Removing All Doubts

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

THIS GREAT OLD ADAGE, usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln, has been consistently violated lately in American political discourse, both by a chronically misinformed citizenry and an out-of-touch punditry -- nowhere more so than when it comes to the phenomenon known as the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party. There were rallies all over the country on Tax Day, and the mainstream media is finally taking a good hard look at what it is, why it is, and just who is attracted to its virulently anti-liberal and anti-government sentiments.

Toward this end, on April 15 the New York Times assembled a small gaggle of commentators online, charged with getting to the bottom of What Tea Party Backers Want. Besides giving a good cup of tea a bad name, we know what they don't want -- to shut up and accept the results of the November 2008 election -- and we can guess by their all-white composition and more blatant displays of racism that they're not too keen in general on a black man in the White House. As expected, the "experts" gathered here are think-tankers and academics -- with some going on record as believing the Tea Party will have a Ross Perot-like impact on the upcoming midterm elections and further out in the 2012 presidential campaign. Others make way too much of a recent poll indicating a "significant percentage" of so-called Independents and Democrats are Tea Party members; and a "longtime political consultant" called Douglas Schoen thinks they're more diverse than they're portrayed and that it's somehow "extraordinary that close to 1 in 5 Americans call themselves Tea Party supporters." Why? That means over 80% thankfully are NOT identifying with Tea Party simpletons!

I'm not a longtime anything except old, but I think if anything there will be a backlash against any politician getting too close to this lunatic fringe.

But my candidate for hands-down dumbest take so far on the nascent-but-already-irritating Tea Party was a March 4th column by David Brooks, which found the Times' token conservative digging at the dreaded Pop Sociology well again. His modus operandi in such pieces is to come to a conclusion first, then retrofit the "facts" that fit his thesis. Last week, for instance, in a column titled "Relax, We'll Be Fine," he uses a few stats about population and income trends to back up a feel-good notion that "the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival." None of it rings true, with the following paragraph an example of what might best be described as Brooks' very un-Toffler-like brand of future schlock on display:

"As the world gets richer, demand will rise for the sorts of products Americans are great at providing — emotional experiences. Educated Americans grow up in a culture of moral materialism; they have their sensibilities honed by complicated shows like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Mad Men,” and they go on to create companies like Apple, with identities coated in moral and psychological meaning, which affluent consumers crave."

Brooks' whole essence of American Exceptionalism, like most sheltered conservatives, can be boiled down to, If Americans are doing it, ultimately it's good for the world, because Americans always mean well. That's the only way I can make any sense of what he's saying.

He's been on an awful negative roll lately, just mailing in column after clueless column. And people are noticing. On April 7 Brooks reflected on the NCAA Championship game, using the prism of "spoiled" Duke versus "underdog" Butler to postulate on Bigger Issues in American society. Not a bad concept, but Brooks uses it to hammer home his point that the rich and successful are who they are for a reason: they work harder than the poor. It was great to see Matt Taibbi calling him out for this elitist rubbish on his excellent True / Slant blog. In "Let Them Eat Work," Taibbi as you might expect does not hold back:

"I would give just about anything to sit David Brooks down in front of some single mother somewhere who’s pulling two shitty minimum-wage jobs just to be able to afford a pair of $19 Mossimo sneakers at Target for her kid, and have him tell her, with a straight face, that her main problem is that she doesn’t work as hard as Jamie Dimon.

Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door."

But back to Brooks and his observation that the current Tea Party = the 1960s Antiwar movement. That claim is somehow even more offensive than his usual outlandish and off-base flights from a reality-based universe -- which obviously is saying something.

A proposal this bad needs a catchy title to match -- and "The Wal-Mart Hippies" does the trick. I'm shaking my head as I type the words here, but Brooks' childish position, that "The Tea Party’s raging against the machine echoes an older radicalism from the opposite end of the political spectrum," is absurd on the face of it. All too typically, Brooks presents little to no evidence to back it up -- making his column the reliably fact-free space on the New York Times' op-ed page that it's become.

After noting that both movements aim to "return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution," he concedes there are many differences, including one being of the right, the other the left, one motivated by a war, the other by government spending. But then he plows right ahead toward his conclusion, claiming that "the similarities are more striking than the differences." This is where an editor should have shot down the idea before Brooks wasted everybody's time, because he uses the rest of the piece to prove no such thing.

Again wildly throwing around concepts in the hope that a few of these stereotypes might stick, Brooks finds great significance that both groups believe in what he calls "mass innocence," defined as: "Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures." What mass movement has members that don't believe in this? It's like a horoscope in that it's so general that it applies to everyone from Jehovah's Witnesses to the Black Panthers.

The remainder of the column is filled with gems like "members of both movements have a problem with authority" and want to "destroy the corrupt structures and defeat the establishment." Trees died for these observations, to paraphrase one legendary negative book review.

