Duh!

Marshall: Sen. Brown Says He'll Support Reform

From Brian Beutler's latest report from Capitol Hill ...

Sen. Scott Brown acknowledged tonight that he did indeed tell Majority Leader Harry Reid he'd support financial reform legislation, before voting to filibuster at the last minute. But he says he's confident he'll ultimately side with the Democrats, and suggested he may switch his vote back to yes as early as tomorrow.

Read the rest here.

Zev Chavets (NYT): The Limbaugh Victory

THERE are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence.

How did this happen? The Obama victory in 2008 left Republicans dazed, demoralized and leaderless. Less than six weeks after the inauguration, in a nationally televised keynote address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Limbaugh stepped into the void with a raucous denunciation of the new president’s agenda and a strategic plan based on his belief that real conservatism wins every time. He reiterated his famous call for Mr. Obama to fail and urged the party faithful to ignore the siren song of bipartisanship and moderation and stay true to the principles of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats responded by branding Mr. Limbaugh — whom they considered self-evidently unattractive — as the leader of the opposition. The day after the conservative conference, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, went on “Face the Nation” and described Mr. Limbaugh as the “voice and the intellectual force and energy” of the G.O.P.

Mr. Limbaugh loved being tossed into this briar patch. He mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.

His strategy was simple. With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda. He dismissed the moderates’ notion that compromising with the president would make Republicans look good to independents. Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates — especially centrists — to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.

Mr. Limbaugh was not just the architect of this plan, he was (and continues to be) its enforcer. Dissenters like Arlen Specter, whom Mr. Limbaugh disparaged as a “Republican in Name Only,” found themselves unelectable in the party primaries. Moderates like Michael Steele, the party chairman, were slapped down for suggesting cooperation with the administration. When Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia had the temerity to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh was too uncompromising, he was met with public outrage and forced into an humiliating apology.

When the Tea Party movement emerged, Mr. Limbaugh welcomed it. The movement’s causes — fighting against health care reform, reducing the size and cost of government, opposing the Democrats’ putative desire to remake America in the image of European social democracies — were straight Limbaughism. A very high proportion of the Tea Partiers listen to Mr. Limbaugh. Sarah Palin’s biggest current applause line — Republicans are not just the party of no, but the party of hell no — came courtesy of Mr. Limbaugh. (Ms. Palin gave the keynote address at the first national Tea Party convention.) Glenn Beck, who is especially popular among Tea Partiers, calls Mr. Limbaugh his hero.

So why the lack of attention? Mr. Limbaugh has studiously refrained from claiming credit for the movement. His only intervention thus far has been to quash talk about the Tea Party becoming a third party. He wants a unified, right-wing G.O.P. in 2010, and by all appearances he is going to get it.

Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of “no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.

Chris in Paris: GOP blocking science and technology bill

The Party of No lives! They might break out with a rash if they were somehow associated with anything as progressive as science and technology. They're tripping over themselves to save Big Oil from their financial responsibilities but somehow it's OK to spend taxpayer money for oil spills caused by bad the oil industry.

It was strike two for a major science funding bill Wednesday as House Republicans again united to derail legislation they said was too expensive.

Going down to defeat was the America COMPETES Act, which would have committed more than $40 billion over three years to boost funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies involved in basic and applied science, provided loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies and promoted science and math education.

Lach (TPM): House GOP Again Foils Jobs Bill (And Again Includes Porn Measure)

The Dems were ready to accept the GOP's anti-porn amendment, but Republicans in the House again managed to thwart a jobs bill that provides billions in funding to science and research.

Last week, we told you how house GOPers managed to scuttle the bill by forcing Democrats to vote in favor of federal employees viewing pornography. 121 Democrats balked, and voted with Republicans to kill the bill.

Today, GOPers pulled off an encore performance. The AP reports the bill's total price tag was reduced from $85 billion to about $47 billion (achieved by reducing the bill's spending timeline from 5 years to 3), and Democrats were united in support, despite the continued inclusion of the porn measure. They opted to use a procedure that required a two-thirds vote to pass the bill, but prevented any more amendments from being added. Every Democrat voted in favor, but they were joined by only 15 Republicans, and the bill failed despite a 261-148 vote.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), who spearheaded the porn-amendment effort, told the AP that the bill "continues to take us in a much more costly direction and authorizes a number of new programs which have little to do with prioritizing investments."

Roth (TPM): Cuccinelli: Critics Of Climate-Science Probe 'Need Not Worry'

Ken Cuccinelli is trying to allay intense concerns from Virginia's scientific and academic communities about his investigation of a former University of Virginia climate scientist.

"The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere," the attorney general told a crowd on Tuesday at a fundraiser for -- what else? -- an abstinence-only education group, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process will take place."

This week, a group of 800 scientists and academics wrote to Cuccinelli urging him to call off the probe of Michael Mann, which even some climate skeptics have referred to as a "witch hunt."

"The need not worry, but I doubt anybody screaming about it will take that from me," Cuccinelli added. "We're going to work our way through the process in a professional way."

Cuccinelli recently subpoenaed UVA for documents relating to the government-funded climate science research of Mann, who left UVA in 2005 and now teaches at Penn State. UVA's administration has said it is still weighing whether to challenge Cuccinelli's subpoena.

Mann was one of several scientists whose emails were released as part of last year's Climate-Gate controversy. Cuccinelli has said he's concerned that Mann may have committed fraud by deliberately skewing his findings -- though Mann has already been cleared of wrong-doing by several investigations.

DougJ: Hanging on the telephone

This kind of pointless, macho posturing is no doubt part of the reason Rand Paul is a teabag icon:

After winning Kentucky’s Republican primary Tuesday night, Bowling Green ophthalmologist Rand Paul refused to take the call of congratulations from opponent Trey Grayson, according to Grayson’s campaign manager Nate Hodson.

Hodson did not elaborate, except to say “it happened.”

“This is truly a classless act in politics,” said Marc Wilson, a Republican lobbyist and friend of Trey Grayson.

It will be fun seeing what Brooks and Broder make of this dude if he becomes Senator.

Think Progress: Rand Paul: ‘The Hard Part Of Believing In Freedom’ Is Opposing Ban On Whites-Only Lunch Counters

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century, banning whites-only lunch counters and similar discrimination in hiring, promotions, hotels and restaurants. Yet, in a recent editorial board interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul explained why he believes that this landmark law should not apply to private business owners:

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

Watch it:

After adding that he is also a fan of Dr. Martin Luther King, Paul dug in deeper, explaining that he he believes that in a “free society,” private lunch counters must be allowed to refuse service to Dr. King because of his race:

INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part—and this is the hard part about believing in freedom—is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example—you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

For the record, here is an example of the “boorish people” that Paul thinks a free society must tolerate:

In an interview with NPR today, Paul was asked three times about his position on the Civil Rights Act, but each time he dodged giving a declarative answer. “A lot of things that were actually in the bill I’m actually in favor of,” said Paul. Hinting at what he doesn’t “favor,” Paul added that “a lot of things can be handled locally.”

What Cole said . . .

