Cage Match

This is pretty good...

Drink Up: Harry Reid

Of all the times for Harry Reid to try and sack up it's for stupid shit like this?

At a town hall in New Hampshire this afternoon, President Obama tried to give a little friendly recession spending advice, telling people they shouldn't "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas" when comparing the federal budget to a family budget.

"This isn't how responsible families do their budgets. When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. And it's time your government did the same," he said.

He may not have expected just how quickly Nevada politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, would react.

Reid (D-NV) shot off a statement telling Obama to "lay off" Las Vegas.

"I just spoke to the White House and told them that while the President is correct that people saving for college need to be fiscally responsible, the President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said.

Good. Fucking. Grief.

If you're going to get your ass handed to you in November anyway, can we move onto the next Majority Leader already?

SOTU

I'm on deadline, and in the office working, so I have the speech going on on my desktop as I work, but there'll be no live-blog or even comprehensive reaction from me this time 'round.

Quickly? I thought it was a pretty good speech. Filled with some of the usual SOTU boilerplate, but his strongest speech since taking office.

Highlights:

• Fuck the bankstas
• Calling the Democrats pussies, grow a pair and get some shit done.
• Calling the Republicans obstructionist assholes, and to get serious or GTFOTW.
• Calling out the Supreme Court right to their face.
• DADT repeal

Lowlights:

• Not telling Congress how to finish health care reform—Pass the Damn Bill, etc.
• Stupid freeze. Though, the release was clearly a red herring, as this wasn't really the meat of the speech, imo.

That's all for now, Seacrest out!

Not Digging It

If you thought the news was bad last week, the front page of Digby's Hullabaloo is enough to make stick your head in the oven.

First, the media is officially turning on Obama:

In case you were wondering, the consensus on all the Sunday gasbag shows is that Obama is an abject failure because of his radical leftist ideology and that his only hope of even maintaining the presidency, much less winning a second term is to take a sharp turn to the right and enact the Republican agenda. Several commentators, including such luminaries as political cross dresser Matthew Dowd on ABC, insisted that the first thing the president has to do is pick a huge fight with the Democrats to show the country that he isn't one of them. Cokie said he should have asked John McCain from the beginning what he was allowed to do.

The historians and expert political observers on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show all agreed that Obama is no Reagan, a president who never governed ideologically and always worked across party lines. Oh, and he needs to be a president or a prime minister, but nobody could agree on exactly what that means except that he should try to be more like Scott Brown, the white Barack Obama, except without all the liberalism.

That was to be expected, of course, these worthless idiots have spotted their own chum in the water and are gearing up for the feeding frenzy.

What is more disappointing is that Obama is preparing to add his own blood to the mix and in very visible and culpable ways:

Talking Deficits:

But evidently, the president does want to politically tie his hands securely behind his back by putting the deficit at the top of the agenda and making sure that the nation sees it as bigger threat to its well-being than the fact that we have 10% unemployment, a moribund real estate market and an economically crushing health care system. [...]

It goes without saying that actually delivering anything of value to the country is now off the table but I'm sure that between a fierce concentration on budget balancing and sounding really annoyed at bankers, the voters will be perfectly satisfied, so that's good

And, of course, part and parcel with the media turning is the revocation of all excuses and history—they no longer want to hear about Bush—it's all on Obama now, and only other Democrats are fair game...

Bush Who?

The Republicans have run against Jimmy Carter for the past 28 years. In fact, they're still running against him.Republicans understand two simple things. You must name your enemy and you must imbue that enemy with the characteristics people hate about themselves. The Democrats used to do it quite well themselves, but after Carter they lost their nerve. (I think the Villagers joining the Republicans with their utter disdain for anything that smacks of liberal idealism completely spooked them and they have never recovered.) If the party cannot run against the catastrophic failure of Bush governance, much less against the catastrophic failure of Republican ideology, then they literally have nothing to run on but empty slogans. And that doesn't cut it once you're in office and you haven't delivered. They need to name the culprits --- if they don't, they'll become the enemy themselves, by default.

2010 fucking sucks.

