise box (and turn out the base for a Republican candidate) like the looming specter of another Clinton in the White House.

Honestly, part of me just doesn’t get this. A thinking Republican (work with me on this, OK?) would notice that President Bill took his party a great big step to the right when he emerged on the national scene. Just think, under Big Dawg, we had such anti-progressive legislation as welfare reform—which was nothing but a Republican pipe dream only years earlier.

And Bill Clinton ran a coattail-free presidency, expending little of his political capital to help his party down-ticket. Under the leadership of Clinton 42, Democrats managed to do something they hadn’t done in some 40 years: lose control of both houses of Congress.

It took a decade of hard work and a really, really bad Republican in the White House to undo that horror (if you can call this current Democratic majority a real undoing).

Maybe it’s that President Clinton appropriated so many of the GOP’s positions, and did it in such a charming way, that has so many Republicans tearing at their clothes every time they hear his name. Or, maybe it’s just that he was so damn charming.

There is no doubting Bill Clinton’s great personal charisma, and when he is sandwiched between Prescott’s progeny and the progeny’s progeny, William Jefferson looks like a fucking god among men. (Hush, you!)

Of course, Hillary is not Bill. She has a bit less charisma, and actually stands a tad further to right (in my humble opinion). But to Republicans, it’s as if she were the wrong kind of second coming.

So, to my earlier point, the best way to unify the Republican Brand is to give them something to be against—and if you have seen the Republican debates or if you watch or listen to rightwing news/talk/blather, then you know they just love being against Hillary Clinton.

Then there’s the other side. Our side. It has long been the contention that the left-leaning base of the Democratic Party would accept a more centrist candidate for national office because, well, because of that electability issue. In theory, you gotta win over some of the middle, right? If you are to the left of the Democratic nominee, where you gonna go?

Unfortunately, many elections over the last two decades have taught us that while the party faithful might not always have somewhere else to go (Ralph Nader not withstanding), they pretty much always have some place to stay: home.

It is not sufficient to expect a voter to cast his or her ballot for the lesser of two evils, or the closer of two ideologies, because contemporary voters don’t always do that. All too often, the uninspired voter writes off the whole process. They don’t vote against you, sure, but they don’t vote for you, either. Much of the time, they just don’t vote.

While there is much to hope for in the candidacies of any of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, some capture that hope better than others. And some do it worse. To my mind, Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the latter category.

As HRC works overtime to win the general election without first winning the primary, she has taken to couching almost every one of her positions in a vast array of buzzwords and qualifying phrases. I find so little of what she says to be daring or inspired, and, so, I find almost none of it inspiring.

I fear other voters might feel the same way. And while I will be at the polls next November pulling the lever (yes, we still do that in New York) for a Democrat, no matter who it is, because this one is that important, I can easily envision others who just won’t bother. I can because I have met them.

Believe it or not, even here in liberal and engaged New York City, I have spoken with people who think this is all a big game. . . or a big bore. Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton—it’s just an amusement for the powerful corporate interests that really rule the world. (I am not making this up.) George W. Bush isn’t running this time, so they don’t have to worry about him, and they haven’t paid much attention to anyone else.

Democrats need a candidate that will get these people to pay attention. One that will get them, and people all over the country like them, excited. One that will articulate a message in such a way that it will inspire people who don’t normally think elections matter. One who can bring a cause to people who don’t often think there is a reason to vote. One who can give hope to people who don’t believe that what they do at the polls has any consequence.

So far, which is for far too long, Senator Clinton has not been that candidate.

Which brings us back to electability. Again, not a good reason in-and-of itself to choose a candidate—electability is just not an issue like Iraq, or healthcare, or poverty are issues. But, after eight years of horrific leadership, electability is not a non-issue, either. This is an election Democrats want to win; this is an election Democrats have to win.

And win up and down the ticket, I might add.

And, if that’s the way you see it, too, well, then Hillary Clinton is honestly not the best choice. Honestly.


(Oh, and, as to which candidate does worry Republican strategists, well, there is this.)


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

The Politics of Falling Down

God knows how much money is spent on t-shirts that say “Shit Happens,” and one can’t even begin to imagine the number of people, t-shirt owners or no, that have used that expression to dismiss all kinds of seemingly incongruous or incomprehensible events.

Of course, in just about any case you can name, shit doesn’t just happen. One of the uncomfortable lessons of history—especially the history of the last six-and-a-half years—is that things happen for a reason. That reason is usually not some grand plan, or God’s will, at least not by my reckoning. The fault, most often, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Which leads us to a stretch of highway in Minnesota—a stretch that used to connect the twin cites of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

As I’m sure almost all of you know, a 40-year-old bridge that had stretched across the Mississippi River collapsed during rush hour yesterday, and when all the cars are salvaged from the wreckage, there could be as many as 30 found dead. The establishment media, has, in large part, turned its attention to graphic images of the collapse and its aftermath, the heroics of the first-responders, and the harrowing tales of the survivors and those looking for missing relatives.

