The Shocking Toolness of Ben Nelson

Conservative Democrats have misinterpreted Barry Hussein's call to post-partisanship as surrender to the right. They do so at their peril.

Particularly the 8 or 9 Senators who hijacked the stimulus package this week, stripped 40 billion in education funding out of it, and then crowed on the floor of the Senate, with Ben Nelson (D-NE): "We trimmed the fat, fried the bacon, and milked the sacred cows."

Memo: this is not 1992. Big government is not over; really really big government has hardly begun. Ben Nelson will get on board now, or he will watch the unemployment lines grow.

Here's Ben on C-SPAN no longer really crowing. I can only pray that Rahm Emmanuel beat his ass with a big staff, right there in the Oval. Seriously, any money spent is money spent. Doesn't matter if you pay highway construction workers or MD's. This is Steven Pearlstein talking to Nebraska's freshman Senator, Mike Johanns:

Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus.

Democrats, we're watching you. The less you sound like Steven Pearlstein, and the more you sound like Herbert Hoover, the more shock and awe you can expect come the next election cycle.

A nation of fourteen-year-old Obama-heads will all be 18 by 2012, when Ben Nelson is up for reelection. So enjoy your breakfast, Ben, because the kids who went to the shitty public schools you vouchsafed them are going to steal your lunch.
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It's been a cold world, we just getting flurries now?

The recent demise of the Democratic ticket is exaggerated, no? The need-to-attack meme, the loss-of-momentum meme(with us since the primaries!), the failure-to-connect meme are more confused media responses to a good McCain week than they are arguments for course correction or predictions of the future.

I counsel patience. Palin's incoherence on foreign policy isn't really a strike against her; what is a strike is she hasn't read a newspaper. Her willingness to accept federal pork isn't the problem; lying about her past in order to run as a reformer is the problem. Phrasing the issues as matters of competence is a losing strategy, practically and ethically. (Practically, because so few Americans think of themselves as "worthy" of higher office. Ethically, because the point of democracy is that it is, in Jacques Ranciere's formulation, rule by those unequipped to rule.)

Phrase the issues on their terms, and it's a win. Claiming insight into Russia because you can see Kamchatka on a clear day from Alaska is egotistical and disingenuous; risking the nation for your party's benefit is not patriotism. Lying about your past, then repeating the lie; advocating abstinence only education, then concealing your teen daughter's pregnancy; trying to get your sister's ex fired, asking about the "process" for banning books (I love how asking about process is anodyne in this case. If I asked someone about the "process" for blowing up a mall, I would be arrested for conspiracy to commit mass murder, making terroristic threats etc.. Process matters.) these are the actions that speak to character. Character counts, as the man said...

But even if Barry and Joe decide not to waste any moreenergy on this thing, my guess is the Palin will fall of her own weight. Her husband has been subpoenaed, her neighbor Vic is doing time, the tabloids are on dirt patrol, the Debbie Richter-Scott Richter-John Bitney-Sarah Palin love quadrangle has yet to fully flower...the harbingers of the shitstorm are already visible. Bloomberg, for instance, shows a woman who sees herself beneath the law, impunity by insularity:

Palin's office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.

She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police. And she sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla -- conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges.

Ted Stevens is going to blow up, somebody's going to find Palin at a Department of Interior cocaine party...in terms of gossip, this candidacy is a never-ending fountain. All Alaska seems some evil version of Mayberry, small-town venality unseen since Babbitt. There won't be anything of Palin left before the debates.

That, or, Americans will realize that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape, fought big oil to get more oil drilled, und so weiter...wait for it...we're going to find it's a cold world for city-council types
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Wes Clark is still alive!

K: First of all, allow me to congratulate you for predicting the use of Wes Clark as a cudgel to Walnuts' war record...get the stiff to spend so much time reminding us of his glorious service in Vietnam that he can't talk about anything else. Whereupon we remember that he was sent to bomb civilians, never sat ass-deep in swamp water, and it took him seven years to get out...which is faster than McCain would extricate us from Iraq...