His tiresome conclusion is that the Tea Party will eventually self-destruct because they're shortsighted like '60s radicals were and therefore are not true conservatives, because "to remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings." See, according to David Brooks, the Left blew it back then "through their own imprudence, self-righteousness and naïve radicalism." I guess the Left just didn't see the "wisdom" of the Vietnam War which the "just authorities" of the time like Nixon and Kissinger were insisting was worth 55,000 dead Americans to preserve civilization as we know it. Glad that's been cleared up for us.

This March 4th column drew 261 comments on the Times' website, a healthy amount of traffic but nowhere near the 500-600 other opinion pieces regularly attract. (Today's Frank Rich column for instance already has 580 comments.) That alone should tell his editors something. Maybe it's time to give someone else his valuable op-ed real estate. It has to be at least on the table if there's anyone on the ball minding the store.

Quite a few rightfully indignant readers responded forcefully to Brooks' brand of hogwash, some of them upset that Brooks would even make such a boneheaded comparison. Like all good writing, I only wish I'd have thought of some of these Comments first, but it's enough to know others are thinking along the same lines. Here's a few choice ones that show there are plenty of people not buying what Brooks is selling:

We need a serious analysis of the Tea Party folks, but we won't be getting it from Mr. Brooks' pop sociology. The inchoate, but real and dangerous, rage of the marginalized white working-class grows out of 30 years of working harder and getting nowhere while the top 1% has grown ever richer and, alarmingly, less white--symbolized by Obama's election. As ever, Brooks wants to analyze American society without mentioning class or race, and so misses the target by a mile...

...There is little, if anything, about the Tea Partiers that isn't ugly. All too often, stupid, simple people, looking for simple solutions and simple slogans - being manipulated and courted by demagogues, dolts, and one very dangerous dame. And by the way - the New Left of the 60's touched an entire generation, and encompassed not only the politics of the major political parties - but also social justice movements for women, Afro-Americans, Native Americans, Indigenous peoples worldwide,as well as the oppressed and the exploited everywhere...

...David, the fact that The Tea Party Movement has people on Medicare and Medicaid complaining about the government's involvement in health-reform sums up their unbelievable (and frightening) intellectual ineptitude and proves that they truly lack any organized goals, objectives or ideas to have a legitimate debate. So I think it's shamefully egregious to compare the followers of MLK Jr. and others who championed civil and social freedoms, equality, love and acceptance - to 'people' as egotistical, zealous and uneducated as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their Fox News addicted, Tea Party zombies.

Tea Party Tempest

ALTHOUGH I ENJOY ridiculing the Tea Party halfwits as much as the next sentient being, let's be clear that the movement as a whole is no joke. 5,000 of them showed up in Boston to see their patron saint of cluelessness, Sarah Palin, regurgitate the same old talking points. Palin like Glenn Beck is dangerous only because people take what she has to say seriously -- despite or who knows anymore maybe because of her disturbing propensity to make things up as she goes along.

In Washington today, attention junkie Michele Bachmann went for the jugular, using rhetoric loaded with code words to make her point: "We're on to this gangster government. I say it's time for these little piggies to go home ... We need you to take out some of these bad guys." Would it surprise anyone who's read about these meetings to discover that Tea Party loons could be heard chanting, "There's a communist in the White House!" Or that a "fair tax" type would be advocating, "We have got to take the country back by taking back the money they take from us" -- not bothering to explain who would be left to pay for a military budget that incredibly, obscenely is more than every other nation on the planet combined. After all, it takes a lot of tax revenue to win hearts and minds. But sometimes we do much more harm than good in places like Iraq, now seven years after the invasion. And you can make a strong case that we've doing a lot more harm than good lately to the people we're supposed to be helping in Afghanistan, to the point where you can't help but think it's high time for the U.S. to get the hell out of both countries. But the Tea Party loudmouths selectively fixate their outrage elsewhere. As an AP story about the rallies put it:

"Lost in the rhetoric was that taxes have gone down under Obama. Congress has cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion, leaving Americans with a lighter load despite nearly $29 billion in increases by states. Obama plans to increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for his health care overhaul and other programs."

But then again, logic, reality and reason are not the strong suits of the simpletons gathered under the Tea Party banner. Facts are not likely to get in the way any time soon where the Tea Party is concerned. Republicans now own whatever ugliness comes out of it when all the heated rhetoric brews out of control and boils over into violence. Because it's a matter of when, not if...

.

Jokers To The Right

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-- Thomas Jefferson

I stole that great quote out of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, recommended reading for oh just about everyone alive, which I am 100 pages into now and really digging. But of course Tom could have been talking about the current state of the Republican party and its scary outer-right fringes in the form of Hate Radio and the equally loud and obnoxious Tea Party.