Few news reports seem to be asking what I asked right away: How did that happen?

Bridges don’t just fall down. Especially bridges as heavily used this one. Some reports will tell you that the bridge was being resurfaced and had recently passed an inspection—what the reports don’t tell you is that the bridge barely passed.

Reports also often include an appearance or soundbite from Minnesota’s Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, a man considered a rising star in his party with national aspirations. “This is a catastrophe of historic proportions,” says Pawlenty.

What the governor doesn’t give you is the history. I’ll leave that task to Nick Coleman, columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way. . . .

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

As Coleman points out, the collapse is not the immediate result of Pawlenty’s budget priorities—officials of all stripes, state and federal, have been giving short-shrift to our nation’s infrastructure for much too long, choosing, instead, to waste money on tax breaks for the wealthy, or corporate welfare, or Iraq—but how fitting a grace note is it that tonight’s scheduled groundbreaking for the new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium (which Pawlenty was to attend) has had to be cancelled because of this bridge disaster? The stadium, a private facility for a team owned by an extremely wealthy man, will receive a half-billion dollars in state subsidies.

And how fitting is it that in about a year, the Twin Cities are set to host the Republican National Convention? As conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke once remarked, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.” As all of America now knows (or so I would hope), Republicans would be hard-pressed to stand in New Orleans’ Jackson Square two years after President Bush stood there and promised to rescue and rebuild a city his administration helped destroy. What will be their rhetoric next summer when they pontificate on the failures of big government a mere ten minute drive from the pont that serves as another example of the results of their governing philosophy?

No doubt they will find a way to blame government while ignoring the fact that once again the government responsible was theirs.

Or maybe they’ll just shrug and tell the grieving families of the I-35 disaster, “Shit happens.”

For the rest of us, it’s time we realize that that these disasters don’t just happen. It’s time we realize, perhaps, that the fault lies not in our stars—it lies in our Republican stars.

A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience

What the hell—right? I mean, if the late Mayor John Lindsay could jettison his Republican ties after losing the party primary while running for a second term, why can’t Mayor Mike jump a sinking ship after winning his? In Tuesday’s announcement that he is removing the epithetical (R) from his name, however, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R ?) looks less like to me like Lindsay, and more like Wernher von Braun.

To be certain, I am less upset with Bloomberg’s leaving the GOP than I was when he joined it in the first place. The fact of the matter is that then, as now, the mayor had little in common with the New York or the national Republican Party, either with regards to history or ideology. If anything, Bloomberg became more of a Republican after he was elected mayor back in 2001.

Instead, what Bloomberg saw in the Republican Party back in ’01 was an opportunity. Mike had an ambition, and the New York Republicans—already in rapid decline back then—had a need. Bloomberg had no desire to work his way through the system or wait his turn, so he switched from Democrat to Republican expressly to snag a guaranteed ballot spot he likely could not win on his own in a Democratic primary.

Mike also had money, and in the Republican primary, and most certainly in the general election, he spent it. He blitzed his opponents. By most accounts, Bloomberg spent over $70 for each and every vote he received on his way to defeating Democrat Mark Green. (He actually spent even more—over $110/vote—in his campaign for reelection.)

And so, with his loose change and his convenient change of sides, Mike Bloomberg got to be mayor. And while he has been like a breath of fresh air after the vile and nasty Rudy Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg has hardly been a progressive’s dream (some very recent proposals for a greener city notwithstanding).

Even looking past the unchecked overdevelopment taking place in New York and Bloomberg’s less than small (or large, for that matter) “d” democratic approach to public education reform, it is hard to celebrate Mike’s run as a Republican mayor because of the support he felt necessary to lend to his new found friends. Bloomberg has given $350,000 of his own fortune to the state party and perhaps more to its candidates, and let us not forget his role as host to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

And let us not forget the preventive detentions, security clampdowns, and the more recently revealed covert infiltration of protest groups that lead up to and surrounded that convention—a style of policing that was not a so much a special case as a case study for the Mayor Bloomberg/Police Commissioner Ray Kelly regime.

Also let us not forget Mike’s not insubstantial campaign help lent to Joe Lieberman (Monomaniacal Party-CT) as the Senator fought successfully to circumvent the will of his constituents and (up till that moment) party.

In fact, it is maybe in Lieberman that we have the best object lesson for understanding Bloomberg’s de-partification (if you will). Both of these men like to brag about how their worldview extends beyond ideology or party, and, in a way, they are right. Neither man is about party because both are all about themselves.

