The enigmas of Rob Portman

Aside to Rob Portman,  Ohio's tag-along Republican senator:

Dear Rob:  In your lame attempt to explain your opposition to President Obama nominating a successor to Antonin Scalia  you said:

"I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment   that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations."

A majority of Americans  have already weighed in, twice, by electing Barack Obama.  It was in all of the papers.

With debates, enough already!

Have they gone yet?

I mean the ten-some who appeared on Project Runway Thursday to assure us that they  had all of the critical answers for the planet.

Adulthood has never failed its pretenders more.   They talked of the future with the cliches of the  past.  Tax cuts.  Border controls. Nuclear holocaust.  Miracle work.  Resumes filled with self-glorifying hype.  Guidance from God to lead America out of Plato's cave.  Gravitas,  an earlier presidential standard, has yet to surface.

Exception:  Donald Trump, who has demonstrated by his  mugging force field  how a  once major political party has lost its immune system from hellish billionaire  invaders. He stands smugly in the center ring with all of the others consulting  their Ouija boards for adequate responses.  Until they do, which may be never, Trump remains the towering Republican experience through whom all  talk show  blessings flow.

Still, can you possibly imagine how many hours, days, weeks this crowd  spent rehearsing for their prime time show?   It appeared they all sat in the same  classroom learning to say how much they despised Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iran,  the IRS, Obamacare, abortion, gay marriage,  job-killing other stuff.  At some point in the encounter staged by Fox News , they could have changed places before the rostrums and you would have been hard-pressed to know the difference.

Finally, holiness has a a lot to do with this sanctified group just as the fire-and-brimstoners have been  wielding threats of eternal damnation against political dissenters for decades.  Indeed, the Republican Party, intimidated by the preachers,  is now on its  knees pandering on social issues.. But Marco Rubio reproted that the GOP candidates have God's blessing.

In the end Thursday night, it was left to the national pundits to decide who was the least craziest, the current barometer that has given John Kasich a slight upward bump.   So there he was camera-wise telling us how much he cared about the less fortunate among us by supporting medicaid in another  rehearsal for his moment at the Pearly Gates.  Kasich , who has long boasted of his Ohio Miracle, stood up forthrightly and described America as "miracle" country and he wanted everybody to have a piece of that action.  The Guv already has witnessed enough miracles to qualify for sainthood.

Have they all gone yet?  Good.


  

Obama's "historic" handshake". Oh?

When are public figures going to learn  that their every move has been recorded on film and instantly available for any TV news host to make an unfriendly  point?

That much about the video trail  left behind from decades ago became quickly apparent again when vulturous Republicans, as is their wont, flapped at the chance of assailing  President Obama for shaking hands with Cuban leader Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

Sen. John McCain, who has a record of erratic public remarks, immediately likened Obama to Neville Chamberlain (not original on the Right since the Iran deal) clasping the hand of Adolph Hitler. That was quickly followed on MSNBC with a photo of McCain doing the same with Khadafi, no humanitarian by any means.  To put an even finer point on the Republican blather, other photos showed President Nixon greeting Mao with a handshake. (Nixon, in the spirit of world brotherhood when he was in China,  even raised a glass!)  

A widely published photo shows a seated President Roosevelt wedged between Churchill and Stalin (!) at Yalta in 1945 to figure out a plan for a post-war world.   (Even in less genteel football,   iconic coaches meet briefly  at midfield  after one has mercilessly trounced the other in the game.)

The Plain Dealer has now taken up the phony phenomenon of the "historic" handshake with a full-page spread offering a huge  photo of the Obama-Castro encounter and urging readers to comment on it.  The paper promises to print the comments later in the week. I can guess.

You'd think there is a better way to engage the reader's interest on slow news days when only person-of-the-year Pope Francis,  Mandella and the Browns' next quarterback are  commanding all of the attention.  

And to McCain I would only say:  Be careful when you sample an olive at the market.  Years from now it could show up on the network news when you blast a malingering Democrat for ordering a martini from  an undocumented bartender on the day the liberal pol called in  sick.