I don't know what disturbs me more -- the nerve of these people to pretend we didn't just have an election, or their frightening ignorance on most issues. And let's just say their spellin' ain't so hot either, if the once-fine art of sign writing is any indication. If ever a political movement needed a roving proofreader, by golly these Tea Party folk will have to do until something worse comes along.

Guam Overboard!

BY THE WAY, HANK, the next time you feel like pontificating publicly on a subject which you know absolutely nothing about, it might be a good idea to assign one of your staff to at least print out the pertinent Wikipedia entry. If you had done even that bare modicum of due diligence, you would have discovered basic facts like the island of Guam is 30 miles long, between 4-12 miles wide, and has been inhabited, sans major geological disaster, for the last 4,000 years. That would have cut down some on your stumbling preamble, which, while masterfully demonstrating your ignorance, nevertheless pales in comparison to your beyond-ridiculous assertion that the collective weight of human beings might pose a threat to a land mass. It's a wonder Manhattan island has lasted this long, what with the millions of overweight tourists coming to the city every year.

The real story here might be how Admiral Willard keeps a straight face while the Georgia congressman floats his outlandish capsize theory: "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Instead, with great restraint, Willard replies, "We don't anticipate that." Classic comeback!

Congressman Fears a Guam capsize with extra U.S. military
Link to story here













Proposed new tourism campaign: "Come to Guam, but please step lightly!"

When Ignorant Sheeple Attack

"I hear hurricanes a blowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't go around tonight
Well it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise.
All right!..."

Sarah Palin's Slightly More Crazy Twin?

Sponsors Leaving Glenn Beck Show

The Sleep Of Reason*

I'M VERY DISHEARTENED, but not all that shocked, that retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters' call for the U.S. military to abandon a captured soldier in Afghanistan didn't get more traction in the mainstream press. Then again, this past week was virtually subsumed by yet another racial Rorschach test, Gates-gate -- the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police for disorderly conduct. All news seemed to pale in comparison to President Obama calling the actions of the arresting white officer "stupid," and it was obvious the story wasn't going away any time soon -- at least until a round or two of beer diplomacy at the White House by everyone involved set for Thursday afternoon. And we can all drink to that.

In case you hadn't heard and/or weren't paying enough attention, according to MSNBC.com, on July 2:

"An American soldier (Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl) is believed being held by the Taliban after he walked off his base in eastern Afghanistan without his body armor and weapon, officials said Thursday. Initial reports indicated that the soldier was off duty at the time he went missing, having just completed a shift."

This is where five-star wingnut Peters comes in. He made an appearance on Fox News on July 19, right after the Taliban released video of a shaken Bergdahl in captivity. Channeling his inner Cheney, Peters cautioned that we shouldn't be making a hero of this soldier, who after all is engaged in anti-American propaganda:

"We must wait until all the facts are in to make a judgment, but … he is an apparent deserter. Reports are indeed that he had abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post and walked off.”

“I want to be clear. If when the facts are in we find out it’s through some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime — I don’t care how hard it sounds — as far as I’m concerned the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills."

Peters' odious diatribes are usually confined to the fairly unbalanced op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. But back in May, he outraged decent people everywhere in a different forum: asserting in the "Journal of International Security Affairs" that, in the future, "godless" journalists criticizing the glorious war effort just may have to be sacrificed on the altar of a Pax Americana Uber Alles:

"The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the "rights" and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion--were any additional proof required--that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves. And, of course, there is a penalty for the intellectual's dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters."

Call me overly sensitive, but I detect a subtle anti-liberal bias buried in there somewhere. In a nutshell, and where else would you find a crackpot like Ralph Peters, this is the standard neocon credo: the future consists of eternal, endless war against whatever bogeyman we're demonizing at the moment, and if you get in the way of the War Machine, you too will be demonized and ultimately destroyed. Because according to Peters, "Our failures nourish monsters." This guy's hateful, overheated rhetoric fits right in alongside Joe Goebbels and Joe McCarthy.

Not surprisingly, Peters has seen as much actual live combat as I have: zip, zilch, nada... He was forced to admit as much a few days later on an appearance with fellow chickenhawk Bill O'Reilly, who seemed crestfallen at the news that Peters too was a war virgin. Peters then regained his footing, calling the captured soldier "mentally disturbed," and O'Reilly quickly chimed in that the guy "must be crazy." Ironically, the only people who fit those labels more than Bill O'Reilly and Ralph Peters usually wear straitjackets to the dinner table.




