As with Beltway Joe mouthing off almost every week on the Sunday talk shows, many of Mayor Mike’s moves can be seen as grand attempts by a lame duck to remain relevant. Or, if not relevant, at least visible—it is hard, after all, to relinquish the spot light, the bully pulpit, or even the rope line.

But, beyond the attention, what does Michael Bloomberg want? Von Braun was easier to understand—he wanted to make rockets. If he had to join the Nazi party and build V-2s to do it, so be it; if he had to become a naturalized American and make ICBMs, all the better. In the end, he was eulogized as the man who got mankind to the moon.

Bloomberg has recently aimed for the moon himself, making many ambitious and sweeping proposals for changes that will almost all theoretically come to fruition long after he is out of office—his current office. I, for one, still question whether his heart is really in it.

That remains to be seen—as does whether Mike really wants (as he currently claims) to be mayor for another 900-odd days. If not, I fear what we learn about Michael Bloomberg and what he wants will, in reality, be less about what he wants for others, and more about what he wants for himself.

(hat tip: Tom Lehrer)

(cross-posted from guy2k)

What part of “majority” don’t you understand?

After weeks of standing tall and standing fast, the Democratic leadership seems on the verge of, once again, standing for nothing. Claiming that they don’t have the votes to override a Bush veto, the likes of Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer have agreed to strip the Iraq war supplemental spending bill of any real restrictions on the president’s usurped power to continue to make mayhem in the Middle East.

Rather than building on a strategy that has unified most Democrats and allied Congress with the sentiments of three-quarters of American voters, while effectively driving a wedge between Republicans and those same voters, rather than ratcheting up the pressure that effectively planted a ticking time-bomb within the Republican caucus, causing those members that hope for a political future to privately, or sometimes openly, question their dead-ender president, rather than blaze a new way forward while just maybe saving a few lives in Iraq as well, Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen the comfort of concession, the tough talk without the tough action, the tried and true road back to mediocrity and minority.

Rather than strengthening the new narrative that had an out-of-touch president as the last man on earth that thought things were going well in Iraq, and Republicans slowly mustering their own circular firing squad as they nervously eye the electoral calendar, a vote on another blank check for George Bush will split the Democrats. When the supplemental comes to a vote, those members of the majority that still have a spine and a conscience—some predict 120 of them in the House—will vote against their leaders’ “compromise.” In the Senate, I expect a dozen or more Democrats will break with Reid, lining up with Senator Russ Feingold, who expressed his outrage this way:

Under the President’s Iraq policies, our military has been over-burdened, our national security has been jeopardized, and thousands of Americans have been killed or injured. Despite these realities, and the support of a majority of Americans for ending the President’s open-ended mission in Iraq, congressional leaders now propose a supplemental appropriations bill that does nothing to end this disastrous war. I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the President to continue what may be the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history. There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action. Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq.

The length of time before the establishment media reverts to the “divided Democrats” meme will be measured in minutes, if not seconds.

And therein lies the other defeat for Democrats. Beyond losing the battle to end the battle in Iraq, beyond losing the trust of the progressives that worked so hard last year to return the party to majority status, beyond losing additional lives and limbs while they fecklessly wait for the next meaningless milestone or pretend deadline to see them in September, the Democrats, by backing down this week, have lost control of the narrative, and so, have lost control of their brand story.

As Drew Weston wrote—and I blogged about—last week, how the Democrats square off with the White House sends a meta-message about how they will handle confrontations across the board:

The willingness of Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi to stare down the president has done far more to reassure the American people that Democrats know how to deal with aggression than all the efforts over the last five years to show that they, too, "support our troops."

It had done more, anyway. Now, with Reid saying we just can’t override Bush’s veto, goshdarnit, and Pelosi helping to negotiate a bill that she then announces she cannot support, the party is back to sympathizing with losers. Reid, who likes to remind us from time to time of his prizefighting days, should know better. You can’t win this one on points. History is not written by loveable losers, and there is no short-end money for the thousands upon thousands of Americans and Iraqis who will have their lives permanently altered over the next 120 days.

Reid and his Democrats could have been contenders, but, instead, they have bought themselves a one-way ticket back to Palookaville. Once again Democrats will be forced to argue that they really, really do “support our troops,” instead of being allowed to talk about how Bush’s rope-a-dope is killing our fighting men and women and the very civil and military structures that truly safeguard our country.

Of course, the idea that refusing to throw more good money after bad and refusing to sacrifice more soldiers and marines to the disappearing dream of a permanent Republican majority is somehow anti-troop is absurd on its face. The thought that de-funding Bush’s war will somehow strand Americans on a sand dune somewhere in the “triangle of death” with no bullets and no ticket home is so ridiculous it shouldn’t require a response. Yet, this is the story that Democrats are about to let Republicans and their media mediators tell: We can’t have a stand off with the White House, because we support our troops. Refusing to approve the blank check supplemental, so the story will go—has to go—is tantamount to leaving Americans in Iraq to fend for themselves.