Bolton prepares to head off Hillary at the pass

Dashing all fear that the world would vanish on Friday,  far-sighted Republicans have locked on to a new  calamitous challenge  to them  that could occur  four years from now:  A presidential candidacy by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With all of the media chatter that Hillary is da first lady-to-be of Democrats, the GOP's ever-vigilant Hard Right is already gathering its battered  forces to deny her of any hope of leading a parade that she has yet to say she would do anyway.

One of the party's leading gorillas,  John Bolton, has thrown down the gauntlet by accusing her of faking a concussion to avoid an appearance before a senate committee probing the Benghazi attack. (He doesn't really know that to be true,  but you can see how this goes..)

You must understand that with guys like Bolton, the former UN ambassador appointed by Condoleezza Rice,  there's never room for professional  courtesies in sickness and in health.   He's a long-time cold warrior, militaristic poker player, Fox News favorite,  and gadabout in conservative think tanks.  He is obviously now the point man in his assault on Clinton to spare the world of another Mayan assumed catastrophe.

 Frankly, it sounds like the GOP is recycling the immodest words  of Sen. Mitch McConnell on Day One of Barack Obama's first presidency that his first duty was to make Obama a one-term president. (We all know how that worked out!)  May we  now assume that  the GOP's most noble vow will be to make Hillary a no-term non-president?

Norquist's "poopy-head" reference is more genteel

Now that we  learned from the election that the tax-hating emperor  has no clothes, we should still keep Grover Norquist around for a few bizarre comments that manage to entertain us when he isn't getting elected Republicans to sign his anti-tax pledge.   His latest offering:  Obama won the election because he defined Mitt Romney as a "poopy-head".  It's obvious that he meant what we call in impolite society  a "s--t- head."  But Norquist was making his rounds on  national TV and decided to clean it up for the adults, if not their children.

Ken Blackwell, now a Tea Party huckster

 Slate  Magazine reports that Ken Blackwell,  the former  Ohio Secretary of State who played  a less-than-illustrious official role in managing Ohio's elections, is appearing in a TV ad as the "titular head" of the  Tea Party Victory Fund.  Honest.

Blackwell's target is the so-called "Obama phone" video unearthed by the Drudge report.

According to Slate, Blackwell wrote the ad, which  once again rails at Democrats for literally buying off votes from people in need.

Rather than cherry-pick the message, here it is:

This is it --this is the October surprise.  We just need to get this ad on television today.  Will you help us?

This commercial  is a microcosm of the difference  between Republicans and Democrats.  Republicans want to create an environment where free people make their own choices and pursue their dreams. President Obama and Democrats want to create a dependency on government that ensures that Americans will continue to rely on Washington from cradle to grave.  

What this lady said is so offensive because it's so blatant  -  she finally comes out and says what we all know that the Democrats really think.  That's why this ad is so damaging to the president in Ohio. 

Let me tell you something.   I'm from Ohio.  I was elected statewide as the Secretary of State and Ohio State Treasurer - the ad is effective.  If swing voters in this state see this ad, they simply will not support President Obama, and he will lose Ohio.

There are too many weird  assumptions to address in the ad, which is supposed to run in Summit, Lucas and Mahoning Counties. But if Blackwell has cast his lot as a Tea Party huckster, he obviously is blind to the sort of racist stuff  that turns up on some of the signs at the teabagger rallies.

P.S..   The only October surprise , Ken, is that you probably got paid to write this.  

Measuring a convention by tweets?

As I watched President Obama tonight, I decided I would write what everybody else was trying to say, comparing his speech with the others - Clinton, Biden, Michelle et al.  But that seemed to be silly.  He wasn't running against them.  So why was it so necessary to make a big deal of  it.   I merely jotted down that Obama was giving a presidential speech, not a stump speech. Not the most profound insight.  But it was getting late.

But I did learn after so many years in the business of writing about these things that  something new had been added in determining winners: tweets (which I don't do.)  In case you are interested in meaningless trivia, like how many homeruns are hit on a 3-2 count, the Democratic convention produced 9 million tweets; the Republican convention, 4 million.

Can we conclude that's well beyond the margin of error?   I left the room before anybody tried to explain the importance of  that lopsided spread.  If you know, you'll have no luck tweeting me.

Doesn't either side want to be presidential?

IF YOU HAVE any interest at all in next year's presidential election - and I know that's a stiff challenge -then you can only conclude that:

While the current preposterous Republican job-seekers are doing their damnedest not to win the election next year...