John Cole: Conflicting Goals, My Ass

The NY Times:

Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals

...While no one has accused Goldman of anything illegal involving WaMu, National City, A.I.G. or the other clients it bet against, potential conflicts inherent in Wall Street’s business model are at the core of many of the investigations that state and federal authorities are conducting. Transactions entered into as the mortgage market fizzled may turn out to have been perfectly legal. Nevertheless, they have raised concerns among investors and analysts about the extent to which a variety of Wall Street firms put their own interests ahead of their clients’.

“Now it’s all about the score. Just make the score, do the deal. Move on to the next one. That’s the trader culture,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University and former counsel to the Federal Reserve Board. “Their business model has completely blurred the difference between executing trades on behalf of customers versus executing trades for themselves. It’s a huge problem.”

Goldman Sachs does not have dueling goals. Period. They have one goal, and one goal only.

Bonuses.

That is all they want. Bonuses. And they will do, or say anything to keep the bonuses rolling in. Bankrupting the country? No problem. Destroying Greece and the international economy. Cash money.

They don’t care about their clients, they don’t care about their community, they don’t care about their country. Their only goal is to make the deal and cash the bonus check.

John Cole: Screwing You is Job One

Oh, hey. More bankster criminality:

A telephone call between a financial adviser in Beverly Hills and a trader in New York was all it took to fleece taxpayers on a water-and-sewer financing deal in West Virginia. The secret conversation was part of a conspiracy stretching across the U.S. by Wall Street banks in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market.

The call came less than two hours before bids were due for contracts to manage $90 million raised with the sale of West Virginia bonds. On one end of the line was Steven Goldberg, a trader with Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd. On the other was Zevi Wolmark, of advisory firm CDR Financial Products Inc. Goldberg arranged to pay a kickback to CDR to land the deal, according to government records filed in connection with a U.S. Justice Department indictment of CDR and Wolmark.

West Virginia was just one stop in a nationwide conspiracy in which financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia Corp. and 11 other banks.

They rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer money.

And yet our dysfunctional Senate still can not pass meaningful financial regulation. At least the Bloomberg piece says they are ready to name names and there will be prison terms.

I eagerly await the Reason magazine treatise on how this is the fault of too much regulation.

Just Another Crazy Wednesday

via Huff Post:Rachel Maddow gave her long-awaited speech to graduates of Smith College this weekend.

John Cole: So Much for the Pelosi Hate

So the Democrat won the race in Pennsylvania 12, defeating the surefire strategy of attacking a grandmotherly figure who looks like damned near every other yinzer grandma in Pittsburgh.

Good thinking, Republicans. You might want to try to run on an issue in the fall, rather than just trashing Pelosi. Those who haven’t heard of her don’t care, and those who have heard of her are either wondering how throwing eggs at her will get them a job or why you are picking on the Italian grandmother who smiles nervously when she is on camera.

I swear, the GOP believes their own teabag/Limbaugh nonsense. Was the Burns campaign theme Barack the Magic Negro? Idiots.

*** Update ***

From the comments, as good a description of the myopic Republican feedback loop as you will see:

The Republicans have a problem of miking the supporter’s section and thinking there is a full house. If you watch MLS, especially during mid-week games, you’ll notice sparse crowds except for the supporter’s section behind one of the goals. If a field mic is aimed at the section it sounds like a full house of singing fans even though you can clearly see empty seats along either sideline.

Republicans do the same thing. The hardcore Republicans hate Nancy Pelosi with a passion (because she’s a woman and a Democrat) and they just assume from the din of their hater’s section that everyone else in the stadium hates Pelosi. But they’re just miking their own noise.

What do you expect from the party that excludes 75% of the country in their definition of “real American?”

Benen: THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT'S OTHER KENTUCKY SETBACK

Republican leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former Vice President Dick Cheney were embarrassed a bit last night. Their preferred Senate hopeful in Kentucky was trounced by right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul, who reveled in his "outsider" status.

But down ballot, the GOP establishment suffered another key setback in Kentucky yesterday.

UPS pilot Todd Lally ran away with the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth in Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District, which centers on Louisville. He beat three candidates, including Jeff Reetz, a Pizza Hut franchise owner who was the favorite of the House Republican campaign committee.

Lally is strongly pro-gun rights and anti-abortion rights. The Louisville Courier-Journal's editorial page said that during his endorsement interview, he said President Obama wouldn't be able to get a security clearance if he wasn't president and said health care reform was for the benefit of "freeloaders."

The National Republican Congressional Committee has a "Young Guns" program, backing select Republican challengers in competitive district, and included Reetz as a rising star in the party.

Despite the party's enthusiastic backing -- or perhaps because of it -- Reetz finished a distant third.

As Rachel Slajda summarized, "In Kentucky, the national Republican Party backed the wrong candidate in not one but two primaries."

NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) conceded that the results were "undoubtedly disappointing."

Funny, between this and the special election in Pennsylvani's 12th, I don't imagine the DCCC is thinking anything of the sort this morning.

Drum: Glenn Beck's Gold Fetish

When Glenn Beck tells you that Barack Obama is going to crater the economy and you should buy gold to protect yourself, he recommends that you buy your gold from Goldline. And what kind of gold should you buy? Well, the government might just up and decide to confiscate gold bullion someday, so he says your best bet is collectors' coins. And as Stephanie Mencimer reports, that suits Goldline just fine:

What Goldline doesn't say upfront is that for its own bottom line, collector coins are a lot more lucrative than mere bullion. Profits in the coin business are based on "spread," the difference between the price at which a coin is sold and the price at which the dealer will buy it back. Most coin dealers, including Goldline, will sell a one-ounce bullion coin for about 5 percent more than they'll buy it back for, a figure that closely tracks the price of an ounce of gold on the commodities markets. That 5 percent spread doesn't leave a lot of room for profits, much less running dozens of ads a week on national radio and cable programs, with endorsements by everyone from Beck to Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, and Dennis Miller. So, Goldline rewards its salespeople for persuading would-be bullion buyers to purchase something with a bigger markup.

Twenty-franc Swiss coins are a little smaller than a nickel and contain a little less than two-tenths of an ounce of gold. The coins are about 60 to 110 years old and not especially hard to find (though Goldline describes them as "rare"). They are not fully considered collectors' items nor commodities, making their value more subjective than bullion's. Goldline sets a 30 to 35 percent "spread" on the coins, meaning that it will pay $375 to buy back coins it's currently selling for $500. At that rate, gold prices would have to jump by a third just for customers to recoup their investment, never mind making a profit. Investing in Goldline's 20 francs would be like buying a blue chip stock that lost a third of its value the minute it's purchased. It's difficult to think of any other investment that loses so much value almost instantly. So what persuades people to buy anyway?

The short answer is: a hard sell from the Goldline sales force. For the long answer, click the link and read Stephanie's investigation into the tangled and abusive web between Beck, Goldline, conservative talk radio, and their all-too-credulous customers. It's not a pretty story.

tristero: Rand Paul: Gracious In Victory

This will surely play well to Rand Paul's proto-fascist base as will this. But, as the incidents of Paul's obnoxious, self-righteous behavior start to pile up, as they surely will, the question is whether Kentucky voters will think such an arrogant, immature, vindictive little twerp is ready for prime time.