Nothing, of course, is further from reality—I mean real reality—wars have been de-funded before, and the result hasn’t been “run for your lives!” The result has been a reasoned and reasonable redeployment, and would be this time, as well. The generals in the field know it, the Pentagon knows it, even the White House knows it (albeit they keep it to themselves), but if the American people are to know it—know it in a way that frames the debate moving forward—then the Democrats have to embrace it.

Instead, it seems, we will continue to be held hostage by the Republican myth machine, with our Democratic leaders exhibiting what might be the first recorded instance of Stockholm Syndrome by proxy.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, the Democrats have, if only for a few more hours, the cheers of an adoring nation. . . or, if not adoring, strongly supportive. Three quarters of Americans—what we call a vast majority—think this occupation is going horribly wrong. A majority support a drawdown of American troops. A majority support a real timeline with an end certain. A majority trust the Democratic Congress more than the President to manage this mess. A majority of independents, a majority of suburban voters, a two-thirds majority of voters in Republican districts all want to see Congress send Bush a bill with restrictions or deadlines. No matter how you slice it, a majority of Americans are against this war, and a majority of Americans want you, the Democrats in Congress, to bring it to an end.

Do that—or, at least continue to try to do that—and you, the Democrats who represent us in Congress, will be thought of as strong. Even if Bush vetoes and threatens to veto again, Americans will have your back because they will believe that you have theirs. Continue to fight, and you will be winners. Capitulate, and you will be losers.

How hard is that to understand?


Action alert: The vote on this compromising compromise could come as early as today. Please call your Representative—especially if he or she supported the McGovern amendment—and call your two Senators—especially if they had voted for the Feingold-Reid resolution last week—and tell them to stand strong and vote “no” on this version of the supplemental spending bill.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

In Republican America, it’s Always “Giuliani Time”

Call me a wild-eyed optimist (you wouldn’t be the first), but I am salivating at the chance to see any of these whack-jobs try to run away from this garbage in the general election.

The whack-jobs to which I refer are the angry white men who are running for the Republican presidential nomination, and the garbage is their, well, dare I dignify them with the label “ideas”?

Let’s look at some of the comments from Tuesday night’s Republican softball game debate regarding torture. Moderator Britt Hume pitched some absurd scenario about a multi-city nuclear attack by terrorists, and then asked candidates about whether they would endorse “enhanced interrogations techniques,” including “waterboarding.” Rudy Giuliani had this to say:

GIULIANI: In the hypothetical that you gave me, which assumes that we know there is going to be another attack and these people know about it, I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of. Shouldn’t be torture, but every method they can think of.

HUME: Water boarding?

GIULIANI: I would say every method they could think of, and I would support them in doing that because I have seen — [applause] — I have seen what can happen when you make a mistake about this and I don’t want to see another 3,000 people dead in New York or any place else.

And, the mouth-foaming xenophobes’ favorite fringe candidate, US Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO—yes, some folks actually elected this guy) thought that since he was on FOX, he’d plug 24:

I just say that it’s almost unbelievable to listen to this in a way. We are talking about it in such a theoretical fashion. You say that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we are wondering about whether waterboarding would a bad thing to do? I’m look[ing] for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you. [applause] There is nothing — if you are talking about — I mean, we are the last best hope of Western Civilization. So all of the theories that go behind our activities, subsequent to these nuclear attacks going off in the United States, they go out the window. When we go under, western civilization goes under. So you better take that into account and you better do every single thing you can as President of the United States to make sure, number one, it doesn’t happen, that’s right. But, number two, you better respond in a way that makes them fearful of you, because, otherwise, you guarantee something like this will happen.

Indeed. It’s the “don’t mess with America because it’s ruled by a crazy SOB and there’s no telling what he might do” theory of deterrence. (Hey, it’s worked so far, uh, yeah, well. . . moving on—)

But, really, why even pretend to be a city on a hill when you’ve got a prison on an island? Which brings us to Guantanamo, and Mitt Romney’s modest proposal:

I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

So, wait, you want to give the detainees more room, or lock their lawyers up with them, or maybe you just want to signal that on inauguration day 2009, it will be “round up the usual suspects” squared?

Really folks, is there a serious man or woman out there—one who is not drawing an administration paycheck, anyway—that thinks Guantanamo has been a net plus in the “war on terror?” Well, at least I have a new nickname for Romney: Mitt “double Git” Romney.

Also, note that the partisan Republican crowd in South Carolina Tuesday, applauded after Giuliani and Tancredo praised torture. Those are the politically involved people who will be picking their party’s standard-bearer!