President Obama's repeated concessions to the GOP suggest he is doing his damnedest to lose it.

Will it be a tie?

Republican attack of "vibrations of weirdness"

ARCH CONSERVATIVE George Will's discovery of "vibrations of weirdness" within the Republican Party is hardly news to liberals who have been scorned for saying the same thing for a long time. He was reacting to presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee's insistence that Barack Obama has evolved from the Zombies that we've been hearing so much about these days. By the way that he continues to make a fool of himself in the media, it's evident that he is increasingly immodest about his credibility....Meantime, Sen. John McCain was back on the Sunday morning talk shows, which is the equivalent of staring into the same cage at the zoo for hours while ignoring all of the other attractions. The networks simply won't allow him to back-pedal into oblivion.

And how about this one: the Republican House Speaker in New Hampshire is upset because hordes of young people register and vote on the same day. He wants the practice to end and there's a Republican bill in the legislature that would do just that. Says Speaker Bill O'Brien of the tads: "They don't have life experience and they just vote their feelings and they're taking away the town's ability to govern themselves." Gee. I thought that's what adult voters do.

Obama has a better month than the media doomsayers

AS THE NASTY political year winds down with an apparent soft landing, President Obama can claim to have something in common with Mark Twain. Responding to a report of his demise in the New York Journal, the iconic satirist declared: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Anyone tracking Obama's bumpy career might very well have been carried away by insistent media reports that his tenure in the Oval Office was heading for extinction and that there was no chance for any of his first-tier projects to make it through an impenetrable Republican stone wall. So much for the national pundits, speculators and street corner doomsayers who wanted to be the first to report an administration in quicksand. The generic headlines and talk show experts often declared "DADT is dead", "Health care reforms will be shelved," and "Hopes fade for START nuclear treaty."

They were, of course, wrong. It is something that happened much too often in a media caught up in its own self-absorbed expertise in the split-second Information Age. Much too often.

Meanwhile, President Obama was rising from the purported ashes with a broad smile and a much higher batting average than any of his naysayers came close to predicting. Moreover, the polls were crediting him with rising in public esteem. One late CNN survey showed him to be comfortably ahead of congressional Republicans in his performance during the lame-duck session. His approval rating rose to 56 pct. against the GOP's 42 pct. At the same time a Public Policy poll in Florida reported hs was running ahead of all potential Republican presidential contenders - 14 pts. (52-38) against Sarah Palin.

Well, yes. Things can always change. But you might want to keep in mind how they change in, um, the Information Age.

Obama a Muslim? More stuff for Bullfinch's Mythology

THE FANCIFUL debate over whether President Obama is indeed a Muslim is the latest right-wing rage that should be confined to the pages of Bullfinch's Mythology. It is the product of a mythological advanced society in which semi-literate (at best!) political opponents and their disciples refuse to accept fact over fiction.

The latest evidence of the effects of the political wallowers are in the new Pew Research study that shows public opinion relating Obama to Muslim beliefs has risen from 11 pct. in March 2009 to 18 pct. in August 2010. But Pew also found that those who said they don't know whether Obama is a Muslim has increased during the same period from 34 pct. to to 43 pct. So when Rush Limbaugh refers to the president as an Imam, he and his kindergarten class know that it's working to damage Obama.

You can add Tom Ganley, the Republican congressional candidate in the Ohio's 13th District, to the "don't know" column, which leaves open the possibility that Obama might very well be you-know-what. When asked by CQ Roll Call, Ganley dodged the question by saying he doesn't "have a position on whether he's a Muslim." (Read: Obama might be - just enough to keep the voters guessing without disturbing the Far Right.)

Thomas Jefferson was a lucky man. There were no well-paid network and cable "news" staffs to advance the issue of whether he was a Deist (he was) nor ask him why he spent so much of his time rewriting the Bible. Wow! Can you possibly imagine how that would go over with the Big Media today?

Unraging Obama: No straw to fix the oil leak

NOW THAT President Obama's "rage index" has become a...eh...raging issue in the national media, I have taken some time from my yard work to find out what I've been missing. With the BP oil spill, the Afghanistan war, the Israeli blockade, staggering economy and the latest comments on Barbara Boxer's hairstyle, it's understandable that the DC reporters and pundits would be forced to look elsewhere for some meatier news. Voila! Is the president raging enough? Well, whether he is or isn't, I doubt that if he would have kicked over a few flower pots on the first day of the spill that we would be any farther ahead in solving what is now the country's greatest environmental disaster.

