Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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What He Said

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Greenwald nails this one:

Let’s spend just a moment thinking about what this means. We’ve known since December, 2005, that Bush officials, including at the NSA, committed felonies by eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by law — crimes punishable by a five-year prison term and$10,000 fine for each offense. All three federal judges to rule on the question have found those actions to be in violation of the law. Yet there have been no criminal investigations, let alone indictments, for those crimes, and there won’t be any, due to Barack Obama’s dictate that we “Look Forward, Not Backward.” Thus, the high-level political officials who committed crimes while running the NSA will be completely immunized for their serious crimes.

By stark contrast, an NSA official who brought to the public’s attention towering failures and waste at the NSA — revelations that led to exposés that, as Shane put it, were “honored with a top prize from the Society for Professional Journalists” — is now being prosecuted for crimes that could lead to a lengthy prison term. Why doesn’t Obama’s dictate that we “Look Forward, Not Backward,” protect this NSA whistle-blower from prosecution at least as much as the high-level Bush officials who criminally spied on American citizens? Isn’t the DOJ’s prosecution of Drake the classic case of “Looking Backward,” by digging into Bush-era crimes, controversies and disclosures?

Meanwhile, who wants to bet we won’t “look backward” when it comes to this:

Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.

Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he “agreed” with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to “take the heat” for destroying the tapes.

“PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat,” according to one document, an internal C.I.A. e-mail message.

The message is clear- you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter.

If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted.

I expected better from Obama and Holder.

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Nothing Could Go Wrong Here

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This is a great idea, Sarah:

During her “Redneck-Woodstock” speech in Searchlight, Nevada on March 27, 2010, Sarah Palin had a suggestion for her audience:

    “That bumper sticker that maybe you’ll see on the next Subaru driving by — an Obama bumper sticker — you should stop the driver and say, ‘So how is that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?'”

I can’t be the only one who could see a potential problem with teabagging Palinites randomly stopping people with Obama stickers and taunting them. Certainly nothing could go wrong with this plan.

Which reminds me- I need a new Obama sticker for my Subaru. Anyone have “Vets for Obama” sticker lying around unused?

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Brownstein nails it… (update)

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Across the so called progressive blog-o-sphere the hand-wringing and worrying about President Obama has been repeated so often that it is like listening to a toddler tell the same joke over and over for weeks. The cuteness factor wears off in a hurry and soon you just pray that a new diversion will get the little tyke onto some other shiny object.

The trouble where I sit is that most folks think about what Obama should be doing while wearing very narrow blinders. I think much of the HCR debate fits that frame.

Over at the National Journal, Ron Brownstein looks at the field of play without the blinders of conventional wisdom and I think he nails it in this graph:

The fight has opened a second window into Obama. The key here is his 2008 campaign assertion that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America” more than Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton did. The health care struggle suggests that Obama views changing that trajectory as the ultimate measure of a presidency’s success. His aim is to establish a long-term political direction — one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for sustainable, broadly shared growth. Everything else — the legislative tactics, even most individual policies — is negotiable. He wants to chart the course for the supertanker, not to steer it around each wave or decide which crates are loaded into its hull.

The entire piece is worth a read.

I think the Obama Era after HCR is going to get pretty interesting.

Cheers

dengre

ps: But first, HCR must pass… So please plan on setting some time aside to make a few calls on Saturday–we need to keep the pressure on full boil.

Update: Moses2317 give us a great calling list for the morning.

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DADT Progress

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Joe Lieberman to sponsor the bill:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) announced this morning that he will introduce legislation repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Democrats have sought to repeal the law since President Obama took office, but have been stymied by a busy legislative calendar.

Lieberman says the time is now right to pass a repeal.

“I will be proud to be a sponsor of the important effort to enable patriotic gay Americans to defend our national security and our founding values of freedom and opportunity,” Lieberman said. “To exclude one group of Americans from serving in the armed forces is contrary to our fundamental principles as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and weakens our defenses by denying our military the service of a large group of Americans who can help our cause.”

I know I am going to be accused of hippie punching and gay bashing, but a certain someone has been claiming for months this is how this was going to happen. Let the military get out in front and be agents of change, neutering Republican opposition, and then let the Democrat who the Republicans simply can’t attack as anti-military propose the bill. And with the public showing great support for repeal, it will pass, Ike Skelton be damned.

This wasn’t 11 dimensional chess. This was common sense, and the way to permanently repeal this crappy compromise. All of you screaming about executive orders and just words just never figured it out, and probably still haven’t. Anything other than the way they are doing this right now would lead to DADT becoming a lot like the overseas abortion ban, which is reversed almost immediately after the oath of office is administered to an incoming President.

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Another Day, Another Unsourced “Rahm Sucks” Piece

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This time in the Hill:

Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform.

The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting.

No one, of course, is on the record. That doesn’t slow down Americblog:

Emanuel has presented himself as the all-powerful. He’s led Obama’s presidency into a tailspin (and Obama let him). While Emanuel hasn’t worked in the Senate, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, is a long-time former Senate staffer. How Emanuel and his crew destroyed the Obama brand so quickly will be the subject of debate for years to come.

Meanwhile, back at the Hill, this portion of the story that will get overlooked:

“I like Rahm; he’s always been a straight shooter with me,” said a Democratic centrist senator who was closely involved in the healthcare debate.

The lawmaker said Emanuel misjudged the Senate by focusing on only a few Republicans, citing Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as too narrow a pool.

“In the Senate, you have to anchor in the middle and build out,” said the lawmaker.

“They just wanted to win,” the source said of Emanuel and other White House strategists. “Their plan was to keep all the Democrats together and work like hell to get Snowe and Collins. The Senate doesn’t work that way. You need a radius of 10 to 12 from the other side if you’re going to have a shot.”

Anyone want to take a wild guess how Americablog and others in the progressive blogosphere would have reacted if Obama and Rahm had passed a bill in the Senate that appealed to 12 Republicans? I can hear the screams. There would be ActBlue accounts by the dozens to primary Obama.

It just never stops. And if Rahm steps down, they’ll just find someone else to act as the bogeyman.

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