Celebrate steamy nights with Gwyneth Paltrow

Inside the mood for hot romance? Men, are you or the lady also into alt-med? A fan of Gwynneth Paltrow and her steamed vagina?

She's here for you. For just $75, you can get this Paltrow allegedly vagina-scented candle.

Kind o like this?

That night's gonna be REAL romantic.

And, you're gonna be a $75 poorer sucker.

At The Cut, Goopster friend Douglas Little puts his spin on how the two of them made this. As part of that, he goes snobby in response to Martha Stewart and says "this was never intended for the masses."

Bullshit and marketing-speak right there.

Don't make yourself $75 poorer by buying one, even though Little says they're back in stock.

So much for 'liberal' Austin; drop-dead proof it ain't

Everybody in Texas, especially those who live there, and lot who live outside of Texas, likes to talk about how liberal Austin is.

Well, for some time, I've said that by New Deal or Great Society types of measures, that ain't so true.

And now, the Austin American Statesman agrees, in lots of detail.

Let's start with this:

The metro area’s elevated levels of income, education and occupational segregation combined to make Austin the most economically segregated large metro and the third-most segregated among metros of all sizes, the study said.

Followed by this, that also applies to Silicon Valley, Massachusetts’ Silicon Corridor and other similar areas:

Denser and more populous metro areas tended to post higher rates of economic segregation, the authors said. Yet a series of studies by the institute suggest that a large creative class tends to exacerbate those divides even further.

That said, even compared to other techie areas, Austin didn't do so well.

By one of that study’s key measures, Austin’s upward mobility rate trailed only three other Texas metro areas — Dallas, Killeen and Waco — and it lagged well behind the tech-savvy hubs in Silicon Valley, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

So why is this?

My theory? This is connected with that New Deal and Great Society issue, especially that second paragraph.

Techsters think that supporting gay rights or nth-wave feminism makes them liberal, even as they ignore widening income inequality, first.

Second, their incomes let them buy their way into economic segregation that feeds educational segregation, too. It's called the suburbs, or unincorporated county areas. You know, like Westlake.

Indeed, the story goes on to note that the influx of tech workers increased the economic segregation.

That said, I've heard people in the past talk about either "the city of Austin" or "old vs. new Austin."

On the first? Austin the city itself was segregated long ago. Double-decking I-35 reinforced that, but it didn't cause that.

On the second? When did you start living in Austin yourself? Have you ever lived in South Austin, or in vicinity of MLK or Caesar Chavez streets?

Just visiting Fifth Street as a hipster doesn't qualify.

And, finally, why is this worse even in Austin than in Silicon Valley?

Because, as the story reminds us, this is Texas:

“While this isn’t unique to Austin, economic segregation is magnified here along race (and) ethnicity lines,” he said. “Our severe disparities in educational attainment according to race (and) ethnicity give our economic segregation in Austin a particularly pernicious quality.”

That’s why.

And, until the techsters that came to Austin from out of state admit that, they're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

But, but, Austin's so liberal.

Well, if we take metro Austin to be coterminous with Travis County, maybe not.

In 2012, Travis County, in the presidential election, went 60 percent Democratic. Before that, it was 64 percent in 2008, 56 percent in 2004, 42 percent (and 11 percent other, presumably almost all Nader) in 2000, and 52 percent (with 8 percent other) in 1996, per its City-Data page.

Sounds liberal for Texas, doesn't it?

You know who does better?

El Paso. Per City-Data, here's El Paso County's totals:

2012 — 66 percent

2008 — 66 percent

2004 — 56 percent

2000 — 28 percent

1996 — 62 percent

I guess Bush's Spanish was enough to sell El Pasoans in 2000; no other clue as to what was up.

Beyond that, though, it's clear, that El Paso is more liberal than Austin. And why? A large minority, specifically Hispanic, population is a fair reason why. But, minorities can be good neoliberals, not New Deal liberals, too. Just ask Dear Leader. Or, not too far from Austin, just ask the Castro brothers.