Were the pundits really counting on a furious meltdown like a deranged King Lear in the Oval Office demanding that thunder "strike flat the thick rotundity of the world!"? Naw. Even if you are talking about obesity, which a lot of people are doing these days, no editor would allow "rotundity" to appear in a modern newspaper. And what about a reenactment of Rigoletto's explosive anger upon realizing that his daughter had been murdered , believing that she was the victim of a curse .(Actually, I believe it was a stiletto that did her in. ) "Ah, la maledizione", he cried out anyway. The curse!

The media, however, did look at Obama's cool disposition as indifference to the mess and the question came up at a recent press conference in which the CBS guy asked press Secretary Robert Gibbs for an estimate of Obama's rage. "Yes, I've seen rage from him," Gibbs replied. But Chip Reid, the TV reporter, persisted. "Can you describe it. Does he yell and scream? What does he do?"

You can see that Reid was not going to take anything less than a description of Obama climbing the walls a la Spider-Man after a lost week end. Over at Fox News, the sole arbiter of good and evil, they aren't taking Obama's rage index lightly, and have gone so far to bleep "ass" in reference to what the president says he has to kick. I don't remember. Did they bleep George Bush when he called the NY Times' Adam Clymer a "Major League asshole" and Cheney added, "Oh, yeah."? And there were no dead pelicans on the beaches, either.

And now Rupert Murdock's Times (of London) is advancing the rage index in a piece by a clearly enraged British columnist, who believes we have been much too harsh on BP.

"Barack Obama," Jonathan Leake sizzled, "has indulged in shameless partisan attacks on a foreign company for the sole purpose of boosting his popularity ahead of crucial elections due to be held in a few months time. The American press, which is notorious for its complete inability to conduct meaningful , impartial research, has gone along with Obama." Right.

There are a lot of things wrong with that thought, including the bit about partisanship, but he's entitled, I guess. But, Jonathan, before you ready the Red Coats for another trip to our chores, you should at least be aware of a real sign of official rage that would suck up some of the loose oil and dump it into the Themes.

Unfortunately, Obama says he personally can't go down into the deep and suck it up with a straw. The president will address the nation tonight on the oil spill and unless he finally agrees to take a straw down to the rig's base, nobody will be satisfied. If it were me, I would invite some of the national media critics to go down there with him.

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Still one more crusade by the classless Dimmies

ANOTHER DAY, another crusade by the southern strategists (with assistance from the oil states and Grand Canyon). The latest uproar by the Dimmies was ignited by President Obama's scheduled TV speech to school kids on Sept. 8 in which students, parents and educators will be urged to work together in providing kids a stronger education to face a tattered world. In Education Secretary Ame Duncan 's words: an education that would lead to "good jobs and productive lives as American citizens."

That would seem to be so noble an effort that even the most partisan of GOP Dimmies would step aside and let the president of the most powerful nation on the globe have his say. But Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, says he's "infuriated" (it doesn't take much these days!) by the thought of Obama's attempt to propagandize the kids by going over the heads of their parents who, Greer assured us, believe otherwise. "An invasive abuse of power," Greer stomped. For all in loco parentis advocates, I have one word, duck. There's an absolutely LOCO politician in Florida trying to steal the scene.

Meantime, the hysteria in Texas could force some school districts to ban the speech in their schools. And a Dimmy Conservative talk show host, Tammy Bruce, is urging parents to make Sept 8 a Parentally Approved Skip Day. Tammy raised the bar on intellectual vacancy by telling parents that they should be "your child's tutor, not that shady lawyer from Chicago."

Well,there is an easier way to counter Obama's supposed bid to control the kids' minds, His opponents should gather up copies of "My Pet Goat" and pass them out as the students enter their classes on Sept, 8. There are still copies of it floating around on Amazon, and as we learned from Obama's predecessor, the story can be totally engrossing..

Rep. John Campbell: In need of a language tutor

AMONG THE MANY boasts on Rep. John Campbell's home page is that he is a co-sponsor of legislation to make English the national language. After hearing the California Republican's evasive gibberish in a debate with Chris Matthews the other night, I would advise him to begin with some English lessons for himself.