Just An Excuse

Ygelsias—How Close Were We Really?:

[emphasis added] Now that’s not to deny that they were, in fact, close. In fact we’re still close and the door is still very open, logistically, to moving forward with essentially the deal that folks were working toward pre-Coakley. But I think the speed with which Coakley’s loss was seized upon as a reason not to walk through that door underscores how fundamentally uncomfortable with the framework so many people were. Say Coakley had turned back the tide and beaten Brown 51-49. Couldn’t some members have looked at that and said that Coakley’s very weak showing in the true-blue Bay State showed the unpopularity and infeasibility of Provision X and thrown a wrench in the works? It feels to me that a lot of members were looking for an excuse not to do it, and now they’ve seized upon one. But the underlying impulse to seek excuses and shift blame was long there.

This. Which is why I thought Coakley being a mortally wounded candidate at the finish line made the victory or loss not exactly irrelevant, but in the case of HCR, almost a wash. There were already far too many politicians—particularly in the House—who were ready to jump ship on the legislation. They would have pointed to a Coakley one-point WIN and learned the exact same fear-driven and incorrect lesson—the public doesn't want health care reform, the left is overreaching, and it's time to move to the right.

Had she won, Congress would only be hearing from the teabaggers and firebaggers that want to kill the package. The media would still be pronouncing the same Democrats are doomed, public rejection meme. The weak members would still be running to the hills. Those still centrally involved in the process would continue to weaken and erode the reforms and still end up with an unlikely-to-pass package out of a long, drawn-out and politically damaging conference process.

I look at the landscape now and absolutely believe that Coakley's loss might be the only thing that saves the reform and the Democrats from themselves.

The False Sense of Urgency of Now

While the political world is all abuzz with health care reform bullshit... whether there'll be public option or not, etc... one thing that isn't getting nearly enough attention is this:

None of these plans take effect for three years.

THREE. FUCKING. YEARS.

That nugget'll be buried deep in whatever article you're reading, but for all the bullshit happening on or around the dance floor on this issue, none of it really makes a fucking difference for the people getting fucked by their insurance now. Or next year. Or the year after that. Or the year after that.

The Democrats could pass the greatest single-payer plan on Earth, and since they are so fucking stupid and cowardly they will let TWO elections cycles go by before anyone benefits from it, and they are rewarded for delivering it. They could, alternatively, pass the worst piece of shit corporate giveaway possible, knowing they can run for their House seat twice before having to face hte pissed off voters they sold out.

At this point I'm not sure I give a shit what plan comes out what Committee of Congress and what Obama ends up signing. No matter how good it is (and I'm not saying it will be good at all) we have to wait three goddamn years to get it.

Screw Baucus, Reid, and all the corporate whores on the Hill. And screw Obama too. This whole thing is a gigantic fucking tease.

Nostrodennis

Dennis Kucinich has a diary up at Kos, where he predicts what he thinks will happen with health care reform...

1. House will make a big deal about keeping/putting a public option in HR3200 because it competes with insurance companies and will keep insurance rates low.

2. The White House will refer to the President's speech last week where he spoke favorably of the public option.

3. The Senate will kill the competitive public option in favor of non-competitive "co-ops". Senate leaders like Kent Conrad have said the votes to pass a public option were never there in the Senate.

4. The bill will come to a House-Senate Conference Committee without the public option.

5. House Democrats will be told to support the conference report on the legislation to support the President.

6. The bill will pass, not with a "public option" but with a private mandate requiring 30 million uninsured to buy private health insurance (if one doesn't already have it). If you are broke, you may get a subsidy. If you are not broke, you will get a fine if you do not purchase insurance.

This legislative sausage will be celebrated as a new breakthrough and will be packaged as health insurance reform. However, the bill may require a Surgeon General's warning label: Your Money or Your Life!

The bill that Congress passes may pale in comparison to the bill that millions of Americans will get every month/year for having or not having private health insurance.

It will take four years for the new legislation to go into effect. During that time, we are going to build a constituency of millions in support of real health care, a constituency which will be recognized and a cause which is right and just: Health Care as a Civil Right.

Join our efforts. Sign the petition. Contribute. Insure a democratic future.