In El Paso, part of that is also traditional blue-collar jobs, including smelting and things like that. Union jobs. The types of jobs that techie neoliberals (or proto-libertarians in "transition") sneer at.

Austinites might say, "But, Austin is weighted down by all the 'red' outlying areas."

Well, pseudoliberal apologists, I had just Travis County on the links above. I didn't include Williamson County. And Austin itself makes up almost 90 percent of Travis County. If I had included Williamson County, which is red, but less red than the state's average, it would have been far different. Austin Metro would be about 53-54 percent Democratic.

El Paso is a smaller percentage of El Paso County, and it has the conservative military presence of Fort Bliss, to boot. And, if I expanded Metro El Paso to include Doña Ana County, New Mexico, which is bluish, those voting percentages would only drop about 2, maybe 3 points.

And, while smaller in size, places like Laredo (Webb County) and elsewhere in the Valley are even more blue than El Paso.

Techie Austin? It's white (with some Asians), and libertarian, not liberal. El Paso is real liberal Texas, along with Hispanic areas in the Valley.

And, that, connected with the problem of getting Hispanic voters to turn out, outside of presidential elections, is why Battleground Texas was clueless, as well as sucky, when it wasn't just grandstanding and patting itself on the back.

And, as for the rhetorical questions I asked above, about "where did you live in Austin"? That applies if you moved to Austin 5 years ago, 15 years ago, or 25 years ago, or if you were born there 40 or more years ago.

There's nothing wrong with support for gay and lesbian, or transgender, rights, or other "interest group" liberalism, of course. But, if you're focused on that without income equality, labor organization and other things, you're not really that liberal.

Limousine liberals at Harvard? Say it ain't so

So, now that Harvard profs might have to pay a bunch more for health care, and the university says that this is a consequence of cost-control features of Obamacare, they're up in arms, eh, at least if they make over $95,000 a year. (See the bottom for more on that tidbit.)

Here's the skinny:

Harvard is a microcosm of what’s happening in health care in the country,” said David M. Cutler, a health economist at the university who was an adviser to President Obama’s 2008 campaign. But only up to a point: Professors at Harvard have until now generally avoided the higher expenses that other employers have been passing on to employees. That makes the outrage among the faculty remarkable, Mr. Cutler said, because “Harvard was and remains a very generous employer.”

 In Harvard’s health care enrollment guide for 2015, the university said it “must respond to the national trend of rising health care costs, including some driven by health care reform,” in the form of the Affordable Care Act. The guide said that Harvard faced “added costs” because of provisions in thehealth care law that extend coverage for children up to age 26, offer free preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies and, starting in 2018, add a tax on high-cost insurance, known as the Cadillac tax.

Per the rest of the story, this isn't really anything unreasonable:

The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

 Previously, Harvard employees paid a portion of insurance premiums and had low out-of-pocket costs when they received care.

I mean, I don't know about you, but, if it didn't cost me an arm and a leg on my share of monthly premiums, I'd be killing people to have an insurance plan with an annual of just $250, let alone the other stuff.

And, that's here in low-cost Texas. 

At Cambridge? I'd be killing people, burying them, digging them back up and re-killing them.

And, if it really leads that many people at Harvard to defer that many medical procedures, as some of the boo-hooers are claiming?

That's the story line from some:

Jerry R. Green, a professor of economics and a former provost who has been on the Harvard faculty for more than four decades, said the new out-of-pocket costs could lead people to defer medical care or diagnostic tests, causing more serious illnesses and costly complications in the future.

 “It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” Professor Green said. “I don’t think there’s any government in the world that would tax the sick.”

Puhleeeeze on the rhetoric.

Getting past that "taxing the sick" line, there is a real rhetorical question lurking, though:

Does that mean that income inequality is a problem at Harvard?

One Harvard prof claims that's the case, on the surface:

Mary D. Lewis, a professor who specializes in the history of modern France and has led opposition to the benefit changes, said they were tantamount to a pay cut.  …

 "None of us who protested was motivated by our own bottom line so much as by the principle,” Ms. Lewis said, expressing concern about the impact of the changes on lower-paid employees.

