The "Kill Chuck" cabal brings out the big guns to block Chuck Hagel's path to the Pentagon: Teh Gays! (And the top gun promptly goes MIA)

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The Log Cabin Republicans want so badly for us to know how bad Chuck Hagel is that they took out this full-page ad in the NYT. Worth every penny, probably -- only whose pennies paid for it?

by Ken

It may not be a scientifically accurate way of choosing up sides, but sometimes one's estimation of a person is affected by the caliber of the enemies he racks up. And on that count, I have to say, I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel -- as we're told, a leading candidate to replace Leon Pannetta as defense secretary (as if anyone could replace Leon Pannetta).

If you haven't yet read Howie's Monday post "AIPAC Agent Eliot Engel Goes After Obama Cabinet Pick As Being Too Anti-Israel," I encourage you to do so, to make the acquaintance of some of the prime movers in what we might call the "Kill Chuck" Cabal. There are, first, the minions of AIPAC, the cross-us-at-your-frigging-peril lobbying powerhouse of the American "Israel Can Do No Wrong" lobby, and then there's the conservative Republican establishment, and especially the neo-cons, who are still smarting from Chuck's uppitiness in his last years in the Senate, in particular his stark turnabout on the Iraq war, which he initially supported but came to see as a massive mistake.

This ground has now been covered well by The New Yorker's Connie Bruck, in the blogpost "Chuck Hagel and His Enemies."


THE TAKE-NO-PRISONERS ISRAEL PROPAGANDISTS

Then-Senators Hagel and Obama at the
Amman Citadel in Jordan in July 2008
"Hagel's most vocal critics," Bruck writes, "have been members of what can be called the Israel lobby."

Their enmity for Hagel goes back to his two terms in the Senate. A committed supporter of Israel and, also, of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, Hagel did not make the obeisance to the lobby that the overwhelming majority of his Congressional colleagues do. And he further violated a taboo by talking about the lobby, and its power. In his 2008 book, "The Much Too Promised Land," Aaron Miller interviewed Hagel, whom he described as "a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values." Miller also wrote, "Of all my conversations, the one with Hagel stands apart for its honesty and clarity." He quoted Hagel saying that Congress "is an institution that does not inherently bring out a great deal of courage." The American Israel Public Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, Hagel continued, and "then you'll get eighty or ninety senators on it. I don't think I've ever signed one of the letters" -- because, he added, they were "stupid." Hagel also said, "The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," but "I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator."

Unfortunately, at one point in his interview with Miller, Hagel made the crucial error of referring to the "Jewish lobby" instead of the "Israel lobby." Of course, to the people who pounced on that as proof of anti-Semitism, there is not supposed to be any difference. In their view, anyone who voices any word in any way critical of the government of Israel is by definition an anti-Semite.

Bruck goes on to call the roll of brain-dead Israel propagandists who have pounced: Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, who lies so persistently that one wonders if he would, if he could tell the truth if his life depended on it; right-wing Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, quoting Anti-Defamation League chief Abraham Foxman, a once-serious person whose brain has long since turned to toxic slime; the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens. She also quotes some Jewish voices of sanity, including "pro-Israel stalwart" NY Rep. Gary Ackerkman ("You know, not everybody who disagrees with Israel's policies is anti-Semitic, otherwise half the Jewish population of Israel would be anti-Semitic!") and Alon Pinkas, "a former Israeli consul general in New York and the chief of staff to Prime Minister Ehud Barak," who --

wrote in Al-Monitor recently that he got to know Hagel during Hagel's various meetings with Barak. "Barak was thoroughly impressed not only by Hagel's military background, but by his analysis, knowledge of the Middle East, and his understanding of Israel's security issues and predicaments," Pinkas wrote. Hagel "is not anti-Israeli and he is not an anti-Semite. In fact, if I were him, I would lodge a complaint with the Anti-Defamation League, asking their assistance and support for being unfairly called an anti-Semite."

BUT IT'S NOT JUST THE "ISRAEL LOBBY" ON THE ATTACK

"The Israel lobby led the charge against Hagel, but there is plenty of animus for him in the broader Republican party, too."

After first voting for the Iraq war, Hagel became one of its most vocal critics, working with Democrats to try to change the direction of the Bush Administration's policy. In 2007, he and his friend Joe Biden, then the Democratic senator who was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored a resolution opposing the "surge" and calling for a transition to a limited U.S. military mission in Iraq. The committee approved the resolution; Hagel was the only Republican to vote in favor. "I was called a 'traitor,' and I was called 'disgusting,' " Hagel told me when I wrote about him in 2008. " 'Shut your mouth, you're a Republican!' Which I always found astounding -- to equate war based on your politics, as a Democrat or a Republican."

NYRB's Washington observer, Elizabeth Drew, has also weighed in, in a blogpost called "The Preemptive War on Hagel," which begins:

Far more is at stake in Barack Obama's decision on whether to nominate Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense than whether Chuck Hagel is nominated. What the president decides will bear on: his effectiveness in his second term; any president's ability to form a government; whether an independent voice can be raised on a highly sensitive issue in opposition to the views of a powerful lobby and still be named to a significant government position; whether there is actually a proper nominating system; whether McCarthyite tactics can still be effective more than half a century after they were rejected by a fed-up nation. And, by the way, what will be the direction of American policy in the Middle East? In particular, how adventurous will we be toward Iran? Have we learned anything from the calamitous foreign policy blunders of the past decade? . . .

NOW IT APPEARS THAT THE "KILL CHUCK"-ERS
HAVE BROUGHT OUT THEIR REALLY BIG GUNS

Or maybe we should call them their "big tools": the Log Cabin Republicans.

In a December 20 report, BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller reported:

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel -- a finalist for the post of secretary of defense in Obama's second term -- once opposed a nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg because he was "openly aggressively gay."
“Ambassadorial posts are sensitive," Hagel told to the Omaha World-Herald in 1998, opposing the nomination of philanthropist James Hormel. "They are representing America," he said. "They are representing our lifestyle, our values, our standards. And I think it is an inhibiting factor to be gay -- openly aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel -- to do an effective job."

Some LGBT rights groups are already criticizing the potential selection of Hagel to replace Leon Panetta.

Hagel was a longtime supporter of "don't ask, don't tell," which banned gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. In 1999, he told The New York Times, ''The U.S. armed forces aren't some social experiment.''

And between 2001 and 2006, Hagel received a score of zero from the Human Rights Council, with no votes on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a job discrimination bill, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which eventually was passed into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in 2009.

Hagel's record on LGBT issues did show some signs of change, as the country shifted dramatically on the subject. He voted in favor of a procedural vote on the 2004 constitutional amendment aimed at limiting marriage to one man and one woman, but opposed the marriage amendment in 2006.

UPDATE: Hagel didn't vote on the marriage amendment in 2004, though he voted in favor of a procedural motion to bring up the final vote.

Almost immediately Hagel issued an apology. BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner reports:

Hagel called the comments "insensitive" and said, "They do not reflect my views or the totality of my public record, and I apologize to Ambassador Hormel and any LGBT Americans who may question my commitment to their civil rights. I am fully supportive of 'open service' and committed to LGBT military families."

However, Chris reports that the Log Cabin Republicans ("a national group for LGBT Republicans" haven't accepted the apology. What's more, "The group bought an ad in The New York Times Thursday painting the potential Defense Secretary nominee as 'wrong' on 'gay rights,' Israel, and Iran." Chris reports further:

Log Cabin's leader, R. Clarke Cooper, acknowledged that the apology is not referenced in the ad and that "[l]awmakers can and do change position . . . for the better on the LGBT equality portfolio." He told BuzzFeed, however, that his group "question[s] the sincerity" of Hagel's apology.

All of which brought forth this response from a colleague, David Fiderer:

Since when has "sincerity" been a standard by which Log Cabin Republicans judged anyone in public office from their own party?