I think everyone is heartened by the second half of Obama's "I will not besmirch" sentence...the Party has been saying "No Scrubs" for years...so i like the preemptive strike, the muscular defense, etc.

But I don't think it's a winning plan. The whole artificial controversy actually gave McCain a bump over the last week. On 6/16 we were watching McCain fall of his own weight. The 'nuts had spent months offering babies hot water, touting NAFTA in Canada, hiding his wife's income, and calling for offshore drilling while claiming to have been decades out in front on global warming. And claiming New Jersey would bolt Republican. No longer. Now we're back to hero-worship.

Don't get me wrong, this is the high electoral ground Barry's got here...on some battle of Vicksburg shit...Based on June and July polls, BHO has a 10-point lead or better in 10 states: CA +10, CT +20, MA +20, ME +22, MN +15, NH +11, NJ +16, NY +20, WA +16, WI +10...and a statistically significant lead in six more (PA, MI, NM, IA, OR, and Montana as of 7/1!)...andhe's in a dead heat in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana. Indiana dude.

Walnuts is a dead horse. No reason for Wes to go on whacking it. Indiana should not be in play, and it is, because what did Pat say? Still, if anything can lose it for BHO, it's the numbnut commentariat bringing the conversation back to questions of character...no matter how artificially-plumped it may be...
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Obama and the Politics of (You'd Better) Hope (I Don't Kick Your Ass...)

An event in the hallowed chambers of the Senate made the rounds of the internets last week. Seems good old BarryHussein cornered noted human paraquat Joe(mentum) Lieberman in the Senate and proceeded to drink his milkshake. Right in front of him.

Furthermore, during a Senate vote Wednesday, Obama dragged Lieberman by the hand to a far corner of the Senate chamber and engaged in what appeared to reporters in the gallery as an intense, three-minute conversation.

While it was unclear what the two were discussing, the body language suggested that Obama was trying to convince Lieberman of something and his stance appeared slightly intimidating.

Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.

Smilin' BarryHussein... intimidating? Noted internet madman and fabulist Warren Ellis, between posting horrifying snippets of the true nature of the universe, took time to comment:

Kelly Sue and I just said “LBJ-style!’ at exactly the same time. Kelly Sue, however, has breeding, and didn’t follow it up with “Obama should have shanked the prick and left him to bleed out.” No, that was me.

"LBJ-style"? Saints preserve us. Surely this arugala-munching, non-bowling, big-eared naif can't be... oh my stars and garters... a tough guy?

This is in keeping with Dark Steer Theorem #4432... "The politics of hope is a sham."

The "Politics of Hope" (Patent Pending) is the shiny, smiling face Obama and company have put over what is really a hardscrapple political operation. You look back on his political career and you'll see some arm twisting and pretty cynical political operations. He elbowed his way into his first Democratic nomination in Chicago, clearing the field via technicalities. And check this choice quote:

"To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up..."

Sound familiar? Yep, that's pretty much smilin' BarryHussein's canned response to the Florida/Michigan fiasco: This is not 'Nam... there are rules.

So BHO [Dark Steer Aside, here: Wouldn't it be fun if the Obama campaign did some iPod style marketing time'a'time? Standard platform positions ending with "It's not a politician. It's BHO"] goes on to the next round robin and he's smiling all the way. Arm-twisted his way onto the national stage, got the Clintons into a submission hold. The Clintons were complaining the whole way that the Obama campaign was underhanded, race-baiting, Rovian even. But Smilin' BarryHussein comes out of it with but the slightest bits of dirt on the shoulder.

So what if he is this mudflinging, underhanded, shiv-happy politicoschemer? That means the Dems have got a vicious streetfighter in sheep's clothing. A brawler with a happy face. Isn't that exactly what the Dems need?