The Next Hurrah

The Next Open Thread

by DemFromCT

So many topics, so little time. There's SOTU tonite (the Bush rehab plan continures, but it won't work). There's the reality of Iraq (best wishes to Woodruff, his family, and everyone there, and their families... it's a tragedy that now has a face, and there's on-air proof it ain't safe there. The bullshit happy talk is another casualty of war). There's the reality of a corrupt GOP electing new corrupt leaders in the House. There's the NBC/WSJ poll which had Bush at 39% and says

Who do you want to see take the lead role in setting policy for the country--President Bush or Congress?

Congress 49%
Bush 25%

Say your piece, but read the interesting stuff my co-bloggers have been putting up here.

Some Questions for Alberto Gonzales

By Meteor Blades

For the past three months, Glenn Greenwald has been putting together one of the best First Amendment-oriented legal blogs in wwwLand. He has just generated an exceptional collection of 10 questions that the Senate Judiciary Committee should ask Alberto Gonzales when the Attorney General is the (only) witness at the hearings on "Wartime Executive Power and the NSA's Surveillance Authority."

I can't praise Glenn enough for his work on these. If the Democrats on the committee only asked these questions, and didn't let Gonzales get too slippery with his replies, it would be better than the entire set of sessions on Samuel Alito. And that's not hyperbole.

You can read all 10 questions at this link and this one.

A sample to whet your appetite:

Never Surrender

By Meteor Blades

Even though we knew it was a dicey proposition from the get-go, many of us are righteously furious about the cloture vote, especially furious that so many of the Democrats who crossed the line couldn't even fall back on the rationalization that their "aye" was essential in order to survive politically in a swing or red state.

Our Growing Income Inequality

By Mimikatz

On the eve of President Bush’s 6^th State of the Union message, three new reports from the Center for Budget Policies and Priorities show just where we are—and where we are heading—as a nation, and if you aren’t in at least the top 20%, if not the top 5%, it isn’t pretty.  First, new data from the Congressional Budget Office demonstate that income inequality is not only at historically high levels, the disparities are accelerating under President Bush.  Second, the reasons for this are not hard to find.  The CBO also has data showing that capital income has become increasingly concentrated among the very rich and the very, very rich, partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts.  Finally, a third report shows state by state how the highest income groups have recovered quite nicely from the stock market drop of 2000-2001, while middle and lower income earners have not recovered from the associated recession, and—at least in states with enough wealthy to measure—the incomes of the top fifth have risen the most.   So while President Bush in the State of the Union Speech will tout his “Ownership Society” and boast that more Americans than ever own stocks, the fact is that the share of capital income received by the bottom 80% of the population dropped from 23.5% in 1989 to 12.6% in 2003, while the share the top 1% got rose to an unprecendented 57.7%.  And it is going to get worse.

Endnotes on the Nuclear Option -- Part III

by Kagro X

If we weren't a family blog, I could have headlined this one "Gang (of 14) Banged! Lindsay Graham F*cks 13 Senators in One Day!"

Word is that CNN is reporting the "Gang of 14" will meet today, presumably to declare the possibility of a filibuster of the Alito nomination dead. That the Gang is getting together to say so is, we must assume, a declaration that the now-infamous "extraordinary circumstances" bar has not been cleared.

But as I've suggested before, perhaps the Senators are looking in the wrong place for their circumstances. What if the guy on the other side of the table is what's extraordinary about the nomination?

Culture of Corruption

by DemFromCT

More headaches to spoil the SOTU party. While RonK goes over the gory details, the Big Picture hasn't changed:

In eight concise paragraphs, two moderate and two conservative House Republicans put into writing last week what they say many of their colleagues quietly fear: the GOP's plunging poll numbers, rising public support for a Congress controlled by Democrats and the increasing belief among voters that the Republican Party is corrupt.

House Republicans will gather Thursday to elect a successor to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) as majority leader, and the perceptions of corruption, though "neither fair nor accurate . . . are reality," Reps. Jim Kolbe (Ariz.), Charles Bass (N.H.), Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Tom Feeney (Fla.) wrote in a letter to their colleagues, imploring them to vote for change. "We must realize that the Majority we have all worked so hard for is in jeopardy."

It's so interesting that the Republicans seem so much more aware of this than the press. This Republican scandal is going to grow like mushrooms after the rain. The Republicans are nervous because they know better than anyone what's hiding under the rock, and what would scurry away under the light of day once it's turned over.

Meanwhile, Bush's stuck poll numbers (42% and holding), along with Dem preferences for Congress and policy, hang over everything.

Have a nice speech, boys. The audience has been declining every year (38 million last year, down from a peak in the 60 millions). But reminding Americans how overinsured they are for health care doesn't seem like such a smart idea to me. And would you trust your health care financing to a party as corrupt as the Republicans are? Only if your'e an insurance executive.