*El sueno de la razon produce monstruos
(The sleep of reason produces monsters)
Francisco de Goya
1797-98

Condemned To Repeat

ISN'T IT REASSURING to see Republicans refrain from politicizing President Obama's response to 10 days of mass demonstrations in Iran over the rigged June 12th election? While rightly celebrating the Iranians' bravery in the face of repression, they crossed the line by making it a personal referendum on Obama's willingness to meddle in another country's affairs -- a nation whose relationship to the U.S. is complicated because of a sordid history of meddling going back to the CIA's part in a 1953 coup (OPERATION AJAX) that overthrew a democratically elected government and ushered in the reign of the Shah's brutal dictatorship. That's just one event in a long string of American interventions in the region. And while the average American may be unaware that the Reagan administration sold arms to Iraq to use against Iran in that savage conflict, any Iranian can tell you all about the circumstances behind the infamous 1984 photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein -- giving at least tacit approval to the use of chemical weapons in that war.

Of course, just 11 days ago these same right-wing human rights advocates criticizing Obama for turning his back on the protesters wanted to bomb the hell out of Iran because of its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. The face of the reformers, one of at least 17 people killed in Iran since protests against the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began, is Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old shot and killed over the weekend by security forces. More than one conservative website went so far as to juxtapose a photo of the young woman bleeding to death on the sidewalk with one of Obama eating ice cream with his daughters on Father's Day -- as if the president's so-called lukewarm or lackluster public endorsement of the protest had somehow caused her to be shot. Only in the current unhinged right-wing blogosphere could such a disgusting connection be made -- which in fairness I heard at least one conservative talk show host strongly condemn.

Of course, when millions of their fellow Americans took to the streets in protest of the impending Iraq invasion in February 2003, conservatives' passion for public demonstrations was a bit more muted. In reality, the only reason Republicans care about Iranians now is because they see an opportunity to make political capital out of it, sensing a chance to paint Obama in a bad light. Their simplistic approach to a complicated affair fails to take into consideration that an American leader throwing his weight behind the demonstrations could only end up being counterproductive -- witness the harsh crackdown underway and the ringing anti-American and European rhetoric being used against the thousands of protesters taken into custody. The show trials have predictably played up that "foreign interference" angle, with detainees "confessing" to acting under orders from the Voice of America, the BBC, etc.

The closest direct parallel to the Iranian reformists' demand for a recount seems to be the Tienanmen Square democratization rallies 20 years ago. I'm sure President George H.W. Bush spoke truth to Chinese power back then; I'm just not recalling it at the moment. But suffice to say China is now a human right paradise largely because Republicans controlled the White House for 20 of the last 28 years.

Instead, "news outlets" like Fox keep harping back to Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" moment as an example for President Obama to follow -- unconvinced that his "outraged and appalled" statement sets the right tone of bellicosity. In truth, the same contingent of bloodthirsty warhawks who painted Iran as part of a monolithic "Axis of Evil" could care less about that country's freedom movement -- their trademark selective empathy bordering as usual on rank hypocrisy.

Let's give the last word to Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, who nailed it as usual last week in his column, The "Bomb Iran" contingent's newfound concern for the Iranian people:

Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way -- just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is. Advocating a so-called "attack on Iran" or "bombing Iran" in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many -- obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives. The same is true every time we start mulling the prospect of attacking and bombing another country as though it's some abstract decision in a video game.

Non Compos Governmentis

IT'S TIMES LIKE THIS when you throw up your hands and break out the You Can't Make This Stuff Up line. Allow me to explain.

I had about an hour to kill this morning before meeting my brother for coffee, so I decided to run out and grab the Sunday papers. I wanted to read about the Subway Series as well as the latest developments on that bush league coup up in Albany, where two Democratic senators defected to the other side on Monday. So what do I see on the cover of the Daily News? For a second I thought it might have been Photoshopped or even a clever caricature, but it was real: Under the headline SCREWBALLS, it's the two jokers at Yankee Stadium yesterday taking in the game from $650 box seats -- Pedro Espada wearing a Yankees jersey and cap, Hiram Monserrate sporting a Queens Dominica shirt and I Love NY hat. And just like that we have a new post-Spitzer low in dignity and decorum.

Following gains in last November's election, Democrats took control of the state senate for the first time in 40 years, but on Monday that majority was history after less than six months as Republicans enticed Espada and Monserrate to join their power grab. The result: a slim 32-30 Democratic advantage became a tenuous 32-30 Republican advantage -- with a court set to rule on the gridlock Monday.

Not to worry, because the two freshman senators come with impeccable credentials when it comes to holding their own in the free-for-all Albany infighting. Espada represents a Bronx district but, contrary to Senate law, may not actually live in the borough he serves. Instead he is accused of residing in an exclusive Westchester suburb, and at last check did not even have an office in the Bronx. But wait, it gets worse. He's also been fined tens of thousands of dollars for campaign violations, with more pending, and the state attorney general is investigating allegations he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions to a nonprofit healthcare organization he founded.

