Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Sunday parking was always free in New York -- one of many outrageous subsidies to drivers, who constitute a minority of New Yorkers -- until 2002. In that year, a decree went forth from Mike Bloomberg to the effect that Sunday parking would henceforth cost as much as parking on Jehovah's six workdays. This is actually one of the very few constructive things Bloomie has done.

Enter the City Council, in defense of... religion. (I'll be back in just a sec, when this little paroxysm of laughter passes.)

--There, that's better. The Council, apprently concerned that our municipal government's hard-earned reputation for comprehensive idiocy might be marred by a single random act of good sense, passed a bill restoring the Sunday-parking SUV subsidy, and Bloomie vetoed it.

Well, there are no flies on Freddy Ferrer. He seen his opportunity, and he took it. No way could he disagree with Iron Mike on anything substantive. But Sunday parking, well, talk about a hot button.

So the most Christian knight Don Fernando saddled up Rocinante and rode forth against the Sunday parking rule, armed with the immortal phrase "pay to pray."

This is quite perfect, really. The Democrats would like to connect with "people of faith," or so we're told. Now there are lots of things that people of faith are supposed to be interested in -- feeding the hungry, for example, and setting the captive free. But those are a little problematic. Driving to church, though -- now there, if you like, is a twofer.

Well, meet the Wal-Mart 22: the House Democrats that voted against an amendment to bar any spending of money by the Department of Labor to implement the infamous deal the department made with Wal-Mart last February, giving the bastards advance notice of any child-labor inspections of Wal-Mart operations.

Need I say more?

See if any of your favorites are among the batch. I bet they are:

Marion Berry (AR)
Sanford Bishop (GA)
Dan Boren (OK)
G. K. Butterfield(NC)
James Clyburn (SC)
Bud Cramer (AL)
Henry Cuellar(TX)
Artur Davis (AL)
Diana DeGette (CO)
Harold Ford(TN)
Charles Gonzalez (TX)
Ron Kind (WI)
Jim Matheson(UT)
Dennis Moore (KS)
Mike Ross (AR)
John Salazar (CO)
Vic Snyder (AR)
John Tanner (TN)
Mike Thompson (CA)
Bennie Thompson (MS)
Ed Towns (NY)
Al Wynn (MD).

It's an interesting pattern, worthy of analysis, how right-wing Democrats consistently provide the "edge" for measures like this. How do they get away with it, time after time? And why do people who hate measures like this -- people who consider this sort of thing deeply evil -- stay in the same party with repeat-offender war criminals like Lieberman and Landrieu? This mystery lies at the heart of how the American political system works. It's like an ingenious little bit of engineering -- an escapement, maybe, or a planetary gear -- that solves the most fundamental design problem of some complex machine.

The problem, as I see it, is how to make sure that people who aren't fully on board with imperial hubris and plutocrat rule keep playing the political game, but never win anything substantive. You want 'em in the system, pushing that rock uphill, trying to get liberals into Congress and ex-liberals into the White House; but you want to ensure that they never reach the summit and change anything important.

This is the Democratic Party's raison d'etre. And shuttlecock aisle-crossers like Lieberman are the crucial little bit of engineering that keeps it working according to spec. Any time the less enthusiastic imperialists get numerous enough, or nervous enough, to give the emperor a thumbs-down, the shuttlecocks do their thing. It's like two fairly evenly matched basketball teams -- the Reds and the Blues, let's call 'em -- but a couple of guys on the Blue team will always shoot a basket or two for the Reds whenever the Red coach wants 'em to.

Of course, the great question is, why do the other Blues stay on the same team with these guys?

Well, it wouldn't happen in basketball.

attention
  straying   donkeys of the house

LISTEN UP CAREFULLY


cause im
only gonna  warn u once

     WANG THE MERCILESS AND HIS POSSE
                     ARE
                              IN TRACK DOWN MODE

    the hunt is on

any one of u pissants
  caught  aiding and abetting
  this himmlerian nonsense
                             called..... the patriot act

by whatever means  at all

by  votes or non votes

by log rolls or sweet rolls

be on guard
don't even touch that cops bible

or

i will  sniff u out

i will throw the klieg lights upon u

i will tack ur vile  squirrel's  hide

to the tallest cell tower in your district

is this clear enough???


if u  lift even the tinier of ur two  pinkies
to further the life of this   criminal  flash back

i will see to it u are destroyed

if u so much
as nod
in the direction
of these foul cookeries
these spurious
spectral menaces

i will find u out

and believe me
                u spongelike freaks
   before im done with u
         i will
make horns grow out of ur skull

  heed me

or
                          BE DAMNED

"The show's over, guys. "

That's John Murtha this week. Listen to these phrases out of an old bemedaled vet-hawk's mouth:

" I just spoke to the Democratic Caucus and told them my feelings about the Iraq war... not going as advertised... a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.... The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress ... our troops have done all they can ..."

But here's where he really strikes the heavy telling blows, opening with this line:

"Our military is suffering," He proceeds to peel out this knuckly Whitmanesque series of suffering, mutilation, butchery -- hard in-the-face stuff.

