Eight years ago in p3: The second Alaska gold rush

Sarah Palin made her first p3 appearance on Sunday Morning Toons, August 31, 2008.

Sensing immediately, like nearly everyone on earth who wasn't John McCain or Bill Kristol, that she would become comedy gold, I used the post to launch my "the governor, not the Python" gag, which I continued to milk for the duration of that electoral season, and to mock the utterly mockworthy Joe Lieberman, who had the unenviable experience of being Palin's beard until the announcement of McCain's choice.

Quote of the day: Conservatives, politics, and the personal

(((

(Updated below.)

I've written about this before: Conservatives' sense of empathy is similar to Tip O'Neill's take on politics: It's all local.

Conservatives tend not to have empathy until they’re personally impacted. When Arlen Specter got sick, he became a champion of the National Institute of Health, and when Rob Portman discovered he had a gay son, he suddenly saw the light on gay marriage. If Republicans think the Watch List only inconveniences Muslims from Dearborn, Michigan, they’ll never have any interest in fixing its flaws. But if it impacts one of their assault-rifle loving constituents who can’t figure out how to get taken off this list? That will interest them.

- Booman, in an aside from his discussion of the calculating use of the dreadfully flawed no-fly list as leverage to push congressional Republicans to finally take up basic gun control legislation.

I wish that there were some other way to get this leverage without paying lip-service to the due-process disaster that the no-fly list(s) represented from the earliest post-9/11 days, but I haven't figured out yet what it might be.

On my behalf, though, I didn't stumble onto the problem this week, like a lot of commentators. Here's my take on it from almost ten years ago – although, ironically, it was triggered by concern for the possible fate of a friend as much as by my respect for the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Maybe O'Neill was right.

To Booman's list I would add former Oregon Republican Senator Gordon's Smith's ephemeral epiphany that federal spending on social programs can play a positive role, such as in addressing the problem of youth suicide – an insight that didn't come to him until after his son took his own life, and seemed to depart again shortly thereafter.

I get no pleasure from the thought of the Smith family's terrible loss; I can't even imagine the pain of it. I just find it tiresome when conservatives' appreciation of the idea of a commonwealth, a political community existing for the common good, begins and ends – as it so often does – with the moment when disaster strikes them or their family directly.*

(I'm not aware of any other social program legislation Smith supported during his Senate career, but I'm willing to have my memory jogged. Most of his work is better exemplified by the 30,000 dead Coho salmon left behind in his 2002 re-election bid, and his tireless work for the end of Net Neutrality – a cause near and dear to the hearts of industry groups such as the National Association of Broadcasters, an organization he has been president and CEO of since shortly after he lost re-election in 2008.)

* Updated: And don't even get me started on Nancy Reagan.

Eight years ago in p3: He slimed us. I feel so funky.

(Update: Link fixed. My bad.)

If it attacks a Clinton -- either Bill or Hillary will do, both would naturally be better --  and it's significantly short on verifiable details, and above all it has a nasty adolescent sexual spin that makes you want to take a shower and burn your clothes, chances are it came from the Sultan of Sleaze, the Impresario of Ignominy, the Archduke of Dirt, old Roger Stone himself.

His reputation as a right-wing dirty trickster goes back to the Nixon administration. Now that is a credential.

He's been back in the news lately, promising great big Republican head Sean Hannity that he has two dozen women on ice ready to go public with the claim that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them, a two-rail shot toward candidate Clinton.

In 2008, he came out with an especially juvenile attack directly on Hillary. (Perhaps it's redundant to say "especially juvenile," since "juvenile" defines his standard. It's like calling one individual banana slug "especially slimy," when it's simply what they all are.) This week in 2008, I wrote about it here, in a little piece called "Heh, heh, heh."

Quote of the day: Judgment day

History will be the judge of an administration and I — when you make tough decisions like I have had to make, you obviously ruffle some feathers and I can understand why people would disagree with some of the decisions I made. […]

[I]t's very hard to write the future history of America before the current history hasn't been fully written.

That's George W. Bush speaking to Chris Wallace on Fox News, February 11, 2008.

No Republican has mentioned Bush in years, but I'll mention him today because Bush's standing among presidents is currently last among two-term presidents and fifth-from-last among all presidents. And that's after only five years. History could just be clearing its throat here, finding its voice before it really sings out.