Thank you.

Dennis

---
Dennis J. Kucinich (OH-10)
U.S. House of Representatives

If I were a betting man, my money'd be on something very close to that.

What He Said...

I've had a best-case scenario collection of health care reform links waiting to morph into a post that tried to be optimistic, but at the end of the day, I pretty much agree with Matt Taibbi [emphasis mine]...

It’s the same with this health care bill. Who among us did not know this would happen? It’s been clear from the start that the Democrats would make a great show of doing something real, then they would fold prematurely, ram through some piece-of-shit bill with some incremental/worthless change in it, and then in the end blame everything on Max Baucus and Bill Nelson, saying, “By golly, we tried our best!”

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds.

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. [...] But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations

Yeah. Pretty much. These fuckers are worthless.

In My Email...

From one liberal activist source or another...the subject reads: "Is Harry Reid going to screw us on health care?"

The appropriate and immediate response?

a. "When does Harry Reid NOT screw us?"
b. "Does a bear shit in the woods?"
c. "Is the Pope Polish? A Nazi?
d. All of the above.

Link Dump

BETTER DEMOCRATS, PLEASE
Harry Reid is a worthless sack of shit. The latest proof.
[h/t Angelos]

BECK, MUTATIONS
Matt Taibbi on the transformation of Glenn Beck from lesser-known, crazy right-wing asshole to...a-list, certifiable, apeshit-crazy, paranoid, crybaby nutjob in a frying pan and on steroids..

TORTURED LOGIC
I find myself falling neatly between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald on the release of the torture memos. Yes, you can, Mr. President.

STFU
Daniel Larison pours Krauthammer and others on the right, a big ol' cup.

"RICH KID BLUES"
von, the conservative over at Obsidian Wings, tries to counter Ezra Klein's point about the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans...and fails miserably. The comments are awesome.

FAIL

I has some serious issues with Paul Krugman during the campaign, and his seemingly irrational criticisms of Obama. I really was confused as to what Krugman was doing to damage the prospects of the far better (than HRC and certainly McCain) candidate—I am just now starting to realize what he might have been getting at...

The Professor weighs in on the stimulus package the Senate put together, and he takes another swing at Obama in the process.

Only now Obama deserves the beatdown, and if anything, Krugman is letting him off too easily.

How the Democrats can take sweeping victories in all possible races, and the most positive Presidential approval ratings ever and turn that into a mandate for a handful of phony-ass "Centrists" to screw the pooch is beyond me.

In his attempt to give this package the sheen of bipartisan support, Obama (thru the all-to-willing Reid) handed all the power over to DINO Ben Nelson and the two or three Republicans that might come across to support it.

In this all-to-typical capitulation process the Senate scrapped and slashed pretty much all of the good stuff in favor of tax cuts that won't do jack shit to stimulate the economy. The bulk of the Republicans will still vote against it, and when it fails they will hang it on Obama and the Dems.

He has seriously kneecapped his Administration three weeks into the first* term, and fucked the country over even worse.

I am beyond disappointed.

*First? How 'bout only? I'm not sure I'm crazy to think this could set up a Carter-like downfall.

Blagojevich

It's been a while since this whole Blagojevich Bust went down, and I realize I never really posted on it. Early on, I snagged a few good pics and political cartoons to maybe use in a post, but it never materialized...mostly because I had other shit I wanted to discuss. But now that he's made his appointment to replace Obama in the Senate and thrust himself back into the spotlight, I suppose I'll wade in...

When this all broke, I'd heard the guy's name before, and I knew he was bad news, but I'd never heard the guy speak, nor could I pick him out of a lineup or pronounce his name. My immediate reaction to all of this was, "That guy's got a pair." and "Here's hoping Obama and his team gave this jackass a wide berth." I enjoyed the initial round of mockery and ridicule of his foul Chicago mouth and Fisher-Price hair, and wondered who the fuck would ever vote this guy into office. But as the story began to fill out I found myself departing—somewhat—from the company of just about every blogger I like.