One can only glare at chicken hawks like Cheney with a mortal fury. after receiving such a salvo.

"I've been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed almost every week since the beginning of the war...." boom boom boom.

And then this for the Rummy-type neo-clam civilian pin pushers:

" Many say the Army's broken... Some of our troops are on their third deployment... Recruitment is down ... the military's lowered its standards.... They expect to take 20 percent Category 4, which they said they'd never take ... forced to do that, to try to meet a reduced quota."

His plan :

"Turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. .... before the Iraqi elections, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice. ... The United States will immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis... an immediate redeployment of our American forces."

And this final pearl:

"All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free -- free from a United States occupation... It's time to bring the troops home."

Quite a moment he created, this aged puffy dough-boy Tip O'Neill figure standing up at the podium, looking bleary-eyed, looking like bathos and old bilge, weary at last with the hackery of it all after what, thirty years in Congress? -- this now nearly flightless bemedaled old VFW stager.

And yet, behold what emerged -- and with a dogged sidewalk majesty. Clio needed him, fellahs. Maybe for only this one moment, but there he was ... very, very powerful indeed.

What is most delightful is that this unlikely paladin has outflanked all the Great White Hopes in the "progressive" camp of the Democratic Party: the Barak Obamas, the Russel Feingolds.

Murtha's courage and common sense are still in short supply among his colleagues: only two other Democrats joined him, and his resolution was defeated 403-3.

Go get 'em, Dick! Don't let 'em off the hook! These creeps were right there with you going into this, and they should go down with you. Get 'em in a death grip and don't let 'em go until you're all in the Dumpster together.

Most of 'em seem to be MIA. -- Well, Paul Hackett has boldly demanded an apology from the admittedly scary Jean Schmidt for calling Murtha a coward. It would have been bolder, of course, if he'd been in the same room with her at the time, as Murtha was.

What would be really bold would be if they joined Murtha in his call for prompt withdrawal. But it seems that's asking a little too much for these ballsy dudes. Hackett has apparently mumbled something about how ill-advised "arbitrary deadlines" are.

Maybe all the earnest democratic-party Eloi who are hoping so much from Hackett et al. should give their guys an arbitrary deadline or two. Like, line up with Murtha by this time tomorrow or we're outta here.

It's been "referred to committee" -- and not one, but two committees: International Relations and Armed Services -- "for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker."

Imagine that -- Denny Hastert gets to play guardian to this resolution.

Nice play, Nancy.

• Becerra, Xavier [CA-31]
• Capuano, Michael E. [MA-8]
• Doyle, Michael F. [PA-14]
• Holt, Rush D. [NJ-12]
• Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18]
• Lee, Barbara [CA-9]
• Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16]
• McGovern, James P. [MA-3]
• McNulty, Michael R. [NY-21]
• Moran, James P. [VA-8]
• Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15]
• Solis, Hilda L. [CA-32]
• Weiner, Anthony D. [NY-9]

"One would have to be more cynical than I to believe there are those in power in my party who do not want to see people like me have a chance, people who have not already made their deals with interest groups and powerful contributors, people who really do have new ideas and fresh approaches , and perhaps even uncorrupted leadership to offer.

I choose not to believe this. But if the Democratic Party puts the big states ahead of New Hampshire, I, and a lot of other people, may have to reconsider."

Go back to sleep, you old ham.

"As Republicans contemplate political ruin in next year's election, they can take solace in the fact that, if defeated, their replacements may not differ in any meaningful way on important issues of the day... That's the hope and dream of Democratic apparatchik Rahm Emmanuel and the corporate toadies he represents."

So obviously in '06 she runs again and wins, right?

Wrong. Cegalis has made the mistake of calling for troop withdrawal from Iraq. So Rahm wants a female Iraq veteran, Tammy Duckworth, who, as Andrew says, "Queried by a Chicago Sun Times columnist for her opinion on the war, replied, 'There's good and bad in everything'."

See, unlike Cegalis, Duckworth knows the party line -- and all you 'progressive' wishful thinkers out there, referring to the Democratic Party as 'us', need to know that. Rahm himself put it best: "At the right time we will have a position."

Andrew also reminds us Rahm was the NAFTA quarterback in '93, back in those dear Clinton years for which we're supposed to feel such nostalgia. After that, and before he replaced that old thief Dan Rostenkowski in the House, his patrons parked him in a "well-upholstered" job in a Chicago bank.

Part of this, of course, is just dead-cat bounce -- people who were otherwise inclined to be behind him got shook up by the events of the late summer and early fall, and now that things have settled down they're feeling like maybe they overrreacted a little.

But the fact that they got shook shows they're shakable, and the fact that they didn't stay shook can be credited, I think, to the Democratic party, which with a few rare and honorable exceptions, refused to take advantage of the opportunity they were offered. What we got from most of them was the usual lame, mumbled yes-butnik pabulum. Now the train may be leaving the station, with the Dems standing rather foolishly on the platform -- as has been their historic role, save for a few short intervals, since they were on the losing side in the Civil War.