If I were Jack Conway, I would do everything I could to encourage Paul to get deeper in touch with his inner churl.

Benen: 'WHERE IS THE WAVE?'

Arguably the most important election yesterday wasn't a primary race, but rather, the congressional special election in Pennsylvania's 12th -- a contest to fill the vacancy left by the late Rep. Jack Murtha (D).

Observers in both parties considered the race something of a bellwether. Democrats ran Mark Critz, a former Murtha staffer, against businessman Tim Burns, who touted his "outsider" status and association with the right-wing Tea Party "movement."

It was the race Republicans felt like they had to win, and the RNC boasted repeatedly that a victory in Pennsylvania's 12th would foretell significant gains in the midterms. It didn't work out the way they'd hoped.

[T]he special election in Southwestern Pennsylvania suggested that Democrats were able to score victories in this challenging political environment. Mark Critz, a former aide to Mr. Murtha, defeated Tim Burns, a Republican businessman. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Critz had 53 percent, compared with 45 percent for Mr. Burns.

Though Democrats dominate in the district, its voters are blue-collar conservatives and it is exactly the type of swing district carried by Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race that Republicans must win if they are to reach their goal of taking control of the House in November. The loss dealt a blow to Republicans, who have been raising expectations for the fall.

"If you can't win a seat that is trending Republican in a year like this, then where is the wave?" asked Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, who said Republicans will need to examine what went wrong.

That's hardly an unreasonable question.

This is the only district in the country that backed Kerry in 2004, but McCain in 2008, suggesting it was trending heavily in the GOP's direction. If there's going to be a backlash against Dems right now, this should be the place to find it. Indeed, it was the bulk of Burns' platform -- he specifically ran against Washington, Speaker Pelosi, and the Obama presidency, a pitch Republicans intend to duplicate in other competitive districts through the fall.

And while polls showed Burns with a slight edge going into the election, Critz nevertheless won fairly easily.

Marc Ambinder noted yesterday, long before the polls even closed, "If the Republican doesn't [win], I think us pundits in Washington are going to have to revise our thinking about whether this is a wave election year for Republicans."

Once the results were in, Politico added that "Republicans failed spectacularly, losing on a level playing field where, in this favorable environment, they should have run roughshod over the opposition.... The district itself couldn't have been more primed for a Republican victory."

In fairness, there are some relevant caveats here. There was a Democratic Senate primary, which may have boosted turnout a bit in Critz's favor. For that matter, Critz didn't exactly run as a bold progressive -- he touted his opposition, for example, to the Affordable Care Act and cap-and-trade.

But Republicans decided weeks ago that this is the kind of district that they'll have to win this year. RNC Political Director Gentry Collins conceded yesterday that this is "exactly the kind of seat that we have to win." Last week, Newt Gingrich said, "This year, we have mobilized millions of people from all over the country, and they are ready to take back this country. It's going to start right here, right now in" Pennsylvania's 12th.

They lost by eight points. It raises uncomfortable questions for Republican strategists, who've done nothing but raise expectations about what's possible in November.

For those keeping score, there have been seven special elections for U.S. House seats since the president's inauguration 16 months ago: NY20, IL5, CA32, CA10, NY23, FL19, and PA12. Democrats have won all seven.

Yglesias: Resultsblogging II: PA-12

Former John Murtha staffer Mark Critz’s win in the PA-12 House election is just straight-up embarrassing for Republicans. The Democratic strategy was straight out of the 2006/2008 playbook. Find a moderately conservative House district and run a somewhat heterodox Democrat. You don’t win every race, but you win a bunch. You can’t count on those guys’ votes on all the key issues, but each of them is with you sometimes. Add up a shifting coalition of such members to the big block of solid House liberals, and Nancy Pelosi can put an effective governing agenda together.

This was supposed to stop working in 2010. The end of the Bush backlash and the rise of anti-Obama sentiment, combined with the reality of the legislation coming out of the Pelosi-era House is supposed to get Republicans back to baseline at least. To see a Democrat win an open seat in a district that went for John McCain will be a welcome sign to a large number of House Democrat incumbents from red districts.

Benen: PERHAPS 'CLASS' IS THE WRONG WORD

When Republicans talk about the 2010 midterms, they invariably use 1994 as a benchmark, and hope to duplicate that level of success.

Electorally, that makes sense; '94 was the cycle Republicans took the majority in both chambers. But in terms of quality, the GOP should probably aim higher. After all, in hindsight, the historic, "revolutionary" Class of '94 looks a little ... sleazy.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), for example, announced his resignation this morning, in light of the "family-values" conservative's new sex scandal. Dave Weigel takes stock of his cohorts from the same class:

Rep. Jim Bunn (R-Ore.) divorced his wife and married his chief of staff in 1995; he lost reelection in 1996.

Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) resigned in 2006 after pleading guilty to corruption charges.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned in 2006 after former pages accused him of sexually harassing them.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted an affair with a former campaign aide in 2009 -- he lost a leadership post but stayed in the Senate.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), elected to the House in 1994, admitted an affair with an Argentine journalist in 2009 but retained his job.

And now, Souder.

But why stop there? Rep. Enid Greene (R-Utah ) was elected in 1994, but didn't seek re-election after authorities learned her campaign was financed in part by funds embezzled by her husband. Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) was elected in 1994, and was perhaps best known for having carried on a six-year extra-marital affair. And then there was Rep. Wes Cooley (R-Ore.), who became something of a national joke for wild fabrications on his resume, and who was later indicted on "federal money laundering and tax charges in connection with his role in an alleged scheme that prosecutors said bilked more than $10 million from investors."

It was quite a class, wasn't it?

Benen: GOP AGAIN BLOCKS HIGHER CAP ON OIL COMPANY LIABILITY

The political circumstances would seem to benefit the "Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act." Under existing law, there's a $75 million liability cap for oil spills. Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) want to increase it to $10 billion.

The impetus for approving the measure should be obvious -- the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf keeps getting worse, and may soon no longer be limited to the Gulf. It's hardly a good time for a politician to take a shameless stand to limit industry liability costs.

And yet, it keeps happening. Last week, it was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Today, it was Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) stopped Democrats' efforts on Tuesday of passing a measure to increase oil companies' liability for accidents resulting from offshore drilling.

Inhofe objected to a unanimous consent request by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who took a second stab Tuesday at passing the bill in an expedited way.

Menendez and his partners on this intend to keep trying -- and the DSCC intends to use Republican opposition as a campaign issue.

Seeking justice for Gulf oil disaster May 18: Senator Barbara Boxer talks with Rachel Maddow about a demand by Senate Democrats that BP be investigated for criminal liability in the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Slajda (TPM: Alabama Teacher Gives Geometry Lesson Using Assassination As Example

The Secret Service investigated an Alabama high school teacher for using the example of shooting President Obama while teaching a geometry lesson.

The Secret Service spoke with the man, a teacher at Corner High School in Jefferson County, but decided not to arrest him.

"We did not find a credible threat," Roy Sex­ton, of Birmingham's Secret Service office, told the Birmingham News. "As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into it, we talked to the gentleman and we have closed our investigation."