Bonus quote: An interview between George W. Bush and Chris Wallace -- son of former President George H. W. Bush (who looks better every day by comparison) and “60 Minutes” reporter Mike “The Hammer” Wallace, respectively -- makes one imagine both fathers rued the day their feckless, Fredo-esque, but no-doubt-beloved sons took up the family business. As Wallace the Younger put it to the ex-President with becoming modesty:

You and I are members of very different levels of a special fraternity.

Well put, Mr. Wallace.

The unforgiving minute: A synoptic history of the separation of church and state

A synoptic history of the Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state (updated for 2012*):


James Madison, 1791: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Thomas Jefferson, 1802: The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment guarantees Americans a wall of separation between church and state.

John F. Kennedy, 1960: The separation of church and state is absolute. My church will not dictate my policy decisions.

Mitt Romney, 2008: The separation of church and state is relative. My church will dictate my policy decisions, but only to the extent that I will discriminate against the same people Christian conservatives would already be discriminating against anyway.

Rep. Bart Stupack, 2009: The separation of church and state is a fairy tale. My church will show up at the Capitol steps in a limo to dictate policy.

Rick Santorum, 2012: The separation of church and state is an abomination. "Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech [by JFK to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960], and I almost threw up."


Minute's up.

*Originally published in shorter form in 2009, when I thought the process had probably already reached its lowest point. Now it appears I may have stand ready for further revisions from time to time, as the exigencies of Republican electoral politics require it.

Six years ago in p3: A moment of prescience

Last week was (possibly) the final GOP presidential primary debate of 2011-2012 -- an event notable, like the earlier debates in the series, for the utter absence of any mention of the 43rd President, George W. Bush.

Here's what I was writing about the same week in 2006:

The neoconservatives (and to a lesser extent [...] the fundamentalist right) are positioning themselves to cut loose of Bush and his ambitions for a "legacy," if it becomes necessary, by denouncing Bush as not a "real neoconservative" (or "real fundamentalist wacko," whichever).

(The fundamentalists are about to get their most fevered wet dream of the last thirty years--the evisceration, if not flat-out overturning, of Roe v. Wade--so they may not be ready to cut Bush adrift yet. Yet.)

But the "movement conservatives," always more loyal to the movement than to the utensil the president, can smell trouble.

Also from p3 in February 2006, a five-part series on “Republican Corruption by the Numbers,” preserving voter-owned elections in Portland, the Bush administration's very-public code of omerta, and an appraisal of Portland's prospects for hosting the 2008 GOP national convention.

Quote of the day: Distractions versus issues

Charles Pierce examines the criterion by which Serious Republicans distinguish between “distractions” (e.g., Birtherism, an obvious political loser) and “issues” (e.g. Swift Boating, a disgusting but surprisingly effective tactic):

Make no mistake. Swift Boatism is different from birtherism only in two ways. First, the target is obviously different. But, second, and most important, there was serious money behind Swift Boatism and there is little behind birtherism. (In Republican campaigns, the difference between an "issue" and a "distraction" is whether the Koch Brothers have busted out the checkbook yet.)

And there you have it.

Three years ago at p3: Too dumb to succeed?

We slipstreamed behind Paul Krugman, who was wondering whether courting the know-nothing vote in 2008 was worth the bother.

In the media-saturated environment of the contemporary presidential campaign, the "undecideds" have opted to treat the glut of information like a pie fight, in which the object is to make it to November while getting as little custard on themselves as possible.

Quote of the day: On elections and consequences

Here's Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog on the right and that whole democracy thing:

At the national level, this is the third presidency in a row that the right has approached on the assumption that elections should be only incidentally related to consequences.

Saturday morning tunes: You can live a lie until you die

Here's something I noticed near the end of the 2010 midterm campaign: Unlike 2008, there were pretty much no stories about GOP candidates co-opting pop songs for their campaigns and campaign events -- without the permission of the rights-holders (for examples of their more typical behavior, see here, here, and here).

Have they learned their lesson, that the rules they want to apply to everyone else have to apply to them as well? Yeah, I know: Not bloody likely.