I switched on the bedside lamp and took a thoughtful pull from the bottle of Jack Daniels I keep ready to hand for these Democrat dreams . As my mind slowly cleared, the thought occurred to me that if Nan really wanted to bat cleanup, she'd start with her own House party, and cancel the Rahm and Steny show.

Couldn't go back to sleep, so I started working on a L'Infame post appealing to my girl to do just that. Not quite awake yet, you see.

Of course as the mists cleared I realized the futility of any such appeal. But I decided to go ahead.

What sense can there be in making impossible demands like that?

Well, maybe the clear sound of the word "impossible" shot back at us in high dudgeon is itself enough reason. Maybe one too many stony dismissals can finally shatter a few stained glass illusions. "At long last is this all they are..... why in heaven's name am I putting up with this?"

So with such epiphanies in mind we will continue to call on the leaders of the party of lesser venality to do the right thing -- knowing all along we'll hear back the chorus of that old Perry Como favorite "It's just impossible ...."

In 2003, I debated Shmuley Botech, a NY Lubavicher Orthodox rabbi, on WWRL-AM radio's "Peter and Shmuely Show". (Peter Noel is a Black journalist.) A historian, I read anything by people I've encountered. Every so often I discover something that belongs out there in front of the world public.

Shmuley's "Madonna: Mother of Modern Monotheism?," in New York's 10/28/05 Jewish Week, is mostly about her. He explains that

"the fact that Judaism is becoming increasingly dependent on vulgar pop cultural icons to make it appeal to the masses is a sign of desperation rather than achievement, failure rather than success."

Then he made a confession:

"It is no secret that I spent two years in friendship with Michael Jackson. To be sure, we worked together to inspire parents to prioritize their children, and Michael even came with me to meet Ariel Sharon and stand up for Israel at a time when few others would. But my embarrassment comes not from Michael's subsequent arrest (and exoneration), but from my insecurity in believing that the Jewish faith needed a celebrity spokesman in order to garner mainstream credibility."

I'll leave you with this for starters.

Sharon:

Michael! You can't imagine what a pleasure it is for me to meet you. I've been your greatest fan for years.

Jackson:

Ariel, you took the words right out of my mouth!

As always, California shows the way: take an end run around the electoral con-game and build a state ballot proposition movement, or join one you agree with -- right where you live.

Think globally but act directly. Isn't that a better use of your money and time and energy than trying to make lemonade out of... Rahm Emanuel?

Will we fly the flag at half-mast? Certainly Congress will have to suspend its august deliberations so that a bipartisan pilgrimage can be made to watch the porky mass murderer get planted in a double-wide grave. Congress out of session, Sharon in drerd -- on balance, what's not to like?

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Democratic leader in the Senate, and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., were also among recipients of large contributions from tribes represented by Abramoff. Asked about Abramoff, Reid told the Las Vegas Sun, "I don't know him. I don't want to know him. I know nothing about it other than what I read in the newspaper. ... This is a Republican scandal."

Amusingly, the New York Times, which is a kind of large, slow-moving Kosnik at heart, also did its best to cover up the incestuous nakedness of the Democratic Noah. Here is the Times' graph of Abramoff's largesse, and here for comparison is the Center For Responsive Government's.

Among the larger Demo snouts at the Abramoff trough were my own dear Charlie Rangel ($36,000), the aforementioned Harry Reid ($30,000), Tom Daschle ($26,500) , and, delightfully, Steny Hoyer ($17,500). Barney Frank got $11,000, Nancy Pelosi was a comparatively small fry at $3,000.

Fourth on the list, however, was none other than the our friend Rahm Emanuel's Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, at $354,700. The Democratic National Committee received a comparative pittance of $65,720, putting it eighth on the list.

I hope they take very good care of Abramoff, and keep his singing voice in top condition. There'll be fun, fun, fun for all of us on this one.

Seems Senator Kennedy will participate in a "Living Wage Days" event on Monday, January 16 at the United First Parish Church Unitarian in scenic Quincy, Mass.

Ted thinks min wage workers need a raise. Last month, at a holiday news conference, thus Ted:

"In this the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty."

" How can any of us in good conscience enjoy our own high standard of living, when it is built on the backs of underpaid workers?"

"There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American worker ... whether he is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer."

Do you hear any Democrats calling for that?

Oh by the way: this information comes courtesy of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, active both at the national level and in a number of states including Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, West Virginia and Arkansas. So if you're looking for a constructive outlet for your political energies, why not join 'em? It would feel a lot better than working to elect some Democrat In Camo, or whatever the buzzword-du-jour is.

And while you're up and at 'em, suggest indexing the Federal minimum, so we don't have to wait on the patronage of a Ted to start back along the road to where we were when Bobby was still alive.

"The key thing certainly politically is whether or not he is mentally incapacitated by these strokes. They will only know that when they bring him out of this induced coma and see what kind of reactions they see from him," CTV's Tom Kennedy reported from Jerusalem, where he is watching developments.

"Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."

