Washblog

Traitors!

Splitters!

Liebermans!

In case you missed this little gem from the usually-good Freakonomics Blog you really MUST read it.

Simple:

That's up to you, Edwards supporters.

From today's Washington Post:

McCain Breaks With Bush on Climate Policy

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; A06

PORTLAND, Ore., May 12 -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made a sharp break with President Bush on Monday, saying that the United States should adopt mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions as well as issue tradable emissions credits to polluters to spur technological innovation.

"The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington," he said, speaking at a Portland training facility for Vestas Wind Technology. "We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.

Here's a little something for the anti-regulation folks down in Southern California: a copy of an email I just sent to the Dental Board of California.

Kos et al, keep referring to the fact that some caucus states haven't released their popular vote numbers.

Of course they started even before Pennsylvania, but it just so happens that I was in Pennsylvania - in 2005 - when I heard what I now recognize as the beginning of John McCain's Presidential bid.

The Republicans are, once again, running America's political theater: they are writing the dialogue, arranging the scenery and calling out stage directions from the shadows.

Expect a Republican tour de force in 2008.

One storyline instantly seized upon from our financial crisis was that of the scummy borrower sneakily attempting to fool the system by getting himself a "no-doc" subprime loan.

There are shocking stories of hack real estate speculators who bought multiple properties despite working-class incomes. This is a politically appealing narrative in the way the "welfare queen" narrative was appealing, but is it reasonable?

Let's look at who really profited and how.

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Dlaw's updated story on WAMU etc: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE... (N.M)

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...read this article.

Jim Cramer may be a yelling fool sometimes, but he has been useful in blowing the trumpet on the Credit Crisis while others have attempted to ignore it - and he's been right all along. And on a local angle, some of you may, I imagine, be particularly interested in his analysis that Washington Mutual is in danger of a bank failure.

[editor's note, by dlaw]I'm sorry if some of this stuff sounds "wonkish". I'm not really a wonk so I'm kind of "journaling" the process of figuring out what this all means and why it's a very big story. ALSO I AM ADDING AN INFORMATIVE COMIC SLIDE SHOW W/ PROFANITY!

[Front paged: NM]

Genene Jones, Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner, Kristen Gilbert, Vickie Dawn Jackson, Harold Shipman, Orville Lynn Majors, Donald Harvey, Beverley Allitt, Charles Cullen, Christine Malevre, Elfren Saldivar -

What do all these people have in common? They are all convicted serial murderers, most of whom are thought to have taken the lives of more human beings than Ted Bundy. All were suspected well before their crimes were even investigated and all their murder sprees went on for multiple years without anything being done to stop them. Most were not even investigated even after being linked to one or more suspicious deaths they were known to have had the means and opportunity to have caused. Many were not even fired although they were widely reputed by their own co-workers to have done these murders in their own workplaces. Some recruited their co-workers to aid and abet their murder and some even recruited co-workers to murder along with them.

They are not just serial murderers, but the most murderous of all kinds of serial murderers. The other thing that ties them together? They were all healthcare workers treating the most vulnerable and helpless among us.

[Ed Note: merits discussion. A.R.]

I couldn't sleep tonight and watched the Bill Moyers Journal that Mr. Ruger incorrectly characterizes in his front-paged post. Senator Murray and Congressman Dicks must answer for their efforts to secure taxpayer dollars for projects of questionable merit in conference, off the books, outside the more transparent parts of the legislative process.

And Democrats must RUN FOR OFFICE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE and stop complaining. Therefore,when I saw Ralph Nader announce his candidacy on "Meet The Press," I welcomed Mr. Ralph Nader's entry into the Presidential race and mocked Tim Russert whining in proxy for the Democrats. Nader - reminding us that the Democratic message was so bad in 2000 that 250,000 Florida Democrats voted for Bush - will be a welcome addition.

Forget being one-issue voters. There seems to be a large chunk of the Democratic Party that are turning into one-part-of-one-issue voters.

Led by Paul  Krugman, these hyper-purists will apparently purge their minds of the memory of votes on the Iraq war (hell, war resolutions co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman), flag-burning amendments, DLC, New Democrat Coalition, triangulation, and all manner of  offenses to the Progressive ideal, so long as a candidate includes that one word in her health care proposal: "mandate".

It's not a single-issue litmus test, but a single-word-of-a-single-issue litmus test.  

At this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial closed down 370 points and all the broad indices were down 3% at least.

I'm not writing this to scare anyone. I believe that there we are in a position that is almost unique in human history. We have the political, communications, finance, industrial and medical technologies not only to turn around our own economy but to expand our recovery into an economic rally worldwide.

The question is whether we have the will.

In this article in the New York Times, we are once again treated to the ignorance and racism of "conservative" Southern voters.

But why not have a national Robert E. Lee holiday? Secession? Racism? Treason? What's the problem?

The problem, at some level, is these people. It is time to put the South in its place.

In his column "Lessons of 1992", Paul Krugman tells us that policy specifics are very important and (in another thinly-veiled, anti-Obama message) tells us that without them we are doomed to failure.

In that Krugman is more-or-less in the policy specifics business, I'm sure he believes this, but as Arthur Ruger gracefully points out in his front-paged post (which I highly recommend), an expression of high ideals and core values is also essential to create support for policy.

Most of the essential policies the Roosevelt administration brought with it into office were too boring and technical for words. But they had a message - America would get a "New Deal". And "New Deal" were the two essential words America needed to hear to keep it from the jaws of despair and likely descent into fascism.