But whatever the reason, when this song accidentally popped up on my mp3 player's randomizer yesterday afternoon, the first thought I had was: Well, here's a song the GOP won't be appropriating for themselves any time soon.

Without further ado, here's "Crippled Inside" from John Lennon's 1971 "Imagine" album:

The GOP: America's laboratory for recycling and welfare

(Updated below.)

This morning I fell into a pleasant discussion with friend and colleague from the Hoosier State about the thinly disguised (and scarcely justified) 2012 Presidential ambitions of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

I have a feeling that the 2012 presidential race for the GOP is going to be a lot like 2008 was: The dominant voter impression will be of eight or nine unappealing white folks (mainly or exclusively men) milling around on stage trying to out tea-bag one another, advancing little in the way of new plans but eagerly jumping on the latest offhand remark by Obama or Biden like it signaled the end of the world. That will continue into the summer until, in the end, the GOP nomination won't go to the winner, but rather to the survivor, like McCain. (That might represent the best chance for someone like Daniels, in fact: a scenario in which all the somewhat better qualified candidates have destroyed one another other and he's somehow been left standing.)

So whoever gets the GOP nomination, he (or she) is apt not to command much enthusiasm or loyalty beyond their immediate base, although the amount of corporate money that will be sunk in that campaign could keep even a bale of new-mown hay from the banks of the Wabash polling at around 30% until well into October. And so, barring a catastrophic game-changer (or what we used to call an "October Surprise" before the Bush family got out of national politics), Obama could probably coast more or less handily to re-election in the most expensive and uninformative political campaign in the history of western civilization.

One important difference between the two parties is that presidential primaries are the only place where the GOP is enthusiastic about recycling. If you're a Democratic presidential candidate and you don't get elected, no one will go harder on you and your chances four years from now than your fellow Democrats (except maybe the mainstream political press). On the other hand, how many Republican presidential wannabes can you name from the last 35 years who ever went away just because it was obvious that almost no one would ever vote for him? Even Bob Dole, for whom Viagra became a political metaphor as well as a part of his pharmaceutical regimen, got two bites at the national-office apple.

Even Newt Gingrich, for heaven's sake -- a man whose meaningful political career ended in disgrace over a decade ago, a man with nothing to recommend himself as presidential material other than his apparent media omnipresence -- can get respectable people to treat his 2012 ambitions as a topic for serious conversation!

So if you're a Democratic presidential hopeful, you'd better make certain you win, because the odds are you'll only get one chance at it. If you're a Republican presidential hopeful, though, all you have to do is make it into the first round of playoffs to get on the presidential-hopeful gravy train for the rest of your working life.

If someone like Daniels can come in a surprising second or even third in a couple of early primaries/caucuses in 2012 before washing out because he can't raise enough money, he could still be on right-wing welfare until his dying day, as a think-tank member, FOX News contributor, strategic consultant, paid speaker, provider of "balance" on the Sunday morning talk shows, etc., and above all as an eternal hopeful, always waiting for the next primary season.

(Note to NPR: How can Gingrich be staging a "comeback" -- as you call it in your interview title -- if you've never given him a sporting chance to go away?)


(Update: Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog says Daniels' 2012 chances are "toast," and not in the nice breakfasty way.)

Republicans and property rights: One rule for lunch counters, another for rally music

As I've documented before (here and here), there are two consistent patterns when Republicans select pop music for campaigns and rallies:

(1) They tend to listen too much to the chorus and not enough to the verse.

(2) They mostly couldn't care less about the intellectual property rights of the music's owner.

Here's the latest example:

Song: The Talking Head's "Road to Nowhere" (1985)

GOP campaign wanting it: Florida governor Charlie Crist, for an attack ad against 2010 GOP primary rival Marco Rubio.

Lyric making it an unlikely choice for a GOP campaign: "They can tell you what to do / But they'll make a fool of you / And it's all right, baby it's all right . . . We're on a road to nowhere."

Other warning signs: [Talking Heads front man David] "Byrne's lawyer Lawrence Iser also represented [Jackson] Browne when the singer sued John McCain over his unauthorized use of 'Running on Empty.' (The suit that was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.) In Browne's settlement, the Republican Party was ordered to 'respect and uphold the rights of artists and to obtain permissions and/or licenses for copyrighted works where appropriate.'"