The torture that routinely goes on at Guantanamo, or at various secret sites in other countries, has seriously tarnished America’s reputation and undermined its authority throughout the world. Along with Abu Ghraib, these examples of US juris(im)prudence are the best recruiting tools a terrorist could have. The policy, and the false bravado that accompanies it, also puts American servicemen and women in greater danger of being tortured themselves. (Don’t just believe me, Colin Powell said it, too.)

Two-thirds of Americans think the US should abide by international treaties and change the way it treats detainees as prescribed by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Even more think we should allow international courts to monitor our compliance with international treaties—even a majority of Republicans think so! So what country are these Republicans running to be president of?

If a Democratic nominee gets to face off against one of these guys in a debate this fall, and a question about torture or Gitmo comes up, I just hope that the Democrat takes the time to pause, look quizzically at the angry white man across the stage, and say something like, “I’m sorry, I’m just taking a moment to absorb your clueless, venal, soulless, lack of humanity.”

And if the Republican nominee happens to be America’s Sadist Mayor Sadist, I hope our candidate has the gumption and spark to say, “America can’t afford another Giuliani time.”


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

Swimming with Donkeys, Kicking Some Ass, Playing for Keeps (and a host of other metaphors)

This is a watershed moment for Democrats. At first blush, it might not feel that wet—the partisan Republicans packing the executive and judiciary branches are, after all, strong bulwarks against a progressive tide—or it might only feel that certain kind of wet one might get in a pissing match (a frame the establishment media is all too eager to put around the conflict between the new majority party in Congress and the dead-enders in the White House). But, this is not a pissing match, nor is it a time to tread water—how the congressional Democrats behave during the remainder of this session will define this generation of politicians for scores of Americans and set the tone for the ’08 election cycle.

Drew Weston, writing for the American Prospect, puts it like this:

The way Democrats handle their confrontation with the White House on the firing of the U.S. attorneys is as important to the party's brand on national defense as the way they handle the confrontation on the funding of the Iraq War itself. Why? Because it sends a meta-message about how they handle confrontations. The willingness of Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi to stare down the president has done far more to reassure the American people that Democrats know how to deal with aggression than all the efforts over the last five years to show that they, too, "support our troops."

I will take Weston’s insight a step further: How the Democrats confront the White House on all matters of oversight—investigating the administration’s deception in the run-up to the Iraq war, uncovering the warrantless domestic spying program(s), closing Guantanamo, ending torture and extraordinary rendition, restoring habeas rights, exposing the failures that lead to the Katrina disaster and continue to hamper Gulf Coast recovery, attempting to correct the partisan politicization of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice and the General Services Administration, prosecuting the influence peddling, cronyism, and outright larceny that has touched the Pentagon, the CIA, Commerce, DHS, the Department of the Interior, the EPA, and many more—will go a very long way to defining the Democrats as a positive force, and not just an opposition party.

Perhaps that seems strange at first—by opposing the Republican agenda, the Democrats transcend their oppositional branding—but if framed, communicated, and executed with the American people (dare I say, “the consumer”) in mind, Democrats can quickly move past saying “no,” move past being perceived as “not Republicans,” and gain brand equity as a force for constructive and noticeable change.

In other words, simply being a “not” brand is not a good positioning for Democrats. “Not” brands are weak brands—defined by their antagonist, reactive at best, reactionary at their worst. There is little that is aspirational in such a positioning; you are the lesser of two evils.

But by standing up for our Constitution, for the rule of law, for a guarantee that every vote counts, for a government for and by the people, for the right to privacy, for accountability and an honest government, the Democratic Party marries itself to the sort of iconic American values that countless beltway strategists have (wrongly) ceded to Republicans for the last decade. Being the party of the country that we set out to be two-and-a-quarter centuries ago, the country that we can be proud to be today, will go further to garner the support of so-called “values voters” than any twisted triangulation on the role of the New Testament in civil society.

And, by standing firm for the ideals laid out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and against the Republican executive’s attempts to degrade them, Democrats not only show what they are fighting for and who they are fighting for, but, that, when the fighting gets tough, they will stand their ground.

By continuing to hammer the Bush Administration and its enablers on the issues outlined above—as well as on the need for national healthcare and a living wage—Democrats will show that Americans have an ally in the everyday struggle for a better life—an ally that won’t cut and run or compromise on core values. There is no negotiating Liberty, after all, and it doesn’t look good to try.

And, by continuing to investigate, hold hearings, reign in the executive—to check and balance—by continuing to pass legislation that benefits hardworking Americans, that represents the beliefs of the majority, even if these bills just meet with a presidential veto, then Democrats will demonstrate strength far more effectively than any photo-op on an aircraft carrier.