A student in the class described the lesson: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president.'"

The district superintendent told the News that the unnamed teacher will not be disciplined.

"We are going to have a long conversation with him about what's appropriate," he said. "It was extremely poor judgment on his part, and a poor choice of words."

The superintendent, Phil Hammonds, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Late update: The teacher has been placed on paid leave and may be fired.

Yglesias: Journalism Today

It’s very to summarize this Moe Tkacik article but I really liked this one paragraph she wrote:

So I wrote what I know, or rather what I’ve learned, which could be summed up this way: when the Internet forced journalism to compete economically after years of monopoly, journalism panicked and adopted some of the worst examples of the nothing-based economy, in which success depends on the continued infantilization of both supply and demand. At the same time, journalism clung to its myths of objectivity and detachment, using them to dismiss the emerging blogger threat as something unserious and fundamentally parasitic, even as it produced a steady stream of obsessive but sneering trend stories on the blogosphere.

Too good to check.

They will never go away

Anne Laurie: Masters of Their GOP Domain

Must-read nightmare fuel. Tim Dickinson has an article in the May 27 issue of Rolling Stone explaining how Karl Rove is taking the Republican Party “boutique”. (Warning: the header cartoon is NSFW or if you’ve eaten in the last several hours).

... Along with his protégé Ed Gillespie, who succeeded him as George W. Bush’s top political adviser, Rove had gathered together the heavyweights of the GOP’s fundraising network. In attendance were the political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as the leaders of two new megadollar campaign groups loyal to Rove: American Crossroads and the American Action Network. Rove’s plan was straightforward: to seize control of the party from Michael Steele, whose leadership of the Republican National Committee was imploding in the wake of a fundraiser at a lesbian bondage club. By building a war chest of unregulated campaign cash – an unprecedented $135 million to be raised by these three groups alone – Rove would be able to wage the midterm elections on his own terms: electing candidates loyal to the GOP’s wealthiest donors and corporate patrons. With the media’s attention diverted by the noisy revolt being waged by the Tea Party, the man known as “Bush’s brain” was staging a stealthier but no less significant coup of the Republican Party.

“What they’ve cooked up is brilliant,” says a prominent Democrat. “Evil, but brilliant.”

... [T]aking control of the party, they knew, would require a new kind of political machine. The Supreme Court, in its recent decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, opened the floodgates for unlimited political spending by corporations and individuals. But the court left in place strict limits on contributions to party committees – and it preserved the legal firewall that bars campaigns from coordinating directly with the outside groups now empowered to spend millions on their behalf.

That’s where Rove and Gillespie come in. As free-agent strategists, they are in a unique position to skirt such prohibitions and coordinate all parts of the GOP – both inside and outside the official party structure – because they’re not officially in charge of any of it. In the run-up to November, they will be the ones ensuring that the many tentacles of the court-sanctioned shadow party – from startups like American Crossroads to stalwarts like the National Rifle Association – operate in concert. “They will be making sure that everybody is expending themselves properly, as opposed to duplicating efforts or working at cross-purposes,” says Mary Matalin, who served with Rove in the Bush White House. “That’s something that the committees and the campaigns really don’t do – legally cannot do.”

[...]
The linchpin of Rove’s coup is American Crossroads – a shadow version of the RNC for the party’s richest donors. Organized under the same part of the tax code that gave us Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the fundraising group can collect unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations. Before the Citizens United decision rewrote the rules of campaign finance, these so-called “independent expenditures” could only be used to support issues, not candidates. But now groups like American Crossroads can use their funds to openly back GOP candidates – or quietly work to destroy Democratic opponents by investing in the dirty tricks of which Rove is a Jedi master.

The group is intended, Gillespie tells Rolling Stone, to become a fixture in GOP politics for 2010 and beyond: “The idea is that there needs to be an institutional entity – a transparent, professionally run Republican operation – that will be there every cycle.” The strategic logic behind the group is simple: to narrow the fundraising deficit that has daunted the GOP since Democrats discovered how to raise megabucks online. “Obama had $1.1 billion in 2008,” says Gillespie, who chaired the RNC under Bush. “John McCain and his supporters spent $634 million. That’s a sizable gap.” American Crossroads, he boasts, will be the place where the real money goes to “play.”

[...]
As soon as Steele took control of the RNC, Rove and McConnell began scrambling to keep the party’s big money together – under their control, rather than Steele’s. The plot to form American Crossroads was hatched over breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in early 2009 by their lieutenants, Gillespie and Steven Law, McConnell’s former chief of staff and a ruthless advocate for big business. As a top deputy to Bush labor secretary Elaine Chao – McConnell’s wife – Law had steered a “modernization” of the nation’s labor laws that stripped 6 million middle-class workers of the right to overtime pay. He then decamped for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he spearheaded a $20 million campaign to block a new law that would facilitate unionization. Today, Law serves as the CEO of American Crossroads, overseeing the group’s day-to-day operations, while the board of directors is run by Duncan and another Rove ally, former RNC communications director Jim Dyke.

With these top aides in place, Rove and Gillespie blessed American Crossroads as the destination for the GOP’s big money. Since last year, they’ve helped the group raise millions from elite donors like Harold Simmons, the Dallas billionaire who pioneered the leveraged buyout. The move represents a dramatic transformation of the traditional approach to party fundraising. “This is the plutocratic wing of the GOP getting together and deciding that, in the era of unlimited corporate contributions, they don’t need a formal Republican Party anymore,” says a top Democrat. “It’s all about the accumulation of power. McConnell and Duncan are not movement conservatives. They are establishment guys – absolutely unapologetic for that. They’ve got all the money they need – and now they don’t have to put up with those pesky, true-believing activists.”

[...]
A third group integral to Rove’s plan – the American Action Network – is so closely integrated with American Crossroads that it has moved into neighboring offices two blocks from the White House. Co-founded by private-equity titan and longtime GOP operative Fred Malek, who once helped Richard Nixon target a “Jewish cabal” in the administration, AAN bills itself as an “action tank” – a think tank that will also inject money directly into federal races. It plans to raise $25 million for its campaign efforts this fall – expenditures that will be directed by a former chief of staff to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. “It’s the beginning of the future,” says Rollins. “Independent expenditures will play a very, very significant role. There are no rules anymore.”

Even leading advocates of election reform concede that, given the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, there is little to prevent Rove from running the whole show. Political parties are barred from coordinating specific ads with “independent” groups – but that leaves plenty of wiggle room for other forms of strategizing. And even if Rove and Co. were to cross the line, there would likely be no consequences: The Federal Election Commission, which has sole enforcement responsibility, is gridlocked by its three GOP-appointed commissioners, who consistently vote to stymie any oversight. “The existing FEC is not going to enforce the laws,” says Fred Wertheimer, the founder of Democracy 21, an advocate of campaign-finance reform.

... “We’re on a parallel course here, with two very different concepts of how our democracy should function,” says Wertheimer. “One is based on involving massive numbers of small donors to be the primary funders of elections. The other is based on involving massive amounts of corporate wealth to literally overwhelm our elections and dominate Washington. You couldn’t have two more conflicting approaches to the way our democracy ought to function. This is going to be an enormous battle.”