The other statesman in question, Hiram Monserrate, is even more scary. Last year, the same Republicans who on Monday welcomed him with open arms were calling on him to resign after he was charged with stabbing his girlfriend in the face with broken glass:

"It took more than 20 stitches to close the wound - "first in the face and muscle and then to the top layer of skin," prosecutors wrote. The heavyweight former cop was enraged because he found another man's business card in her purse, prosecutors said. Monserrate was caught on tape dumping the card into the trash chute and dragging his screaming girlfriend from the building."

That's right. This piece of work, who represents Elmhurst, a part of Queens about one district over from where I sit typing this stirring entry, was forced to "retire" from the NYPD because of a "psychological disability." He's also accused of falsifying a campaign bio, claiming he served in the Persian Gulf War although "military records indicate he never left the United States."

TAKING OF THE SENATE 1-2-3
Yesterday's Room Eight New York Politics has a possible smoking gun. The website speculates on Monserrate's motivation for joining the coup and turning control of the Senate over to the Republicans. The dots connect the dissident senators to state power broker Tom Golisano -- the Rochester billionaire and serial gubernatorial defeatee (1994, 1998, 2002). Turns out Monserrate is looking at 7 years if convicted in the assault case, and maybe just maybe Golisano is willing to help out a little in a textbook case of political quid pro quo for dummies.

The turning point for Golisano, according to the New York Times, may have come "when Golisano met with senate majority leader Smith a few months ago to demand that the new majority drop its plans for modest tax increases for the wealthy, the billionaire was not treated with sufficient deference." Golisano soon was announcing he was moving to Florida to escape New York's burdensome tax code, claiming he would save $13,800 per day in income taxes, plus more from sales taxes, gasoline taxes, utility taxes and property taxes. Golisano then let it be known that he planned to fund "worthy causes" instead of spending it to fund "Albany's bloated bureaucracy, corrupt politicians or regular handouts to the special interests."

Room Eight notes that back in early May, just as Tom Golisano, political operative Steve Pigeon, Monserrate, Espada and new majority leader Dean Skelos began plotting to overthrow the Democratic majority, Monserrate switched lawyers to high-powered Joseph Tacopino -- who represented Michael Jackson in his child abuse trial. Among the revealing questions Room Eight raises are:

-Where's Monserrate getting the money to pay Tacopino $750 per hour, and what's its provenance?

-Was Monserrate promised help with this by Golisano, Pigeon, Espada, Skelos, Libous or any other individual?

-Were Monserrate's legal problems raised during the planning or recruiting stages of the coup, and if so, in what context?

-Why was Monserrate, in particular, recruited by Espada for the coup, and no other Democrat?

Juan Gonzalez also tried to make sense of the switch Friday in his Daily News column, noting that it came with just two weeks remaining in the session. The move put on hold legislation relating to issues like mayoral control of the city's education system, same-sex marriage, ethics reform, property taxes, changes to NYC rent laws:

One of the most important bills to be voted on in the last days of this Senate session is the end of vacancy decontrol. More than 200,000 city rental apartments would be placed back under rent stabilization. That would brake skyrocketing rents and directly benefit thousands of working-class Latino tenants. That legislation is the landlords' biggest nightmare.

Espada, as the head of the Senate Housing Committee, gets huge backing from those landlords. Monserrate, on the other hand, has always had a liberal voting record. People forget he was the first cop ever to sit on the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union. He is also the main sponsor of the bill to end vacancy decontrol. So why would tenant champion Monserrate join with landlord buddy Espada? And why would both defect to Republicans on the eve of the all-important vote on vacancy decontrol?

Why indeed? Well, it's never a surprise when politicians act according to sheer opportunism, self-interest and greed -- which in this case would certainly explain why rats like Espada and Monserrate would jump ship. After all, the former is reputedly upset he didn't get enough consideration for legislative “earmarks,” money for favored projects, as well as other perks; while the latter is said to be still smarting from the "Senate leadership’s stripping him of a committee chairmanship and the $12,500 stipend that goes with it after his indictment." Also, according to the Daily News, the Bronx District Attorney is looking into "whether Espada lives within his Senate district, as required by law" and in a separate matter, "whether a nonprofit Espada controls...demanded $2 million in state funds."

The new coalition immediately showed signs of fracture, with Espada claiming more Democrats were coming over and the new majority was "growing stronger by the minute" -- at the same time Democrats were trying to lure Monserrate back into the fold as he attempted to explain, if by explain you mean shed no new light whatsoever on the subject: "I am not a Republican. I am a Democrat. My understanding and agreement to coalition government was under certain criteria. You can't have a coalition with two Democrats and 30 Republicans."

For his part, on his way to Yankee game Saturday afternoon, a defiant/delusional Espada told a reporter “We are in a war and I told Hiram to leave the load at home and come enjoy the game." However, another player in the "Albany Circus" sees it a little differently, telling The Borrero Report: “Espada has to keep Monserrate very close and guarded or the weasel will succumb to the pressure from the Democrats."