This guy looks to be a douchebag of the highest order and probably should do the honorable thing and step aside because he's certainly too big a dick to be Governor. And it makes sense that he should probably refrain from making an appointment under these circumstances. But here's where I depart from the mob: I haven't heard ANYTHING CLOSE to a smoking gun regarding this allegation of his selling Obama's Senate seat

People are acting like this guy was busted like Jimmy Serrano with a cash-filled suitcase exchange. I'm not seeing it. I've heard and read nothing beyond what I imagine to be the sort of horsetrading that probably happens all the time in these situations—ie: "I appoint you, you campaign for me, scratch each other's back, fundraise, etc." Hell, even Obama's appointments are in some cases surely rewards for support.

I think he's probably guilty of this, and whatever drew him into U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's sights in the first place—but that's my impression, and not based on any actual evidence that I'm aware of.

Fine, if you're Obama, or the party: distance yourself from the guy, throw him under the bus, even ask for him to "step aside if he's guilty." I'm all for zero tolerance and purging corrupt people from office regardless of party. By all appearances, Blago deserves to be alone on his self-constructed island, but at a certain point it boils down to this: he's innocent until proven guilty and deserves a chance to defend himself. And frankly, if he thinks he did nothing wrong, he should tell Obama and everyone else to "Fuck off. I'm Governor, and I'm not going anywhere."

And if that's his position, I have no problem with him fulfilling his Constitutionally-required duty and appointing someone to Obama's seat. Viewed in a vacuum, Roland Burris appears to be a perfectly good selection. Taking into account Blago's situation, Burris appears to be the perfect appointment, and the Governor probably deserves credit for selecting him.

What's unfortunate is Burris is now inextricably tied to Blagojevich, and if the Senate holds to it's stated position that any appointment by Blagojevich will NOT be seated, a good man was probably sacrificed as part of this ridiculous standoff.

Of course the Democratic caucus holding to a position other than bent-over is a goddamn joke. If Burris doesn't get seated it's more likely to be because Harry Reid has given Joe Lieberman a second Senate seat.

UPDATE: I could have saved myself the trouble and just posted a link to John Cole

GG4AG

It would never happen, but Glenn Greenwald might be the best man for the job as Obama's Attorney General. Watch Bill Moyers' interview with Greenwald here—fascinating, invigorating, yet ultimately disappointing, because no politician—Obama included—is bold or brave enough to do what it takes.

Dick of the Week: Harry Reid

Big surprise, right? This feckless asshole has GOT TO go...

Senate GOP Kills Auto Bailout Compromise
A proposed $14 billion automaker bailout bill, agreed to by Congressional Dems and the White House, collapsed late Thursday evening in the face of the opposition by Senate Republicans. "It's over with," declared Harry Reid.

Is is Harry Reid's fault that a group of Southern Senators want to jumpstart a new Confederacy and push the whole country towards a Depression just to score a few union scalps? No. But it's Reid's fucking fault that the Republicans get to scuttle badly needed action by quasi-filibustering without actually having to get off their asses.

Again.

Reid is yet again letting the whole Senate appear to blow it, when it's really a handful of "right to work" assholes actually colluding with foreign companies against American workers just to bust unions.

There's much more on this topic, but I'm on deadline, so it might be days til I can spend time on it...Have at it.

UPDATE: Another reason Harry sucks. His kiss-ass reaction to this bullshit.

Weak

It's Official: Lieberman Keeps Homeland Security Chairmanship
Senator Harry Reid just spoke to reporters after the private caucus meeting with Dems over Joe Lieberman's fate, and he confirmed it: Lieberman will not be stripped of his Homeland Security chairmanship, because the "vast majority" of the Democratic caucus wants him to stay.

"This was not a time for retribution," Reid said, adding that "we're moving forward."

Lieberman was removed from the Environment and Public Works Committee, a largely meaningless punishment since it's a topic (unlike Homeland Security) on which he has no differences with Dems.

Asked about liberal "anger" towards Lieberman, Reid said: "I pretty well understand anger. I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was."

Really Harry? Then you haven't talked to anyone besides the bunch of pussies in that chamber with you or the Sunday morning morons.