Notice how the malignant shadow of the Nixon White House continues to poison American politics almost 40 years after we let Gerry Ford “put that dark chapter behind us”. Another argument, as if we needed it, to demonstrate why a full public examination of the crimes of the Cheney Regency less-than-transparent behavior of the George W. Bush administration is the only way to keep our political grandchildren from suffering the consequences of a Mary Cheney/Pierce Bush/Track Palin coup d’etat.

Read, as they say, the whole thing. President Obama may be less of a savior than even us more cynical progressives hoped, but we can’t afford to turn away from the political arena as long as people like Karl Rove walk among us.

• from the comments:
  

  Mike in NC
  

  Notice how the malignant shadow of the Nixon White House continues to poison American politics almost 40 years after we let Gerry Ford “put that dark chapter behind us”.

  Everybody really needs to read “Nixonland”. Then go read it again, for Christ’s sake. Scum like Rove and Gillespie and Luntz will never go away.

DougJ: Why Newt Is So Much Fun To Watch

This was the title of a piece Joe Klein wrote a few years back. Klein continued:

It’s almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he’s on a tear. And he’s almost always on a tear of some sort. I caught up with Newt as he wandered around New Hampshire last week, which is what people who think they’re running for President do. Please, God, no, you say. Not that angry guy again. “He’s probably carrying too much baggage to be President,” said Peter Bergin, a Republican state representative from Amherst, N.H. “But he sure is a terrific idea man. He needs to be part of the debate.”

Absolutely. We might even create a new federal position to accommodate him, sort of like party ideologist in the old Soviet Union, except that the U.S. job would be the opposite of what it was in the U.S.S.R. Instead of imposing orthodoxy, the party idea-ologist—ideology is so un-American—would propose unorthodoxy. Gingrich was certainly wild with ideas last week, flicking them off at warp speed, like a dog shaking himself clean after romping through a pond.

You can see how much fun Newt is to watch here or read about it here:

The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.

Krugman’s piece today on the media’s recent discovery that the right is insane got me thinking about this:

Maybe it was just deference to power: as long as America was widely perceived as being on the way to a permanent Republican majority, few were willing to call right-wing extremism by its proper name.

I think this is about right (though in fairness, Klein’s Newt fluffery took place in 2006, after Republicans had lost some power).

“Liberal hawks” have never given a very good explanation of why they were so gung-ho about Iraq—just a lot of “no one could have predicted Bush would screw it up so badly” etc. Likewise, liberal wingnut fluffers (not all of whom were that pro-Iraq War) have never given an adequate explanation of why they thought George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich and the like were such serious people.

The answer in both cases is probably the same: it made a lot of sense professionally to suck up to the right at the time. I’d like to see Klein and others admit this for once.

Think Progress: NRA Members Echo Fiery Right-Wing Anti-Obama Rhetoric: ‘He Hates The Second Amendment’

ThinkProgress reported from the NRA Convention this past weekend. This is our sixth dispatch. See our previous posts here, here, here, here, and here.

Last weekend, ThinkProgress interviewed dozens of NRA members at the NRA’s annual conference in Charlotte, NC. While many offered reasonable positions on issues that haven’t been widely publicized — such as closing the “terror gap” gun loophole and whether gun owners should be to allowed bring weapons into bars and consume alcohol — the vast majority of NRA members ThinkProgress spoke with echoed the misinformed and extreme anti-Obama rhetoric espoused by right-wing heroes such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and other Fox News hosts.

Indeed, right-wing leaders brought their inflammatory rhetoric to this year’s conference. NRA favorite Ted Nugent repeatedly claimed that “there’s a Marxist in the White House,” while Palin and Beck entertained thousands of NRA members with classic anti-Obama one-liners.

PALIN: Don’t doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the Second Amendment.

BECK: The people that we have running the country, these are not Democrats. These are revolutionaries! They are Marxist revolutionaries!

Not surprisingly, many of the NRA’s members repeat this right-wing noise. ThinkProgress has compiled a video of some of the more egregious examples of anti-Obama rhetoric taken from interviews at the conference:

NRA MEMBER 1: He’d just as soon get rid of all the guns in the country I’m sure.

NRA MEMBER 2: I think he would try to eliminate the Second Amendment if he could.

NRA MEMBER 3: I think we’re headed toward socialism. And I think if that happens we’ll be not long after that we’ll be headed toward communism.

NRA MEMBER 4: He has no respect for the country, no respect for the Constitution. … I believe he hates the Second Amendment.

NRA MEMBER 5: He’s an idiot. … I think that he’s anti-American. I think he’s trying to destroy our country and turn it into a socialist country.

Watch the video compilation:

The fear campaign has paid off for the gun industry. Since Obama took office, gun and ammunition sales have skyrocketed.

And while Attorney General Eric Holder has said he would seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban — a move that Americans overwhelmingly support — the White House has said it’s not looking to push the issue. Obama has said repeatedly that he believes in the Second Amendment, and has no intention of taking away anyone’s guns. “I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution,” he said last year, “the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that…are helping to fuel extraordinary violence.”

Think Progress: CA lawmaker proposes bill to keep away TX’s textbooks (which call slavery the ‘Atlantic triangular trade’).

Earlier this year, Texas faced national scrutiny for the efforts of a determined bloc of far-right ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education to rewrite history in the state’s social studies textbooks and curriculum. They succeeded in making students learn about the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” “documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” and the difference “between legal and illegal immigration.” Because of the state’s size, Texas has significant pull in shaping what the nation’s social studies books will say. However, California state Sen. Leland Yee (D) has introduced a bill to keep Texas at bay:

Under Yee’s bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.

The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”

Tom Adams, director of the state Department of Education’s standards and curriculum division, said the Texas standards could make their way into national editions of textbooks, but those aren’t used in California. “Our main concern is whether materials meet California’s standards,” he said. “There’s nothing in our review process that says we should be following Texas or anything like that.”

A new report in the Guardian reveals that the Texas State Board of Education also “dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous ‘Atlantic triangular trade,’ and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.” The board will be meeting again this week and conservatives have promised to “keep working to the last moment to correct years of liberal bias in history classes.”

Extremists

digby: "Shoot To Kill"

Here is perhaps the most bizarre commencement speech in history, courtesy C&L (click the link for the full write up)

Have you ever listened to those Jim Jones sermons down in Guyana just before he told them to drink the kool-aid? Just saying.

digby: Making The Argument

Rick Perlstein alerted me to this fine post by Dante Atkins in which he gives a spirited and moving argument for liberal values. It's particularly gratifying since he made the argument around the issue from which so many Democrats are running as fast as they can: abortion rights.

He is engaging in a sort of dialog with a retrograde, throwback outfit called "The Ruth Institute" which is apparently some sort of white supremacy group concerned that the birthrate of the right sort of people is going down because selfish and slutty white women are refusing to properly submit themselves to men and breed early and often.