Seems like it ought to be an easy demand to expect a pledge out of any Dem running for election, or re-election to the House this November: "I will vote for Conyers' bill" -- and If they're already in the House, demand that they co-sponsor it.

Now.

Or else.

orthrian politics
or
the two party system exposed

call me orthrus:

i'm a dog with two heads
one left and one right

seperate and
         unequal
but both attached
  to a single  body
    and reflecting the  conflicting moods
                             of  a single  soul

among other nice features
of  working thru  two heads

i obviously

have at all times
   two mugs to work with

two expressions to make
and
two mouths to speak

one mug can be  clean

while the other's dirty

one indignant while the other's  defiant

u get my gimmick

mix in the k street project

and
     well....

           my soul can dirempt over this

and run against itself
and drive itself from power

and and and .... 

''It all started when Gene McCarthy was willing to stand alone and turn the tide of history.''

This is not to detract anything from McCarthy, who has been overestimated but deserves a kind word all the same. I can't help speculating, though, about the precise psychic process going inside Clinton's brain. It's gotta be some kind of reflex -- no way this particular lie could do Clinton any good.

Is it that he just can't help overselling whatever he's selling? If it's a used car -- Einstein once owned it. If it's real estate -- there's oil under it. Does he feel obliged to keep gilding the lily, even after he's made the sale? Such personalities are not uncommon.

If you were a kind person -- which I am not -- and wanted to cut Clinton some slack -- as I do not -- then you might say he's just expressing the fundamental theorem of the liberal view of history -- a view in which history is made from the top down, by thinkers, writers, professors, experts, politicians, and other folk who stand out, in some way, from the common herd. According to this view, it was of course the Bobby Kennedys and the Gene McCarthys who ended the Vietnam War -- not us poor slobs burning our draft cards, or those fed-up grunts in-country fragging their gung-ho lieutenants.

"attention must be focused on changing the political composition of the House and Senate in the upcoming 2006 elections. If a Republican Congress is unwilling to investigate and take appropriate action against a Republican President, then a Democratic Congress should replace it."

Let's not take this bait again. Sure, it would be fun -- an admittedly delicious show, the very best theatre of cruelty. But after the tribunal of pointy-hatted scowling dems has clobbered and reclobbered an already beaten and totally lame-duck Bush admininstration -- what will be the body count?

Best shot -- Cheney dies of a heart attack on live television. Okay, that would make for great entertainment. But after that, what? It's a meaningless, mindless pleasure. They will never remove the man from Crawford himself -- where's the 2/3 in the Senate gonna come from?

But if folks fall for the Holtzman bait, and turn out for Dems in hopes of another Watergate soap opera -- it'll just be another palace coup, like the first one, with no political content at all. Guelphs walloping Ghibellines, or Crips taking some turf back from Bloods. We the people might get a Democratic majority in the house -- but it'll be the same old dirty Democratic party that went along with the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, the bankruptcy bill, and so on ad nauseam -- a majority that empowers the worst elements of present-day donkey-party bizwiz hawks. After the big Truth or Consequences slapstick show of the hearings, we'll be watching 'em hook up their time-honored, time-tested "working majority" with the Republican cross of Christ/Chamber of Commerce thundering hunnish horde.

Following up on his earlier comments about job exportation -- "get used to it," was his advice -- he has now made clear what the rules of admission are to the nuclear club. At a time when bipartisan hysteria about Iran getting the bomb dominates the newspapers, Max has indicated that it's just fine for India to have one:

His approving remarks echoes comments of US senator and former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who last week backed the India-US nuclear deal, saying that it recognised India as a nuclear power.

Once one head's local operative gets into re-election trouble, then big Geryon's money flows in bountiful measure into the coffers of a seat contender from the other head.

Think this simple rule through and you'll see how well it works.

One result: if a seated head's agent is in a pickle (like us lefties could very easily put dear Jane in) -- once there's blood in the water, it's survival politics at its most naked. The incumbent's party, like a reef shark in a feeding frenzy, will devour its own creature, allowing it to be replaced by a flea from the hair of Orthrus' other head. (I know, mixed metaphor, but screw it, it's a goddam blog.)

Better to let the other team have a turn, than allow some upstarts to disrupt the machinery.

Of course, the weaker head can never be permitted to die out completely, because without a second head, the con is finished.

In this light, somebody ought to trace the tick-tock of the heads in the people's house since, say, the civil war.

Stay tuned.

How can you tell an Orthrian? Simple: donor flows. Not voting patterns. Orthrians need to keep some camouflage, so they often vote non-Orthrian. Here's how it works:

With a nice reliance on careful insider log rolling, Orthrians can protect each other's false branding. Say you've got a rep to uphold as a feminist or a champion of labor. Well, if you're in a pinch you get a pass and vote on the wrong side -- what you might call the people's rather than master Geryon's side. You can even do this a lot -- even most of the time, if you need a lot of camouflage. On corporate issues, you can defy the board roomers -- but only in a losing battle.