Yet there's an even uglier reading of the recent events in the Capitol: that Golisano and other Republicans exploited tensions between black Democratic politicians (Smith, Paterson) and Latinos in the so-called Gang of Four (Espada, Monserrate, Ruben Diaz Sr. and Carl Kruger). That and a reported promise of Golisano helping the two traitors fight off challengers in the 2010 Democratic primary.

But leave it to accidental governor David Patterson to put it all in perspective. Last week he pleaded with the two sides to come to their senses, imploring everyone to “think of the lobbyists” who had worked hard “to persuade legislative leaders and legislators of issues." I suspect lobbyists will do okay for themselves whichever side comes out on top. The same can't be said for Paterson -- one of the least popular governors in the nation -- and his reelection chances in 2010. How does "Governor Giuliani" sound to you?

Buyer's Remorse?

CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE how testy Mike Bloomberg has been acting lately. Despite a tightly controlled, almost scripted narrative of a run for his third term, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for Bloomberg, who has recently squeezed in a full campaign season's worth of verbal blunders -- and it's still early June.

The most recent example came in the aftermath of Dategate: the First Couple jetting into New York City for dinner and a show. Asked how much the president's trip cost the City in security expenses, Billionayor Bloomberg swatted the question away while typically boiling everything down to tourism: "I can't think of anything that is better as an advertisement for our tourism industry, for Broadway, for our restaurants, for saying that this is a safe city and an affordable city."

Then, as if intentionally trying to compound the absurdity of calling New York City "affordable," he belted out the following gem: "The President doesn't get paid that much. He's on a budget, too."

Well, as you might expect, the tabloids let Bloomberg have it for that one, with one Daily News story headlined:

Get a clue, Bloomy! Mayor touts Obamas' 'affordable' night on Broadway

Even The Times couldn't resist piling on. As Michael Barbaro put it in a fairly caustic Monday column:

"It was the latest puzzling remark in a re-election campaign filled with colorful foot-in-mouth mayoral utterances. He has scolded a disabled blogger, Michael Harris, who uses a wheelchair, for accidentally turning on a tape recorder at a news conference. And, last week, he bitterly rebuked a reporter, Azi Paybarah, who asked about his decision to overturn the city’s term limits law." This kind of foot-in-mouth syndrome would have to manifest itself on almost a daily basis from now until the election in November for the 67-year-old frontrunner to be denied his third term. Toward that end, Bloomberg has already spent $20 million of a projected $60 million on radio and TV ads.

standing what is essentially an unlimited budget, Mayor Mike continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons. Last week at a press conference he again managed to veer off-message -- calling the New York Observer's Azi Paybarah "a disgrace" for having the temerity to bring up the mayor's original rationale for seeking a third term -- that the financial crisis demands a leader of his rare business acumen. Now, the question was served with a side order of sarcasm that seemed to set off Hizzoner:

Mr. Paybarah: If the economy is turning around, as you said, does that mean that the rationale for extending term limits–

Mr. Bloomberg: I don’t know why … why don’t we just get serious questions here. The rationale for extending term limits is, the City Council passed it and the public’s going to have a chance on Nov. 3 to say what they want. And I don’t think we have to keep coming back to that. When you have a serious question about the economy I will be happy to answer it. Anything else?"

After that, a fuming Bloomberg stared directly at Mr. Paybarah and said, “You are a disgrace.”

Barbaro's piece included two other examples of Bloomberg's trademark callousness:

After parents complained about dangerously hot rubber safety mats on city playgrounds, he responded: “If it’s hot, don’t sit on it.” About crowded subways, and the griping they engender, he once said: “So you stand next to people. Get real. This is New York.”

A guy would have to be awfully insecure to be this nasty this often. I mean, Bloomberg is the wealthiest New Yorker and the 17th richest guy in the whole world. But no matter how much he spends on advertisements attesting to the contrary, he shares a bullying streak with his ho unsurprisingly also sought to circumvent the term limits statute following 9/11.

It should be emphasized that the mayor's latest blunders come in the wake of much stricter ground rules for reporters lucky enough to cover his expected coronation. The new directive limits all questions to campaign matters, with policy questions off limits. Yet obviously there's little the mayor's staff can do to offset his recent propensity to say the wrong thing at the worst time.

Last week he somehow found a way offend the widow of a swine flu victim with his remark that "In some senses, if you have H1N1 [virus], you should consider yourself lucky because it so far seems to be a milder flu than the garden variety." To be fair, Bloomberg did follow up his impromptu diagnosis with an explanation that "It's very sad that those that we've lost are gone, but the good news is that so far it does seem to be a relatively mild flu" -- but the damage was done and the tabloids had their money "consider yourself lucky" quote and were busy running wih itIn short order, Bonnie Wiener, whose husband Michael was the city's first death frirus, waw one om the vfor his insensitive remarks:

"I'm not feeling very lucky. I'm sorry I can't agree with that. My children are not feeling very lucky either. It's a very puzzling comment to make." -- also revealing that, "When my husband died it was on the media before they called to tell me."

