Ugh

Ed Schultz should be canned for calling Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut."

Why do the big name lefty media voices have to be as big of assholes as right-wing bullies? I'm thinking of Olbermann, Maher, now Schultz. Maybe it's the nature of the media. But that's unacceptable behavior for a MSNBC host.

Poor Lanny Davis

Poor Lanny Davis. It's so hard out there for an amoral asshole who openly courts the services of the world's most despicable leaders. I mean, to have a comic strip last relevant 15 years ago call you out being a gigantic jerk who capitalizes on mass murderers and tyrants really makes me a shed a tear.

And as a Friend of Bill, isn't Davis immune to such attacks? He once worked for Ed Muskie for Christ's sake, he can't be evil!!! I just haven't been so disillusioned since I found out that the uber-progressive James Carville was advising right-wing Bolivian politicians on opening their country to the full forces of neoliberalism without regard for the needs of the Bolivian people.

Obama's Speech, Hecklers, and Reverse Fundraising

I wrote a piece for Global Comment tonight on Obama's speech, so I'll post a link when that goes up. For now, though, the thing I wanted to share is way, way cooler.

So Congressman Joe Wilson, of South Carolina's 2nd district, was the one who shouted "Liar!" at Obama during his speech. Always classy, since the good old days of taking handouts from Jack Abramoff, that Wilson. I've been bitching about him since I lived in SC, but no one really cares about South Carolina politicians until they screw up on a national scale. People still buy into the red state/blue state divide and just assume that South Carolina republicans are untouchable.

But Joe Wilson pissed off a lot of people. And petitions started circulating on Twitter as soon as people found out who had been the heckler. But some people (me being one of them) decided that a better way to punish Wilson would be to donate to his opponent, a nice guy named Rob Miller who ran and lost in 2008 but forced a more competitive race than Wilson has faced in my memory.

Well, as of a few minutes ago, Rob Miller's campaign was $40,000 richer. Just on the ActBlue page, at press time (since it keeps changing) he's raised $29,312. His home page was down the last time I tried it from traffic.

Twitter activism might fade out quickly, but perhaps fundraising/reverse fundraising is the best use of that flickering moment when thousands of people are all good and pissed off. The people who donate to Miller tonight may not remember him in 2010 (unless they live in SC's 2nd) but their dollars will go a long way toward making the race competitive.

What Populism Isn't

When I have more time and brain space I plan to take populism back up. But tonight, NPR's Mara Liasson was discussing "populist anger" with bailouts and such, and referenced that damn Santelli rant.

"if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages or would we like to, at least, buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road. And reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water."

Santelli, a former futures trader, made his now-famous rant from a Chicago commodities trading floor. Bastion of Real America, that. But he had the stones to declare, "This is America!" because he was cheered. Because we know from the McCain campaign that the Real America is whichever part agrees with you.

But Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times schools Santelli with two sentences:

Well, no. America is a place where 8 million families are threatened with losing their homes, not a futures pit filled with braying traders.

Populism: Hiltzik doin' it right.

Roll Call on Auto Bailout

Here we go. Notable "Fuck You": John McCain! And why wasn't John Kerry voting? Come to think of it, why wasn't Joe Biden voting?

The 52-35 roll call by which opponents on Thursday prevented the Senate from considering a $14 billion emergency bailout passed by the House for U.S. automakers.

On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to formally consider the House bill and a "no" vote was a vote to stop its progress. Supporters of the bailout needed 60 votes to advance it.

Voting "yes" were 40 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 2 independents.

Voting "no" were 4 Democrats and 31 Republicans.

Alabama
Sessions (R) No; Shelby (R) No.

Alaska

Murkowski (R) No; Stevens (R) Not Voting.

Arizona

Kyl (R) No; McCain (R) No.

Arkansas

Lincoln (D) No; Pryor (D) Yes.

California

Boxer (D) Yes; Feinstein (D) Yes.

Colorado

Allard (R) No; Salazar (D) Yes.

Connecticut

Dodd (D) Yes; Lieberman (I) Yes.

Delaware

Biden (D) Not Voting; Carper (D) Yes.

