As the Congress prepares to cut Social Security from poor old widows, while cutting taxes on millionaires, and we support the apartheid and starvation of innocents in the Middle East, it may be time to think about where this “great experiment in democracy” is going as “the greatest country in the world”:

SPIEGEL: Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation: The United States is frittering away its role as a model for the rest of the world. The political system is plagued by an absurd level of hatred, the economy is stagnating and the infrastructure is falling into a miserable state of disrepair.

As an American expat living in the European Union, I’ve started to see America from a different perspective through the prism of the European media.

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less — right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical — the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.

The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 45 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane, particularly as 2 million long-term unemployed Americans are getting ready to lose their jobless benefits as America approaches the year end fiscal cliff.
The sobering assessment of America’s unemployment rate isn’t really 7.9 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.

Keystone XL Pipeline opens the eyes of conservative midwesterners

“Republicans could give a rats ass about the people out here.”

The proposed XL pipeline is a giant toxic Love Canal across America’s heartland. The Canadian corporation that wants to build it is bullying landowners in its path, threatening the use of condemnation proceedings, and the sheeple aren’t taking it lying down:

The effect of it today is to place people like Randy Thompson on an unfamiliar side of the divide between conservatives and environmentalists; and business and liberal political activists. He even testified this month against TransCanada as a witness for Henry Waxman’s minority on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“I’m a little ashamed to say that maybe if it hadn’t come across our land, I wouldn’t have gotten involved,” he told me. “I’ve gained a great deal of respect for people who do care about our environment I’ve become much more aware of environmental issues. I have to admire them for being concerned about our environment.”

“Republicans,” he said, by contrast, “could give a rats ass about the people out here.”

Why is Waxman having baseball hearings?

Doesn’t strike me as the Oversight Committee’s highest priority. Strikes me as a Republican-like “oh, look over there….” kind of cover for not doing the real work…am I wrong?

Like, how about a little more attention to this?

Michigan Republicans are morons

Let me get this straight: these benighted folk think that Mitt Romney, he of the ultrarich business CEO class that took down the American auto industry, is the savior?  Good luck with all that, and oh, there’s an arsonist who wants a job with your fire department…..

Not that I mind Romney winning…I’m ecstatic. I had picked McCain to win, because I was wrongly convinced that Michiganders (of which I was once one) had enough sense to vote for the only guy with a chance of winning in the fall, John McCain. Poor old John. Bad as he is….

It may be that people are just burnt out on the Iraq war, McCain, and all the broken promises; it may be that soon the single biggest issue will be “the economy, stupid,” all across the country… but the idea that big business is the champion of the little guy is completely delusional.  The business of big business is exploitation of the little guy. That’s why we need government, to balance that out. Instead, our government has become just another weapon in big business’ array of armaments against the little guy.

If choosing a campaign strategist is a measure of Hillary Clinton’s judgement, she’s wouldn’t be much of a president

Mark Penn, the Clinton strategy guru, has singlehandedly blown up the best laid plans of Hill and Bill. He touted “same”, while the country was just so fed up with Washington it couldn’t even bring itself to impeach Bush. And the senator isn’t getting any younger, people…and neither are her clothes or her hairstyles. So Hillary became “same-old…”.

Now of course, she’s yelling “change, change….” more often then Rudy Giuliani rants “9/11,” but I think she’s a little behind the curve. America has “moved on.” You remember Move-on, don’t you, Hill?

Harry Reid has to go. period.

The senate majority leader is becoming the minority leader. Though he supposedly hates Bush, he tolerates the truly record-breaking numbers of filibusters and “holds” by the Republicans, who have actually begun to brag about their obstructionism; see today’s Wall Street Journal front page:

Stopping stuff is Sen. Coburn’s specialty. In a Congress that has had trouble passing even the simplest legislation, Sen. Coburn, who proudly wears the nickname “Dr. No,” is a one-man gridlock machine. This year, the senator, who indeed is a medical doctor, single-handedly blocked or slowed more than 90 bills, driving lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to distraction.

It is one thing to have one’s hands tied by the numbers; it is another to let the obstructionists succeed, without making them pay a price in the media. Reid has been a complete failure in this regard.

And now, at the same time he rolls over for Republicans, Reid not only fights the leading senators of his own party, he disses them in the press:

Via Glenn Greenwald:

Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, was speaking the truth as Harry Reid viewed things. Reid could have pushed the FISA bill through if he wanted to, over Dodd’s objections, but it would have taken time, several days. Reid decided to wait till mid-January.

A little noticed statement Reid made to reporters on Tuesday: he said that by mid-to-late January, when the Senate takes up FISA again, it’s likely the presidential campaign will be finished. That was a not-so-subtle dig, I think, at Dodd, who some Democrats believe was grand-standing to try to gain attention for his floundering ’08 campaign. Don’t yell at me for saying this, this is what some Democrats here on the Hill believe.

Eventually, in a month or two, it’s extremely likely the Senate will pass a FISA reauthorization with telecom immunity, so Manley’s comment in that regard was accurate. So those of you in the blogosphere attacking Jim should understand, he’s channeling Reid when he says that.

