At least for now, I’m signing off as a diarist and commenter. All will be told at length below. Stand by for venting.
In a real way, DailyKos helped save my sanity. Anyone willing to be objective and simply listen, pay attention and remember what was said and by whom knows we are living under a U.S. federal government that is a shambles, with an emphasis on "sham." Make no mistake, we – that is, the honest, decent, dumb-ass citizens of the U.S. – were the victims of a palace coup years in the making. It wasn’t a VRWC but it was a fortuitous combination of little things and big things: Radical talk radio, the right wing takeover of the Supreme Court, Republican co-opting of electoral control, redistricting, idiotic mistakes by Democrats and a corporate media that ignored steak and reported sizzle for the most part. The attacks of 9/11, however, were the cappo di tutti capo. We were all ready to be herded like sheep, deprived of all rights in the name of "security" and the U.S.A. of Amurricah would be marched straight into one-party rule, with only token Democrats to give an illusion of Democracy.
Then something horrible happened to the Republicans: They had to govern. That’s pretty impossible when you’ve done everything you could for thirty years to gut government. They radically over-reached on Iraq and Social Security, got caught with their pants down on Katrina, their hands in the cookie jar on Abramoff, and with pants down and hands where they shouldn’t be in Foleygate. Then suddenly, America realized it needed some health insurance and, uh, is it getting hot on this planet or is it just me? And the Internet, Lo and Behold, was right there to finally connect us and get the word out to the willing readers, watchers and listeners.
The GOP is on the run, stampeding its way to the Gulf States and the upper Rockies, with some redoubts in the plains, affluent suburbs and Alaska, but it’s pretty much over for the long term. The GOP as we have come to know and hate it has played out the string, though it’s still dangerous and will be difficult to dislodge completely. We have had the curse of living under the worst President in over two hundreds years of the U.S. Constitution. The blessing is, he has done more damage to what had become an Evil Empire than anything the Democrats could ever have done. At least our children don’t have to live under him – just help clean up his mess. Can’t have everything.
DailyKos got me through the absolute worst of those times. I love my country. And, as a lawyer, I know how it is supposed to work so I was deeply saddened and ashamed. Plus, I must be smarter than the average bear because I’ve known for years just how stupid the things that the enemy would say can sound to someone of ordinary intelligence, even if slugs like Blitz Wolfer ignore it.
So what does this have to do with my GBCW? Glad you asked.
I am sick of the hyperbole. I am sick of ill thought out diaries, not just by off-the-wall kooks but by Kos regulars that make the rec list and generate hundreds of positive comments. I am sick of comments that put the "jerk" into "knee-jerk." I no long want to comment or post here because, frankly, I can’t be a part of this; not for a while, at least not until you get your "A" game back.
Sure this is an over-inclusive generalization, but it seems lately that the best way to get noticed and generate discussion is with over-the-top moonbatology and just-plain-wrong fear factor analysis. I treasure the words of Jerome a Paris on energy, bonddad on the economy, the formidable work of dengre on the CNMI scandal, and many others, but the recent Harry Reid mess, well, that one just did me in.
You know what I’m talking about. "Reid calls Peter Pace ‘incompetent’ – the horror of it!" screamed the Bushites. "Whoa," say the liberal bloggers, "We were on that call, he didn’t say that. Don’t have it in my notes ... who are those right wingers to make stuff up like this? Who are their sources? Why isn’t Harry denying loud and long?!" Except we learned he DID say it. And GOOD. I’m glad he did – how incompetent do you have to be to get fired by the Worst President Ever? Harry Reid apparently said it to Pace’s face, and told those on the call that he had done so. "Well, that’s DIFFERENT, that’s NUANCE. He didn’t call Pace ‘incompetent’ to the libs," went the rationale, "He just told the libs that he told Pace in person that he was incompetent." With pretzel logic befitting a John Kerry, this is somehow portrayed as completely different from the right’s accusations, but beyond that absurdity, the underlying issue was never addressed: the original, flat-out denials. Were you listening? At all?