It's a fascinating back and forth, but as Perlstein noted what's especially notable is the way Atkins makes the argument. Here's an example:

See, in Dr. Morse's opinion, it's not sexist of her to advocate that women's economic and social advances be rolled back. Why? Because many women actively want take on what one could call a traditional domestic role. That is definitely true: many women do actively seek that role, just as there are many men who actively desire the corresponding role of economic provider. What Dr. Morse seems to want, by contrast, is to force all women to reject the technological, medical and social advances that guaranteed their freedom to choose something else. And why? Because her main concern is, of course, birthing children ahead of the replacement rate of 2.1 per woman, and active Western wombs are apparently the only method for the purpose. After all, Dr. Morse doesn't even consider immigration as a potential solution for the aging population and social services issues that she seems so concerned about.

[...]

The Ruth Institute wants to ban no-fault divorce. They want to ban same-sex marriage. They apparently want to ban the Pill. They want the government, in fact, to do all sorts of social engineering to make sure that women revert to being baby factories to generate Western babies at a replacement rate. And we fevered "leftists," by contrast? All we want is to make sure that each individual has the freedom to choose his or her own destiny.

In Dr. Morse's mind, that type of freedom is far too much for her fellow women to handle. But as a progressive man who loves strong, smart and capable women, I respectfully beg to differ.

He sets forth the fundamental liberal value --- the freedom to choose your own destiny, a value which almost never seems to make it into the discussion of abortion anymore, as if bearing children, whether one then raises them or not, is a trifling matter that only the most depraved or selfish person would refuse to do. Parenthood is at once nothing and everything.

For an insight into how the allegedly anti-statist Ron and Rand Paul libertarian right are able to justify their intellectually incoherent anti-choice views, here's a pretty good example of the argument. They're all about individual freedom --- for blastocysts. Women, on the other hand, are begging for "special rights" when they resist the idea of forced childbirth. No matter which way the right comes at the argument, the autonomy of the woman never rises to the surface of concern. She is a vessel of God or a vessel of nature, but never a human being with full dominion over her body or her future.

Krugman: Going to Extreme

Utah Republicans have denied Robert Bennett, a very conservative three-term senator, a place on the ballot, because he’s not conservative enough. In Maine, party activists have pushed through a platform calling for, among other things, abolishing both the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education. And it’s becoming ever more apparent that real power within the G.O.P. rests with the ranting talk-show hosts.

News organizations have taken notice: suddenly, the takeover of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists has become a story (although many reporters seem determined to pretend that something equivalent is happening to the Democrats. It isn’t.) But why is this happening? And in particular, why is it happening now?

The right’s answer, of course, is that it’s about outrage over President Obama’s “socialist” policies — like his health care plan, which is, um, more or less identical to the plan Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts. Many on the left argue, instead, that it’s about race, the shock of having a black man in the White House — and there’s surely something to that.

But I’d like to offer two alternative hypotheses: First, Republican extremism was there all along — what’s changed is the willingness of the news media to acknowledge it. Second, to the extent that the power of the party’s extremists really is on the rise, it’s the economy, stupid.

On the first point: when I read reports by journalists who are shocked, shocked at the craziness of Maine’s Republicans, I wonder where they’ve been these past eight or so electoral cycles. For the truth is that the hard right has dominated the G.O.P. for many years. Indeed, the new Maine platform is if anything a bit milder than the Texas Republican platform of 2000, which called not just for eliminating the Federal Reserve but also for returning to the gold standard, for killing not just the Department of Education but also the Environmental Protection Agency, and more.

Somehow, though, the radicalism of Texas Republicans wasn’t a story in 2000, an election year in which George W. Bush of Texas, soon to become president, was widely portrayed as a moderate.

Or consider those talk-show hosts. Rush Limbaugh hasn’t changed: his recent suggestion that environmentalist terrorists might have caused the ecological disaster in the gulf is no worse than his repeated insinuations that Hillary Clinton might have been a party to murder. What’s changed is his respectability: news organizations are no longer as eager to downplay Mr. Limbaugh’s extremism as they were in 2002, when The Washington Post’s media critic insisted that the radio host’s critics were the ones who had “lost a couple of screws,” that he was a sensible “mainstream conservative” who talks “mainly about policy.”

So why has the reporting shifted? Maybe it was just deference to power: as long as America was widely perceived as being on the way to a permanent Republican majority, few were willing to call right-wing extremism by its proper name. Maybe it took a Democrat in the White House to give some observers the courage to say the obvious.

To be fair, however, it’s not all a matter of perception. Right-wing extremism may be the same as it ever was, but it clearly has more adherents now than it did a couple of years ago. Why? It may have a lot to do with a troubled economy.

True, that’s not how it was supposed to work. When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naïve: voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments — and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right.

That’s the message of a recent paper by the economists Markus Brückner and Hans Peter Grüner, who find a striking correlation between economic performance and political extremism in advanced nations: in both America and Europe, periods of low economic growth tend to be associated with a rising vote for right-wing and nationalist political parties. The rise of the Tea Party, in other words, was exactly what we should have expected in the wake of the economic crisis.

So where does our political system go from here? Over the near term, a lot will depend on economic recovery. If the economy continues to add jobs, we can expect some of the air to go out of the Tea Party movement.

But don’t expect extremists to lose their grip on the G.O.P. anytime soon. What we’re seeing in places like Utah and Maine isn’t really a change in the party’s character: it has been dominated by extremists for a long time. The only thing that’s different now is that the rest of the country has finally noticed.

Benen: GINGRICH, MEET GODWIN

It was the latest in a series of reminders that this is nothing -- literally, nothing -- that a far-right media personality can say to be driven from polite American society.

Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), inexplicably one of the nation's most ubiquitous Sunday-show guests, sat down with Chris Wallace yesterday on "Fox News Sunday." The host confronted Gingrich with one of his recent quotes: "The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."

Wallace said, "Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn't that wildly over the top?" "No," Gingrich replied, insisting that he believes President Obama intends to "decide who earns how much."

The host pushed back, but Gingrich was entirely serious. As the former Speaker sees it, President Obama believes there's such a thing as excessive wealth, which means the president intends to be "the arbiter of your dreams," which means the president will try to "decide who earns how much," which means the president is some kind of communist. Or something.

Gingrich added that the Obama administration therefore poses a threat comparable to the Nazis and Soviets, not on a "moral" plane, but as "a very serious threat to our way of life."

Now, I think it's fair to say most reasonable people would charitably describe this as idiocy. Comparing America's leadership to Nazis and Soviets is as offensive as it is ridiculous. This isn't exactly a new observations, but Newt Gingrich, the disgraced pseudo-intellectual, is quite obviously stark raving mad.

But here's the kicker: it won't make a bit of difference. Given the way the political establishment is "wired" for Republicans, there simply aren't any consequences for this kind of abject stupidity.

Gingrich was driven from office by members of his own party more than a decade ago, under a cloud of ethical lapses, policy failures, and personal scandal. He hasn't held office since, but the media can't stop turning to him -- he was the single most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" in 2009 -- giving him a national platform to spew nonsense, including yesterday's remarks comparing Americans to Nazis.

The media-driven discourse of 21st-century America often leaves much to be desired.

The Media We Have.