Well, Prof. Lewis, you need to talk to President Gilpin about that income inequality, then.

Besides, the university says it has an insurance subsidy program for lower-income people.

Which, at Harvard, is anybody making less than $95K. No, really:

Although out-of-pocket costs over all for a typical Harvard employee are to increase in 2015, administrators said premiums would decline slightly. They noted that the university, which has an endowment valued at more than $36 billion, had an unusual program to provide protection against high out-of-pocket costs for employees earning $95,000 a year or less. 

So, Jerry Green and Mary Lewis? Put a sock in it.

See, it's things like this, or the fact that no yellow school bus from Boston ever rolled up to Hyannisport, or that white Western liberal environmentalists defend defacing indigenous history in Peru that gives liberalism a bad name at times among poor whites, or minorities.

Ooh, what's that I hear? Could it be the sound of an ox being gored in Harvard Yard?

#Islamofascism, #BigTobacco, #Hitchens as a-hole

A Big Tobacco poseur trying to blow smoke in our eyes?

With some parallels to Ed Abbey ....

After putting the last touches on my "the dark side of Hitchens" blog post, I got to thinking about 9/11, his being one of the first people to use the word "Islamofascism" and similar, and a newspaper column I wrote on the first anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

I tied those thoughts together with Christopher Hitchens' known smoking history, his claims to be standing up against totalitarianism throughout his life, and his attitudes toward control of smoking in public places, and knew I had another blog post to write, even if it further angered people who want to think of nothing other than Secular St. Christopher.

So, here goes, starting with a synopsis of that 2002 newspaper column.

In that column, while not minimizing 9/11, I reminded readers of how many other things in America, usually recurring situations whose lessening was a matter of public policy in general or public health policy in particular, killed the same amount of people as al Qaeda did on 9/11, albeit perhaps over a week's time, or a month's rather than a day's time.

For example, I said diabetes kills X people per month, and is at least controllable, especially with Type 2, through diet. I said traffic accidents killed about 50,000 per year, and that safer driving, driving with seat belts, and driving while sober could eliminate many of those deaths.

Finally, I said that cigarettes killed about as many people every two days as al-Qaeda did that one day. And then killed about as many more the next two days. And again, the next two, ad infinitum.

Well, there's no "Big Sugar," re diabetes, not really. And even a "Big Alcohol" possible role in DWI fatalities is small.

Big Tobacco? Quite different. Now, that column didn't go beyond this, because that wasn't its focus.

But, I am now doing so, and going to riff on Big Tobacco and some of the issues Hitchens claimed to fight for, or against.

My focus now is, not just on Big Tobacco per se, but how, via being a poseur for Big Tobacco, Hitchens was a liar about what he claimed to stand for.

No, not just morally or psychogically inconsistent. Not even contradicting himself in a Whitmanesque, multitudes-containing way.

But lying to himself (and to us), and, I believe, quite consciously, all while being an asshole, to get in the last part of the title. More below the fold.

More liberal Obama enablers

Oh, they're going to protest his threatened social service budget cuts, sellouts to the GOP, etc.

But, showing that they've learned the "compromise away the compromise in advance" idea from Dear Leader, they're still going to vote for him:

A liberal group upset over potential cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security delivered pledges Friday to President Barack Obama's national campaign headquarters threatening to pull its support.

About a dozen people representing the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered what they said were 200,000 pledges from people who will refuse to donate or volunteer for Obama's re-election campaign if he cuts the entitlement programs.

"It's not a question of who they're going to support for president, they're going to vote for Barack Obama. It's a question of where their time and money is going to go," spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

And, I use "enabler" just like the spouse/lover of an alcoholic is an "enabler." Threatening to cut off your donations? They're a pittance of Dear Leader's proposed billion-dollar campaign. Your volunteering time? Enough Obama fear-mongering will probably bring most of you back to do that, too.