Go ahead, says Geryon, go out there for a little romp, Orthrus, good doggie. Vote freely! Vote your doggy conscience -- as long as you lose, lose and lose graciously. Stand tall in defeat. Stride forth with a rugged "stay the course" jutting chin. Walk up to the net and shake the victor's hand like a good sport -- and tell your disappointed constituents, "Next time."

Great, keep strokin' -- but as long as you've got the referendum bit between your teeth, as long as you're taking over the asylum, fellow inmates -- where it applies, why not add this to your state-wide movement:

Repeal the union-busting "right to work" laws now on the books in more then twenty of our soverign states.

I figure you all know who put 'em there and why.

Let's look all the way back to a richly deserved nadir of the Democratic Party's fortunes: the Republican house hegemony consolidated in the post-civil war "rump nation" election of 1866 -- the election that produced the 40th house of representatives. In it, Republicans of all stripes outnumbered Democrats ditto 175 to 49.

Now that was one hell of a nice house, stripped down, souped up, ravin' and rarin' and ready to fly. Does the name Thaddeus Stevens ring a bell?

Well, from early 1867 through three more cycles and 8 very full years of free-form romping, this multi-faceted Republicanism showed a America some of its highest and lowest moments in congressional history.

A taste of the high side : the gunpoint occupation of all Dixie, the local empowerment of the Southern freedmen.

And on the low side: No distribution of slavers' plantation land, and way too many big-time Yankee corporate shenanigans. Think railroad giveaways.

Our story starts to get interesting with the biggest corporate shenanigan of all, the vicious, huge, and out-of-nowhere crash of 1873. The first modern or Orthrian period really gets underway with the next electoral cycle after the crash. The people, knowing when they feel gratuitous pain, tossed out the Republicans in droves, including from the house. Jes'-folks up north "soured on Gilded Age business as usual," figuring that the congressional Republicans and their corporate friends were precisely what had produced the prior year's depression.

So we got a Democratic house for the 44th congress:

• Democratic Party 182 seats ( +94 )
• Republican Party 103 seats ( -96)

But surprise, the donkey proved no redeemer for northern jobsters or hocked northern yeoman farmsteads. In fact, with the north's industrial economy continuing down cripple-stagger lane for years afterwards -- even after the folks rose up and threw out the elephant men -- the northern electorate slowly but inevitably discovered Orthrian reality.

That good old donkey Tweedledee warn't no damn better than elephant Tweedledum -- except on race, of course, where the Democrats were rock-solid defenders of lynching and Jim Crow. So a step-by-step, cycle-by-cycle retrogression set in up north, though down in Dixie the noose-and-sheet party was able to defend its gains.

One consequence of the Republican debacle: Dixie was now considered "redeemable", meaning it was given back, step by step, to its "rightful" Democratic white owners.

But the net of these these two contrary regional trends nationally was that the Orthrian do-nothing sellout lost the donkey votes and seats faster than nightriding could add 'em down south.

The sad donkey declension: from 182 dem seats in '74, to 157 seats in '76, to 141 seats and a whiskery margin of nine in '78.

For any pair of eyes willing to see Orthrus was now in the saddle. The system -- outside the south, at least -- had two heads, but only one controlling mind and soul: the mind that watched the stock ticker and owned a lot of farm mortgages. So the donkey by sheer whithering-away of hope became again, in accordance with its deepest nature, the lesser head of the dog. They lost the last few seats necessary to give back house control where it rightly belonged in the election of 1880 with a further drop of 13 seats.

But lo, there was lightning flashing on the horizon: next installment, Populism, Coxey, Bryan and the origins of true Bidness Republican hegemony.

That's right -- blow up the whole damn corporate welfare rockery once and for all. Or in Ralph's own words:

Congress should decree that every federal agency shall terminate all below-market-rate sales, leasing or rental arrangements with corporate beneficiaries, including of real and intangible property; shall cease making any below-market-rate loans or issuing any below-market-rate loan guarantees to corporations; shall terminate all export assistance or marketing promotion for corporations; shall cease providing any below-market-rate insurance;..... shall eliminate all liability caps; and shall terminate any direct grant, below-market-value technology transfe or subsidy of any kind.

The bill should also amend the Internal Revenue Code to eliminate all corporate "tax expenditures" listed in the President's annual budget.

Some of what gets cancelled in such a bill might be good public policy. If so, Congress should reauthorize it. But there's too much accumulated contribution/lobbyist-driven institutionalized graft for a case-by-case review to eliminate what's in place.

Question one : are any of Rahm's rangers as yet worried at all about a base rebellion next fall?

Have they noticed the possibility that a revulsion from this do-nothing approach might hit their zombie candidates so hard at the polls, come November, as to spoil all hopes for a return to majority status?

Has it occurred to anybody that the present "planned power off" strategy -- make no blunders, it's all down hill anyway, so let's coast -- won't hack it over all the humps out there up ahead? Has it crossed anybody's mind that the voters might want to hear something more than tut-tutting and insincere protestations of shock about corruption and spying -- that they might want to hear about the big positive beef-with-thick-gravy issues, like Iraq, one-payer health, high-wage jobs?