Campbell is a co-sponsor of a bill that would require all presidential candidates to reveal a birth certificate. (Hint, hint.) When Matthews demanded to know whether the bill wasn't really playing to the "wackos" who insist that Obama is a foreigner and ineligible to serve in the Oval Office, Campbell insisted that his effort has nothing to do with Obama and - hint, hint - "as far as I know" Obama is an American.. As far as I know? Campbell seemed a bit blind-sided when Matthews held up a copy of Obama's birth certificate, which, for the congressman, was hardly irrefutable proof for him because it was on a TV screen that he was unable to read.

Pure blather. And as Matthews noted, a play to the paranoia that has existed in the right-wingers who gathered under their coconut trees last year to raise hell and havoc. In fairness, Campbell finally hedged on Obama, continuing to argue that his legislation only applied to the future. On the other hand, his co-sponsor, Rep. Bill Posey, a Florida Republican, says he couldn't swear on a stack of bibles that Obama is one of us. The wackos aren't the only sillies who spread ridiculous gossip. Some of them sponsor legislation.

When Democrats reach for their hankies

"It's like deja vu all over again" - Yogi Berra

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS are mournful worriers. The untreatable sense of foreboding by my crowd is a kind of genetic guilt that took hold when the Democratic Party, which was less than progressive, foolishly endorsed George McClellan, a terrible general, against Lincoln in 1864. But things were so bad that even Lincoln, a Republican seeking a second term against the backdrop of the Civil War, didn't think he would be reelected. Since then the prevailing gloom among liberals was that if there was a way to lose an election, Democrats would certainly find it. It's the curse of John McClellan.

Nowadays, although some Dems are putting up a brave front, down deep they just know that Governor Strickland will be a one-term governor because of his dithering over a state budget. They flinch and reach for their moist handkerchiefs when polls show his approval rating in a nosedive. Frankly, I have no idea how that will turn out at the polls next year. The media will be full of dire warnings for Strickland, and will continue to urge him to raise taxes to pay some bills. That, of course, would only serve to increase the despair in his party, particularly among other Democratic candidates on the state ticket who will be forced to toss and turn at press conferences over whether they support tax increases, too.

On the other hand, liberals will be scowling at Republican John Kasich, hanging effigies of him in their basements, and fretting that their party's brief years of glory will be ended regardless of Kasich's ludicrous sing-song pledges to lower taxes. He, after all, was a big-time executive with Lehman Brothers before it tanked and would not be expected to know something worthwhile about the financial system. Sorry, not enough to assuage hanky-twisting liberals that the end is near. They will keep their cell phones turned on should a friend want to report the latest dismal poll. Damn the McClellan curse anyway!

There is even concern with the aforementioned crowd about President Obama, who still has three and half years remaining to define his work before the next election. My friends have been skittish about polls that say Barack has dropped some points but remains around 60 pct. job approval. It is of no consolation among always- nervous Dems that as a married man cavorting with a teenage girl friend, Italy's Silvio Belusconi's approval rating in the polls fell only two points. Boastfully defiant, the Italian president declared: "This is how I am. I am not going to change a thing. If they like me this way, they like me this way." The McClellan factor obviously has not found its way to Rome.

I quickly recall that during the past presidential election campaign, my gang was standing

on tall ladders looking ahead to the next poll and fully expecting defeat. John McCain and the national media mentioned more than once that the Republican was closing the gap. On the other hand McCain was cool and confident that nature, and even the Supreme Court, if necessary, would again favor the GOP.

Republicans, particularly conservatives, aren't like that at all. Guys like William Kristol, the Neocons' foster parent, grin their way through another Fox hour full of certainty that in the end, America is a just nation and will do what's extreme right. Even now, Kristol is finding ways to justify another national campaign for Sarah Palin.

It would have been different if Lincoln had been a Democrat.

Don't wait for the Morrison trial, et al...