Did they question the sincerity of any politician who failed to oppose the GOP platform to make marriage equality unconstitutional?

Whenever anyone in politics judges someone else's "sincerity," he's probably insincere.

And David also raised the question of who paid for the ad. Did our Clarke just dip into LCR petty cash? NYT full-pagers don't come cheap. (More from David in a moment.)


OH, ONE MORE THING ABOUT CLARKE COOPER:
AS OF MONDAY, HE'S HISTORY WITH THE LCRs

Oops, Clarkie forgot to mention that he's, y'know, outtahere!
Are you ready for this? Here are the LCRs, locked in a fierce assault on a potential DoD nominee, to the extent of taking out a full-page ad in the NYT, which we all know doesn't come cheap, which again raises the question of who the heck paid for that ad? And now, mere seconds later, Mr. LCR is history, and he told everybody about it in October only nobody seems to have thought this development in any way relevant to . . . well, anything.

I don't know what the heck is going on. I just know that none of this makes a lot of sense to me. David Fiderer has done some speculating, observing, "He steps down just after he bought a full-page ad in the NY Times slamming Chuck Hagel? Surely the timing is a coincidence," then adding:

I think Cooper had a deal with a K Street lobbying firm, which arranged for the NYT ad to be placed. Do you really think that Log Cabin has the kind of money to drop for a full-page ad to go after a Republican who said something homophobic 14 years ago? That category includes just about every GOPer on Capitol Hill.

So Clarkie is LCR history, but as far as I can tell, the LCR fatwa against Chuck Hagel is still in effect, and LGBT people across the political spectrum are still expected to serve as the wedge that keeps the so-and-so from becoming secretary of defense. All right, man (and woman) the barricades, guys 'n' gals!
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The Cliff Minuet Moves Towards Crescendo

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A blame game for the GOP and another bungled opportunity for Obama, the Grand Bargain-- despite Boehner's inability to control his own caucus-- is heading into the melodramatic end-stage. People overseas take this far more seriously than Americans do and for media consumers abroad, it looks like we're actually approaching armageddon. Many low-info Americans actually do too, though others are already rolling their eyes and at all the obviously staged game-playing. I'm guessing there'll be some noisy stock market mini-crash if the whole thing doesn't get wrapped up by tomorrow morning.

But are Republicans willing to start facing reality? Maybe. Leaving a GOP conference meeting a few hours ago McCain told reporters that the Republicans are finally dropping chained CPI from their fiscal cliff proposal, ironically one of the worst reactionary anti-social ideas that they had already gotten Braveheart Barack Obama to accept. "CPI has to be off the table because it's not a winning argument to say benefits for seniors versus tax breaks for rich people," said McCain "We need to take CPI off the table-- that's not part of the negotiations-- because we can't win an argument that has Social Security for seniors versus taxes for the rich." I'm sure they'll come up with something just as bad to try but this is a step in the right direction-- and maybe McCain can even get his hissy/spitty little gay friend from South Carolina to act like an adult. Schumer told ABC-TV viewers this morning that he thinks the chances are better than even that the Senate will come up with a deal by tomorrow. And Republican lame duck obstructionist Jon Kyl said he doesn't disagree. Oh, the drama!

"I've been a legislator for 37 years, and I've watched how these things work. On these big, big agreements, they almost always happen at the last minute," Schumer said. "Neither side likes to give up its position. They eyeball each other until the very end. But then, each side, realizing that the alternative is worse, comes to an agreement. So while an agreement is hardly a certainty, I certainly wouldn't rule it out at this last minute.

Oh, and look what right-wing propaganda writer Byron York, who says he's hearing Senate Republicans are ready to give up obstructionism on the "Grand Bargain" by today or tomorrow. Poor thing seems despondent. Again, to Republicans , this is all a game about what they can deliver to their wealthy patrons... and to hell with working families.

Under the most likely scenario, Republicans will get nothing-- nothing-- in return for giving in on tax rates for the highest-income Americans.  No spending cuts, at least no serious spending cuts beyond what are already included in sequestration, would be part of the deal done on Sunday or Monday, if that is indeed what happens.

Instead, Republicans will tout their accomplishment in making nearly all of the Bush tax cuts permanent.  Those cuts were always temporary, first in a ten-year form that expired in 2011, and then with a two-year extension.  Now, in a fiscal cliff deal, they would be permanent for those who make less than $500,000 a year.  Or at least as permanent as any tax rate can be; rates can always be changed by Congress, at any time.

As for spending cuts, particularly in entitlements, some Senate Republicans say they will press for those in January or February, during the coming battle over raising the nation’s debt ceiling.  They believe that fight will give them leverage to extract real concessions from the White House and Democrats on spending.  It’s not entirely clear why they believe that so strongly; Republicans will certainly take a beating in the press if they appear ready to push the nation toward default to win unpopular cuts.  Nevertheless, some in the GOP are readying themselves for that fight.

As for the immediate fiscal cliff agreement, the wild card is what will happen in the House of Representatives.  Facing opposition from some conservative members, Speaker John Boehner has already had to back off pushing for a vote on a measure (“Plan B”) to extend current tax rates on all Americans who make less than $1 million.  Given that, how could he pass a bill that would do the same thing, only for those who make less than $500,000?

There are two things to remember. The first is that Boehner had a big majority of Republican support for Plan B.  An estimated 80 percent to 85 percent of the House GOP caucus was ready to vote for that bill.  The second thing is that a Senate deal, presumably blessed by the White House, would have the support of Democrats as well as a significant number of Republicans, meaning House Democrats would undoubtedly vote for it.  Put those Democrats together with even some of the Republicans who were prepared to vote for Plan B, and a bill would pass the House.

So a deal will most likely be done.  But the bottom line is that the fiscal cliff fight will not end happily for Republicans.  They will have given in on what was an article of faith-- that taxes should not be raised on anybody, poor or rich-- in return for essentially nothing.  All they will have is a plan to fight again, soon.

This debate should be about Democrats demanding a return to the Eisenhower era rates on plutocrats and Republicans pleasing for something in the 70% range. Democrats have to nominate a better president in the future. Elizabeth Warren would be awesome.

Why congressional Republicans don't have to pay even lip service to reality

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by Ken

In his last post, "The Cliff Minuet Moves Towards Crescendo," Howie asked, "Are Republicans willing to start facing reality?" And he thought, "Maybe."

Sometimes the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza has his uses. And today he's done some electoral math that makes a pretty convincing case why congressional Republicans don't don't don't have to pay even lip service to reality in the life of these here United States: Their voters have converted for the forseeable future to the nonreality standard.

As ‘fiscal cliff' looms, Republicans have no political incentive to make deal with Obama

Amid the last-minute wrangling over a "fiscal cliff" deal, it's important to remember one overlooked fact of the 2012 election: Republicans in the House and Senate have absolutely no political incentive to compromise with President Obama.
The numbers are stark.

Of the 234 Republicans elected to the House on Nov. 6, just 15 (!) sit in congressional districts that Obama also won that day, according to calculations made by the Cook Political Report's ace analyst David Wasserman. That's an infinitesimally small number, particularly when compared with the 63 House Republicans who held seats where Obama had won following the 2010 midterm elections.

The Senate landscape paints the same picture -- this time looking forward. Of the 13 states where the 14 Republican Senators will stand for reelection in 2014 (South Carolina has two, with Lindsey O. Graham and Tim Scott up in two years time), Obama won just one in 2012 -- Maine. In the remaining dozen states, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won only one, Georgia, by less than double digits. The average margin of victory for Romney across the 13 states was 19.5 percentage points; take out Maine, and Romney's average margin was 22 points in the remaining 12 states.