Charles Blow, blowhard

The New York Times columnist Charles Blow is often OK, though seldom of much depth.

Today, he's not even that.

Blow reads the riot act to left-liberals, etc., who threaten to undermine the Democratic party, hand political victories to Republicans, etc. It's a screed that could have been written straight out of the Obama White House, and in fact, I wonder if it was.

Along the way, Blow perpetuates stereotypes such as left-liberalism is largely confined to the coasts (without talking about trying to educate the heartland better — Blow seriously needs to read "What's the Matter with Kansas"), and then gets worse, when he talks about whether a "purging" is imminent or not.

First, Mr. Blow-hard, Democrats don't have the balls to purge anybody.

Second, if there were a purge, Mr. Preznit Kumbaya would try to purge the left-liberals you demonize.

Third, you're right Obama doesn't have a progressive base. I "saw through him" three full years ago.

Fourth, if the progressives really aren't that numerous, how can they be the ones doing the "purging"? Talk about poor logic.

Finally, all of this is why I'm not a Democrat.

Howard Dean flunky doesn't speak for me

Levana Layendecker, the communications director of Democracy for America, a group that's the remnants of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, claims that Obama is still the progressives' man. In fact, Dean himself says that.

Well, Howie Dean built his "progressive cred" on a gay marriage bill in Vermont that he wasn't that thrilled about until it landed on his desk and he knew he'd have a shitstorm if he vetoed it. Other than that, he is bupkis as far as true liberalism.

Apparently Howie and his mouthpiece don't pay attention to places like Truthout and its new open letter to the "left establishment."

Now, that said, Howie probably DOES speak for Talking Points Memo; given a staff-generated piece that long, without any blog-editorializing to go along with it, could it be otherwise?

Liberals SHOULD worry about Kagan

Liberals should worry about Elena Kagan not only in her own self as not being that liberal on the Supreme Court, but as symptomatic of an ongoing trend in that area.

Further proof of that? And of pseudo-liberal presidential cravenness? The NYT notes that not since Thurgood Marshall in 1967 have liberals really been jazzed about a SCOTUS nominee. (LBJ's biggest mistake outside of Vietnam was not nominating him, rather than crony Abe Fortas, to be the Chief a year later.)

Oh, and liberals SHOULD complain about Kagan:

“Why do the conservatives always get the conservatives, but we don’t get to get the liberals?” Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, asked the Web site Politico recently, voicing the frustration of the left when Ms. Kagan was considered a front-runner but was not yet Mr. Obama’s selection. “What the hell is that all about?”

More proof from that same story?

Richard A. Posner, a conservative appeals court judge in Chicago, and William M. Landes, his colleague from the University of Chicago law school, ranked all 43 justices from 1937 to 2006 by ideology and found that four of the five most conservative ones are on the current court. Even the moderate swing vote, Justice Kennedy, was the 10th most conservative over that period. By contrast, none of the current justices ranks among the five most liberal members, and only Justice Ginsburg is in the top 10.

Remember, Posner would have incentive to UNDERsell conservative bona fides to push the court further right.

Oh, and it's not just executive power to worry about from Kagan.

Her eptitude as Solicitor General is laughable, despite The One's claims about her brilliance, as posted on a blog at TPM. It's hard to imagine her having the skill, or the gravitas bestowed by other justices, to be able to form voting consensuses.

Take back progressivism – from Obama

More and more progressives are waking up to that idea, as Dana Milbank notes, but the numbers are still small. And, most of the “dissidents” will still pull the “D” lever in 2012, assuming Obama runs again and is renominated.

‘Carnival of the Liberals’ isn’t

Another Carnival of the Liberals is out. Again, yours truly didn’t make the cut.

CotL is different than most blog carnivals in that it has a 10-post cutoff for posts each issue, making it more selective, if you will, than two other blog carnivals to whom I regularly submit.

My submission this time?

Tim Geithner compares Obama to Bush. Nuff said?