WEEKEND LEFTOVERS:  Take a deep breath but don't hold it.  Once again the pretrial  (May 11, today) hearing and trial date (May 26) for Atty.  Jack Morrison Jr. have been been delayed on motions by  Morrison's lawyer, Paul Adamson.  New dates were not set at this writing.  Morrison, a University of Akron Trustee and advisor to the Summit County Republican Party, was indicted on seven misdemeanor charges arising from his son's purchase and profitable sale of a house on University property that was designated for use in the area that was being cleared for a new football stadium. The case is five months old.   Morrison has ignored calls for him to step down from the Board of Trustees, including one from Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut and the Beacon Journal.  Watch for an update around  Christmas.....

Dick Cheney has made it official:  He prefers Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell as the inspiration for the Republican Party.   Have you noticed that Cheney is much more visible today as the GOP's spiritual leader on talk shows than he was as a  shadowy veep who spent some of his time in a real cave?  He's an old non-soldier who won't fade away...But something else appears to have faded away:  the aggressive PR effort to rehab George Bush's image has fallen silent.  One practical explanation:  It wasn't working.... 

Let's hope that the recall election for Mayor Plusquellic is set for the earliest possible date so that the city can get on with the important business at hand.  The effort by Warner Mendenhall and his pickup army to throw out the mayor will be one of the darker moments in the city's history, Warner's defense of "democracy in action" notwithstanding.  win or lose (he will lose this one) he will have gained some strategic information on the city's demographics should he decide to run for mayor himself.  But at what price to the city itself?

It is amusing to hear the right-wing "profiling" of an imaginary Supreme Court nominee that President Obama has yet to select.  I'm waiting to see protesting GOP  billboards rise with fill-in-the-blank nominees to be named later. 

Finally, does anybody besides Sean Hannity and  his ding-a-ling disciples care that Obama ordered a hamburger with  "elitist" mustard  instead of catsup?  There are days when I wish I could be president for eight hours.  I would  give Hannity an eternity of eyebrow raisers with my exotic Middle Eastern  palate. 

A diversionary Ohio poll on a rainy day

ALTHOUGH THERE are still mega-miles ahead in the major 2010 Ohio races, you can bet your rusty Wendell Willkie button that insiders from both parties will be carefully digesting the latest Quinnipiac poll for beneficial spins.  At this stage of the long journey,  polls tell us very little - unless, of course, they come in handy to influence the big early donors that their generosity would not not be forgotten.

The Q poll for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican George Voinovich, shows Lt. Gov Lee Fisher with a comfortable lead over Republican Rob Portman, 42 pct-31 pct, while Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who is competing with Fisher in the Democratic primary, is ahead of Portman, 40- 31.  Both also have double digit leads over State Auditor Mary Taylor,  who is not expected to run at this point.

Gov. Ted Strickland has a 51-32 lead over former Republican congressman Republican John Kasich.   More important than the one-on-one matchups is the context in which Ohio politics is currently being played out.  President Obama has a 62-31 approval rating in the Buckeye state; Strickland, 52-37.  

The Democratic senate primary remains the focal point among the party's movers and shakers, with a back-channel effort by some  inside chess players to persuade Brunner to withdraw and run for the Ohio Supreme Court instead.  You might keep an eye on that opening gambit.

A strong word of caution:  A year before the 2008 presidential election in Ohio, the Q poll reported that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani (!!!!) were in a virtual tie.    We all know how that turned out on Election Day.  

  .    

Lieberman's brain runs dry

I HAD RESISTED piling on poor  Sen. Joe Lieberman because I'm really not a bad guy when you get to know me.  But when he said a couple of extraordinarily contradictory things, I felt it was necessary to resurrect him from McCain's ashes from the last presidential campaign.  I was constrained to give him not one, but two,  Grumpy Abe  Linguistic Lunacy Awards (GALL) - the first such double honor of the year, which will qualify him for the annual GALL Award in December.   Take a look:

Joining his  road-show pals McCain and Lindsay Graham,  Lieberman signed on to a letter to President Obama  regarding waterboarding and other means of torture that said:

"We have also strongly  opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these memos deemed legal."

However, two days earlier,  ensconced in his comfort zone at Fox News, Lieberman said:

"Well, I take a minority position on this.  Most people think it's definitely torture.  The truth is, it has  mostly a psychological impact on people....We ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.

Uh, he did say that it was a terrible thing to do if we had to do it.  But...

Sorry, Joe.  You lost me at the last trickle.  Waterboarding is not good to the last drop.  