The picture on the Democratic side is less clear. Although 96 percent of House Democrats in the 113th Congress will hold seats Obama won in November, according to Wasserman, fully one-third of the 21 Senate Democrats who will stand for reelection in 2014 represent states that Romney won.

While Obama narrowly lost North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) will run for a second term in November 2014, the president lost the other six states where Senate Democrats will be running by double digits. Here's that list: Alaska (lost by 14), Arkansas (lost by 24), Louisiana (lost by 18), Montana (lost by 13), South Dakota (lost by 18) and West Virginia (lost by 26). Obama's average margin of defeat across these seven states? A whopping 16 points.

Even the most cursory analysis of those numbers makes two things clear.

First, with the exception of a dozen or so Republicans in the House and Maine's Susan Collins in the Senate, the number of GOP members of the 113th Congress who see cutting a deal with the president -- in the fiscal cliff or, frankly, anything else -- as politically advantageous is close to zero.

Second, while House Democrats are equally de-incentivized to working across the aisle, there is a large-ish group of Senate Democrats who must find ways of showing their bipartisan spirit if they want to win reelection in states that didn't favor their party -- or even come close to doing so -- in the 2012 election.

Those twin political realities make the ground on which the fiscal cliff fight -- and future scuffles over gun control measures, etc. -- less heavily tilted toward Democrats than you might think.

Yes, Obama won the election and did so quite convincingly. And, no, he doesn't ever have to worry again about being reelected, which should, in theory, embolden him. But he is the only person involved in the fiscal cliff talks who has that luxury. Everyone else needs to keep one eye (at least) on their next race.

That mentality means that for the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, a deal is more dangerous than no deal. A deal creates the possibility of a primary challenge from their ideological right in districts and even states that, by and large, went heavily against Obama in November. No deal means they might -- with the emphasis on "might" -- face some blow back from constituents who want them to get something done for the good of the country and put the partisanship and politics aside.

And so, if you are wondering why congressional Republicans won't, in the words of Obama, just "take the deal," now you know. They have every political reason not to.

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Finally... Justice For Víctor Jara-- But War Criminal Henry Kissinger Is Still On The Loose

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The song above, "Plegaria a un Labrador" ("Prayer to a Worker") is one of Víctor Jara's classic songs. You need to know who this guy was. On September 11, 1973, Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA gave the go-ahead for a violent fascist coup against Chile's democratically elected government. The presidential palace was bombed and shelled and Chile's beloved president, Salvator Allende, was murdered. But that was just the beginning. Within hours of Allende's murder thousands of his supporters were rounded up (eventually 80,000) and herded into a stadium and many were tortured (40,000) and murdered (3,000) to help the fascists make way for a Chicago School/Ayn Rand-inspired dictatorship. Labor unions were put under fascist control and Social Security, for example, was privatized according to the same directives by the same people who have worked out the same plans for the GOP here in America.

One of the people herded into the stadium that day was Chile's Bob Dylan, Víctor Jara. He was tortured; his fingers were broken; a soldier played Russian roulette until a bullet wounded him in the head. He was then machine-gunned and 44 bullets were found in his body, which was dumped on the street of a local slum. The following year Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie did a memorial concert for Jara in New York City. The stadium where he was murdered was renamed the Estadio Víctor Jara in 2003. I first heard about Jara in 1980 when the Clash included a song, "Washington Bullets" on their iconic album Sandinista! (video below). 16 years later Chuck Brodsky wrote and recorded a tribute, "The Hands of Victor Jara."

The blood of Victor Jara
Will never wash away
It just keeps on turning
A little redder every day
As anger turns to hatred
And hatred turns to guns
Children lose their fathers
And mothers lose their sons

Before Pinochet finally died-- hundreds of criminal indictments pending against him-- he had stolen between 20 and 30 million dollars. He managed to evade justice, just as Nixon did and as Kissinger still is. But Jara's direct murders are finally being brought to justice, 8 retired army officers charged on Friday.

Judge Miguel Vásquez charged two of the former officers, Pedro Barrientos and Hugo Sánchez, with committing the murder and six others as accomplices. Mr. Sánchez, a lieutenant colonel, was second in command at the stadium. Mr. Barrientos, a lieutenant from a Tejas Verdes army unit, currently lives in Deltona, a city southwest of Daytona Beach, Fla., and was interrogated by the F.B.I. earlier this year at the request of a Chilean court. Attempts to reach Mr. Barrientos for comment were unsuccessful; his two listed telephone numbers had been disconnected.

Judge Vásquez issued an international arrest warrant against Mr. Barrientos through Interpol Santiago and ordered the arrest of the other seven, who were in Chile. Those charged as accomplices are Roberto Souper, Raúl Jofré, Edwin Dimter, Nelson Hasse, Luis Bethke and Jorge Smith.

...Judge Vásquez established that Mr. Jara was recognized by military officers, separated from the rest of the detainees and taken to the basement dressing rooms, which were being used to question prisoners. There, he was interrogated, beaten and tortured by several officers, according to the court.

On Sept. 16, 1973, when the stadium was evacuated and the prisoners transferred to the larger, open-air National Stadium in the capital, Víctor Jara and a former prison service director, Littré Quiroga, who was also detained there, were taken to the basement and killed. The bodies of both men and three other victims were later found dumped near a railroad track outside a cemetery; one of the victims remains unidentified. According to the autopsy report, Mr. Jara was badly beaten and was shot 44 times.

The Idiocracy Files, Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

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"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And, frankly, they own the place."
-- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), May 2009
by Noah

On June 13 of this year, almost exactly three years after the above quote from one of the few of the more honest men in Washington, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee gave us more of what Congress does best: a classic dog-and-pony show, a farce meant for public consumption, to be cut down, shined up and packaged for the nightly news by Washington's media accomplices.

The special guest star attraction this time was Jamie Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of J. P. Morgan-Chase, a creature who is so warped that he can actually say, even on national TV, that he has no idea why he is so unpopular with the American public, and say it with a straight face. Gee, all he (and his bankster cohorts) did was bring the world economy to the brink of total collapse, ruin lives that are of no consequence to him, make a profit on such actions, and then hold up the taxpayers for even more of their hard-earned money. What a swell guy!

So it' was about time that this dark lord of the financial world got called on the carpet by the people in Washington who look out for us, right? You know, the people we elect to represent us? Yeah, well, somewhere between your voting booth and the Capitol building, the $enate's mission changed. Fancy that!

Hence the farce back in June when Dimon Jamie arrived for his stern, harsh, and even brutal questioning by our senators, brutal enough to remind one of the Spanish Inquisition -- or, well, perhaps something milder. Let's take a look at some of the harsh inquisitors and some highlight quotes that will show what a nasty day Dimon had. These guys didn't just remind me of Idiocracy. A famous Monty Python sketch also came to mind.



AND NOW, THE BRUTAL, INHUMAN $ENATE INQUISITORS!

1. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

"You're obviously renowned -- rightly so, I think -- as one of the best CEOs in the country. . . . You missed this. It's a blip on the radar screen."

A blip! Four billion dollars lost in speculative derivative trading is a blip? That's right, the score was up to $4 billion as of the "hearing." Originally Dimon told the country that his company's loss was $2 billion. Now it looks like it may be as high as $7 billion. Pocket change. Either the guy is a pathological liar or he is grossly incompetent. Makes me wonder if his great-grandfather was the captain of the Titanic.

2. Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)

"One of the tensions we face here is that we wanna be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we wanna be sure also that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions . . . and again, what should the function of the regulators be."

Unbelievable! Crap-boy is asking Dimon what the function of the regulators should be. If this assclown had a farm, he'd be asking the foxes what their role in guarding the chicken coop should be.

3. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Now this guy is well-known for being a world-class asswipe. Let's see what this genius from South Carolina, now moved on to run the Heritage Society, had to say.

"I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on, uh, what you think we need to do."