The party faithful—the people who just busted ass to deliver the White House and both Houses of Congress by wide margins—were plenty pissed off. We rightfully expected some leadership on this, and despite your and JoeLie's portrayal of this as simply a vendetta, this was actually a decision to be based on governance. Lieberman was an utter failure at his oversight job, and acted against the interest of the party, Constitution and the country. He should be removed. Period.

You "defy anyone to be more angry?" My fucking socks were more angry than you.

--

The only possible silver lining scenarios in this:

1. Obama gave cover for this to happen. I think it was a mistake, but he's made me look stupid every time I've second-guessed him. If this is part of a master plan of his, then I assume he can handle Lieberman.
2. This should serve as a clarion call that despite the election, it is business as usual in Washington with the Democrats and I think people need to be snapped out of the election afterglow and be reminded of that fact.
3. Renewed focus on Reid's impotence as Majority Leader. He's awful.
4. Lieberman is hopefully marginalized. He has nothing to bitch about now, and no reason to run to FOX as a martyr.

UPDATE: Excellent point from 'Shift:

If Obama had said nothing and the Dems rolled over for Joe, then Joe owes Obama nothing. As it is, the same thing happened that would have happened anyway, but now Joe is publicly acknowledged to be beholden to Obama. That has more value than the nothing Obama would've had otherwise.

A New and Improved Democrat

Bob Cesca links to a very encouraging Joe Klein column. It's not encouraging because of anything Klein says, it's the behind-the-scenes look at Obama's style...In fact, Cesca relates the best part of the piece better than Klein himself [emphasis mine]:

Apparently, when McCain suspended his campaign and flew back to Warshington, Senator Obama was in the midst of debate prep in Tampa. Democratic villagers urged Senator Obama to follow McCain -- or McCain might appear more presidential.

Of course, this is the traditional Democratic instinct. To follow... To constantly play on Republican turf rather than defining a a separate path. And of course Senator Obama ignored the leadership and remained calm -- determined to debate on schedule with or without McCain.

[Obama] "You gotta be kidding. I'm going to debate. A President has to be able to do more than one thing at a time."

That's awesome. I hadn't realized that he had been under pressure from the pussies in Washington to pull a "Me Too!" on McCain's stupid stunt.

That's awesome because it shows fortitude the party needs, but more importantly, it was also the right decision for both the short- and long-term. That single moment, more than any other I can think of, altered the race—defining Obama as steady and level-headed, and McCain as an erratic, undisciplined drama queen.

I think any other Democratic candidate would have gotten that one wrong, and be looking up at McCain right now.

UPDATE: Do yourself a favor and go read the Klein piece—the decision about the Rev. Wright Race Speech and dealing with Petraeus are excellent as well.

“IT'S A TRAP!” or “This is good news for John McCain.”

As I mentioned previously, last week was pretty busy for me, so I am just catching up on pretty much everything that happened during that time...

My initial thoughts were that this economic meltdown couldn't have come at a better time for Obama—or more precisely—a worse time for McCain. I read the unanimous rejection of the Bush Bailout Plan by anyone with a brain. I saw some more palatable plans suggested (see below). But the one post I read that is really sticking with me is this one at Hullaballo, wherein Digby directs us to a possible GOP jujitsu move:

Republican incumbents in close races have the easiest vote of their lives coming up this week: No on the Bush-Pelosi Wall Street bailout.

God Himself couldn't have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. ...Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say "No" and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress...

And it will work, too. These GOP cocksuckers threw open the vaults and let their buddies ransack the economy for eight years, and now, just as the scope of the theft is uncovered, and the Dems step in to re-lock the door, the GOP shouts "Look!" and pins it all on them.

And nobody is better poised to work this angle than McCain—he can demagogue the shit out of this: Pander to conservatives by "standing up to" the spending, play anti-government and anti-corporate "maverick" by bucking Bush on the issue, and at the same time he can blame the Democratic majority for passing the massive giveaway.

There is not a question in my mind that this could play out that way and not just cost Obama the election, but have an impact on the Congress.

Perfectly timed, no? And the last several years show that the Democrats are all to willing to try and kick the football every time Lucy tees it up.