One of the free daily papers here today noted that Bloomberg has spent 10 times more than his closest challenger -- City Comptroller William Thompson, who is 15 points behind in the latest poll. Then a chart showed what the $20 million could restore to the mayor's 2010 austerity budget:

$12 million -- cuts to prekindergarten classes

$3.8 million -- afterschool programs

$561,000 -- home meals for senior citizens

$1.5 million -- literacy classes

$500,000 -- Housing Court

$1.3 million -- dropout prevention

$360,000 -- anti-predatory lending awareness

Of course, the whole premise is kind of unfair -- the campaign spending is coming out of Bloomberg's own deep pockets while the cuts are part of a $59 billion municipal budget -- but I'm not hating it. Because after all 20 million dollars is an obscene amount of money to spend on a race that is for all intents and purposes uncontested.

Wingnut Wednesday

IT IS NO ACCIDENT that President Obama's tapping of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace the retiring David Souter represents the quintessential "rock and a hard place" conundrum for the right wing. That's what makes the choice such an inspiring one, and quite possibly Obama's single best move of his young presidency.

The beauty of the selection lies in the simple logic that the harder Republicans fight the nomination, the more likely they will continue to be seen as the anti-minority, anti-women, anti-progress bunch. And the more inflammatory the rhetoric, the less likely it becomes that Hispanics -- the fastest-growing voting block in the U.S. -- will want anything to do with the party that already has done so much for them on issues like immigration.

Granted, Sotomayor is no Harriet Miers when it comes to legal experience or jurisprudence -- who is? -- yet leading Democrats are confident of her eventual confirmation. Chuck Schumer even warned Republicans that they oppose the nomination "at their own peril."

And so with the lines drawn, the race was joined to see which leading right-wing figure could slander the nominee most irrationally. As expected, professional bigot Rush Limbaugh broke out well ahead of the pack, followed closely by warped hatemonger Anne Coulter and tiresome charlatan Newt Gingrich. The trio took turns branding her a "racist" based on an out-of-context soundbite from a 2001 speech she made to a Hispanic group:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Gingrich actually used his own Tweet account to urge Sotomayor to "withdraw" from consideration for the Supreme Court vacancy: Imagine a judicial nominee said "my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman" new racism is no better than old racism. And former Congressman Tom Tancredo -- never one to pass up an opportunity to slander a brown person -- just had to throw his own white hood into the fray. Readily admitting he had never even glanced at a single word of Sotomayor's legal rulings or opinions from 16 years as a federal judge, the deranged crazed zealous anti-immigration lunatic advocate nevertheless used an MSNBC appearance to weigh in:

"I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that? There’s plenty of stuff."

But when it comes to politics, no part of the nation reliably brings the crazy like the Loon Star State.Could anyone have been surprised to learn that David Carney is an advisor to Texas Governor and recent secession advocate Rick Perry?

Apparently untroubled by poll after poll showing the number of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans shrinking to near-record lows, Carney still was having none of that Big Tent approach advocated by softies like Colin Powell. Times may be tough for the GOP, but as Carney told the Dallas Morning News on May 16, “that doesn’t mean you take your principles and throw them out the door and become a whorehouse and let anybody in who wants to come in, regardless.”

Any more talk along those lines, and David Carney may find himself slapped with a "mental anguish" lawsuit -- what with prostitutes, whores and streetwalkers polling higher than Republicans these days. After all, stranger things have happened inside an American courtroom.

Give 'Em Enough Rope

AT FIRST I THOUGHT it had to be a joke, the kind you might see on political humor blog Wonkette or from anything-goes The Onion. But there it was in Roger Simon's column Wednesday on Politico.com:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

Does it get any more embarrassing for the Republican'ts these days -- foolishly butting heads at every turn with an exceedingly popular president instead of picking their battles when they actually have, you know, something resembling an actual plan. I give embattled RNC Chairman Richard Steele a modicum of credit for having the common sense to oppose this latest display of red-baiting, predicting the stunt "will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Yet what did you expect from the new Know-Nothings who thought up the bold Freedom Fries initiative after France refused to join the Coalition of Willing Invaders back in the heady early days of Operation Iraqi Oil? Red-baiting has always been their stock in fixed trade, their desperation go-to move. And why not? Branding opponents as communists or socialist traitors has always worked before, from South America to Southeast Asia and now back by unpopular demand to North America.

Judging by their actions in the last week alone, the Right sure doesn't need any help from the left in digging a deeper hole for themselves. Perhaps the most potent symbol of that obtuseness came when Deferment Dick very pointedly sided with Rush Limbaugh as the face of the party against former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell -- in effect choosing a draft-dodging, drug-addicted hatemonger over one of the party's most respected figures in a feeble attempt to work up its rabid, panicked base.