Florida

Martinez (R) No; Nelson (D) Yes.

Georgia

Chambliss (R) No; Isakson (R) No.

Hawaii

Akaka (D) Yes; Inouye (D) Yes.

Idaho

Craig (R) Not Voting; Crapo (R) No.

Illinois

Durbin (D) Yes.

Indiana

Bayh (D) Yes; Lugar (R) Yes.

Iowa

Grassley (R) No; Harkin (D) Yes.

Kansas

Brownback (R) Yes; Roberts (R) No.

Kentucky

Bunning (R) No; McConnell (R) No.

Louisiana

Landrieu (D) Yes; Vitter (R) No.

Maine

Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.

Maryland

Cardin (D) Yes; Mikulski (D) Yes.

Massachusetts

Kennedy (D) Not Voting; Kerry (D) Not Voting.

Michigan

Levin (D) Yes; Stabenow (D) Yes.

Minnesota

Coleman (R) No; Klobuchar (D) Yes.

Mississippi

Cochran (R) No; Wicker (R) No.

Missouri

Bond (R) Yes; McCaskill (D) Yes.

Montana

Baucus (D) No; Tester (D) No.

Nebraska

Hagel (R) Not Voting; Nelson (D) Yes.

Nevada

Ensign (R) No; Reid (D) No.

New Hampshire

Gregg (R) No; Sununu (R) Not Voting.

New Jersey

Lautenberg (D) Yes; Menendez (D) Yes.

New Mexico

Bingaman (D) Yes; Domenici (R) Yes.

New York

Clinton (D) Yes; Schumer (D) Yes.

North Carolina

Burr (R) No; Dole (R) Yes.

North Dakota

Conrad (D) Yes; Dorgan (D) Yes.

Ohio

Brown (D) Yes; Voinovich (R) Yes.

Oklahoma

Coburn (R) No; Inhofe (R) No.

Oregon

Smith (R) Not Voting; Wyden (D) Not Voting.

Pennsylvania

Casey (D) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.

Rhode Island

Reed (D) Yes; Whitehouse (D) Yes.

South Carolina

DeMint (R) No; Graham (R) Not Voting.

South Dakota

Johnson (D) Yes; Thune (R) No.

Tennessee

Alexander (R) Not Voting; Corker (R) No.

Texas

Cornyn (R) Not Voting; Hutchison (R) No.

Utah

Bennett (R) No; Hatch (R) No.

Vermont

Leahy (D) Yes; Sanders (I) Yes.

Virginia

Warner (R) Yes; Webb (D) Yes.

Washington

Cantwell (D) Yes; Murray (D) Yes.

West Virginia

Byrd (D) Yes; Rockefeller (D) Yes.

Wisconsin

Feingold (D) Yes; Kohl (D) Yes.

Wyoming

Barrasso (R) No; Enzi (R) No.

UPDATE FROM MR. TREND: Think Progress has up a chart that also shows who voted "yes" for the banks and either "no" or didn't vote at all for the auto industry. Apparently, the only two dems (Kerry and Biden) who didn't vote this time had reasons: Biden working on "transition issues" (and given how fucked things in this country are right now, that no doubt is probably a huge task), and Kerry, who, as was mentioned in the comments, is in Poland. And only two democrats (Max Baucus of Montana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas) voted yay for the banks and nay for the car industry.

Historical Image of the Day

Alexander Haig. Photo by Arthur Grace.

Georgia Again Proves That It Sucks

A Georgia Senate panel has approved a plan to create a Confederate Heritage Month. At the same time, it has no interest in pushing a bill to apologize for Georgia's history of slavery. Moreover, it approved the Confederate Heritage Month unanimously.

How nice.

The bill's sponsor State Senator Jeff Mullins wants to honor ''all those millions of its citizens of various races and ethnic groups and religions who contributed in sundry and myriad ways to the cause of Southern Independence.'' Meaning those millions, of whom approximately 3 were not white, who tore the country in two in order that they could enslave black people. These treasonous Confederates are clearly worth honoring. After all, not only did they leave the union in order to rape and kill blacks with impunity, tear their families apart, and take their labor for nothing, but they also caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans! Go Confederacy!