We know by deduction what's up -- nothing. But have they all drunk the Rahm and Hillary Kool-Aid? Or is there discontent in the ranks, kept out of the public eye by the masters of the campaign-money spigot?

Go ahead, let 'em pick up all the marbles. Let the party of white loser salvation, the boys of the cross and the sword, triumph. Let's give Pat Robertson and his ilk control of the full spectrum of federal power levers. Let's see what the holy hell they got. Bring it on, as the Maxiumum Leader says.

Okay so a few of us pinkos stinkos and hoe-moe-sexuals get virtual burnings. We can take it. This isn't the 16th century. Come on, walk away from the polls. Give 'em a clear run. Let 'em have the damn keys to all the pointy-heads' offices. Let 'em drown the bastards, virtually of course -- its all pretty much a video game anyway. Who's to say anything real will even get its hair mussed?

And suppose it does -- Jane and Joe Churchgoer might figure out that what the ayatollahs are giving 'em isn't exactly what they signed up for. As the Men's Wearhouse says, an educated consumer is our best customer.

Timmy, this fine mild man bursting with southern honeysuckle and chapel-bell reason, a nice new "I pray a lot too" Democrat, has been elevated. He's received the golden tap. He's the donkey-designated counter-puncher to our august sleepwalker-in-chief, after the boy mummy reads his, or rather somebody else's, "state of the union" speech.

What a digital dust-up this has triggered. Take for just one the progoshere's Arianna Huffington. She's raging like Mrs Macbeth before the dirty deed: Why why why, oh you dunderish doltniks -- I'm paraphrasing a little here -- why this guy? Why another rock-candy DLC huckster? Is this the best pinup you jackasses have got? Another tootsie-roll Dixie-lite smile puppy, another far-from-the-beltway, potlatch-proofed, green-acres goobner from the sovereign state of bogosity. Thats what you vontzes are putting center stage? I'm told the shocked and galled Arianna has been flapping and grinding her jaws so hard over this, she may have to move forward her next chin lift.

The Washington Post says, in a more general context, and more decorous language, this latest snafuzzy is giving the party bigwigs

"an early glimpse of an intraparty rift.... fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups [denouncing] another flaccid Democratic response."

The Post item goes on to say it's not just the proglo-bloglodytes out there howling in the electronic wilderness, but the entire off-to-the-left base may be erupting because "party leaders [are] gutless sellouts."

Gotta hand it to the Post. Unlike the NY Times, they do sometimes fail to miss the story.

By the way, this Kaine strode to the Virginia governor's mansion over some mighty hallowed old oaken planks: "faith, values and fiscal discipline." What a "victory formula" that is, for the party of Jefferson and Jackson.

But Kaine is a man of principle, to hear him tell it. As the Post says,

The Virginia Democrat said he will not adjust his speech to placate the party's base."I'm not anybody's mouthpiece or shill or poster boy for that matter. I'm going to say what I think needs to be said ..."

What does this heart-of-oak man of principle think about the Iraq war? Well... er... ahh... then again....

Kaine is not alone in his contempt for the base. Again, the Post:

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

This Elmendorf, by the way, was a key player in that petrified waltz to nowhere put on by the Kerrymen back in '04. You'd think he'd be ashamed to show his face, but no, here is is bigfooting it around DC like he's some fearsome hard-nosed badass, telling the base to lie back and enjoy it -- again.

Chutzpah will take you quite a long way in life, even if you're a born fool.

Well, I don't as yet quite share his dark conclusions, nor his John Brown certainty. Damply feeble as it may seem, I'm not ready to dump the whole damn donkey into the boiling pot.

This said, obviously one question follows: Why are we two able to sing in harmony here at the Stop Me barbershop?

Simple. We share the same Stage One: blast the War Democrats and Wall Street Democrats out of the party, by refusing ever to vote for one of 'em, ever again. Stop fooling ourselves that by electing these quislings, we might avoid some additional pounding by the elephants.

If we succeed at the end of the day there will either be a party Gideonized, or a puddle pulverized. We shall see.

My heart is far from confident here. When Bryan at the 1912 convention read Wall Street out of the party -- "There is no room for Belmonts and Ryans here. This is not their home, nor will it ever be" -- he got a thunderous hour-long response. Unfortunately, I know today that even among those furtive potential allies we may have in surprising numbers, trapped inside the party, surely a call by us out here to banish the Wall Street bums, banish the stranglers' legion of Kerry, Dean, Rubin and Clark, would meet with something very much less than even sheepish bleatings.

But hey, give it time. What has happened once can happen again.

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed .

"When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said.

When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats -- the scans showed that "reward centers" in volunteers' brains were activated.

The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction, as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

Here are a few highlights from his turn on the new admonitory Post theme: "O stop good donkeys, stop before you run off another cliff again."

Tuesday, January 31, 2006:

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds congressional Democrats in the best position they've held in 14 years, besting President Bush and Republican lawmakers on Iraq, the economy, health care, immigration, ethics and more. All of which can mean only one thing: It is time for the Democrats to eat their own.

Elected Democrats and their liberal base are in one of their periodic splits....