It wasn’t just the Reid thing, of course, there is always a build up with something like my departure from posting. First doubts I had came when I read some poor schlub getting ripped a new one for suggesting the U.S. impose a federal sales tax on Internet purchases. To me it seemed like a decent way to climb out of our financial mess. I agreed with the diarist, "tax the rich" only goes so far, and ending the Iraq occupation doesn’t even immediately stop that bleeding. No one is going to have the guts to do much more than retreat and reposition, even with a Dem in the White House, so don’t expect fast action, folks. The federal government needs massive infusions of cash. Internet sales drain away retail sales that used to produce state and local taxes, and employment, which produced federal income and Social Security taxes.
We are going to have the mack daddy money crunch very, very soon when Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security take on boomers like me. And we want to do more, have to do more, in energy and climate research, health care, infrastructure and no one, I mean NO ONE is going to have the guts to cut money from a defense budget that exceeds the defense budgets of all other nations on earth COMBINED (and doesn't the very word "budget" seem oxymoronic in that context).
It’s either cut entitlements or raise tax revenues somewhere, or likely both. So why not a federal sales tax process on the Internet, which, after all, uses all the high-tech instrumentalities of interstate commerce, mostly provided by federal actions past and present? "Perish forfend, that’s where the poor sometimes shop!" went what passed for reasoning. It left me scratching my head, and not for the last time.
Then I got my ID and started posting, slowly, just some comments, then some diaries and really engaging with the community. (I thought long and hard about how to do this part of this diary, and decided against naming names or giving cites.) Let’s just say that I encountered a diary by someone who is roundly praised here for insightful analysis. The diary teed up Citibank for offering a credit card targeted at financing health care expenditures, the general point being that banks were getting rich at the expense of the uninsured, and by tying in bankruptcy reform, not only were these folks borrowing for their medicine, they were going into indentured servitude.
My comments took the diarist to task. It sounded to me like someone was alleging conspiracy. "Alleging conspiracy? Little old us? The diary never said that!" came the replies. So, I had to wonder, what was the point of the diary at all? A bank was offering a legal product that might actually help a few people and the bank would make money. Citibank has done lots of crappy stuff, but why light this one up, I wondered, especially – as I pointed out – when credit cards were such a small share of the bank’s revenues? This was actually chump change to an outfit like Citi. "CONNECT THE DOTS!" I was told. "FORTY MILLION UNINSURED!" "YOU ARE SO NAÏVE!" Then, not long ago, a luminary no less than bonddad put up a graph showing that credit cards constitute five percent of bank revenue generally. FIVE PERCENT. And what percent, do you suppose, of all credit card revenue would this health card represent, hmm? Two percent of that five percent? I haven’t seen any other bank offering this goofy thing. I said it sounded like a foolish product and I think I’m right. So does the market.
There are lots of other examples. Another goodie is the diary that said a federal judge was halting the process of the Army hiring mercenaries in Iraq. Oh happy day!! Except it wasn’t true. Not remotely so. I had to read back through all the documents cited, but the answer was obvious to one who took the time to understand the source material. A federal judge had temporarily halted the awarding of an open contract for security services at an Army location in Iraq because one of the bidders was protesting its disqualification from the bid for administrative reasons. It was a bid dispute. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, I posted my comment as a correction and the diarist was actually very gracious about it, and other readers caught on to what I was saying, too. Yet the diary stayed on the rec list for two or three days and generated 400 comments, most of them after I had posted my correction and ignoring the substantive deficiency in the diary's thesis. Talk about people who will "little note nor long remember ..." .
And on this whole "Democratic majority" thing that infests our thinking: Sure, we’re solid in the House but I see one comment and diary after another about Harry Reid not wielding the big stick. Criminy. Have any of you noticed that since the election, REPUBLICANS STILL OUTNUMBER DEMOCRATS IN THE SENATE? That’s right. Subtract Sen. Tim Johnson from the "active" list and you’ve got 48 Dems, plus one Independent (Jim Jeffords) plus a Liebercrat (Joe Sneakysnake). Right now, with the sad passing of Sen. Craig Thomas, there are 48 Republicans, but once Gov. Freudenthal appoints another Republican, as he is bound to do by Wyoming law, THERE WILL BE 49 ACTIVE REPUBLICAN SENATORS. When Sen. Johnson, God Bless him, comes back, it will be 49-49, with the D’s keeping the two "separatists" in their caucus, and one of them a notorious back-stabber. Yeah. Some majority.