Gee, I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks! Why, it wouldn't shock me if he just came out and said, "I think we need to do nothing. Does nothing work for you?" After all, four years have now passed since the crash and "nothing" is what Washington has done, simply because, as Senator Durbin said, the $enate is owned by the banks. They got off even easier than BP.

No lesson will be learned. Expect a bigger crash eventually, and expect these bribe-taking cretins to say publicly that they just didn't see it comin' and who could have possibly predicted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It'll be like Condoleezza Rice saying that no one could have imagined terrorists flying planes into the WTC.

4. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

What does the renowned racist from Alabamy say?

"Would you feel better in a closed hearing?"

I can imagine what that would be like: laughs, drinks, K Street-provided lap dancers, and envelopes of cash for all. Who wants another round?

* * * * * Crapo and Corker? Ya just can't make these names up. They're like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. It gets better. Crapo's No. 1 "campaign contributor"? J. P. Morgan-Chase. Corker's No. 1? Goldman-Sachs. Not to worry, his No. 2 is Morgan.

To be fair, and I always want to be fair, I've only called attention to the four worst of the grand inquisitors. After the committee was through wasting our time, Dimon even thanked $enator Corker for such easy questions, right out in the open; no shame, plenty of arrogance. Makes me wonder what kind of handouts were given out after the show. Were there any briefcases left behind in the Senate that day?

Of course, if it was up to me, the majority of the $enate would all be fitted for orange jump suits, or better yet salted up and dragged through glass after going before a judge, if you could find a judge that hadn't also been paid off by the same "campaign contributors."  Ask yourself who has damaged this country more, Al Qaeda or the Wall Street criminal element and their Washington enablers? Who is even responsible for more deaths? I have no doubt that if Jerry Sandusky gave $enators the same kind of money as the banksters, they'd treat him the same.

Money buys a lot of ass-kissing in Washington. Sure, we already knew that. It's just that Washington business is getting done in a much more brazen manner these days, as evidenced by the June 2012 inquistition of Jamie Dimon. Ever wonder what the janitors use to clean the slimy ooze from the Capitol floor and furniture every night?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that no matter how good you are, how competent people are, you never, ever get complacent in risk. Challenge everything. . . .

Yeah, Dimon. You are so good. What a great guy! Not. Great smirk too. Try arrogant creep, for starters. Yeesh. We've already seen how money can buy infinite heaps of arrogance by observing the likes of Romney. How many more of these arrogant, insensitive crap-spewers do we have to put up with before the combined rage and indignation of the world just says enough and heaves these a-holes into the shark-infested waters off their Cayman Islands? I'd like to see if the sharks would even touch them.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who actually tried to grill Dimon and even reminded him that "this is not your hearing" when Dimon arrogantly tried to talk over his questions, made an attempt to do the people's business, but, as we know, the majority of the Democrats aren't much better.

Our corporatist President Obama, in a May interview on The View, called Dimon "one of the smartest bankers we've got" and called Morgan "one of the best-managed banks there is." Obama went on to say that even smart people make mistakes. True enough, but ideally they don't lie about the size of the mistake every time a microphone is placed in front of their face, oath or not. Besides, no one ever said bad guys weren't smart sometimes.

Now there's talk that Dimon might be the clown that replaces Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. More of that fox-guarding-the-chickens stuff. Ain't Washington grand?

Lots of people say the problem with Washington can only be solved if we somehow get the money out of politics. Of course, there isn't much chance of that happening when the people that make the laws are the same ones that take the cash. If any progress is to be made before the 2014 elections in increasing the awareness of just how low Washington has sunk, there is a lot of work to be done.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."
-- The Narrator, Idiocracy
Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

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What really matters to the Chinese regime -- and the crucial concept of "face"

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Remember Bo Xilai, the People's Republic rising superstar-turned-dastardly criminal and his dastardly criminal-murderer wife Gu Kailai, who supposedly acted in cahoots with Bo's police chief, Wang Lijun? Now Jonathan Mirsky writes, "It is clear from the relative lightness of the sentences handed down on Gu and Wang that they were rewarded for voicing exactly what was expected of them when they read from their prepared scripts in the brief glimpses we had of their trials."

by Ken

In April, I wrote a post called "When masters of corruption are also students -- the thrill of the fall of Bo Xilai" about the spectacular fall from grace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising star in the hierarchy of the People's Republic of China, ostensibly for covering up the misdeeds of his wife, Gu Kailai, and our friend me commented:

It seems to be difficult to get a real picture of what happened with Bo Xilai. The shitty American media are reporting it as something along the lines of "the fall of a rising star" but have said almost nothing about what's really going on.

Naturally, there's loads of celebrity news being shoved at me, along with the latest rantings of some conservative kook/asshole.

Who was this guy? Why did he get canned? I mean the real reason, not the corruption. What does this mean for the future of the Chinese government? And for the rest of the world?

The facts and a thoughtful analysis are hard to find.

Whatever their story was, those now closest to being in the know seem persuaded that the official story isn't it. So I was delighted to find an updated glimpse of the case in the course of a January 10 New York Review of Books piece by longtime China-watcher Jonathan Mirsky, "How China Gets Its Way" (of which, unfortunately, only an abstract is available free online to nonsubscribers).

Mirsky is reviewing a book for which he expresses considerable admiration, China’s Search for Security, Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University and Andrew Scobell of the Rand Institute. Nathan, Mirsky notes, was co-author, with Robert S. Ross, of the 1997 book The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, in which the authors wrote that China "may join the international regimes that govern trade, human rights, weapons proliferation, and other interactions as much in order to change them as to obey them." Mirsky writes, "This new book explains how that happened," showing us "how the world looks from Beijing." Mirksy stresses how formidable an accomplishment it is to have gotten as close as they have to understanding the inner workings of Chinese governance, meaning the operation of the real seat of power, the seven-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, as they have.

One cannot state too clearly how little is known about the Standing Committee members, which explains this book’s bare accounts of their ages, previous posts, and anodyne personalities. Mostly men of a similar age, with dyed black hair, they operate in an atmosphere of secrecy, in which even wives are rarely glimpsed.

Mirsky finds his way to the case of Bo et al. from what he considers a rare slip by Nathan and Scobell, passing along at face value the propaganda image of China's new top dog, Xi Jinping (recently installed as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and expected to become president in March), as a man who is tough but fair and washes his own clothes. "This," writes Mirsky, "is nothing but the Communist 'plain-living' formula traditionally applied to the top leaders: Mao was a man of simple peasant habits; Deng Xiaoping used a spittoon, loved croissants, and was an ardent bridge player never so happy as when he was home with his family." Mirsky goes on to describe "the opposite of plain living": "the occasional vilification of men doomed not to be elevated." Which brings him to --

the fate of Bo Xilai, who, despite being the princeling son of a revolutionary hero, has been denied entrance to the Politburo for reasons involving the kind of corruption that could be attached to many past, present, and future laders. Such blackening is often accompanied by a smear of the disgraced official’s wife, who until that moment has been a high-flier. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, and his former chief of police, Wang Lijun, have confessed to Neil Heywood’s murder in orchestrated show trials that are wholly unconvincing to thousands of sarcastic writers on China’s vast Internet. Wang testified that he had extracted a sliver of Heywood’s body containing traces of the cyanide that Gu confessed she had forced down the man’s throat. No autopsy was performed and the British vice-consul who attended the cremation did not see a body. It is clear from the relative lightness of the sentences handed down on Gu and Wang that they were rewarded for voicing exactly what was expected of them when they read from their prepared scripts in the brief glimpses we had of their trials.