"between pragmatism and symbolism."

I think this illutrates a great law of life -- you won't go too far wrong if you turn every tenet of conventional wisdom on its head. Oh, and another one too -- there's nobody more banal than a "humorist."

--MJS

To me our stage-one strategy for destroying the Democratic party as we know it is simple: don't drive the pussheads out of the party -- drive 'em out of office.

Do you all agree?

Over the last month or so, as this site has started gathering a readership, I've noticed the stalwarts commenting here so far seem -- to my mind correctly -- focused on exposing the fiends now runninng the donkey machine, more than belaboring the rights and wrongs of the several issues du jour.

Now the two are linked, obviously. It's through the issues du jour that the fiends expose themselves, as they take the pro-forma, dying-swan flop, come nut-cuttin' time.

But everybody here seems pretty clear that mobilizing folks on the issues is not the problem -- in fact, we have the multitudes already with us, at least potentially, on the issues.

Nope, the problem is what to do about the knaves that vamp about claiming they're ready to lead us to the promised land.

Hence our mission, should we choose to accept it, and oh, we do, we do -- lets put the wrecking ball to this prisoner/victim holding tank of an electoral party.

Am i right? Eh?

I think most of us agree the strength of this whole line of cell blocks is in its core of " pragmatic promise breakers" and aisle-crossers the ones with the cold eye that flat out claim they'll deliver precisely what they and their donors are determined not to deliver.

You can identify the species by its song: "Help us retake power in Washington... help us retake power for... the people." I think we are agreed this illusion, this mirage hot dog always kept a safe three inches from our mouth, this shameless medicine-show conjury, must be wiped from the minds of all decent Americans.

And since we know stages are real steps, first we need to hack away the worst elements. Concentrate the attackon the party's most obvious stinkers. Knock 'em out of office, and by doing so, prove on the field of battle that the donkeys, at least as presently led, not only never can regain power but even more, never deserve to regain power.

Their future is toast so long as they put their one by one votes into that same old same old Democratic shitbox.

Yes, mah fellow Amurricans -- your future is toast, toast, toast -- until we sweep the whole hee-hawing herd of 'em into the street. All the fat-necked DLC "New Democrat" donor-craving knaves. with their Madison Avenue blown hair and their callous fear pandering.

"No mas!" must be the watchword -- as long as they offer nothing better or deeper-drafted than the likes of a St Hillary or a Bidenbone.

Go ahead, give us 20 more years of elephant moonshine -- we'd rather take our poison straight up, neat, right out of the bottle -- than smile and smack our lips and pretend it's Madeira.

No more of those egomaniacal Macy's balloons, those loathsome power chair and spotlight freaks, these careers that are all about... their careers. Never again, till the spellbound underlings in their own rank and file rise up and chop off their corporate stooge heads.

Pluck the vultures from the party, feather by feather -- each and every Wall Street weak-kneer and humanitarian imperialist.

Negativity? You bet it is. Negativity is underrated. This is negativity at its tree-topplin' best -- each seat-warming, gold-eared jackass needs to be driven out of office, by a challenge that splits their deluded majority into two losing pieces.

This is not preperation for the launch of some neat new reform or class party. It's not so much a third party as a third rail, with enough current in it to kill off the secondary party of the era.

Kill off, did I say? And I was supposed to be the reasonable one here. Of course I meant to say, kill it off or cure it.

Shock some of 'em enough, and if they survive the experience maybe they'll morph in delightful ways, just to survive. It's been known to happen.

These times call for spoilers -- thick-skinned renegades and contrary rebels, eager to help trigger a destructive revolt of the multitude. This November, let's drive a dozen of these bums out -- and their little dogs too, out of the Rahm Emanuel puppy pound.

All the way back in the off-year election of 1874 this pattern got established -- the Democrats won the house by national landslide, barely a decade after the Civil War, in which of course they were the party of treason and the slavemaster's lash. But it was, not for the first time, the economy, stupid.

The Democrats characteristically frittered away their advantage over the next few cycles, till 1880 when the GOP regained total control of Washington.

But now right away comes a sudden massive  switchback: 1882.No economic contraction here -- that would have to wait till next cycle -- but  two factors unrelated to each other converged to produce this second big pro-donkey swing:

Number one -- and it's not applicable to this year's conjuncture, obviously -- the solid South gained 25 new seats. All went where they belonged, to the white-sheet party par excellence, and that alone would have almost allowed a retake of the House, so  narrowly lost in '80.

But in addition -- and here's a parallel -- the nation had just gone through the first leg of the fabled Garfield-Arthur administration, where the elephant boyz dutched up so badly that chunks of the usually solid East and Midwest bolted at their first opportunity.

So once again it was dumb luck -- throw-the-bums-out dumb luck -- just what Rahm and Chuckie and Hillary and Howie are hoping for this time.

Next installment: third party strangulations aren't enough when gold holds the donkey's reins. Yup, here cometh the mighty populist challenge and the curse of Cain's deadly embrace -- a sucker kill that  brought white supremacy right into the very heart of the national party and smashed popular hopes for a generation.