It’s not the first time that something that critiques what passes for American liberalism from further left hasn’t made the cut. That’s OK in and of itself.

What’s not OK from where blog is some of the stuff that gets in.

The main offender? The blogger known as Greta Christina, whose posts regularly make the Top 10 cut, even when, as this time around (no link will be provided), they’re of no connection to any liberal issue. A blog post deriding conspiracy theories is fine for, say, Skeptics’ Circle, but it had nothing to do with liberalism. And, she does nothing for me anyway.

Beyond that, seeing comments yesterday on this Washington Monthly post by CotL host Dr. Biobrain, I now realize why I’m not making the cut. (His comments to my Geithner post only reinforce that. Note to Democrats only "liberals" like Biobrain – look in the mirror before calling somebody like me closed-minded.)

When the idea of someone being to the left of Obama is basically derided, I don’t need to bang my head against that wall any more.

So, I doubt I’ll bother submitting anymore. I can always post my best left-liberal comment of the last two weeks to the blog that hosts the particular CotL.

Jim Leach in the Cabinet?

Yes, according to Obama Svengali John Podesta, the neolib financial sellout of the incoming Obama Administration is almost complete. Smell the Change™!

One of the three coauthors of 1999’s Gramm-LEACH-Bliley legislation, former GOP Congressman Jim Leach, will be somewhere in the Cabinet, according to Podesta.

Leach’s early endorsement of Obama should have made any real progressive or liberal start smelling a rat six months ago, coming from Chicago’s South Side and riding a horse named Change™! No wonder Obama once said he hated the slogan.

Joe Conason oversimplifies history

Contrary to his article about Obama picking up the mantle of the more idealistic side of the Slickster and running with it:
• Recalcitrant Democratic senators helped kill his healthcare plan;
• He never presented Kyoto to the Senate or even considered doing so;
• Does “other profoundly important reforms” include Clinton’s part in the financial deregulation push?
• Democratic policies under Clinton may have slowed the rate of income inequality increase, but didn’t actually reverse that, and certainly not in any structural way.

First, Conason knows better, and is really in the bag on this one.

Second, I’m afraid that the Bill Clinton of the bullet points is exactly whose mantle Obama will pick up.

HERE is a bailout idea with teeth

As part of a bailout agreement, the DOJ agrees to investigate past and/or present CEOs of all mortgage companies that offered liars’ loans, for possible fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, etc.

DOJ also agrees to investigate CEOs of investment banks, hedge funds, reinsurers, etc. who bought mortgage-based securities with liars loans in them, for similar criminality.

Beyond criminality, DOJ promises to sue, as well, per available evidence, any such CEOs.

Would be a wonderful idea, but folks such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, just to mention Congressional Democrats with the most connections to the financial sector —

I’m sorry, I forgot Barak Obama with top campaign contributor Goldman Sachs in there —

Would strangle this in the cradle.

Why you should NOT trust Dems in ‘Immunity 2.0’ bailout

Think “tort reform” in 1995; think GLB in 1999

Not only did 2/3 of House Dems for FOR Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999 (many Democratic cover-ups will point ONLY to the party-line Senate vote, while ignoring the House vote and the fact that the House reported it out of committee before the Senate, but also …

A narrow majority of Dems voted FOR The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 in the House, with a substantial minority of Senate Dems going along — 69-30 overall, with a 26-16 split against by Democrats. However, such “stalwarts” as Reid, Dodd, Kerry and even Harkin and Kennedy all voted yes; Leahy, Feingold and (surprisingly) Joe Biden were among top no votes.

Hell, Dodd was even a cosponsor!

(On GLB, other House yes votes include Rangel, Patrick Kennedy, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Ackerman, David Bonior, both Udalls, Sandy Levin, Murtha, Oberstar and others. House roll call here)

In the House, supposedly progressive minority Democrats such as Shelia Jackson-Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson were among the yes voters, along with Big Bill Richardson and Chuck Schumer (shock me again) among others.

And, you know who — Passive Pelosi™ of course voted yes.