If they can do this, Democrats will not only shed light on and throw up roadblocks to the rightwing agenda, and win the hearts of voters, they will do something almost as satisfying—they will disarm beltway blowhards. When you are acting on the instructions of the American majority, when you are advocating for the broad interests of the American people, then you are no longer engaged in a simple pissing match. When your special interest is the Constitution and the people it protects, it is not politics as usual.

Fail to stand tall, however, and you confirm every prejudice of the Paleolithic punditocracy. Talk loudly, but eventually whittle down your stick to something smaller than a souvenir miniature baseball bat, all in the interest of being seen as a team player, and you will soon find yourself handling the leather instead of the wood. You will be back on defense. It’s all a game; you’ll get ‘em next time.

Or, to go back and torture my opening metaphor, if Democrats lack the strong kick to swim with the progressive current, they will again be back to carrying the Republicans’ water, and 2006 will look like just another unremarkable high tide, rather than a defining sea change.

Or, let me put it yet another way: Don’t play for time—play for keeps.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

Mission Not Accomplished

It is easy—really easy—to look at the beady-eyed maniac who vetoed the Iraq supplemental (now! with timelines!) and laugh at the folly of his flyboy stunt and photo-op speech of four years prior. Since then, over 3,200 more dead Americans, 360 billion more dollars down the sinkhole, the number of Sunni insurgents increased 14-fold, the number of attacks up by a factor of 17—mission so not accomplished.

It is easy, too, to laugh at the rationale President Bush used when issuing only the second veto of his administration: timelines are a “prescription for chaos and confusion; an early American exit would turn Iraq into a “cauldron of chaos”—as if Iraq today is a model of warm, fuzzy order rivaled only by Build-a-Bear Workshop.

But, it is because of the additional dollars and the additional dead, because of the inflating number of terrorists and the inflamed global tensions, and because of the current carnage and chaos that I cannot laugh.

Republicans and reporters might want to frame the debate over the future of the occupation as a game, pissing match, or staring contest between Bush and the Democratic leadership, but what is truly at stake is not just bragging rights or a stack of play money. Everyday the US stays the course and continues to splurge on the “surge,” the numbers of dead and wounded Americans, the numbers of dead and wounded Iraqis, the numbers of radicalized Moslems, and the numbers of dollars that could have been spent on something better will continue to increase—and the power that we as a nation have to do anything about it all will continue to decrease.

The clearly deteriorating situation in Iraq—with violence of all kinds as high as ever, the Iraqi parliament in disarray and now on hiatus, the al Maliki government using the US to kill Sunnis and arm their own Shiite militias—coupled with the contempt held by the White House for the feelings and wisdom of the majority here at home, makes this no time for easy jokes. . . or expedient compromises.

And that is why when I say “Mission not accomplished,” I am not looking at the president—not this time—I am looking at the Democrats. George W. Bush has vetoed one strategy to end the occupation—and more the visible fool he for doing so—but that is not an invitation to the Democrats to find their own USS Abraham Lincoln and declare major combat over. Democrats may have won the day, but they have not accomplished their mission.

Voters made it clear last November—America wants its troops out of Iraq. And while this round has done much to tie the Bush Administration and its Republican enablers to a fiasco of historic proportions, it has not stopped the architects of our misfortune from perpetuating, and exacerbating, the nightmare. If Democrats take this moment to feel satisfied with the political points gained, victory will be beyond pyrrhic, and voters will all too soon come to mock them as much as they now do the calcified commander-in-chief.

Any talk of compromise that does not include real and binding restrictions on the President’s long war is not so much compromise as capitulation. Any discussion of drafting a bill that Bush might sign must keep the Democrats’ mission—emphasizing political and diplomatic solutions over military force—in mind, and the final goal—effectively withdrawing all US combat forces from Iraq—in plain sight. Returning to the status quo ante, voting for another supplemental funding bill while paying aggressive lip service to the president’s problems, will not end the carnage nor calm the chaos, and thus, it will not do.

Over four years in, Bush’s original mission—however you frame it—lies in blood-soaked ruin. It is not accomplished, but it needs to be over. The occupation must end. American troops must come home.

President Bush has now made it his mission to prevent that from happening—it is the Democrats’ mission to see that this time, this Bush mission is (also) not accomplished.


(cross-posted from guy2k)

Fill In The Blanks

As Alberto Gonzales is to Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Washington press corps.

Well, if you answered “David Broder,” give yourself an A:

The Democrats' Gonzales

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 26, 2007; A29

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

Broder would be a “continuing embarrassment” to his inside-the-beltway brethren if any of them tried talking to the rank-and-file instead of reading each other’s clippings. But, like Gonzales, Broder relies on years’ worth of well-rubbed elbows and the noblesse oblige of the Capitol cocktail party set to maintain his position as the titular head of his guild (Gonzo as the nation’s top lawyer, Broder as “The Dean” of Washington newspapermen).