A possible parallel strikes one, eh? Maybe you're thinking we need something of that sort again -- some congressional committee, either house or senate, to take stock of the long war on  mad turbans, now by my count past its 30th birthday.

Now I understand the urge to dream here. As a for-instance, the Church investigations -- among other attempts to clip off some of the more hideously malformed branches of the imperial presidency-- led to the creation of the recently much traduced FISA court. Dear ole Frank Church's white hat outfit produced revelations that all bore fruit in legislation limiting executive power when the donks returned to the White House in' 77.

But as nice as this all seems, try not to project it onto today's conjuncture. The mirage of a Dem-controlled house forming a Church-like committee is nonsense -- pure unvarnishable nonsense, so long as the donks have a dominant core of  fearless resolutes still committed to fighting this terror war against the mad turbans until... well, until when? The next Millennium, maybe.

Church and his senate posse make a bad analogy. Those donkey guys had made a separate peace. For them the cold war was over well before they formed their committee.

In fact there is a far better possible parallel, also from '75, than Church and company: the infamous Rockefeller commission, a star chamber set up by Gerry Ford to whitewash a generation of domestic government crime.

Their letter is a purple-faced, spittle-spraying torrent of wild indignation and cries of mile-deep corruption in the UN secretariat. The goal apparently is to distract, discredit,  and disorganize this vote-decisive  group, just at the moment when US Ambassador and neocon ninja John "Headless Horseman" Bolton is trying to end-run the General  Assembly by rigging up a  "veto power" substitute for the assembly's contemplated new human rights commission.

Hmmmmmm.

Wonder where Tom the Impaler's impulse for this act of bipartisanship came from?

I've been taking great pleasure in the Lawrence Summers story. The porcine Clintonite dumper of toxic waste and immiserator of working people worldwide -- a guy who terrorized Washington and much of the world when he was working for Bill Clinton -- has met his match in the Arts and Sciences faculty at Harvard, who have squeezed him out of the President's chair there. It's enough to make one think more kindly of Harvard.

As if this weren't joy sufficient, who should come creaking, like a WWI tank, out of the wings to defend Summers but --

Yes! Alan Dershowitz! Thus Alan, as quoted at the Huffington Post:

The idea that a president should be fired because he believes in patriotism should shock every American.... Now listen to what Summers actually said about Israel and the Palestinians:

"But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities."

"Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent."

Freed of the constraints of public office, Alan Greenspan has expanded from commenting on the economy to commenting on politics.

Speaking to a Wall Street gathering Wednesday the former Federal Reserve chairman decried the "polarization" of American politics and said the ground was ripe for a third party presidential candidate....

The two American parties now [are] controlled by their extreme wings, even though the voting public is far more centrist... the leadership of the parties [is] "bimodal" ... clustered at the extreme ideological ends, whereas the voting public [is] "monomodal" ... clustered near the middle, which creates "... an opening for a third-party candidate who appeals to the center."

"prompt the candidates of the other two parties to move back to the center."

Greeny fears -- or rather, credit where it's due, pretends to fear -- the electoral elites polarizing hoi polloi. Why?

Well, surely not because he thinks the hacks' "deepest values" are driving them to the next round of the eternal grappple, with ever-mounting righteous ferocity. He's been among 'em way too long to hold that view even in a nightmare. It must be because he sees these mindless thoroughly unprincipled vote seekers potentially getting so high on the vapors of discontent among he masses, that like a pair of sorcerer's apprentices, they provoke an unstoppable tempest. Heedless of the reality out there -- still playing pretend combat -- still studio wrestlers all; but when the streets are ready to really rage maybe they'll inadvertently stir the mobitude out there to an escape-velocity frenzy.

It's as if the Orthrian joint mind had lost integral control of itself, and the two heads had sealed themselves off from each other, and begun to gnaw each other's necks in earnest. Not a good idea, when, as I suspect Alan G correctly senses, the helots are restless and don't need any more wedge agitation but a calming goon-like regal smile -- a new Reagan head with a completed domestic and foreign agenda and all "partisanship" well behind him -- a Reagan settling down to an era of pure reignmanship -- a Cheshire Cat Reagan by stages disappearing, first the calming twinkle, then the slow head spin, and finally all that's left is just that benignly demented pursy smile.

Law professor Alan Dershowitz has argued Summers was done in by a core group of faculty angered over his support for the military, Israel, and for his comments on women in science - the last of which he apologized for repeatedly.

"I'm clearly in the left 20 percent of the country, nationally. I'm a Ted Kennedy liberal," Dershowitz said. "In the [Harvard] Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I'm in the 10 percent side of the conservatives."

Sen. Robert Byrd, the dean of the Senate and its resident constitutional expert, counts only a few regrets in his 48-year Senate career: filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act, voting to expand the Vietnam War, deregulating airlines.

Add to the list a new one from this century: supporting the anti-terror USA Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The original Patriot Act is a case study in the perils of speed, herd instinct and lack of vigilance when it comes to legislating in times of crisis," the West Virginia Democrat sai