The Sunlight Foundation catches on to another inconvenient truth: Those in power who benefit from the status quo are loath to change.
“At Sunlight, when we learned that Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was convening a task force to address the issue of earmarks, we knew the odds of progress were slim. McConnell is an appropriator, a champion of earmarks and an ardent foe of almost every conceivable good government reform. He also has a keen political ear. So by forming a task force on earmark reform, he could arguably demonstrate action without actually moving. As “The Hill” reports here, Senator McConnell not only continues placing obstacles to moderate reform, but he is resisting a push for earmark transparency coming from within his own party.
How did McConnell undertake the issue without putting his caucus at risk of actually having to change its ways on earmarks? He appointed a working group with members on such opposite ends of the earmark spectrum odds were against success. Then he told them to come up with a unanimous recommendation. When they did that, McConnell moved the goal line again, saying he would attempt to work with the Democratic Leader to consider creating a Senate Rule the encompassed the suggestions. Even the most casual political observer wouldn’t be surprised to find that those “negotiations” came to nothing.
The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.
There is a profound lesson to be taken from Orangejuicegate, or Bowlinggate, or Bittergate, and that lesson is that the guardians of our discourse are, at heart, idiots. There is no other explanation or redemption. Anyone attempting to draw out character definition from a glass of orange juice is, at heart, someone who has entirely run out of insightful things to say. Anyone attempting to make the case that a bowling score represents the measure of a man deserves to be basted, roasted, and served to whatever imbecile of a president does manage to rise to the top of their addled internal scoresheet.
At the same time, I think the appropriate response to this is not to get too angry and pretend to seriously rebut any of this, but to simply recognize it as a function of a deeply embarrassing and inept media environment, and, well… make fun of them. Repeatedly. That is what passes for analysis, as the world decays around us?
Because it should be nothing short of hilarious that, just as usual, orange juice and bowling are stories that titillate our “experts”, but torture approved at the highest levels of government is not. If only the government response to Katrina demonstrated half as much as the clothing a candidate wears to an event; now that would be something. If only the measure of our current president was taken a tenth as carefully as that of our current candidates; but no, that would be unpatriotic.
These people really need to find something productive to occupy their time, because providing news and insight appears to be beyond them.
As usual, John Cole nails it as he compares the furor over Spitzer to the lack of interest in the revelation, for the “n=1″th time, of a study showing the Iraq invasion was BS.
I stand by my earlier assessments- to hell with Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer was a guy who used his office to essentially blackmail people to keep from being indicted, who used all sorts of hardball tactics to destroy people, and who seemed to relish it. he was a self-righteous crusader who used his office as a cudgel, bludgeoning people and ruining their reputations.
And he enjoyed it. So while I share Tim’s earlier concerns about what started this prosecution (and we will see how the Siegalman/Roger Stone angle plays out), and I think we live in a pretty screwed up country that a couple thousand dollars in transactions made by a multi-millionaire is all that is needed to start a huge investigation, I really have a hard time mustering any sympathy. If the shoe were on the other foot, Spitzer would be holding a press conference trying to destroy Client #9. Some of you may think of him as a reformer because you liked his results, I look at him as part of the problem.
Regardless, it is depressing to the nth order that Spitzer is going to go down for getting his rocks off with an escort, but this disaster hasn’t cost anyone so much as a cut in pay:
An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East , U.S. officials told McClatchy . However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
I’ve said before Spitzer reminded me of Minnesota’s own Mike Hatch, who as attorney general I considered to be an ego-maniacal, self aggrandizing parasitic media whore. In the big picture his downfall is something I find hard to take issue with. And as I said before, the Lt. Gov. of NY seems to be a step up.
Too bad this Iraq report too will be ignored by the usual suspects.
Matt Stoller takes on single issue folks for losing focus on the big picture:
Environmental groups greenwash Republicans for doing very little. This is a problem all over the country for progressives, who are often running in blue areas against moderate Republicans. It’s just one more way that the failed single issue model of politics kills progressive leadership in its crib.
Rudy will no doubt deny any knowledge of, oh, you know, how the city’s finances are run (even as he takes credit for “fixing” them), and then maybe even fall back on the, “Hey, it’s a fact of life and everyone has a private life” explanation.
But while it’s true that everyone has a private life, it’s also true that public leaders know its price. If you want to claim it’s no big deal that Giuliani was having an adulterous affair, that’s one thing. But why not just be an adult and have it, already? Why the long drives out of the city, when you know full well it’s going to cost $3,000 a pop (no pun intended — and we hope he got a better rate than that by buying in bulk)? What was the taxpayer cost of having his gal pal come by the mansion?
But he didn’t want to do that, because that would be unseemly. Family ValuesTM and all, you know. So he snuck out to the Hamptons instead (where everyone America’s just gotta “have a beer with” summers, dontcha know) and passed the costs on to the city. Because he couldn’t be a man and be honest about what he was doing, and never gave a moment’s thought to whether or not it was fair to make you and me pay for his cowardly selfishness. And why would he? He’s a Republican. Their entire philosophy of government is to privatize the benefits of public expenditures.
So here we are in round one of the spin game. If there could have been no worse timing for breaking the story than the night of a debate, then there’s perhaps no better timing for the spin cycle than during a television writer’s strike, when Giuliani will be spared the acid test of political scandal: late night comedy monologues.
It’s an interesting situation for the righteous folks who haven’t been happy to begin with. It’s one thing to have skeletons in the closet, but to be paying their room and board at taxpayer expense - and milking unrelated agencies to do so? That’s going to be an issue. And it should be.
There’s an annoying piece at CNN about the new national trend to crack down on baggy pants.
It’s a fashion that started in prison, and now the saggy pants craze has come full circle — low-slung street strutting in some cities may soon mean run-ins with the law, including a stint in jail.
Proposals to ban saggy pants are starting to ride up in several places. At the extreme end, wearing pants low enough to show boxers or bare buttocks in one small Louisiana town means six months in jail and a $500 fine.
You know, I’m SO glad there’s nothing actually wrong in the world so these legislative pissants can focus on things that really matter.
Lincoln Chafee, the moderate from Rhode Island, has formally left the GOP tent.
Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party.
Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment.
“It’s not my party any more,” he said.
Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.
One can’t blame him - and apparently he doesn’t blame voters for his defeat last November. One gets the impression that he’d have voted against the GOP in that election too, had he the opportunity.
In the big picture, this really isn’t a good thing. It’s not good when the other major party is the exclusive domain of sycophants and whack jobs. Not good at all.
There are a lot of issues about which I think: Republican politicians have taken the name of something I care a lot about, turned it into something I scarcely recognize, and made it very tempting for liberals to just dismiss it: to accept the idea that the concept in question is what Republicans say it is and reject it, rather than challenging their definitions and reappropriating the values we care about. Patriotism is one example. Family values is another.
Remember back fifteen or twenty years ago when Dennis Miller was funny? Yeah, so do I. Apparently he hasn’t been taking his metamucil regularly enough of late. You’ve heard is silly screed against Harry Reid? Probably not, since it was on a widely ignored Faux news program. But everyone and their dog in the wingnutosphere linked to it.
It’s really not worth the effort replying to it in detail.