Devilstower (DKos): The Disaster Disaster

The BBC television show Top Gear is well known for showcasing beautiful examples of automotive art alongside classic bits of British buffoonery. Any given week is likely to feature cars that cost more than most homes being whipped around a track, followed by some adventure that may include shooting an old Reliant Robin into the air or turning a Toyota pickup into a boat. It's a formula that's made Top Gear consistently one of the most popular programs in the world. But it's not exactly the place you turn for the news.

So when, during the 2007 season, Top Gear set one of their episodes in the southern United States, I wasn't expecting to learn much more than how the hosts of the show would choose to get themselves in trouble that week. I wasn't disappointed on that front, as they managed to get stones thrown at them in a small Alabama town after painting "Man-love rules" on one of their vehicles. I was surprised by what happened next.

As the show rolled into the New Orleans region, the camera revealed block after block of devastation. Even the hosts of the show appeared to be in shock as the scale of Katrina's impact on the region became clear. For miles there was not one open store, not one building undamaged, not one house without shattered windows and sagging walls. On and on they went, with things becoming progressively worse. It was like a drive through the tiers of hell, and if there were attempts to repair the damage, they were invisible. The hosts dropped their usual banter for what was clearly a mixture of surprise and disgust at how little the United States had done to help the stricken area.

The most surprising thing was that, not only was the area still in rubble two years after the storm hit, the visit from a BBC entertainment program did a better, more hard-hitting job of revealing what had happened than any program in the US from the time of Katrina till now. That evening was the first time I had a real sense of just how huge and all pervasive the damage had been. It was certainly the first glimpse I'd seen of just how utterly inadequate was the government's response. Heck of a job, Brownie. Heck of a job, all of us.

And heck of a job, US news media, for not coming close to showing what was really happening in one of America's great cities.

It not as if our three 24 hour news networks and the dozens of news programs on the broadcast channels didn't cover Katrina. They devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours to the coverage. The only thing is that the coverage was focused on a very few areas -- the people trapped inside the Superdome, helicopters rescuing people from rooftops, aerial shots of people breaking into supermarkets in a search for food and water, interviews with local, state and federal officials, George W. Bush back-lit by a battalion of generators brought in just for his speech. Those features were covered over, and over, and over again, with the obligatory discussion by dozens of regular pundits and hundreds of guests. After the immediate effects of the storm had passed, occasional New Orleans coverage continued -- mostly in the form of showing FEMA trailers parked in sodden yards, volunteers unloading food from trucks, and more speeches from officials.

None of those shows came close to showing the width and breadth of the damage and the picayune nature of the response. If the media had done a better (and by this I mean much better job) of showing the nation what had really happened to the Gulf coast region, there might have been a lot less resentment in some quarters toward the amount of aid that was required, there might have been a lot more attention paid to seeing that the real problems were addressed, there might have been a lot less tendency to treat New Orleans like a political petri dish ready for experimentation. But that didn't happen. What America saw was a few locations, a little looting, a lot of talking heads. TV Katrina was a disaster in a jar -- shrunken not just to fit our screens, but to fit pre-composed narratives and scripted bits of drama.

The same thing can be said of the coverage in Iraq. Despite the celebrated program of "embedding" reporters to provide "unprecedented" access to events as they happened, what America saw of the war was not just sanitized beyond recognition, it was reduced, scaled back, turned into repeat clips of Humvees roaring past and statues being dragged to the ground. The media fumbled back and forth, trying to find the right plotline for Iraq, and ultimately shredded the script and consigned the whole series to token coverage. The best Iraq footage as far as the networks were concerned was no Iraq footage at all -- just conversations with "experts" who met the requirement for square-jaws and steely-eyed resolve.

Any American who has traveled outside the US in the last few years and caught a glimpse of the war in foreign coverage is bound to feel as if they've been sucker punched. Leveled towns, blocks of smoldering ruins, walls that cut through cities, and everywhere ordinary families screaming and crying at their loss. Streets packed with people who are tired, dirty, and beaten. It's like a view from another world. Who are these people? What are these places? What are they doing in our war?

But really, all of this shouldn't be surprising. Because the United States no longer boasts a television news media. That's been replaced with entertainment programs. Newsy programming. Saying that watching the Daily Show gives you a better glimpse of what's really happening in the world may be funny, until it's true.

Newsy programming is what you get when there are no reporters, only anchors -- anchors that almost uniformly have no background in journalism. It's what you get when the first qualification on your network is a high-def friendly complexion. On newsy programming, you don't have reporters who stay on the scene for days, you have aerial cameras and helicopters to bring your anchor in for some well-framed views in front of the most scenic areas. Everything else can be done back in the office with enough loops and some snazzy sound effects.

Newsy programming is great at spectacle, at stories that lack scope but make up for it in stupid. They'd love to order up a season worth of balloon boy. Newsy programming also likes stories where almost nothing is known and everything is open to interpretation. Missing white girl isn't the staple of newsy programming because it's interesting. It's a regular series because they know how it goes. Those scripts are written. The emotions have already been practiced. The cross-program interactive synergy is known down to the product placement. Missing white girl has a theme song.

What newsy programming doesn't cover is disaster. Disasters are big, messy, always in transition. Disasters don't stay neatly in frame.

When you have a smashed oil rig under a mile of water and ripped-open pipes spewing unknown quantities into the Gulf, news programs might question the statements coming from the companies that created the issue.

A news program might question why BP has been restricting the video recordings that could be used to get an accurate estimate of the scale of this disaster.

A news program might wonder why both BP and the government have consistently underestimated the flow and only nudged up their numbers when confronted by irrefutable evidence collected by independent sources.

A news program might question BP on why it has stopped providing updates on the rate of flow and refuses to answer questions about the size of the total loss.

A news program might stop repeating numbers that have turned out to be false over and over, and instead work toward uncovering the true scale of what's happening.

A news program might investigate the truth behind insistence that the US can't meet its energy needs without more deep water drilling.

But we don't have news programs. We only have newsy programs. So they'll continue to interview "experts" who tsk over this "unfortunate accident" and assure us that this isn't a big problem. In fact, they'll use the same experts who they talked when the "debate" over drilling happened last time. It's easier that way. Our newsy networks will repeat what they're told, repeat the corporate line on our need for offshore oil, and provide dutiful coverage for whatever top hat-dome-pipe BP is lowering into the sea today. Now and then they might pause to shake their heads over the completely uniformed numbers circulating on the web, numbers that have most definitely not been provided right from the mouths of the people responsible for this disaster.

But hey, they will keep some cameras poised to pick up a dead sea turtle or two, because baby, that's spectacle.

If you want to get an idea of the real scale of what's happening, the real cost to the Gulf both in the long and short term, the real risk we take by allowing this type of drilling or the real options for future development... well, I hear there are still some cheap tickets overseas. Why not plan for a few days somewhere where they still show news on TV? Or you could wait until some imported comedy show provides a little insight. That 2012 episode where The Peep Show stars frolic on the black sands of Florida? Hilarious.

In the meantime, there are plenty of pundits ready to fill some airtime, and I hear they've put new carpet in the situation room. Now that's news.

