Back Door Men

Republicans to Unemployed: Drop Dead. Msnbc.com treats this as a "blow to Obama," but it seems to me that it's a blow to the 15, 000, 000 Americans who are out of work. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose lapdog acquiescence to the Bush-Cheney economic "policy" that made this mess, piously opined that it's better for a few people to be desperate than to add .002 percent to the national debt that he also helped create. In other words, if you want to work and can't, the least you can do is bend over and make an immeasurably insignificant contribution to debt relief...

No one can say that last week was dull. After panning President Obama's Oval Office speech on the BP/Halliburton catastrophe, pundits fell all over themselves the next day in praise of his effectiveness in negotiating the escrow account. Obama then relieved Stanley McChrystal of command in Afghanistan, again to high marks (here and here).

But, the oil still gushes, the black pool continues in, and the American people yearn for an Augustine who will read a children's book for seven minutes and then order the tide to return from whence it came. No matter that this didn't work for Augustine, George Bush, or anyone else: The point is to act like you know what you're doing and be the kinda guy who Joe the Plumber can have a beer with when it's all over.

The usually astute Rachel Maddow drew progressive accolades for her alternative speech, through which she recommended that President Obama make promises that he couldn't possibly guarantee, alienate everyone he must work with, and attend to the spill with a Jimmy Carter-like focus to the exclusion of everything else (something voters just love). She paid lip service to a mainstay of the Gulf Coast economy ("short-term income") and all but said "jobs schmobs" in her ringing commitment to "mitigate" the economic impact of a long-term drilling moratorium. Maddow also mischaracterized the reconciliation process, something which one hopes she'd have more than a working familiarity with by now...

Michael Gerson braves up and derides Al Franken's characterization of the Roberts Court as having "...consistently and intentionally protected and promoted the interests of the powerful over those of individual Americans." The former Bush speech writer accuses Franken of hyperbole, then compares the Minnesota senator to a member of a French Revolution directory. The author of the phase "Axis of Evil" expresses disgust with Franken's "bile" and implies that Franken said things that he didn't say. The long-time political aide and speechwriter all but calls Franken a poser, then passes himself off as a Constitutional scholar...

JUST A SONG: Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone. Look out ma, here comes the elephant boy... 

McChystal went pretty quietly, slinking out the back entrance while Obama announced the firing. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and the Connecticut Toad telegraphed support in advance, signaling that the GOP wouldn't oppose the president's decision. Mainly, that's each and every senator harbors fantasies of the presidency and wouldn't want to be undermined by the likes of McChrystal. In any case, he had to go: If you can't control yourself and your staff, how can you prosecute a failing war against the Taliban?...

The Texas GOP just doesn't go in for back door shenanigans...

Progressivism and liberty...