If they were to ever go back to doing what journalists are supposed to do—reporting, newsgathering, that sort of thing—what “The Dean” and all of his dean-iacs might notice is that while Alberto “I can’t recall” Gonzales is at the very least an embarrassment to his party, but more like a disgrace to the nation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying out loud and to the president what wide majorities of Americans believe and would say themselves if anyone thought to ask.

Fortunately, for the truly curious among us—and, no, that doesn’t include Broder—we have something called “opinion polls,” and here’s what a very new one has to say:

Do you think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is still possible, or not?
Yes, victory in Iraq is still possible....... 36
No, victory in Iraq is not still possible.... 55
Not sure......................................…. 9

Thinking of the situation in Iraq over the past three months, do you think the situation there has gotten better, gotten worse, or stayed about the same?
Gotten better.............................. 12
Gotten worse.............................. 49
Stayed about the same................ 37
Not sure.................................. 2

When it comes to the debate on Iraq who do you agree with more?
The Democrats in Congress, who say we should set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq;
OR
President Bush, who says we should NOT set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq?
Democrats in Congress/should set deadline.... 56
President Bush/should NOT set deadline........ 37
Some of both (VOL)................................... 3
Not sure................................................... 4

In general, do you approve or disapprove of the job that George W. Bush is doing as president?
Approve............................. 35
Disapprove......................... 60
Not sure........................... 5

I could say the numbers speak for themselves, and leave it at that, but I will add an observation. When you hear Senator Reid saying the Iraq war is “lost,” you are hearing from a man who is not only the Majority Leader (and yes, that means he’s in the majority), you are probably hearing from a man who reads the front sections of several newspapers—in other words, the news pages, and not just the opinion page, of newspapers from inside and outside of the (literal and metaphorical) DC beltway.

When you read David Broder, you read the words of a man very much like not only the Attorney General mentioned at the beginning of this extended analogy, but also somewhat like that AG’s patron, George W. Bush.

For as Broder and his establishment media cohorts have spent the last two or three decades cloistering themselves with the power elites on which they are supposed to report, they have joined those elites inside the same echo chamber. It is no secret that President Bush doesn’t like to hear a lot of critical “perspective,” so when you work your way into the king and his courtier’s close confidences, you are likely not to hear much of that criticism, either.

In fact, Broder and his aging band of beltway brothers are probably a little horrified (if not terrified) by the behavior of the next edition of the ruling class. After all the prostration and prostitution, after all the hard work and heavy drinking, after all the time spent earning a season’s pass to the conservative construct of Utopia—what the establishment media calls “access”—the fortunate of the fourth estate cannot simply turn to the left and bow down to the new order. (It’s hard on their aging backs, and the new majority might not trust them—or party with them—anyway.)

And that can’t be a fun position for The Dean. For, while Broder no longer seems to read today’s news, he probably remembers some ancient history. I’m thinking here of Sir Thomas More who, despite working his way up to Lord Chancellor, still found his body a good distance from his head after refusing to acknowledge that there was a new Queen in town.

Of course, I am not going to be recommending The Dean for sainthood any time soon (nor ever). Where Saint Thomas More might have held his ground out of deep moral conviction, Dean David Broder’s allegiance is likely a matter of expedience. He’s assessed on which side his bread is buttered, and he’s scared to death of being toast.

Much like that blankity-blank Alberto Gonzales, don’t you think?


(Hat tips to Josh, and Joan, and about half of the blogosphere, I figure.)


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

"Instant" Karma

Former Secretary of Labor and University of California professor Robert Reich pretty much nails it:

In the United States, if you are seriously depressed, you can purchase anti-depressive drugs like Prozac, but only if you have a prescription from a doctor. Anti-depressants are enormously beneficial to millions of people but they are also potentially dangerous if used improperly. So, you have to see a doctor and get an assessment before you can go to a drug store and purchase one.

But in the United States, in places like Virginia, a seriously depressed or deranged person can walk into a store and buy a semi-automatic handgun and a box of ammunition. All you need is two forms of identification. You don’t need permission from a doctor or counselor or anyone in the business of screening people to make sure [you’re] fit to have a gun.

We can debate the relative benefits and dangers of anti-depressants and semi-automatic handguns, but if 30,000 Americans were killed each year by anti-depressants, as they are by handguns, anti-depressants would be even more strictly regulated. So why aren't handguns? Consider the politics.

Funny (that would be funny strange, not funny ha-ha) enough, it appears Reich wrote his commentary (which also aired on Marketplace) before the full extent of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui’s documented psychiatric problems were revealed to the press. Cho, it turns out, was not one of those stereotypical “nice, quiet boys” that everyone scratches their head about after things go to all to hell. No, this was the guy that everyone expected to do something like this. Two female students had complained to police after Cho harassed them via phone calls and text messages, a roommate thought him suicidal, a creative writing teacher brought Cho’s violent plays and stories to the attention of University administrators, and poet Nikki Giovanni threatened to quit the VaTech faculty if Cho wasn’t removed from her class because he was scaring away other students.