   

Grassroots? Where are the roots?

Derided by elitists as  phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous..." - Karl Rove

A FEW NIGHTS ago   I had dinner with a  fellow who said his paycheck is a bit healthier these days because of the tax cuts arriving via the Obama Administration.  He said others in his company had experienced the same benefit. No one was prepared to make a down payment on a new yacht or a Lear jet, but all had more dollars  in their pockets.  Would anybody deny that these income tax cuts embraced all middle income taxpayers from California to New York? 

Well, yes. Indeed, if you listened to the rants on tea-party day, the President's policies are drenching all Americans with steep federal tax increases.   Karl Rove, a political survivor whose wallet will never deny him a good meal enhanced by a job with the Fox megaphone,  insists America is entering a new phase when the common folks aren't going to put up with runaway "tax-and-spend government".    Republicans like the sound of tax-and-spend because it has been around on their calling cards since the days of Herbert Hoover. Meantime, Republican presidents have spent and spent.  Or didn't they tell you that? 

Rove and his cohorts, who slammed us with eight years of George Bush,  are in denial.  They have no options left but to tell us, when the occasion calls for it, that Thursday is Saturday and Monday is Wednesday, and the dark spot on the moon is a wayward cow. Now they are selling "spontaneous " tax revolts that would be quite agreeable to winning elections for their brand of conservative Republicans down the road.   

Spontaneous?    For Rupert Murdoch's Fox News,  such imagined impromptu tea bagging was such a seductive thought to rabble-rouse that the  station's incendiary talk show hosts sold it endlessly to their  audience  with the vigor of those bombastic used-car commercials.  Joining the "grass-roots" assault on the White House was an old pro at this sort of nonsense:  Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman who is now the head of an outfit called FreedomWorks, another of the right-wing enterprises that confuses patriotism with Wounded Knee.  

All of the old crowd were out there sellin' their wares:  Newt Gingrich, whose curse we must bear because he has yet to find a job that will get him entirely out of the way; Phil Gramm, an inspired deregulator, a vice chairman of UBS (which is being investigated for serious tax fraud)  and a super-rich Texan, who got his share of income as a senator from oppressed taxpayers;  Tom DeLay, another discredited Texan  who smiles painfully when  Chris Matthews toys with DeLay's loopy invasions of reality.    

If there were anyone big enough to lead a fragmented McParty these days, he or she would promote a series of Smart Parties around the country that would begin with the premise that nothing is working for the GOP's good these days, so maybe it ought to consider something more sensible as the loyal opposition.   At the moment it is nothing more than a composite of silly free-lancers on the right who have kidnapped the GOP as their own private plantation where they grow peculiar ideologies from barren soil.  A party cannot survive with the wealthy alone.  

So be alert when you see grassroots as the key to the party's revival.  If  the tea parties were the domain of the future look of the party - white Obama-haters with Hitler-Obama posters - the slugs have eaten the roots and converted the lawn into a rollup carpet.  

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Morning Joe in mourning

I AM COMPELLED to elevate Morning Joe Scarborough (or is it  Mourning Joe?) of MSNBC as the winner of the Republican Obama-hating Panic Patrol button.  Scarborough's credentials as host of the daybreak program is that he is a  former Florida congressman and a rather superficial observer of the world scene.  But he got my attention when he accused President Obama of having never received a paycheck from a profit-making private company.  Hear him out:

"We have a president who never received a paycheck.  This  guy - think about it - he's running Detroit, he's running Wall street, he's gonna run other sectors of our economy ...he's never received a paycheck from a profit-making business in his entire life.  Not one check.  Think about the radicalism in that."

Well, I have thought about it, Joe, and with help of others' research, I have learned that he worked for  4 or 5 firms that paid him in American currency.  And think about it, Joe.  Even the fat checks he got for his books arrived from book publishers, the private profit-making kind.  

True, thanks to the mess left behind by Obama's predecessor, everybody knows these days that not many people are drawing checks from profitable companies.  As deadpan George Gobel once reminded Johnnie Carson about World War II, "It was in all of the papers."

As additional fodder for the Panic Patrol, Scarborough later gushed over South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's highly visible resistance to stimulus funds to his state,  praising him and urging him to run for president.  Joe, the governor already is running for president.  It's been in all of the papers.