There is a way around this...overwhelming opposition to Paulson's plan, and crafting one along the lines of Dodd's but with more than a five-man oversight panel. They need MAJOR regulatory reforms, and punitive measures. And as Ed Kilgore notes:

Democrats are right to demand significant substantive concessions before offering their support for the Paulson Plan. But just as importantly, they need to demand Republican votes in Congress, including the vote of John McCain. If this is going to be a "bipartisan" relief plan, it has to be fully bipartisan, not an opportunity for McCain to count on Obama and other Democrats to save the economy while exploiting their sense of responsibility to win the election for the party that let this crisis occur in the first place.

Kilgore's right, this plan only works if the Democrats inoculate themselves by making sure it's bipartisan. Bring it to the floor, and make the Republicans, starting with McCain, vote "yea" first.

UPDATE: Kleimann climbs onboard:

And — this is the part I didn't guess up front — the Democrats don't trust the Republicans not to double-cross them by allowing a bailout to pass (thus satisfying the Republicans' paymasters) while mostly voting against "the Bush-Pelosi bailout" and running as populists.

[...] At minimum, Harry Reid should announce right now that no bill will reach the Senate floor unless both Presidential candidates have signed on as sponsors.

Too bad Harry Reid has never shown the strategy or stones to pull that off.

What Does This Picture Have to Do With Joe Biden's Iraq War vote...

Yes, Joe Biden voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq. But was he the same breed of sheep as everyone else who did? Was it solely political calculus like is suspected of Hillary? Or, total capitulation and trust in the President?...

You might recall a certain Rose Garden ceremony with a certain flesh-haired loser Democrat who sold out the Party (and as it turns out, the country) by going behind closed doors and crafting deal with Bush and the Republicans.

But who did Dick Fucking Gephardt really screw over? David Corn reminds us...

One of Biden's better moments came in the run-up to the war with Iraq. In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration, claiming Saddam Hussein had amassed loads of WMDs that he could hand to al Qaeda for attacks against the United States, was demanding that the House and Senate grant Bush the authority to invade Iraq whenever he wanted. Rather than cave to Bush, Biden, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, worked with Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to craft an alternative: a resolution that would allow Bush to attack Iraq only for the purposes of destroying Iraq's WMDs and only after seeking UN approval. If the UN withheld permission, Bush would have to come back to Congress and prove that the threat was so "grave" that only military action could eliminate it. This was a wily legislative maneuver that could have averted a war. (And Biden told me and Michael Isikoff during an interview for our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, that he had received backdoor encouragement from Secretary of State Colin Powell.) But Biden's bipartisan measure was ultimately derailed by a fellow Democrat: House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who essentially accepted the White House's blank-check approach. After Gephardt did that, Republican senators told Biden, How can we be to the left of Dick Gephardt? "I was so angry," Biden later said. "I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man's political judgment."

Biden went on to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Which demonstrated his Washington-ness. He had tried for something better. When that failed, he, too, accepted the prevailing notion. But his pre-vote effort to create a much more limited resolution will afford the Obama-Biden ticket a small measure of cover when its foes point out that Obama's main charge against John McCain (he supported the Iraq invasion) can also be applied to his running-mate.

As Corn points out, Biden still voted for the War, but what he wanted was NOT the bullshit he ended up putting his name on.

It was a mistake, but not as glaring as would appear at first glance, and much more excusable and reconcilable.

Biden, Your Time

I know I said Joe Biden was dead to me after the odious Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, but I can't help but feeling that the Obama campaign—and Democrats in general—need someone willing to throw a freaking punch.

Evan Bayh? Screw that. If we're going with a Senator that voted for the Iraq War, he better bring more to the table than Bayh. Joe Biden has a fastball, and he ain't afraid to throw it.



UPDATE: Kevin Drum concurs. (See, Toast?)

Venn-detta

Slate.com has a chart that illustrates the different people involved in the Bush Administrations scandals crimes. It's more clever and cute than actually revealing or engrossing, but it does point out the common thread in all of them—Alberto Gonzalez.

It does, however, omit the one circle I would lay across the whole diagram...the complicity of the Democratic Congress.