"cheney’s chernobyl"

Ann Laurie: Best Gulf-Spill Cleanup Suggestion Yet

My personal suspicion is that Halliburton’s got way more incriminating stuff buried in its file cabinets, just because we haven’t had Darth Cheney all over the Media Village telling the DFHs and other sane people to go fvck ourselves.

John Cole: And Then Obama Blew Up That Oil Rig And Tried to Get Away Blame Free

Chip Reid knows who is to blame for the oil spill in the gulf:

Angry Obama Seeks to Deflect Blame for Gulf Oil Spill Crisis

The president seemed genuinely angry today, on a beautiful spring afternoon in the Rose Garden. Having watched him on a daily basis for about a year and a half, I’m confident he wasn’t faking it.

He seems deeply upset about the growing calamity in the Gulf, about the environmental damage, about the irresponsibility of the companies involved, and about their efforts to shift the blame.

“I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter,” he intoned. “You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else.”

President Obama may have decried finger-pointing today, but he also did a fair amount of it himself. Not only at the three companies, but at previous administrations.

Yeah. I can’t imagine why the White House doesn’t want you assholes anywhere near Supreme Court nominees or why they view you all with sheer contempt.

• from the comments:
  

  valdivia
  

  assholes. deflect? this is cheney’s chernobyl (someone here coined it) and Reid says Obama is deflecting. Fucking jerk.
  

  dmsilev
  

  Didn’t you hear? Obama dug the well himself, using slave labor supplied by ACORN, under direct orders from Fat Al Gore, whose diabolical plan to discredit the worlds’ oil companies is proceeding nicely.

  The really sad thing is that parts of that above paragraph have been advanced in all seriousness by various members of the conservative media establishment.

Benen: PLUMES IN THE GULF

Lately, there seems to be a pattern in developments surrounding the BP oil spill disaster: the news is always bad.

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

"There's a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water," said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. "There's a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column."

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. "If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months," she said Saturday. "That is alarming."

The AP, meanwhile, reports that BP launched a new effort to use a mile-long pipe to capture much of the oil flowing into the Gulf, "but engineers failed to connect two pieces of equipment a mile below the water's surface."

Officials from BP said they're confident the pipe can be adjusted and that this effort may prove to be effective, but then again, officials from BP say a lot of things.

Matt Yglesias: Jack Bauer Republicans

Here’s a frightening piece from Benjy Sarlin in the Daily Beast:

Call them the Jack Bauer Republicans.

Two Iraq veterans who left the military after surviving charges of crimes against detainees are running credible campaigns for Congress. And far from minimizing the incidents, both candidates have put the accusations front and center in their campaigns, attracting rock-star adulation from conservatives nationwide in the process. But critics, including human-rights activists, veterans, and now even defeated primary opponents, warn that their records should disqualify them from office.

Love of violence and brutality is deeply ingrained in the conservative worldview, which I think is what you can see here.

Benen: ANOTHER ANGEL LOSES ITS WINGS

Just three weeks ago, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank had a perfectly reasonable column on the Republican Party's shift to the hard-right. It was premised on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist "being drummed out" of the GOP, but it captured nicely the larger context of the party's increasingly radical transition.

But Milbank couldn't leave well enough alone. In a column devoted to highlighting Republican extremism, the Post writer just had to say, "Both parties have been undergoing ideological cleansing." The observation was both wrong and superfluous.

Today, Milbank has an even more compelling column, which is just devastating for the GOP. It laments the "crackup of the Republican Party," chronicling Bob Bennett's purge in Utah, and the truly ridiculous new platform adopted by the Maine Republican Party. He proceeded to make note of the larger trend, which also includes the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Alabama who's under fire for only being a partial Biblical literalist, and Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) literally laughable new anti-immigration campaign ad.

The Republican Party, Milbank observed, "is turning into this One-World-Government, Obama-worships-Satan, Jesus-opposes-climate-bill melange."

It's a really strong, persuasive, well-argued piece, raising an important point that many observers at major media outlets deliberately avoid.

But once again, Milbank just had to go there.

Democrats are having purity putsches, too, in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Colorado.

[bangs head against desk]

First, Democratic primaries are not necessarily evidence of "purity putsches." We've been through this. Taking the Pennsylvania case, for example, we see Arlen Specter facing a Democratic challenger in large part because Specter was a Republican for the last three decades, and he endorsed Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin. Subjecting him to a primary is hardly an example of the Democratic base imposing some kind of rigid ideological test, or moving too far to the hard-left.

Second, there's really no comparison between a handful of Senate primaries and a Republican Party that, by Milbank's own admission, appears to have gone stark raving mad.

And third, reporters at major outlets have to realize one of these days that there's nothing wrong with a publishing a piece critical of the GOP -- and leaving it at that. I'm well aware of the unwritten rule -- all criticism of Republicans has to include related criticism of Democrats, whether it makes sense or not -- but it's wildly unnecessary, and at a certain level, misleads the public into thinking "both sides" are equally guilty of the same transgressions. They're not.

There's no need to put a pox on both houses, when only one deserves it.

• from the comments:
  

  Milbank is right. The Republican party is a serial killer - hacking co-eds and children to pieces and burying them in the backyard. B-b-but the Democrats are really bad too - they have an overdue library book.

  Posted by: ckelly on May 16, 2010 at 9:07 AM

Benen: ACT FIRST, THINK SECOND

I've made a conscious effort to avoid coverage of a certain former half-term governor lately, but Sarah Palin's recent remarks demanding more coastal drilling seem pretty important under the circumstances.

It's not just the topical nature of her misguided comments -- there is, in case she hasn't heard, a devastating oil spill in the Gulf, that gets worse every day -- but Palin's demands are also evidence of a larger problem with the far-right approach to public policy.

"After inheriting a good pro-development GOP plan that opened up both coasts for drilling, the Obama administration halted development ... and now we're gonna study, more study of the South Atlantic and parts of the Gulf of Mexico ... my goodness, folks, these areas have been studied to death ... I have seen so many, many studies!

"I say, let's send the White House this message: that, you know, we can save taxpayer time, save money and announce: there is oil and gas down there, and we can produce it safely and responsibly! We don't need more studies, we need more action! Because energy produced in America is security for America, and it is jobs for American workers, jobs that can't be outsourced. Let's drill baby, drill, not stall, baby, stall!"

It's hard not to chuckle at the notion that the conspicuously unintelligent former half-term governor has actually "seen so many, many studies" -- as if she spends her free time digging through reports from the Department of Interior.

But the larger point Palin is trying to make here is pretty straightforward: stop being methodical, stop worrying about consequences, stop getting the facts together, and just do stuff. Evidence and research are fine for eggheads and East coast intellectuals, but who needs thinking when there are oil rigs to erect along the nation's coastline? Everything will probably work out for the best, right? We can obviously count on oil companies to do the right thing and deal with any problems that arise.

The right-wing media personality couldn't possibly understand this, but her approach is exactly what helped create this nightmare in the first place. Federal officials cleared drilling in the Gulf "without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species -- and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf." Officials could have also required remote acoustic shutoff switches, but was more concerned with getting the process underway -- without "stalling" -- with minimal burdens on the industry.

In other words, we already tried the "act first, think second" approach Palin recommends. We'll be dealing with the costs for a very long time.