Abramoff Intermission: Bloomberg and Prospect

by RonK, Seattle

[Obligatory Disclaimer: None of this makes anybody guilty if it's true. None of this makes anybody guilty if it's not. Osama bin Laden is a bad, bad man. Jack Abramoff is a bad man.]

Sometimes the trained eye is drawn to numbers that just don't look right on the page. And sometimes the numbers are not right.

Bloomberg filed a quick & dirty rundown on Abramoff-influenced tribal campaign contributions in December. This would have been quickly forgotten except that it said the Saginaw Chippewa tribe gave $277,210 to Dem's in 2001-2004, versus $279,000 in 1997-2000. Last week the report made a stellar (lunar?) comeback, as a coven of blog-harpies dragged it out of the morgue for a second dance in the spolight

What's the big deal? I argued that Abramoff directed his tribal clients to increase campaign contributions to both parties. ("Invariably".) The Bloomberg report offered one lone published exception, albeit to the tune of less than $2K. Blogstorm ensued.

I based my comparisons on the 2000 and 2002 cycles (data-rich, adjacent in time, and consistent in governing law). Pre-Jack history is sparse, and an eccentric $220K push to the DCCC in the 1998 cycle swamped the Saginaw baseline (which consists of about a dozen transactions). Is it a pattern? Or just a history? [More on that in future posts.]

But something else didn't add up. Literally.

Where Is Abu Zubaydah?

by emptywheel

Am I the only one who is disturbed that our government has disappeared all the Al Qaeda leadership rather than dealing with them transparently?

I just finished James Risen's new book in which Abu Zubaydah features prominently. First there's the anecdote where, a few days after Abu Zubaydah's capture and transfer to Thailand, Bush asked Tenet what kind of intelligence they had gotten from Zubaydah. None, Tenet explained, he's still so doped up for his injuries he can't talk coherently.

Bush turned to Tenet and asked: "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" (22)

Then there's the story near the end of the book about finding--and not pursuing--Zubaydah's ATM cards. Don't want to know who's filling Zubaydah's bank accounts, you see, for fear you'll discover it's your crack oil dealer.

Reading of Zubaydah's capture made me ask, for the umpteenth time, why haven't we hard of Zubaydah's military tribunal and execution? Why are we still holding him in an undisclosed location, almost 4 years after we captured him, and presumably long after he's been of any intelligence value?

More of the Narrative

by DemFromCT

We've presented the polls. We've talked about the failures. And the narrative continues...

President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday night marks the opening of a midterm election year eagerly anticipated by Democrats and fraught with worries for Republicans, whose hopes in November may depend in large part on how successfully Bush can turn around his troubled presidency.

After his reelection victory in 2004, Bush often pointed out that he would never again be on a ballot as a candidate. But the coming year in many ways represents another national campaign for the president, aimed at preserving the gains his party has made in the past five years, as well as rehabilitating a reputation that has come under brutal assault from the opposition in recent months.

His reputation (that of a failure) has been trashed by his own actions, not by 'assault from the opposition'. He's been a failure since his bidness days in Texas (see Molly Ivins). he's strongly disliked by 38-40% of the population and tolerated by another 40%, though just barely. And all discussion of current scandals, impeachment, etc should be seen through the prism of an unpopular President who is the most polarizing in polling history.

Child Support Is a Pro-Life Issue

by emptywheel

Mark Schmitt has an important post up about Republican cuts in child support enforcement in the Budget bill. I agree with him that cutting enforcement funds for child support is about the most churlish short-sighted thing you can do.

And it worked. In 2004, 51% of child support was paid. From 18% to 51% is a huge transformation. I doubt that anyone in the mid-1990s would have predicted that. One study showed that improved child support enforcement was responsible for a quarter of the reduction in welfare caseloads. See this report from the Center on Law and Social Policy for a summary of the success.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cuts in the incentive payments to states will cost families $8.4 billion in child support. Even that estimate assumes that states will make up half of the federal money they will lose; if they don"t, children will lose twice as much in child support.

The era of bipartisan collaboration on basic problems like child support or health care is long gone. I"ve gotten used to that. What I can"t grasp is why this Republican majority wants to take some of the basic accomplishments of that era, accomplishments that took a decade or more of serious work, and casually toss them aside.

I'm no expert about this issue. But I remember clearly friends' stories about how impossible it was to collect child support across state lines in the early 1990s. Men basically could leave the state, go to a lax enforcement state (I lived in UT at the time and everyone seemed to head for TX), and basically hide from any and all responsibility for the children they had fathered.

I'm not just disgusted with Republican attempts to turn back the clock to the deadbeat dad days. I'm disappointed Democrats haven't more clearly demonstrated the hypocrisy of dedicating your political energy to eliminating access to choice, while at the same time effectively absolving men of all responsibility for the fetus-people they father.