Now Bo Xilai has been expelled from the Party and accused of corruption, sexual misconduct, and perhaps complicity in Heywood’s murder. Among his accusers are new leaders who once loudly praised him. Chief among these is Xi Jinping. Xi is also a princeling, a son of a close ally of Mao. In his first speeches he railed against official corruption, as had then Premier Li Peng years ago when he said that corruption could destroy the Party. These recent speeches of Xi’s have already been derided on the Internet because of recent disclosures by Bloomberg of his family’s enormous wealth. (Similar disclosures were made by The New York Times of the wealth of Premier Wen Jiabao.) Official sources have denounced these allegations, but did not deny them.

OFFICIAL CHINA AND THE CONCEPT OF "FACE"

The authors' summary of the "main elements of Chinese foreign policy," Mirsky writes, includes some that "sound similar to those of all significant powers" (like concern for largely fraught relationships with the "many close neighbors" along its "thousands of miles of se and land borders"), while "others are sui generis" (like the preoccupation with suppressing, indeed crushing, any challenge to its internal supremacy (think Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and throw in its determination to reclaim Taiwan). Nationalism, say the authors, is both a critical value of the regime and a critical tool for enlisting support at home.

It's extremely important to China, the authors suggest, "to thwart any country wishing to dominate Asia," to which end "Beijing flourishes its economic might, the threats of its military, and diplomatic blandishments." And it "seeks to arrange the international order so that China's policies are given due weight." Its urgent need for energy resources puts it in conflict with other countries hungry for them, notably the U.S., and it is extraordinarily sensitive to criticism of its record on human rights. According to Nathan and Scobell, "China remains vulnerable to international criticism over the regime's violations of human rights, which reveal the illegitimacy of the Chinese political model to many of the country's own people

"[O]ne of the truly brilliant contributions of China’s Search for Security," writes Mirsky, "is the authors’ exploration of 'face.' "

Everyone knows this means "favorable personal recognition." What may surprise readers, even some China specialists, is their discussion of how Beijing deploys face as both a bargaining tool and, if necessary, a weapon in China’s international relations. China uses the concept of face to warn others not to shame it in public, and it has succeeded by persuading both foreign leaders and diplomats and businessmen that China, perhaps uniquely, dislikes public criticism. Of course no one likes to be criticized, but Beijing has somehow inserted into its dealings with foreigners the concept of "quiet diplomacy," if difficult matters cannot be avoided. My own experience revealed that what actually happens is that no discussion occurs while outsiders are assured it took place. In 1991, then Prime Minister John Major assured foreign correspondents in Beijing that he had "banged the table" about human rights with Premier Li Peng. Anson Chan, a senior Hong Kong official who was in the room, informed me that human rights went unmentioned.

Nathan and Scobell point out that the Chinese, ever-sensitive about slights and loss of face, are often blunt in their dealings with others, and can "extract humiliating concessions from a negotiating adversary. Face may be given afterwards as a reward for diplomatic cooperation." This is a well-used weapon. Beijing persuaded seventeen ambassadors in Oslo to stay away from the presentation in absentia of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo. The most recent example is when, after the recent brief and unpublicized meeting between the Dalai Lama and Prime Minister David Cameron in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Beijing proclaimed that it had "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people," and a ministerial visit to London was canceled.

A similar weapon, used to knock Western powers off balance, Nathan and Scobell write, is Beijing’s reference to the 1950s concept of the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence." This holds that all nations, large, small, rich, and poor, must be free to operate by their own rules, as opposed to the

American conception of a new world order in which international regimes and institutions would limit the rights of other sovereign states to pursue policies at variance with American interests…against American ambitions to control other countries’ behavior.

Beijing can therefore insist that it never seeks dominance—as it makes clear in its refusal to approve UN sanctions against Syria. This principle, the authors add, permits China to maneuver in relation to the other major powers in their blocs by insisting on the precedence and authority of sovereignty.

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Brian Schatz-- Abercrombie Makes The Best Possible Appointment To The Senate

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A new progressive U.S. senator

When Daniel Inouye died last week, anyone would have predicted New Dem Colleen Hanabusa would have been appointed by Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie to succeed him. It's what Inouye is reported to have wanted. When we looked at the situation here at DWT a week ago, Lt. Governor Brian Schatz seemed like too good of an idea to even give serious consideration. It looked to me that it would be the only way to keep reactionary corporate whore Ed Case-- who was gearing up to run for Hanabusa's seat-- out of Congress.

But I didn't give Governor Abercrombie enough credit. He gave Schatz the appointment the day after Chrtistmas. The state Democratic Party had given Abercrombie 3 names to pick from: Schatz, himself a former chairman of the state party; Hanabusa; and Esther Kiaaina, the deputy director of the state's Department of Land and Natural Resources. He made the right decision, though not everyone in the Establishment thinks so.

"Senator Inouye conveyed his final wish to Governor Abercrombie," said Jennifer Sabas, Inouye's chief of staff. "While we are very disappointed that it was not honored, it was the Governor's decision to make."

Abercrombie said Inouye's views and wishes weighed on his decision-making process, but "no one and nothing is preordained." He said the possibility of a special election to fill Hanabusa's seat weighed on him in choosing Inouye's successor.

"Sometimes you have to set aside personal considerations in order to look for the good of the whole," the governor, a former congressman, said at a press conference.

Schatz said he would board a flight to Washington sometime this evening, with hopes of being sworn into office sometime on Thursday afternoon. The Senate reconvenes on Thursday to take up the urdent business of reaching a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff on Jan. 1.

Just as important as keeping Case out of Congress is the fact that Schatz, who at 40 will be the youngest member of the Senate until Chris Murphy (D-CT) is sworn in in January, is also a progressive and a reformer with a great record on environmental issues. Hawaii's Senate delegation, Schatz and Mazie Hirono, is likely to turn out to be the best in the whole country.

"Leverage" spoiler alert: The show goes out on a high note, imagining a lovely conspiracy of the world's overprivileged elites

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The Leverage team: Nate (Timothy Hutton), Sophie (Gina Bellman), Eliot (Christian Kane), Hardison (Aldis Hodge), and Parker (Beth Riesgraf)

"The world's economy would never stabilize with endless parades of bankers being led around in chains. The system has to work. The guys who used to run it have to keep running it."
-- Interpol agent James Sterling (Mark A. Sheppard), in last
night's final episode of Leverage, "The Long Good-bye Job"
"Leverage was one of the few shows that pointed out how outmatched individuals are by profit-obsessed corporations. In its last season the show tackled pro sport's concussion problem, weak occupational-safety laws, how the rapacious policies of big box stores threaten small towns, and the inadequacy of consumer-protection regulations in the toy market—among many other little-guy-versus-the-world story lines. The show also reminded viewers of the similarities between scam artists and marketers. Did you think they'd be allowed to get away with that forever?"
-- Slate "Browbeat" culture columnist June Thomas
by Ken

I'm sure you remember the Obama administration's storied preference for "looking forward" over sifting through the wreckage of the economic meltdown with a view to bringing any malefactors to justice. In last night's Christmas finale of TNT's Leverage, we were treated to a wonderfully wacky but delicious image of that refusal to prosecute.

During the week I'd heard the Christmas episode of Leverage promoted as both the season finale and the series finale. It turns out, as of last Friday, that "series finale" is correct.

After watching the episode (about which more in a moment), I've learned from Slate's "Browbeat" culture blogger June Thomas that showrunner Dean Devlin explained in an open letter to fans earlier this month that, amid uncertainty about renewal for a sixth season, and facing the departures of star Timothy Hutton (as scam-team mastermind Nate Ford) and Gina Bellman (as the ever-mysterious grifter Sophie Devereaux), decided with series co-creator (with Chris Downey) John Rogers decided to end Season 5 --

with the episode we had planned to make to end the series, way back when we shot the pilot.  So, the episode that will air on Christmas is, in fact, the series finale we had always envisioned.

You could see from the end of the episode that it left open the possibility of a Closer-to-Major Cases-type afterlife-conversion, but on Friday, as I noted, the hammer was dropped.