The move to "officially" brand Democrats as socialists is sure to backfire -- just as it did in the last election. The McCain-Palin campaign did its best, in effect making it a stalking point, and yet enough voters saw it as the shameless, shameful tactic it was.

Former Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson finally had enough of Deadeye Dick besmirching his ex-boss, and he let loose in a no-holds-barred editorial published Thursday called The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney:

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact. Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11--much touted by Cheney--is due almost entirely to the nation's having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation." Third--and here comes the blistering fact--when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Remember, this criticism is coming from within his own party -- a retired military man, a Republican and former chief of staff at the State Department -- not from the "pages" of the Daily Kos or moveon.org. Wilkerson saves his best brush-back pitch for last -- passionately decrying the devastation the Cheney-Limbaugh axis of ill will is leaving in its wake:

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party. He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln? When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends. Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

I guess 7-term Congressman Pete Sessions wanted to make it crystal clear where he stands on the new president, casting all logic and reason to the winds while his mouth proceeded full speed ahead. The Oklahoma Republican told a New York Times reporter last week that it was the Obama administration's intent to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of its “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate power -- part of a long-term Democratic strategy that is “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it."

But fear not, free marketeers, because come the 2010 midterm elections, voters will swarm to the polls, remembering that when the GOP controlled Washington, according to Sessions, “many dreams were achieved.” Until then, it's Sessions' mission to keep hope alive until the Republican dream machine can recapture power, preferably by the ballot box -- but Sessions lately seems to be espousing a more radical oppositional agenda.

Apparently unwilling to cite suitable homegrown precedents of heroic rebellion against tyranny in his own nation's storied past -- Sons of Liberty, anyone? -- in February of this year he reached for a more current inspiration: suggesting his party model their opposition to the new Democratic administration after Afghanistan's shining band of freedom fighters, the Taliban -- unabashedly stirred by their selfless brand of old school dementia:

"We understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

Not far from Sessions' home base, Kim Hendren -- a Republican state senator with (previous) designs on a U.S. Senate seat -- had his own Macaca moment in Arkansas: referring to Senator Chuck Schumer as "that Jew" at a campaign event. And like George Allen back in 2006, Hendren's half-hearted apology likely made things worse instead of better:

"I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as 'that Jew' and I should not have put it that way, as this took away from what I was trying to say. I ought not to have referred to it at all. When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn't because I don't like Jewish people. I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on 'The Andy Griffith Show.'"

Yessir, no big city Jews, uppity blacks or dirty immigrants on Mayberry's Main Street, a minority-free bastion of order where Otis the harmless town drunk is the biggest criminal concern.

The unfavorable news kept coming for Republicans last week -- some of it with more potential fallout than the usual jaw-dropping ignorance or crude anti-semitism on display.

Yesterday's Frank Rich column outlined a concerted propaganda effort by the previous administration bent on controlling public discourse relating to the increasingly unpopular war:

"...the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.” Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these “analysts” appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

Someone needs to explain to Americans how is this any different than the Soviet Union in its repressive prime or any other dangerous totalitarian state? Until they do, then what comes to mind is Orwell's 1984, and it's scary as hell that it went on as long as it did. What's even more unacceptable is unless the details are revealed, then when it comes to the selling of our next war, it will follow a similar propaganda pattern, if it hasn't started already.

Meanwhile, ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was writing all over President Bush like the empty blank slate he was, pulling his strings in directions the neocon planners of the war needed him to go. Despite the obscene collateral carnage inflicted on Baghdad during "shock & awe," contrary to the expected cakewalk, the Pentagon knew it was in for a protracted war likely to last for years, not months. So Rumsfeld made sure that only the most rosy of scenarios was painted in the highly filtered intelligence briefings given to Bush, even personally selecting Biblical quotes to adorn the cover of the reports and thus appeal to the president's messianic vision of himself as crusader for Christianity against evildoers bent on world destruction:

And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.) Rumseld...was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

As Rich put it, this is "seriously creepy." I feel the need to end on a slightly more humorous note. NFL Defensive Player of the Year James Harrison was having none of the old tradition of sports champions going to the White House to meet the president. Baseball teams do it, as do NBA, NHL, NCAA teams. But somehow Harrison found this practice disturbing, so he boycotted the ceremony back in 2006 when the Steelers won it all, passing up the opportunity to meet Bush, and proving his misguided stubbornness is at least consistent, he's not going to Washington to meet Obama last this week either to celebrate their last Super Bowl win.

"This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won."

Nice to see such a firm grasp of the obvious, James. See, the winners get to go to the White House, runner-ups...not so much. Or perhaps we're being unduly harsh and this was Harrison's not-so-subtle way of disagreeing with the president's stance on cap-and-trade emissions.

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