I see that T-Paw has dropped out of the race. I’m not surprised. I say again, no one named Tim will be president in our lifetime.
Conventional wisdom says the nomination is now a tossup among Bachmann, Romney, and Perry. At the moment, I’d say that if one of those three wins the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, he or she will have a huge lead toward winning the nomination.
And the GOP establishment will find a way to be sure Bachmann is not one of those three.
Ann Althouse is screaming that she was “assaulted” by people protesting — well, mostly singing — outside the Wisconsin state capitol building. If you actually watch the videos she has posted as evidence you can’t see much, but my best guess is that she shoved a camera in a man’s face while he was talking and he shoved the camera away. See also SEK at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Michele Bachmann has been telling audiences that S&P downgraded America’s credit rating because the credit ceiling was raised, not because it almost wasn’t. And she would never vote to raise that debt ceiling; nosireebob. S&P has released a statement saying that the real reason for the downgrade is that too many lawmakers in Washington are bleeping idiots who don’t understand the consequences of default. Greg Sargent explains this in a post titled “Standard and Poors punctures Michele Bachmann’s blissful fantasy.” However, I doubt any ray of reality ever punctures Bachmann’s blissful fantasy life, so I expect her to stick to her position. But Bachmann is so pathetic that even Joe Scarborough calls her pathetic. That’s really pathetic.
Before I get into the debate, please note that Rand Paul says we are all corporations. We are all chartered by a government and as an entity have legal rights separate from our owners? Weird.
This’ll get the Truthers pumped up, although it shouldn’t. Richard Clarke claims that in 2000 and 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, former CIA Director George Tenet hid intelligence about al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. from the White House. From The Daily Beast:
Clarke offers an incendiary theory that, if true, would rewrite the history of the 9/11 attacks, suggesting that the CIA intentionally withheld information from the White House and FBI in 2000 and 2001 that two Saudi-born terrorists were on U.S. soil—terrorists who went on to become suicide hijackers on 9/11.
Clarke doesn’t know why Tenet would have done this, but he believes the CIA may have been trying to recruit the two Saudis to be informants. Of course, after 9/11 Tenet and others in on this plan would have gone into massive butt-covering mode.
There have been all kinds of speculation and rumor about what the CIA might have known about the terrorists prior to 9/11, and these rumors helped give birth to the Truther movement. However, Clarke’s story places some of this narrative during the Clinton Administration. Even if you believed the haplessly incompetent Bushies somehow pulled off the Mother of All Conspiracies to give Dubya dictatorial powers, it’s even more absurd to think that the Clinton/Gore White House was in on it before the 2000 election.
Clarke’s theory is far more plausible, especially given some of Tenet’s other bizarre judgments (remember the “slam dunk”?).
This really is brilliant. I’ve heard some complaints that it could backfire, but in a way I think backfiring is kind of the point.
Idiots Abound, everywhere — the British riots are blamed on “liberal dogma.” When will we learn that when groups of people feel utterly disenfranchised, they tend to no longer care about following the establishment’s rules?
Although the recall effort failed to take back the Wisconsin Senate, it was still quite an accomplishment to recall two state senators. Thanks to all who fought for sanity. I hope the progressive momentum continues and the recall of Gov. Walker goes forward.
Other stuff to read –
A new poll shows that the recent debt ceiling tantrums hurt Republicans and helped Dems.
Krugman writes about global intellectual failure and the willful refusal to learn from past mistakes.
Another critique of the Westen piece. This piece also underscores the point that when progressives unfavorably compare President Obama to FDR, they are conjuring up an FDR from myth, not the real one. And if you missed this Nate Silver post from 2010 that I linked in comments yesterday, here it is again.
Bottom line, the single biggest reason FDR was more effective at getting his programs passed was not that he was “tougher” or gave better speeches, but that he enjoyed the advantage of an overwhelming majority of Democrats controlling Congress. In Obama’s case, even when he had a slight majority, he had the Blue Dogs in his own party working against him. In effect, he’s never had a real majority at all.
You want more progressive government? Focus on getting more progressives elected to Congress.
I haven’t focused much on the spreading rioting in Britain, but this post from The Guardian points out that “Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures.” Another compares the rioting in London to rioting in Athens in 2008 and says, “Both happened on the watch of conservative governments that refused to even acknowledge, let alone address, underlying discontents.”