I like June Thomas's take, grieving first for all those people put out of work. I suspect I'll miss the show, which she points out "was all about sticking up for the rights of the little guy against powerful corporate and governmental interests," less than she will, but I take her point about it, which I've put at the top of this post.

And I have to give the show folk credit for going out in a blaze of glory, with Nate secretly bamboozling the team into a mission that turns out to be the capture of a government computer file he calls the Black Book. When the heist appears to have gone catastrophically wrong, he's interrogated by an Interpol agent and her superior, a long-time nemesis of Nate's.

INTERPOL AGENT CASEY (Catherine Dent): What is the Black Box?
NATE: Five years ago, when the financial system crashed, the FBI, SEC, IRS, Interpol -- they all did their jobs. They investigated, and they found massive fraud. Market manipulation, secret deals, pension funds loaded with bogus paper, people's life savings burnt. And because they knew they'd broken the system, well, they were too powerful -- they got all the money out. Now you think I'm a thief, Agent Casey? One-third of the world's entire wealth disappeared then. Biggest heist in history. And we know who did it.
INTERPOL (HIGHER-UP) AGENT STERLING (Mark A. Sheppard): We decided not to prosecute. Order had to be restored.
NATE: That's why you joined Interpol? Screw justice, you're the order guy?
AGENT STERLING: It's not a choice.
NATE: It is. Justice, or order? One day you are going to have to make that choice.
AGENT STERLING: The world's economy would never stabilize with endless parades of bankers being led around in chains. The system has to work. The guys who used to run it have to keep running it.
NATE: Government agencies -- they closed all the cases. They took all the files of all the cases they could have prosecuted, all the savings accounts with all the stolen money, and they filed it away. That file . . . is the Black Book.
AGENT STERLING: The Holy Grail of the ones who got away with it.

"The ones who got away with it." I like that. (By the way, in the end Agent Sterling did indeed make his choice, and it probably wasn't the one most of us would have expected.)
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Looks Like Boehner Booted Justin Amash And Tim Huelskamp Off Their Committees As Part Of A Policy Of Payback Against A FreedomWorks Faction

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Battling right-wing sociopaths Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe are both stealing from FreedomWorks

In a new exposé on the shenanigans inside one of the most well-funded arms of the Tea Party, FreedomWorks, Mother Jones ace reporter David Corn has uncovered the genesis of Boehner's decision to kick several Republican members off key committee positions-- part of "a purge aimed at tea party lawmakers." The corrupt Beltway GOP Establishment made a move to infiltrate and take over FreedomWorks but when thwarted reacted against Justin Amash (R-MI), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and other independent-minded GOP congressmen. There's a vicious and desperate civil war raging inside FreedomWorks and the bulk of contributions to the group is going right into the pockets of high-priced, white shoe legal firms as the battle moves towards expensive law suits and counter suits.

When the news broke in early December that former GOP Rep. Dick Armey had abruptly resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, a powerhouse of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party, Armey maintained that the nasty split was due to differences he had with the top management of FreedomWorks about the group's operations and future. Immediately, media reports disclosed that Armey had been concerned that Matt Kibbe, the group's president, had used FreedomWorks resources to promote a book he had written (which was released in June) and that Armey himself had received an $8 million payout from a FreedomWorks board member to ease his departure. But internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that the bitter war inside FreedomWorks has also resulted in allegations of staff wrongdoing (prompting an investigation by lawyers) and counter-allegations that Armey and his allies tried to turn FreedomWorks into a partisan outfit backing establishment Republicans over tea party insurgents.

On December 12, James Burnley IV and C. Boyden Gray, two FreedomWorks board members (and allies of Armey), sent Kibbe a letter informing him that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees." They notified Kibbe that the group's board of trustees had retained two attorneys, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Burnley and Gray ordered Kibbe to cooperate with the lawyers, to make sure no records were "destroyed, deleted, modified or otherwise tampered with," and to send Regnery a check for $25,000 to cover his initial fees. (Regnery, a prominent conservative, is the past president of Regnery Publishing, a right-wing firm that has put out books by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Pat Buchanan, and other notable conservatives.) The letter did not specify the allegations being investigated. In an interview with Mother Jones, Burnley declined to discuss the alleged wrongdoing at FreedomWorks. "The letter speaks for itself," he says. Gray, Kibbe, and a spokeswoman for FreedomWorks did not respond to requests for comment.

Shortly after receiving the December 12 letter, Kibbe wrote a memo outlining his beef with Armey, Burnley, and Gray. In the document-- titled Republican Insiders Attempt Hostile Takeover of FreedomWorks-- Kibbe accused the three of being shills for the Republican establishment and undercutting the group's standing as an independent, non-partisan, conservative organization. (FreedomWorks has at times endorsed tea party candidates in primary elections against mainstream or incumbent Republicans, drawing the ire of mainline Republicans.) Kibbe charged that the three men were trying to punish him for defying their effort to steer FreedomWorks into the conventional Republican fold. He contended that the divisive fight within FreedomWorks was not really about his book contract or other organizational matters; it was a grand ideological clash pitting those fully loyal to the tea party cause (such as Kibbe) against backroom, Washington-centric pols attempting to wield their influence to benefit their pals.

Noting Armey's habit of coining maxims-- and Armey's complaint that Kibbe had hijacked media requests for Armey-- Kibbe began his memo with a blast referencing a September 4 meeting at which Armey and Gray had voted Kibbe off the board of trustees and replaced him with Burnley, a secretary of transportation in the Reagan administration:

Our favorite "Armey's Axiom" goes something like this: "Every argument in Washington, like in a marriage, is really about something else." So it goes with the attempted hostile takeover of FreedomWorks by three Republican insiders from the old guard. Is it about a book contract, or a pilfered appearance on CNBC? No, it is not. As it turns out, the fight for lower taxes, less government and more freedom is all well and good until it is Republicans-- "old friends"-- that are the ones needing to be held to account. It is our sense that the irresponsible acts of the so-called Trustees of FreedomWorks-- Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray, and James C. Burnley-- on September 4th, and their continued hostile acts today, are all about retribution for our willingness to take a strictly nonpartisan approach to politics, our willingness to hold both Republicans and Democrats to the standards set out by our freedom philosophy and the clear limits on government power delineated in our U.S. Constitution.

Kibbe then presented a timeline seeking to demonstrate that Armey, Gray, and Burnley had sold out the tea party cause to help less conservative Republicans.

His first example: the Republican primary contest earlier this year pitting Rep. Ben Quayle against Rep. David Schweikert, two House freshmen thrown into the same congressional district after redistricting in Arizona. In May, FreedomWorks endorsed Schweikert, who, Kibbe wrote, "had been willing to stand on principle even under tremendous pressure" from the GOP top brass. Quayle, according to Kibbe, had been too "reliable" a vote for the House Republican leadership, which FreedomWorks occasionally has opposed from the right. Yet Gray, the memo noted, was sending donations to Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle. (Gray was White House counsel during the Bush-Quayle administration.) And Gray, Kibbe wrote, called him several times last summer "wondering why we were engaged in this primary fight."

In the memo, Kibbe pointed out other conflicts as well. When Rep. John Mica, the Republican chair of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, was challenged by tea party freshman Rep. Sandy Adams in Florida in another primary race caused by redistricting, Kibbe wrote, Burnley, a transportation lobbyist, called Kibbe and "made it very clear…that he had a dog in this race." And on June 16, when FreedomWorks announced its "Retire Hatch" campaign against Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Gray endorsed Hatch. A month later, Gray held a fundraiser for Wisconsin senatorial candidate Tommy Thompson-- two days before FreedomWorks endorsed tea party favorite Eric Hovde, who was challenging Thompson in the GOP primary.