And, you can’t even blame the Slickster for this one. He vetoed it and got overridden.

This was a fulcrum piece of legislation from Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and the start of the conservative “tort reform” battle at the federal level, and Democrats couldn’t muster enough numbers to uphold a Clinton veto — one of just two vetoes of his that were overridden.

So, on Uncle Henry’s Used Derivatives Bailout, Passive Pelosi™ and Land-Swap Harry Reid will bit a bit, then roll over and play dead.

Andy, you know what?

So will about 98 percent of registered Democratic voters who are politically active.

Even where they have Green (or Socialist/Social Democratic) alternatives on the ballot for president, or even local Congressional races, you'll listen to Democrats' fear-mongering.

“What’s the Matter with Kansas” has nothing on this.

Sidebar: It’s “interesting” that Uncle Harry made his immunity request the same day Attorney General Mike Mukasey officially played the immunity card in the FISA/telecom fight.

Kevin Drum is a DLCer

This post of his last week, approvingly linking to Tyler Cowan and his claim that immigration doesn’t depress wages – without distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration – was the light-bulb moment.

OK with illegal immigration depressing wages? Hiding that fact by refusing to talk about illegal immigration? Check?

OK with “free” trade but won’t ever talk about fair trade? Check?

An Iraq war hawk who never really has apologized for his stupidity? Check.

Democratic Leadership Council, American neoliberal, however exactly you want to parse it, Drum is it.

Of course, so is his employer.

How WM ever settled on him, I don’t know. Atrios (Duncan Black) has government experience and an economics graduate degree. Josh Marshall had a history master’s and journalism experience before starting TPM. Don’t start me on Orange Satan.

Sham impeachment hearing update

Yesterday, I called today’s House Judiciary impeachment hearing a sham, above all for the reason that no impeachment vote will actually be allowed, but for the number of people banned from the witness list.

Well, the actual hearing has become even MORE of a sham, with Cindy Sheehan and other activists evicted from the gallery. Their crime?

Applauding too loud when witness Vincent Bugliosi said President Bush should be indicted for first-degree murder for lying us into Iraq.

But, THAT’s not all.

A person in fatigues, claiming to be a veteran, was barred for wearing an anti-war pin. And, John Conyers was OK with this:

Conyers instructed committee staff and Capitol police officers to “ask anyone with such signs to either remove them or leave the hearing room from this point on.”

This request kicked off more than three minutes of disruption and commotion as blue-clad police officers entered the crowd to escort out a man wearing camouflage fatigues and an button with an anti-war button.

“You’re hassling a veteran for wearing a pin? That’s an outrage!” another spectator shouted, before escorting himself from the hearing room.

But, THAT’s not all. More of Conyers in the tank.

A committee aide tells RAW STORY that members were cautioned to abide by the Rules of the House, which prohibit lawmakers from “impugning” the president’s character during official debate. Some apparently took this to mean they could not explicitly call for Bush' impeachment. None of this would stop Republicans from accusing the committee's majority of seeking just that.

And, just what does “impugn” mean? Wearing a button?

And, Conyers wouldn’t even USE the “I-word”:

The prepared text of Chairman John Conyers opening remarks referred to Congress’s “power to impeach.” When he spoke before the committee, Conyers modified that line to the “power to remove through the constitutional process” officials who abused their powers.

With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans, eh?

‘Impeachment’ hearing July 25 will be Shakespearean

Tomorrow, if nothing more than symbolically, is a long-awaited day for many of us true liberals who think Nancy Pelosi is full of it for her “taking impeachment off the table.”
The House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on one article of impeachmentproffered by Dennis Kucinich.

Shakespearean? How?

“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”:

The committee can talk about anything deemed to be abuse of power by the president or the White House but not vote to impeach him, the first step toward removing him from office.

Beyond that, here's more “sound and fury, signifying nothing”:

1. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, apparently taking his cue from Passive Pelosi™, or perhaps acting on his own, doesn’t actually want an impeachment vote

2. Both Ralph Nader and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney were excluded from Conyers’ witness list, although Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is on the list.