We might ask ourselves why we aren’t rioting also. I’m not saying that we should; in the U.S., violent protest nearly always works against the protesters and bolsters the power of the establishment. But it does make me wonder why we’re such bleeping sheep over here.
I’m going to update this post with whatever news comes in from the Wisconsin recall elections. Comment away.
There is news that voter turnout is good. It’s “steady” to “higher than normal.” At polling places in Baraboo, voters complained about activists hanging around polling places and intimidating them, but the news story doesn’t say which activists were doing the intimidating.
Update: Somewhat O/T, but it’s my blog — the new GOP chair blames President Obama for a drop in GOP popularity.
Update: The District 2 race has been called for the Republican, Robert Cowles, but this is a seat that had been expected to stay Republican.
Update: The District 10 race also has been called for the Republican, Sheila Harsdorf. This was the other race that had been expected to stay Republican. Of the remaining four races, two are expected to go to Dems and two are a toss up.
Update: Dems currently are ahead in three races, but lots of districts haven’t reported yet.
Update: District 14 has been called for Republican Luther Olsen, which means three of the six districts will stay Republican. This was a district the Dems had hoped to win. In two uncalled districts the Dems are leading pretty well, although there are lots of votes T
Update: We got one. District 32 has been declared for the Democrat, Jennifer Shilling.
Update: Dems are leading in the two remaining races.
Update: We got another one! Democrat Jessica King is the projected winner in District 18.
Update: OK, folks, there is one district remaining, and everyone says it could be a few hours before the race is called. This is the race between Democrat Sandy Pasch and Republican Alberta Darling. Right now, the Democrat is up 52 to 48 percent with 67 percent of the vote counted.
The same district that lost and then found 14,000 votes for the Republican Supreme Court candidate in April has not reported at all yet. This district is supposed to go heavily for Darling, which could wipe out Pasch’s lead. So this one’s a nail biter that may not be decided tonight. So I’m going to bed.
Several of you have mentioned Drew Westen’s “What Happened to Obama?” in the comments. I thought Westen made some good points, but in some places he overstated his case and his arguments were weakly supported. I don’t have to write a lengthy analysis, however, because others have done it for me:
I’m siding with the critics on this one, but y’all discuss among yourselves.
Elsewhere — Someone on the right must have started a rumor that George “The Bogyman” Soros made $1 billion on the S&P downgrade. The Daily Mail picked this up as actual news, although (as you see if you read the entire story) there is no evidence whatsoever that Soros made so much as a penny on the downgrade.
The theory is that Soros had “inside information” because of his much-overstated ties to the Obama Administration. But there is no evidence the Obama Administration had “inside information” either and knew about the downgrade until a few hours before S&P publicly announced it. The alleged investment was made last month, the Daily Mail says. Of course, several rightie bloggers embraced the rumor as a cold, hard fact and have already indicted Soros; see Tbogg for a rundown.
Susan Page of the alleged newspaper USA Today — which for some time has consisted mostly of re-writes of GOP and rightie think tank press releases — notes with wonder that the President’s approval rating remains at or above 50 percent in 16 states and DC. Note the blurb picked up from the article as auto-generated at Memorandum:
Not subtle. The article itself speculates that 2012 will be another “wave” election that causes a substantial change in the political lineup in Washington, but in which direction the wave will hit it will not speculate. See also the Booman:
The Republicans are succeeding in weakening the president, but they’re making themselves even weaker in the process. I can’t say for sure that this past weekend was a pivotal moment, but I think we may look back on it as the point in time when something snapped. It’s like the Republicans kept pushing on a door, and pushing and pushing some more, with the idea that they were getting rewarded for bad behavior. But all the time the tension was rising and the resistance was building, until the door snapped back in their faces and sent them sprawling.
The presidency has a reputation for being stronger than it is in reality, and the Republicans rejoice in making Obama look impotent in any way that they can. They hold his appointments. They filibuster everything. They refuse to compromise on almost anything. This infuriates liberals and progressives who have big hopes and dreams and can’t understand why they’re not coming true. We all begin infighting and blaming each other. The public gets disgusted with the whole spectacle and starts to believe government is worthless. And the GOP benefits coming and going.
This is why I keep saying that progressives need to stop whining about Obama. Forget Obama; the job right now is to change public opinion and give people a clue what’s going on. Otherwise, in a couple of years we’re going to find even more whackjob teabaggers in Congress.
And I think the results in Wisconsin today could have an impact on the momentum of the 2012 campaigns. Go Wisconsin!
Aug 14, 2011 
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