In fact, we learned on Wednesday that Cho had been involuntarily detained in a mental facility when it was determined by a psychiatric professional that he presented “an imminent danger to self or others.”

Much attention is being paid to, and much is being made of, the fact that Virginia Tech administrators had not collected all of these incidents in some sort of central file—as if somehow someone in the academic community should have been able to prevent the shooting spree that killed 33, including Cho, himself. While I will be one of the first to advocate for more awareness about mental illness, better mental health services, and easier access to them, the absence of a coordinated University response to Cho is not what facilitated this massacre, and not the most disturbing part of Wednesday’s revelations.

Instead of second-guessing the individual judgments of teachers and administrators—many of whom did their best to intervene—why don’t we focus on this fact: Cho Seung-Hui, a young man with documented mental problems, a man declared “an imminent danger to self or others,” walked into a Roanoke gun shop, and, moments later, walked out with a gun.

In a country of lax gun laws, Virginia has some of the laxest. Virginia has no gun registration, no safety training requirements for gun ownership, no restrictions on the kinds of guns sold, no mandatory waiting period for gun purchase, and performs only the most perfunctory “instant” background checks. Pretty much all you need, as Reich observed, is two forms of ID and you’re good to go. . . and kill.

Almost all Republicans, and an unfortunate number of Democrats, have fought long and hard against real background checks as a prerequisite for gun purchase. Early drafts of the “Brady Bill” suggested a waiting period of a week to allow for a thorough background check; that was negotiated down to five days by the time the bill was signed into law back in late 1993. But part of the law was struck down in 1997, and the waiting period provision expired in 1998.

The Brady waiting period was replaced with the so-called National Instant Check System (NICS) nine years ago, allowing a purchase to be approved in minutes if a check of a federal criminal database shows no felony violations. But even the NICS law has all kinds of exceptions that allow states and private sellers to skirt background checks entirely.

It was gun-loving Virginia’s take on the “instant” check that allowed Cho to instantly obtain a 9 mm Glock semiautomatic, extra clips, and many, many rounds of ammunition. (Cho also bought a .22 caliber handgun at a pawnshop, and additional ammunition at a Wal-Mart—in both of those cases, it was also cash and carry.) It was that instantly purchased murder kit that allowed Cho to turn his Blacksburg stomping grounds into a killing field.

. . . .

Coincidentally, but not really that coincidentally, Wednesday also saw Republicans in the Senate rally to prevent a vote on a Democratic-sponsored revision of last year’s Medicare Drug “reform” that would have allowed the government to negotiate down the prices it pays for prescription drugs. So, for the foreseeable future, the price of Prozac, and all those other anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, statins, blood pressure medications, chemotherapy drugs, etc., will remain artificially astronomical.

Gun prices, however, are still subject to the whims of the open market.

And, Wednesday also saw what five Republican-appointed Catholic men have to say to any woman who makes the mistake of needing a medical procedure called “intact dilation and extraction”—namely, “too fucking bad.” However, as Justice Kennedy said in his majority opinion, if you or your doctor really think you need this immediate medical procedure to preserve your health and well-being, you could always “assert an individual need for a health exception” or challenge the decision again in court. . . and wait the months or years it might take to get a final decision.

However, if you need a gun, maybe to kill somebody’s living, breathing, walking, talking son or daughter, well, you can get that in an instant.

And, also not that coincidentally, Wednesday was another murderous day in Iraq. A series of bombings in Baghdad killed upwards of 170—the deadliest day of many deadly days this year. As military commanders now admit, the Bush surge escalation has actually resulted in a higher number of civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, here at home, we are starting day four of wall-to-wall media coverage of the massacre of 30 college students and two of their teachers, while we pay scant attention not just to the daily horrors in Iraq, but to the roughly 80 people who die each and every day in this country from gun violence.

All of this—the easy access to guns, the poor access to medical and mental health care, the expensive prescription drugs, the disrespect for women and the doctors that try to help them, the ongoing death and destruction in Iraq—all of this can be attributed to what Republicans like to call their “culture of life.” Consider the politics, indeed.

But maybe all of that is just too much carnage to process—too many connections to make—so let me leave you with a simpler equation, again from Robert Reich:

In [the] United States, many people who are seriously depressed can’t afford to see a doctor, let alone get a prescription. Unlike every other advanced nation, we do not provide universal health care, or ready access to mental health services. But unlike every other advanced nation, we do allow almost anyone [to] buy a handgun.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)