After next election, we’ll be far better off, but get a reality check folks, on everything that is helped along by a Senate majority, from war funding to impeachment. We can't even get a symbolic "no confidence" vote on an Attorney General even the Republicans hate. That's because the GOP will oppose in lock-step anything that makes any one of them, even President Nuttybuddy, look bad. Badder. Worse.
Majority Leader Reid should get a medal every time he brings the Good Ship Leaksalot into port, given those numbers and attitudes. Take the recent Iraq supplemental: Harry and his pals got $9 billion in domestic spending while threatening to hold up funding for the occupying force in a way that was both politically risky (at least because it gave the GOP and the so-called news media propaganda fodder) and legislatively impossible to pull off. THAT FUNDING IS MAINLY THE MONEY THE GOP CRITICIZED AS PORK-LADEN PROJECTS LAST TIME AROUND. What we were really talking about, though, were programs like relief for farmers and ranchers devastated by drought and blizzard, and more money for New Orleans rebuilding along with other things that should be priorities if we weren’t so screwed up. I pointed this out but one idiotic commenter said "We could have gotten that anyway!" without bothering to note that those big-ticket projects were the White House’s reason for vetoing the FIRST funding bill. Yet we have the audacity to call this bill a "capitulation" though the votes to do something substantive won't be there until the Republicans sign up for the ride. They will, of course; too late to keep a bunch of Bush's pawns alive, but they will, for their own political self-preservation. That's the reality.
Oh, and about that Iraq "war": STOP CALLING IT A WAR. It was never a war. No war was ever declared. There's no one to declare war on in the Iraq mess. It’s an illegal occupation. There was only an authorization to use military force to enforce a U.N. resolution that the U.S. was saying, unreliably as it is now obvious to all, was not being enforced. And now we're cops on the Baghdad beat in an aborted attempt at nation-building. That’s another thing wrong here at this site; sure the U.N. resolution was a fig leaf for Bush (Uchh! Mental picture!) but many, many of the Iraq diaries conveniently ignore this part of the argument. And we call the OTHER GUYS revisionist! If you are going to have credibility, you’d better acknowledge the cards that are face up on the table and beat them. Let’s face it: Bush gambled on being right. It was a reckless gamble, but what if he actually had been right? We’d be talking about an alternate universe and the outright end of American democracy. In a bizarre Kabuki tragedy, our forces are dying, as are innocent Iraqis, and all are being maimed as a result of the first American dictatorship not coming to pass. But I digress.
Another of my "favorites": few here could recognize the political brilliance of John Dingell’s introduction of a bill to gut California’s tough emissions laws. "EGADS!! SPEAKER PELOSI, STOP THE MADNESS!! WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRAT IS DINGELL?!" I’ll tell you what kind: perfect. He represented his constituency: The Detroit-based auto industry, and their unionized workers that we adore around here so much on an absolute, no-risk basis. He carried their water. He took up their issue. He gave them everything they asked for. Hell, auto industry lobbyists no doubt wrote the bill. But it went nowhere because Speaker Pelosi did, indeed, bury it. Did we hear any outcry from Dingell? Of course not. He probably picked up the phone and said "Nancy, there's this bill I gotta introduce ... ". He can look his constituencies in the eye and say "I did what you asked and tried my best." He’ll absolutely be back in office in 2009 if he wants to be, and with any luck at all, he’ll be helping a Democratic Congress and President begin the rebuilding years. All pointed out by me in the comments, but few took any notice. It's politics, folks; horse-trading at its best.