Quote: "'I was pretty upset by that,' Byrne told Billboard. Even though Warner Bros has managed to get the campaign ad pulled, Byrne says that 'the damage had already been done by it being out there. People that I knew had seen [the ad] so it had gotten around. It's about copyright and about the fact that it does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for.' Byrne is suing for $1 million because it's the amount he's typically offered for use of his songs in commercials."

Did the GOP have permission to use it? No.

Used it anyway? Yes.

Quote of the day: Losing Indiana the hard way

Charles Pierce on the fallout from John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate:

[. . . ] her innate clownishness had made her (and him) such a laughing stock that the Republican ticket lost in places like Indiana to a black man whose middle name was "Hussein"

Verily.

A year later, and "push" predictions were pretty much spot-on

Here's a bit from a p3 post from a year ago this week:

How far to the left or the right will Obama govern?

The answer, which I consider especially smart even by Digby standards, since I've been saying much the same thing since last spring: Obama will govern just as far to the left as he's pushed into doing by the left itself, and probably not much farther.

I still think that, even at the time, that was pretty much a tap-in, so this isn't about a victory dance--especially in light of the status of DADT and the wobbly history to date of health care reform. Instead, the post is looking over again partly because it quotes lavishly from Digby's take on the subject, and partly because it features the ACLU's proposed "to-do" list for Obama's first day in office, first 100 days, and first year.

The ACLU's lens being what it is, their list tends noticeably toward domestic policy issues, although defending civil liberties is also at the heart of such foreign policy issues as rescinding the abortion gag rule on foreign aid restoring the rule of law for Gitmo detainees (as well as closing Gitmo down).

Check out Digby's analysis and the ACLU's wish list and see how they stand up as a yardstick, a year later.

The unforgiving minute (2008 retro edition)

From the p3 archives one year ago tonight:

Right-wing talking head Glenn Beck had several dinners recently with Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News.

At these dinners, says Beck, he and Ailes discussed how "there's got to be a better way to do what we do and not divide people."

Minute's up.

Damn. EMK: 1932-2009

August 25, 2008--one year ago today:

For me this is a season of hope -- new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few -- new hope.

And this is the cause of my life -- new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American -- north, south, east, west, young, old -- will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.

He didn't live to see it happen. Of course, at this point, I think we could be forgiven for wondering if any of us will--but certainly we wouldn't even be this close to realizing our right to health care if it weren't for his unstinting labor on behalf of this issue.

The lion sleeps tonight.

Eight months later

(H/t to Anne.)

Waiting on the Coleman/Franken recount: The penultimate chapter?

Here we go:

The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected a bid by Norm Coleman in the disputed U.S. Senate election to consider counting hundreds of rejected absentee ballots from mostly Republican-leaning areas.

The court did not issue an opinion on Republican Coleman's claim that the ballots may have been wrongly rejected, saying he can press a court contest if he wants to prove his point.

The ruling this morning appears to clear the way for the State Canvassing Board this afternoon to certify results of the Senate election recount, presumably with Democrat Al Franken on top. Franken holds an unofficial 225-vote lead.

So now it's official.

Well, except for Coleman's anticipated strategy of can't-work sore-loser lawsuits. (Atrios is right.)

And except the filibuster to keep Franken from being seated, as promised by the partners in the New Bipartisanship [oops!]--by the Civil War Re-Enactment Guild [ahem; let's try it one more time]--by the Senate Republicans.

Yeah, other than fiddly details like that, it's pretty clear sailing ahead for ol' Smilin' Al. Good luck to him.

I don't have any more of those old Franken/SNL vignettes to share, so I'll just direct you to this. (It's got to be driving the TPM folks nuts--you spend day after day, month after month, providing all that muckraking and political analysis, and then your traffic numbers skyrocket because of a 25-year old clip of someone in tight pants.)


(Hat tip to Nick, one of the 83 gazillion email correspondents who forwarded the link to that clip to me in the last 24 hours.)

The p3 meta-list of top 10 "Top 10" lists

No year has been done to death until the last Top Ten list about it has been published. In the hope that it will hasten the end of 2008, p3 proudly presents our Top 10 list of Top 10 lists.