All of these conflicts, Kibbe maintained in the memo, led to that September meeting when he was booted off the board. Referring to himself in the third person, Kibbe described that confrontation: "It is eight weeks out from the most important election in our lifetime. 'Do you have any idea,' Kibbe asks, 'how much your actions will damage FreedomWorks efforts?' No answer is given."

The memo went on, with Kibbe taking Armey to task for having urged FreedomWorks to assist Thompson, who won the primary but whom the group had declined to endorse in the general election due to his "full-throated advocacy of ObamaCare," and Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri who had come under fire for his "legitimate rape" remarks:

One of the first actions taken by Dick Armey [after the September meeting] is his attempt to reassess our political priorities. "We have to help my friend Tommy Thompson," he tells the staff in his first meeting with them. He later tells the staff that he has discussed the Missouri Senate race with "my friend [Senator] Roy Blunt, and he says they really need grassroots cover for Todd Akin." FreedomWorks PAC had endorsed John Brunner, who barely lost to Akin [in the GOP primary]. We had declined to endorse Akin, even before "legitimate rape" became a late night punch line.

At the conclusion of his memo, Kibbe linked Mother Jones’ December 3 disclosure of Armey's departure from FreedomWorks-- one of several media reports supposedly featuring Armey "trashing the senior management of FreedomWorks"-- to House Speaker John Boehner stripping FreedomWorks-backed legislators of key committee assignments in what conservative pundits denounced as a purge aimed at tea party lawmakers. And Kibbe ended with this broad swipe:

Bottom Line: The Actions of the Trustees Put FreedomWorks Values and Mission at Risk. They have put personal and political agendas above the agenda of freedom.

No wonder all the big shots on the conservative cruise of a lifetime were so despondent! And it's no wonder so many House Republicans are feeling out opportunities to defeat Boehner's bid for another term as Speaker!

It's 2012. Do You Know Where Your Jimmy Hoffa Is?

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by Noah

Who doesn't love a mystery? Anytime there is a search for the body of Jimmy Hoffa, it becomes one of my favorite stories of the year. This year it was Roseville, Michigan. It doesn't matter that it's the same story over and over again. Hell, religions are built on the same thing. The "Where is Hoffa?" story always consists of some old guy in Michigan or Indiana having a tip, the blue-wind-breaker feds come in, dig dozens of holes in some other guy's yard, find nada, and leave the property looking like the biggest moles in the universe had quite a party. "Our work is done here, folks."

Jimmy Hoffa was a very important American. Big, bad warts and all, he moved America forward, begining with his career as a union organizer in 1932, the same year FDR was first elected. It was at the height of the Depression. Hoffa was a threat to the corporatist, money-grubbing status quo. Hoffa fought for a fair shake for workers, and he did it at a time when workers died in that fight. It was a time when the corporate masters thought nothing about hiring someone to kill you if you "got out of line" or spoke up for yourself. It was the kind of time that neo-fascist Midwestern Republican governors with names like Snyder, Walker, and Kasich dream of bringing back.

Say what you want about Hoffa, we may need his like again someday soon. The times he lived in created him. The current Jimmy Hoffa, his son, is also the Teamsters president, but he is a product of milder times. Those times are changing, however -- for the worse, egged on by radical politicians, their sleazy financial backers, and their media propagandists. The current Jimmy Hoffa sees the possibility of a return to the days of labor wars over right-to-work-for-less bills.   Regarding Michigan Governor Snyder's recent attacks on labor, he says, "We're going to have a civil war in this state."

You can watch the clip at the link.
Hopefully, the current Jimmy Hoffa can win the war without making the same pact with the devil that his father did. The needs will be the same. Can the means be different?

************By the time he was done, the original Jimmy Hoffa ran the largest single union in the United States. The membership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters had grown from 75,000 in 1933 to 1.5 million strong when Hoffa became its president in 1957. If a company wanted something trucked, chances were that IBT would be doing the trucking. Got a problem with that?

Along the way, Hoffa ticked off everybody, including AFL-CIO President George Meany and the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee, Bobby Kennedy, who would eventually become U.S. attorney general. The confrontations were the stuff of legend. Said Kennedy on the Jack Paar show one night, "All of our lives are too intricately woven with this union to sit passively by and allow the Teamsters under Mr. Hoffa's leadership to create such a superpower in this country, a power greater than the people and greater than the government."

Bobby Kennedy saw the immensity of Hoffa's power, and he saw who was working with him. He even named them on live television. The names were Johnny Dio and Tony "Ducks" Corallo. Hoffa didn't cross picket lines. He crossed other lines, to both good and bad. The man was a ruthless, single-minded pragmatist. Some might say he was amoral. But he would probably reply along the lines of: "You want amoral? I got your amoral right here in this crowbar."

To do what was necessary, Hoffa had done a deal with the Mafia, just as FDR had done a deal with the Mafia when he wanted to keep our docks free of German sympathizers during WWII. Both actions had a cost, a big cost, but the goal was achieved in each case. There were differences in the two deals, though. FDR offered to overlook some issues. Hoffa took the devil into his house, and by 1964 he was going to prison. In 1967 he went in, sentenced to 13 years for jury tampering, attempted bribery, and fraud. Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.

By 1960 Hoffa had found an additional dog, a dog named Richard M. Nixon, the U.S. vice president and a former bagman, later possibly the most mobbed-up president this country has ever had. Although the teamsters usually endorsed Democrats, Nixon got their endorsement over JFK in the1960 presidential election. Think about it. We always hear about mobsters around the Kennedys, but this is how much the mob had penetrated the top in this country by 1960: The mob-affiliated IBT endorsed Nixon and did it again in 1968. Apparently Tricky Dick enjoyed some sort of special relationship. Rumors abound. It's not surprising that Nixon thought nothing of breaking into the Democratic Party offices, erasing tapes, or even sabotaging the 1968 Paris Peace Accords in an act of treason. For Nixon, as with Hoffa, no means to an end was out of bounds. Hey, it's just politics. Soldiers died unnecessarily? It's just business.

It's also not surprising that Nixon knew where hush money could be obtained when his Watergate scandal blew up -- "but that would be wrong" (wink, wink). We now know that Nixon always had bags of cash around, literally brown-paper grocery bags full, and he could always get more. His vice president, Spiro Agnew, even had it delivered to his office. It's a little more sophisticated today. We have K Street now.

Suffice to say that in 1971 Tricky Dick, now the president, pardoned James Hoffa and Hoffa left jail on the condition that he cease trying to regain control of the union. He even got an unheard-of $1.7 million pension. But the same single-minded focus that had driven him to build the union to such heights of power was not about to let him just retire to Florida with his pension. He wanted to run things again. The problem was that Hoffa's hand-picked successor, Frank Fitzsimmons, was well-liked by Nixon, and the mob found Fitzsimmons more pliable than Hoffa; such a coincidence!  Next thing ya know, Hoffa got into the wrong car and rode away into mystery.

The FBI says, in its 56-page "Hoffex memo" (1976), that Hoffa was murdered by mob figures who saw his desire to regain power as a threat to the Teamsters pension fund, which they now controlled. Interestingly, hundreds of millions of Teamster dollars had disappeared just before his disappearance.

************

Roseville (MI) detectives schlepp off soil samples from the site of the latest Hoffa "finding." As the Detroit Free Press reported, "Ballyhooed Jimmy Hoffa dig turns up more nothing." The "tipster" who provided the hot "tip" told the paper, "Maybe they moved the body."
I love the constant searching for Jimmy Hoffa's grave. It's the holy grail of pop culture. You could sell tickets every time someone says they think he's buried in their barn or under the porch. The gawkers arrive in droves. They even bring the kids. People probably even sell hot dogs. They should make it a holiday, with pageants, reenactments of Jimmy's last ride, and everything.

