Dems: We'll tell you we told you so

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Thursday January 19, 2006 · 6:43 AM PST

2006/01/19 · 06:43

Here's the new Democratic strategy on Judge Alito, according to the New York Times: no filibuster -- let the guy squeak through -- but vote against him so we can use him as a campaign issue. In other words, they won't deploy the one weapon they've got -- that precious heirloom, the filibuster -- but they will want to come back to us, in '06 and '08 and for as long as Alito bestrides the bench, and claim they were against him.

I love the Democrats on the Supreme Court. It's always their summum supplicium, or rather their ultima ratio, when they tell us we have to vote for 'em no matter how sold out they are. I almost hope Alito turns out to be every bit as bad as they say he is, or worse. Then maybe people will stop being so afraid of the Supreme Court, and find some other means to defend their rights and interests. A panel of nine elderly lawyers never was very good casting for this part anyway. Read More

Max Baucus, Montana Metternich

rauschpfeife

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Tuesday January 17, 2006 · 9:46 PM PST

2006/01/17 · 21:46

I'm getting very fond of Max Baucus, senior Democrat on the Senate finance committee. He has a refreshing way of blurting out inconvenient truths about his party's actual attitudes. 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.

Nonproliferation, it seems, is one of those doctrines that needs to be applied very selectively. Now let's see, from whose point of view is it a good thing for India to have the bomb?

Democrats: Kiss your job goodbye

rauschpfeife

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Tuesday January 17, 2006 · 12:01 PM PST

2006/01/17 · 12:01

Interesting that nobody reacted much when Senator Max Baucus, senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, blew his party's cover -- such as it was -- on job exportation. AP quotes Baucus as saying,

... outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India has become a global fact of life - and America must learn to live with it.... Baucus said a majority of fellow Senate Democrats agreed with him, despite the party's longtime opposition to American companies moving jobs overseas.... "But the world is flat and we must work harder to better retrain our people."

Now if there were any justice in the world, a guy should be kicked out of office just for alluding to Thomas Friedman, much less reading him.

The Democrats' family jewel

rauschpfeife

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Sunday January 15, 2006 · 11:42 AM PST

2006/01/15 · 11:42

As predicted, the Senate Democrats failed to deploy the fabled filibuster to stop the Alito nomination -- even though every "progressive" web site in the land assured us that the somewhat Don-Knottsian jurist was second cousin to the Antichrist. Join me in the Wayback Machine for a quick trip to May of last year, when we were being assured, by institutions like The Nation magazine, that the sky would fall if the all-holy filibuster were allowed to go the way of the stegosaur.

Even at the time, the filibuster seemed a somewhat unlikely palladium to defend -- a thunderbolt wielded in the party's heroic age by such Olympians as Theodore Bilbo, to preserve fine old American values like lynching. More apres-fold. Read More

Poisoning the peace movement

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Friday January 13, 2006 · 3:10 PM PST

2006/01/13 · 15:10

My Stop Me Before I Vote Again colleague Lenni Brenner has an interesting article at Counterpunch examining recent conflicts and splits in the anti-war movement. Lenni has been around for quite a while and brings a rich historical perspective to the topic. As always, he's good on the deadly effect any connection with the Democratic Party has on such movements. Excerpts below the fold. Read More

Pelosi, Reid et al and their eensy fig-leaves

rauschpfeife

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Thursday January 12, 2006 · 10:24 AM PST

2006/01/12 · 10:24

Over on Alternet there's a fine story about Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, Daschle, Graham et al. keeping quiet about Bush's NSA snooping project, although they knew about it. The only flaw in the Alternet piece is that it isn't sufficiently dismissive of the Democrats' excuse for not speaking out. Read on. Read More

Boy, am I in trouble now

rauschpfeife

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Wednesday January 11, 2006 · 6:23 AM PST

2006/01/11 · 06:23

Annoying people on the Internet has become a Federal crime, thanks to the usual collusion between Republicans and Democrats. More below. Read More

Clinton Mythographus

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Tuesday January 10, 2006 · 11:22 AM PST

2006/01/10 · 11:22

"Democratic royalty" and perjurer Bill Clinton seems to have appointed himself high priest of the soon-to-be-posthumous-I-hope Sharon cult:

"Mr. Sharon had not only withdrawn from Gaza, he had started a new party with the purpose of continuing to push for peace," Clinton said. "All of us who believe in peace in the Middle East are in his debt, and so more than anything else, I pray for his health." ... His illness "puts yet another obstacle in the path of the peacemakers," Clinton said. "It's almost as if God were testing them one more time to rise again, to keep on."

Nobody ever said Clinton was short on chutzpah, but Paris seems to have put him in rare form. Hard to say which is more breathtaking, Clinton's theological ruminations or his eulogy of Sharon as a peacemaker. More after the fold. Read More

Roll over. Play dead. Good donkey.

rauschpfeife

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Sunday January 08, 2006 · 8:04 AM PST

2006/01/08 · 08:04

Thus Reuters:

Ethan Siegal of The Washington Exchange, a private firm that tracks Congress for institutional investors, predicted "Senate Democrats will put up a fight and play to their liberal base, and then watch Alito be confirmed."

Sounds like Ethan got it right. Not that I mind too much. The Supreme Court is a fundamentally undemocratic institution, and so it seems only fitting that it should be a deeply reactionary one. The tendency of liberals to pin their hopes and fears on the Supremes reflects what I see as the anti-democratic, Hamiltonian character of liberal thinking -- one of the reasons why liberalism, as an outlook, can never expect to command a mass following.

I am... [clank]... the ghost of Jimmy Carter

rauschpfeife

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Saturday January 07, 2006 · 1:19 PM PST

2006/01/07 · 13:19

According to a recent AP-Ipsos poll, the country is ready for a change -- and who could blame 'em? Respondents favored, by 49% to 36%, the idea of Democrats taking control of Congress. Talk about a Desperation Index.

Looks like a minor Jimmy Carter moment in the making -- one of those cases where the Democrats, quite undeservedly, get a turn at the trough, thanks to some spectacular series of blunders on the part of the Republicans. Deep-thought historical background below the fold. Read More

Corruption -- theirs and "ours"

rauschpfeife

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Friday January 06, 2006 · 6:47 AM PST

2006/01/06 · 06:47

The indispensable Joshua Frank points out on his blog, "Since 1990, the Democrats have received almost 70% of all pro-Israel campaign contributions. Republicans have only pocketed 31%. "

Starting with the 2000 cycle, Jack Abramoff and his clients pumped about $4.5 mil into the American political pigsty; during that same period, the corresponding stream of pro-Israel bribery was a little shy of $22 million. Go back as far as 1990, and the total is almost $56 million.

I'm not sure what Abramoff got for his money, but I can tell you at least one thing the Israel lobby got for theirs: the Iraq war. I know, I know, there were other factors, bla bla, but there can be no question, I think, in the mind of anybody who is paying attention, that pressure from the Israel lobby played a crucial, perhaps even a decisive role in getting this murderous folly going. Just as there can be no doubt that Democrats are even more willing to dance to AIPAC's tune than Republicans are -- and that's saying something.

Equal-opportunity corruption

rauschpfeife

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Wednesday January 04, 2006 · 8:50 PM PST

2006/01/04 · 20:50

Some of us are doing their best to sustain what you might call the ~~Harry Reid~~ Colonel Klink line:

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."

Well, no, it's not. More after the jump. Read More

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