I think the worst part about this though is Mullins and others having no interest in apologizing for slavery. Mullins says, "If I had done something personally, yes, I would apologize." This is a classic racist argument. Mullins seems to think that he has not benefited from slavery when clearly he, as whites in general have in this nation, has. Of course, there is nothing Mullins could have done about slavery, given that he was born long after the end of the Civil War. However, by not being willing to even support an apology for slavery, Mullins denigrates its history as well as denies the impact of slavery on the history of black-white relations in this nation, and more specifically in Georgia.

What's more, Mullins has done something that he needs to apologize for personally: sponsoring a bill to commemorate racist traitors that tore the country apart in the 1860s. He has insulted African-Americans in his state and throughout the nation. So he's flat out lying when he says he has nothing to apologize for.

Mullins also perpetrates the blacks supported the Confederacy myth. Despite the complete lack of evidence that large numbers of African-Americans sided with the Confederacy, Mullins and Confederate apologists claim that all the slaves who worked for the Confederacy means that it wasn't a racist regime. Of course, almost all of these people worked for the Confederacy out of fear for their lives and because of centuries of coercion. But hey, who needs evidence when you have a half-baked theory to support your present espousal of racism?

Congratulations Jeff Mullins. You win the Jerk of the Day Award. And Georgia, again you have proved you are a disgrace to the nation.

Absurd Texts of American History (V, d): Paul Harvey

This ends our investigations into the absurdity of Paul Harvey's book, You Said It, Paul Harvey, complied by Mrs. Harvey.

Part I.
Part II.
Part III.

Today, I present his masterpiece, "The Cannibal Society"

The Cannibal Society

"America has become a cannibal society, devouring its best.

The competents, numerically outnumbered by the incompetents, are being corralled, restrained, confined and milked like barnyard cattle.

The giants who created our skyscraper civilizations are now ordered to obey Lilliputian bureaucrats.

Common men--who owe their jobs to uncommon men who create jobs--gang together to shackle their providers.

Americans are becoming congenital dependents. Even as loafing relatives extort a livelihood by claiming they have a "right" to your money--so today eight million homegrown moochers, insist that you are responsible for their welfare!

Thus we subsidize promiscuous mothers and their illegitimate babies and lazy featherbedders and goldbricking government payrollers...while we penalize the strong, the purposeful, the productive with disproportionate burdens of taxes, pressures, red tape.

We praise ventures which are "non-profit" and grant them tax advantages and social acceptance, yet we damn the men who make the profits and make the "non-profit" ventures possible.

Americans want to keep the electric lights and destroy the generators.

What if the men of brains and initiative and industry should go on strike? It happened once. The Dark Ages were a period of stagnation when men of exceptional ability gave up, figured "what's the use," even went underground--for a thousand years.

Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged," thinks it may have to happen that way again.

Dr. Charles Mayo says, "I know of no individual, no nation, that ever did anything worthwhile on a five-day week."

Already many American industrialists are turning the keys on their corporations and going to Florida--either part-time or full-time--to become nonproductive beachcombers.

Curiously, Russia is beginning to reward the uncommon men. Soviet scholar, Vadim A. Trapeznikov--not without Kremlin sanction--is now referring to the Soviet system as "obsolete." He says Russia's economy must now rely on the "more productive profit motive."

We, on the other hand, continue to play the democratic con game which pretends that all men are equal and that anybody who demonstrates any inequality should be punished for it.

Any insolent beggar can wave his sores in your face and plead for help in the tone of a threat. You are expected to feel "guilty" for having more than he.

Any barefoot bum from the pestholes of Asia or Africa cries out, "How dare you be rich!" and we beg him to be patient and we promise to give it all away as fast as possible.

The economic creed of "enlightened selfishness" which made our nation the powerhouse of this planet has been so maligned that it now sounds like heresy when I say:

Any man who claims you own him a living is a cannibal. Whether foreign or domestic, he is a cannibal.

If you choose to help him, that is one thing.

If he demands your "help" as his "right," he is a leech, a sycophant, a parasite. He is a cannibal seeking to survive by consuming you."

Good Day!