Reid continues to allow Bush to act as a virtual dictator, and therefore has failed in his position, has failed our country, and is a liability for the Democratic Party.

He needs to step down.

Chuck Norris: litmus test for Americans

link

Here’s a Chuck Norris fact you may not know. If Chuck Norris endorses you and appears in one of your campaign’s TV ads, you take the lead in an Iowa poll and your Web server crashes. That’s what happened to Mike Huckabee, the shrewder-than-you-realize former Arkansas governor (sound familiar?) who has become a major player in the tight Republican presidential race. The ad opens with Huckabee deadpanning: “My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris.” The camera moves back to reveal the Man Himself, who praises Huckabee as a solid, gun-loving, IRS-loathing conservative. Huckabee adds a twist at the end. “I approved this message … So did Chuck.” The ad, which ran in Iowa on cable for a week, has generated an astonishing 1.5 million YouTube views and clogged the campaign’s Web site. Huckabee was rising in Iowa even before the ad, but he took the lead with Chuck as Huckster.

Yes, Chuck Norris, a coveted endorsement for GOP candidates. Perfect. I think that pretty much sums it up. Americans could just choose sides based on whether or not they see Chuck Norris as a guiding light.

Of course, Mike Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution. Not to say that Chuck Norris hasn’t evolved as much as the rest of us……

This is the kind of shit you get when you cede the country to a bunch of profiteers who are all about trying to sell you fear, cheap TV shows and toxic shit from China while they work on the real business of grabbing your pension.

Juan Cole on combatting Muslim extremism

The next election will tell the world whether George W. Bush was an anomaly, or, in fact, that the US intends to pursue a self-destructive and world-threatening course of hostility and war on Muslims. Juan Cole knows more and communicates more about the Middle East than anyone I have encountered (see blogroll).

Link

All the major Republican presidential candidates have bought into George W. Bush’s rhetoric of a central struggle against Muslim extremism and have thus committed themselves to a generational, often self-generating war. By foregrounding this issue, they have ensured that it will be pivotal to the 2008 presidential race. The Democratic candidates have mostly been timid in critiquing Bush’s “war on terror” or pointing out its dangers to the Republic, a failing that they must redress if they are to blunt their rivals’ fearmongering.

…

The Republicans are playing Russian roulette with America’s future with their bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims may constitute as much as a third of humankind by 2050, forming a vast market and a crucial labor pool. They will be sitting on the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources. The United States will increasingly have to compete with emerging rivals such as China and India for access to those Muslim resources and markets, and if its elites go on denigrating Muslims, America will be at a profound disadvantage during the next century.

Some Muslim extremist groups are indeed a threat, but they have not been dealt with appropriately. Bush has argued that terrorist groups have state backing, a principle that authorizes conventional war against their sponsor. In fact, asymmetrical terrorist groups can thrive in the interstices of states, and September 11 was solely an Al Qaeda operation. In his speech about the conquest of Iraq on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, George W. Bush announced, “We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.” It was a bald-faced lie.

Jay Rockefeller, closet Republican

link

Joe Lieberman, Steny Hoyer, Diane Feinstein….these are the Senators who have betrayed the country, pretending to be Democrats, while supporting the greed and kill philosophy of the GOP of Karl Rove and George W. Bush. Now we can add Jay Rockefeller to the list.

When the history books pillory the Republicans for their assault on civil liberties in the post-9/11 era, they should put a little asterisk next to “Republicans”–in memory of Democrat Jay Rockefeller.

In his role first as ranking member and now as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Rockefeller has been run over, bypassed, steamrolled and otherwise hoodwinked by the White House on so many occasions that he’s become something of a laughingstock among civil libertarians–at least among the more charitable of them. Whether he was antagonistic to civil liberties or simply ineffectual will be another question for the historians.

The latest surrender has come on the FISA bill, where the Senate version (.pdf) that emerged from a closed hearing last night included, to no one’s surprise, retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies who cooperated with the President’s warrantless surveillance program. (In the years before the program was revealed by The New York Times, Rockefeller’s opposition to it consisted of fretting to the Vice President in a hand-written letter.)

“Political” contributions to Rockefeller from the telecom industry have gone from zero to large in the last year.  He’s a disgrace.

pachacutec: Iraq war, immigration: corporations win, America loses

Two very disappointing pieces of legislation this week:

the Iraq funding bill passed, to the aid and comfort only of the oil and military industrial complex, and

the immigration bill with it’s permanent underclass and undercutting of working people (likely to pass in some form).

link

…on the one hand, the right wing is melting down over the GOP corporatist position on immigration, cracking the coalition with the grass roots racists. On our side, we control, supposedly, both houses of congress, and yet the Blue Dogs and other corporatists (led by Steny Hoyer, abetted by a handful of Dem senators) struck a deal with the White House to capitulate on the occupation funding just as we had the greater leverage and momentum on our side.

Notice anything?

The same party is winning both fights, but it’s not the Dems or the GOP.

I wrote a post right before the election that was a little more weedy than David Sirota’s subsequent description of the Money Party versus the People Party. In it, I argued we actually have three parties. I’d like to recommend people take a look at that again, because I think it holds up rather well in light of the events of this week.