List: Top 10 Food Trends for 2009
Source: The Food Channel
Trendline: Green, local, low-budget
On the list: #8: Food Insecurity – After the tomato and jalapeno scares of ’08, Americans are looking for tighter controls around food.


List: Top 10 Craziest Things People Say About Tom Cruise on the Internet (Read by Tom Cruise)
Source: Late Night With David Letterman
Trendline: Disturbing
On the list: #8: I still wear those underpants from "Risky Business."


List: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008
Source: Alternet
Trendline: Deregulation, short-term thinking, profit over social use
On the list: #3: Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"


List: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
Source: Lifehacker.com
Trendline: Geeky, moving toward mainstream
On the list: #7: Compare items with "better than" and find similar items with "reminds me of."


List: BBQ08: The 50 Best Barbecue Joints in Texas
Source: Texas Monthly
Trendline: Mouthwatering
On the list: The best barbecue in Texas is currently being served at Snow’s BBQ, in Lexington, a small restaurant open only on Saturdays and only from eight in the morning until whenever the meat runs out, usually around noon.


List: Top 10 Reasons Not To Tell Her You’ve Cheated
Source: AskMen.com
Trendline: Amazingly shallow, but with a certain low cunning
On the list: #7: Because she already beat you to it


List: The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008
Source: Foreign Policy
Trendline: Lunatics running the asylum
On the list: #4: "[A]nyone who says we’re in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of' 'recession.'" —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008


List: Most Outrageous Comments of 2008
Source: Media Matters
Trendline: Neanderthal
On the list: Michael Savage: "Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They're only gonna vote themselves a raise."


List: Top 10 Viral Videos of 2008
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Trend: It's Tina Fey's world; she just lets us have some of the oxygen.
On the list: #3: Christian the Lion being reunited with the two men who raised him as a cub.


List: Top 10 Editorial Cartoons
Source: Time.com
Trendline: Oil! Obama! Palin!
On the list: #3. Dante's Terminal


List: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008
Source:
Trendline: Evil flourishes
On the list: #9: Privatization of America’s Infrastructure

Waiting on the Coleman/Franken recount, Part 4

Here's a treat to find under your tree, or next to your menorah, this morning: TPM is calling an Al Franken victory--albeit an excruciatingly narrow one--in the Minnesota Senate race "nearly a foregone conclusion when this recount finishes up in early January."

Norm Coleman just got a Christmas present from the Minnesota Supreme Court: A giant lump of coal.

In a unanimous decision handed down just now, the state Supremes denied Coleman any relief in a lawsuit he was waging to deal with allegations of double-counted absentee ballots, which his campaign says have given an illegitimate edge to Al Franken. The Coleman campaign was seeking to switch 25 selected precincts back to their Election Night totals, which would undo all of Franken's recount gains in those areas and put Coleman back in the lead.

The court, however, sided with the Franken camp's lawyers in saying that a question like this should be reserved for a post-recount election contest proceeding, as the proper forum to discover evidence -- and which also has a burden of proof that heavily favors the certified winner.

Simply put, Coleman is in very big trouble right now. With Al Franken leading by 47 votes, this lawsuit was Coleman's best shot at coming from behind.

Of course, as long as a Republican lawyer still draws a breath in the Twin Cities, it isn't completely over. But it's encouraging news.

In fact, it's encouraging enough to bring up another story from Franken's SNL days:

In the second season, Franken and Davis got over their initial shyness about crossing the threshold into Lorne's office and learned to barge in whenever they felt like it. Franken in particular developed a reputation for stubborn aggressiveness, and people got used to hearing the hard, nasal sound of his voice raised to express an opinion, any opinion, any time he wanted to express it. When Ricky Nelson hosted the show, he walked into Lorne's office while Franken was there, lying on the floor with his feet up on Lorne's desk.

"Hey, Rick," Franken said cheerfully, "how about an 'Ozzie's Dead' sketch?"

After Franken left, Lorne turned to Nelson and said, "That was Al Franken. You have to understand."

Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad,
Saturday Night: A Backstage
History of Saturday Night Live

"Stubborn aggressiveness." I like the sound of that in a Senator.

"That was Senator Franken. You have to understand." I kind of like the sound of that, too.

Fingers crossed.