A field so rich in targets, where to turn, where to turn ... I KNOW! How about diary after diary on The Little President’s utterly innocuous Executive Order detailing requirements for contingency planning for the nefarious purpose of KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OPERATING! Anyone who bothered to actually read the EO with an open mind saw some reasonable requirements for backup plans, things that had apparently been lacking had one of the 9/11 planes taken out the White House or the Capitol. What seemed to trip up everyone was that dreadful word "interoperability" – probably too unfamiliar for Kossack readers to be comfortable with. All it means is, the three branches of government will stay coordinated. Wouldn’t it be nice in a post-disaster environment for Congress and The White House to communicate on emergency legislation and the Federal Court System to remain open for U.S. Attorneys to practice in? But NOOOOOO ... it has to mean something stealthy and nefarious. But any goose can see this Maladministration needs no subterfuge. Why bother with sleight-of-hand when you ignore the Supreme Law of the Land on a daily basis? Yet, despite my repeated comments, the diaries rolled on and on and on, even after Josh Marshall at Talkingpointsmemo.com had debunked the myth around this bland little EO.
What else can we cover? How about the linkage of Karl Rove to Don Siegelman’s prosecution -- wowee, got him! Except the guy was convicted. A disproportionate sentence, for sure, and evidence of Rove going where he should not, but hardly effective as the smoking gun that most made it out to be. Then the question of whether Bush would actually relinquish the Presidency in 2009, asked with nary a thought of the huge money being spent BY REPUBLICANS ON REPUBLICANS to get into the Oval Office. The Mormons alone would go berserk with one of theirs on the campaign trail, and when Orrin Hatch and the Osmonds go after Bush with pitchfork and torch it’s over folks – not that it would ever even get to that stage. States would secede first. Hizzoner Da Mare Richard Daley would probably deputize the Blackstone Rangers and take Bush out himself.
Maybe abortion next? Who here is completely comfortable with abortion as elective birth control? I am not. It’s all about line-drawing. My problem with severe restrictions on abortion, however, isn’t necessarily the right to privacy or women's reproductive choices. It’s that our government is supposed to reject laws that can’t be uniformly and consistently enforced. That's how the machinery works. There are lots of women who will manage to get abortions, even if we returned to the olden days of total illegality. Only the poorest of the poor would be impacted, and they’d turn to deadly and dangerous practices. Sure, there’s a right to privacy, developed from court cases under the Ninth Amendment, but I forget about that when remembering seeing my kids for the first time on ultrasound in utero. This goes way deeper than privacy, yet most of the discussion on the topic around here would blithely ignore this "inconvenient truth," to borrow a phrase, and trumpet "abortion rights" like the NRA talks about gun ownership. Shouldn't it be harder than that, even if women -- and their doctors -- continue to hold substantial rights in this matter? I think so. I'm constantly disappointed by the cold clinical analysis I see here, with few notable exceptions.
And how about gun control? The tragedy of Virginia Tech added nothing to either side of the debate. It proved there was a hole in a good law, which I understand the House at least has corrected, overwhelmingly. Let me say this: I was a big gun control advocate. I still favor bans on assault weapons and background checks. But one thing Herr Bushtator showed me is how valuable the Second Amendment is. I don’t own a gun but I can see myself buying one, if worst had actually come to worst, to defend myself and my family against Los Federales. Personally, I think the Second has a lot to do with why we haven’t had a few of "our own" Kent States.
That’s it. Sure, there’s no doubt more, but I’m done. Make of it what you will. I’ll come back to this site as a source of information – mainly for links to original materials and quick updates. You can help be my eyes and ears, but as for analysis, well, I’ll read the sources and decide for myself. And no more posting, at least not until I cool off – that includes responding to comments to this diatribe (I know one when I write one). I’m going to spend more time on thoughtful, in-depth posting like the aforementioned Josh Marshall (yeah, he got the Reid thing wrong, too, but blew the US Attorney mess out of the water), Juancole.com, Tomdispatch.com, TomPaine.com, Truthout.com (though it has had its own flaws, it's constantly cited here) and even Thewashingtonnote.com, which can often rankle liberals but more often than not, Steve Clemons is right. So is Charlie Cook by the way. Take more time to get to know his work and less time here; you won’t regret it.
It’s too bad. There are so many great posters here, good fun and laughs, and more diaries I wanted to write, but I’ll handle my writing in some other way. That is, at least until I sense a return to insight and credibility that attracted me here in the first place. Guess I'll be missing Yearly Kos.
Be well. Drive safely. Happy Father’s Day.