"Ain't nothin' to see here." But, that's the point. It's always in some town in Michigan or Indiana or some other godforsaken Nugent land, where there never has been anything to see. But still they come, hoping to see something, anything. It's palpable desperation. I suppose it's the same thing that causes people to buy a tabloid that proclaims: "Pictures of Princess Kate's Rear!" People may not have much time or money, but they are sure eager to part with some of either just to break the monotony. The Hoffa thing has the extra life because not only is it inexorably tied to Richard Nixon and the Mob, it's also a larger than life cult of personality thing.

For those of you who sadly missed the 1960s, Richard Nixon and the Mob was not some wild and crazy rock group. Neither was the Jimmy Hoffa Mob Experience. No, but Richard Nixon was crazy as any "Goodfella," and he and Hoffa must have seen something in each other, even if it was just the willingness to do anything for power. Both Nixon and those Mob folks were pretty damn crazy. You've seen The Sopranos. That Nixon wasn't literally on Tony's crew or one of the Goodfellas is simply an accident of geography and environment -- right guy, wrong place. Instead, he became Mr. "I Am the President" and Mr. "I Am Not a Crook." Hmmm, the evidence says otherwise, Dick. Things were different in those days, right? But how much will the future mirror the past?

Anyway, I'll tell you where Hoffa is really buried. No, it's not under some poor sod's driveway, as the latest tip went. And it wasn't under the end zone at the old New York Giants Stadium in the fabulous "Meadowlands" of industrial New Jersey. Here's the truth: Hoffa is buried in Nixon's grave, with Nixon, where he belongs. Two sides of the same coin, two peas in a pod, happily spooning for eternity.
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Americans considering guns in schools

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From Virginia to Texas to Missouri, public officials are getting serious about protecting school children.
In Virginia

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) said on Tuesday that it’s “time to have a discussion” about arming school officials, in wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. 

“If someone had been armed, there would have been a possibility to stop the person from coming into the school,” McDonnell said on Washington’s WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor” monthly program responding to a caller’s question. “I know there is a knee-jerk reaction against that, but I think we should have a discussion about it.” 

He continued: “If a person [like Sandy Hook’s principal Dawn Hochsprung] was armed and trained, could they have stopped the carnage? Perhaps.” . . .

Missouri (Long article worth reading)

The St. Louis County police have arranged to meet privately this week with education leaders to discuss safety measures — including the possibility of arming some school staff members. 

Police Chief Tim Fitch said the county already employs 33 school resource officers — police assigned to schools — who work in 12 districts and are mostly based in high schools. But concern is now focused on elementary schools, after Friday’s shooting spree that killed 20 students and six staff members in Newtown, Conn. 

Not every district can afford more officers to patrol elementary schools, and the county force can’t pull enough officers off their beats to do it immediately, Fitch said. So, he said, training and arming selected school workers is an option that must be considered. 

“We can talk on the back end of the need for funding of mental illness programs and gun control, but as a law enforcement officer, I’m focused on that five-minute window that it takes for the cops to get there while people are getting killed,” Fitch said. “There is somebody out there right now trying to figure out how to do something worse than this guy did, and there is only one way to end a threat, and that’s with lethal force.” 

Such a proposal would require a change to Missouri law, which forbids anyone but law enforcement from carrying a weapon into a school, noted Roland Corvington, a member of the county’s police board. . . . 

Texas

Lawmakers and educators in Texas say the way to guard against school shootings like last Friday's at a Connecticut elementary school is to make sure teachers can shoot back. While the rampage that left 20 young children and six adults dead in a small Northeastern community has sparked a national debate on gun control, assault weapons and a culture of violence, David Thweatt, superintendent of the 103-student Harrold Independent School District in Wilbarger County, said his teachers are armed and ready to protect their young charges.“We give our ‘Guardians’ training in addition to the regular Texas conceal-and-carry training,” Thweatt, whose school is about three hours northwest of Dallas, told FoxNews.com.  “It mainly entails improving accuracy…You know, as educators, we don’t have to be police officers and learn about Miranda Rights and related procedures. We just have to be accurate.” . . . .

More on Texas here

Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated Monday that he supported allowing teachers and administrators to carry concealed handguns in response to the Connecticut school massacre that left 20 children dead.
Local school districts should decide their own policies, Perry said. But if someone has obtained a concealed-handgun license, he said, “you should be able to carry your handgun anywhere in this state.” He clarified that private property owners should be allowed to impose their own restrictions.
Perry was asked about calls for stricter gun control laws Monday at a tea party forum in North Richland Hills. Perry said that he believed lawmakers should consider mental health issues as well as ways to make schools safer.
“It appears that this was a young man who was very disturbed,” Perry said.
Some school districts across the state already allow school personnel to carry guns. When Perry talked about how he had read about one district allowing teachers, administrators and others to carry weapons, he was interrupted by loud applause from the crowd. . . . 

On the other hand Michigan will still only allow open carry at schools.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has vetoed legislation that would allow concealed weapons in churches, schools and daycare centers. 

The Republican governor said in a release Tuesday that public venues need clear legal authority to ban firearms "if they see fit to do so." . . . 

Under existing law, people may openly carry guns in those and other locations but not concealed weapons. 

Concealed carry people stopping crime: Some more cases that I had previous missed from the last four months

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-- SURVEILLANCE VID SHOWS 71-YEAR-OLD CONCEALED CARRY HOLDER OPENING FIRE ON WOULD-BE ROBBERS

-- Something from the recent Portland Mall Shooting (from Investors Business Daily):

Before the tragedy in Connecticut, a shooter at an Oregon shopping mall was stopped by an armed citizen with a concealed carry permit who refused to be a victim, preventing another mass tragedy.

In the target-rich environment of the Clackamas Town Center two weeks before Christmas, the shooter managed to kill only two people before killing himself. A far worse tragedy was prevented when he was confronted by a hero named Nick Meli.
As the shooter was having difficulty with his weapon, Meli pulled his and took aim, reluctant to fire lest an innocent bystander be hit. But he didn't have to pull the trigger: The shooter fled when confronted, ending his own life before it could be done for him.
We will never know how many lives were saved by an armed citizen that day. . . .

Another version of the Portland Mall Shooting here:

While reports of Tuesday's shooting at the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Oregon, dominated the national media, until Friday's horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, one very important detail has been repeatedly (and intentionally) left out of the MSM's coverage.
The shooter, Jacob Tyler Roberts, was confronted with an armed citizen, at which time he ran away and shot himself. By the time police arrived on the scene, Roberts was already dead. . . .

-- FORMER FIREFIGHTER SHOOTS, KILLS ARMED ROBBER WITH LEGAL CONCEALED HANDGUN: ‘WHEN I GOT MY CHANCE, I HAD TO TAKE IT’

-- Arizona man stops robbery.

-- Here is another case from August:

A 43-year-old man was arrested Tuesday afternoon for threatening people after asking for cigarettes, according to Kitsap County sheriff's reports.
Deputies were called to the 1900 block of Pioneer Lane SE around 3 p.m. for a report that the man had yelled at two people who hadn't given him cigarettes. He had taken off his shirt to fight one man.
The man he challenged, however, had a valid concealed pistol license and drew his weapon, and the 43-year-old made threats he'd return there and "shoot the place up," deputies wrote.
Deputies arrived and searched for the suspect, not finding him at first. Deputies said he "suddenly came running out of a nearby apartment with his hands out in front of him" and yelled "freeze." He was holding a "shiny metallic object" that spurred deputies to draw their guns and take cover. . . .

New piece at US News: "Gun Restrictions Leave People Vulnerable and Helpless"

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My piece at US News starts this way:

When bad things happen with guns, the desire to ban guns is to take away guns is understandable. But doing that can often make problems worse. 

For example, it might seem obvious to protect people by banning guns in areas. But law-abiding citizens, not those intent on committing terrorist acts, obey these bans. Instead of making places safer, disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks. With just one single exception, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the United States in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns. 

This isn't random. If it were, . . . .