3. Given that Conyers has, to date, refused to call the bluff of people like Karl Rove and Mike Mukasey by using his powers of inherent contempt, he’s just going through the motions here, too.

Update: See here and here for follow-up stories, including a critique of the Four Horsemen of mainstream quasi-liberal blogs on this issue.

Turley fears Obama sellout on Bush investigations

Jonathan Turley thinks Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular will give Republican illegalities a pass if/when they’re in power next year.

Judging by a comment from Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein (of whom I expected better), and Passive Pelosi™ keeping under wraps the idea of a new Church Commission, Turley is right to be “very, very afraid.”

Sunstein, in another Obama the squishmeister/Kumbaya chorus master type of comment, said that investigating too much would risk politicizing public service unless the crimes were “egregious.”

“We’ve had eight years of moral relativism and the avoidance of legal process,” stated Turley. “And to start a major campaign with the suggestion that we're going to distinguish between egregious and non-egregious crimes promises more of the same.”

“Did we just see accountability go out the window for good?” Keith Olbermann asked Turley.

“That would probably wrap it up,” Turley replied.

Be very, very afraid — of an Obama victory. At least on the issue of civil liberties, you’re not going to get hypocrisy from McCain.

And, this fall, exercise your idealism and vote Green. If Obama loses? Maybe it’s better.

Oregon Dems propose Healthy Forests lite

I didn’t think Sen. Ron Wyden could be that much of a sellout, though “weak-kneeded” is an acceptable description; well, he and Rep. Peter DeFazio are proposing timbering bills that would cut logging companies a big break

Traditional National Forest Service sales contracts will be used for “thinning.” But:

In order for a federal timber sale to attract buyers, the timber companies must be able to make money on the sale. But most federal forests are remote and steep. This means high logging and log hauling costs. As a result, in order to create a timber sale that will actually attract buyers, Forest Service planners must either log the larger trees or they must reduce the forest canopy radically by having loggers removing most of the trees.

But when you remove that much canopy shade small trees and brush sprout and grow prolifically. Within 5 years or so the risk of catastrophic wildfire has dramatically increased. Also, immediately after logging the open canopy increases sunlight and wind on the forest floor. Forest fuels dry sooner and this also increases fire risk.

Furthermore, economic considerations often cause Forest Service planners to forgo requiring the timber company purchasing the timber sale to remove or burn slash - that is, the limbs and small trees left on the forest floor after logging.

The increased wildfire risk which result from excessive “thinning” will persist for 30 or more years until slash decomposes and trees grow enough to form a closed canopy which once again shades out highly flammable brush.

No wonder Wyden doesn’t want to talk about his own legislation.

Oh, let me take this chance to plug High Country News, the premier magazine on Western life and environmental issues.

Russ Feingold is a dildohead

The very idea of “vote Obama to undo FISA damage” makes me want to look for a barf bag

“In particular, Barack Obama, should allow us to greatly change this mistake.

“Barack Obama believes in the Constitution. He’s a constitutional scholar. I believe that he will have a better chance to look at these powers that have been given to the executive branch, [even though] he'll be running the executive branch.”

If pseudoprogressive lying bullshit like that gets accepted, then the Democratic Party really should remove words like “liberal” and “progressive” from its vocabulary.

The chutzpah of Feingold, KNOWING that Obama just voted FOR the FISA bill, is crap.

If you, too, want to call him a dildohead or worse, here’s his webmail. Here’s what I said:

I call BULLSHIT on your “vote Obama to fix FISA” schtick. Why didn’t you say “vote Clinton”? She, at least, voted against the final bill.

And, if Obama is such a “constitutional scholar,” then why did he vote FOR it?

I guess you, like he, are Just.Another.Politician.

No thanks. I’ll be voting Green again this year.

Instead of a barf bag, maybe I could barf on pseudoliberal, Democratic-enabler blogs who will champion his idea.