Yacht Party Rushes To Tout Snake Oil That Works, Works, Works!

Around 11:00 this morning some senior Yacht Party members and their acolytes will stand in front of microphones in Sacramento trumpeting a report about state labor regulations and small businesses. They can be expected to say that the real problem with the California economy is all those gosh darn regulations, and if only businesses could free themselves from the iron boot of - I don't know, the 40-hour work week, child labor, the right to have an employee saw off his fingers in a lathe without responsibility, it's a different thing every week with these people - the state could be saved.

It's worth understanding what this report that makes them go ga-ga is all about. John Myers had a sketch of it the other day.

The document, wonkishly titled Cost of State Regulations on California Small Business Study, was quietly made public late yesterday. You can read it here [...]

The summary says it all, at least in the eyes of the business community:

The study finds that the total cost of [business]regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the State's general fund budget, and almost a third of the State's gross product. The cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8 million jobs which is a tenth of the State's population. Since small business constitute 99.2% of all employer businesses in California, and all of non-employer business, the regulatory cost is borne almost completely by small business. The total cost of regulation was $134,122.48 per small business in California in 2007, labor income not created or lost was $4,359.55 per small business, indirect business taxes not generated or lost were $57,260.15 per small business, and finally roughly one job lost per small business.

Basically, regulations take your wives, enslave your children, throw your ice cream on the ground, and write "loser" on your chest in sun tan lotion when you fall asleep at the beach. It's amazing how in line this study is with standard conservative tropes about onerous regulations and big government. I wonder why that is? Here's Myers.

So how do (authors Sanjay Varshney and Dennis Tootelian) reach their conclusions? The 33 page report (85 pages if you include the charts) relies heavily on Forbes Magazine and its annual report of the best -- and worst -- states in which to do business. The 2008 report ranks California #40 in the nation, and that's the relative placement the authors used for their calculations.

"Forbes data is reliable," says the study, "in that it uses credible sources of secondary data that are well recognized and respected as credible independent research in the business world."

Perhaps, but Forbes' proprietary methodology isn't entirely transparent. Its website does note the sources for its rankings: data from both the federal government and nonprofits like the Tax Foundation and the conservative-leaning Pacific Research Institute.

This "academic" study cribbed their data from a MAGAZINE profile? One owned by a movement conservative, which includes materials from wingnut welfare think tanks? And we're supposed to just let that go?

Myers goes on to note that the way Varshney and Tootelian transform the Forbes data into dollar amounts is entirely inscrutable, but designed to advance the proposition that every single state's set of regulations are harmful to business. "Even Forbes' #1 state for business friendliness, Virginia, comes out with a regulatory climate that's a net loss to the state of $4.4 billion." The study also neglects to determine which regulations harm business more or less. It's a partisan mess of a report and it should not be taken seriously. Which is why the Yacht Party has taken to it so quickly, with classy headlines like "California Businesses Waterboarded by Governmental Overregulation."

Look, labor regulations serve a particular purpose. It's true that they have a cost to business, but they also provide a significant cost savings to the individual, to the public health system, to the overall quality of life for the laborer. We have made these trade-offs over hundreds of years. The Yacht Party may think that The Jungle is a fantasy utopia, but in my experience, Californians and pretty much everybody else appreciate safe food and clean air and the minimum wage.

You can get a good sense of the intellectual honesty of a politician - and the media - by seeing if they bite at this crap sandwich of a report.

Draining Their Money

One thing Jon Stewart failed to mention yesterday is that Betsy McCaughey is the director of Cantel Medical Corp., a medical device company. So when she argues against comparative effectiveness research, she's doing so because she wants her device company to keep selling its wares to doctors without having to prove whether or not the stuff actually works. It's a total conflict of interest and it should lead all reports on her.

Until now, because McCaughey just resigned.

LITTLE FALLS, N.J., Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform.

McCaughey probably gets enough wingnut welfare elsewhere that she'll be fine. I don't think she'll have to worry about using her own $2,000 debit card to pay for a $5,000 health care plan.

But you have to chip away at these liars. And McCaughey's performance last night, complete with the Jeanine Pirro "I can't find page 10!" stunt, was so abominable that Cantel couldn't risk being tied to her anymore. And replicate this thousands of times, and the world gets a little bit better.

Government Cheese

Is Michelle Malkin supposed to be a patriot for suggesting that millions of Americans are so lazy that they'd rather sit home and live off the public teat rather than work for a living?

Malkin: If you put enough government cheese in front of people they are just going to keep eating it and you're just kicking the can down the road and just to hammer this point about the unemployment benefits extension again it was Larry Katz, who's a chief labor economist under the Clinton labor department who came out with a study and there are a lot of these economists who say this that if you keep extending these "temporary" unemployment benefits you're just going to extend joblessness even more.

Stephanopoulos: I don't know if I follow that though

Malkin: That was a Clinton economist who said it George...

Stephanopoulos: Choosing to take the unemployment benefits when a job is available?

Malkin: Seventy nine weeks already and then they're going to extend it by another thirteen weeks and what happens is according to these economist who have seen it including this Clinton economist is that people will just delay getting a job until the three weeks before the benefits run out.

Tucker: Well, that might be true when there are jobs out there that are available, but there are very few jobs available at the moment so I don't think people are using that unemployment benefit to be lazy instead of going out and searching for jobs...

Malkin: I'm not making a moral judgment, it's an incentive problem.

Tucker: But when businesses advertise the few job openings they have, they'll advertise twenty openings, they have six thousand applicants so I don't think that's the problem...

Hunt: If Starbucks were hiring, suddenly you'll see lines around the block. Anecdotally George, I have a kid who has some friends from college and many of them don't have jobs and boy, they are looking.

Stephanopoulos: And there are other states especially that are hard hit.

So many things wrong with this tableau. First of all, unemployment benefits are not enough to live on, that's probably as good a place to start as any. You'll need the kind of savings most Americans on unemployment don't have to sustain yourself. Second, what exactly does Michelle Malkin do all day that's so vibrant, other than get her husband to write her columns and books that get bought in bulk and pulped? They don't call it wingnut welfare for nothing. Regnery-purchased cheese! Third, the fact that George Steph is confused when he, you know, booked Michelle Malkin on the show and shoudl know what he's getting. Fourth, Malkin bangs the drum for Clinton economist Lawrence Katz throughout the segment, then learns that he actually supports temporary unemployment insurance extensions, and she turns on him like a good little rage addict and quotes the Heritage Foundation. Whither bipartisanship?

Paul Krugman notes that at least Malkin's not alone with this view - it's also expressed by professors at major universities like the University of Chicago.

Wingnut Welfare Up For The Highest Bidder

Mike Allen has really advanced the cause of exposing pay-to-play media scandals over the past week. Fresh off the Washington Post salons, Allen catches a pillar in the conservative movement, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, trying to sell his own opinions:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

Politico is usually just link-bait, but if they want to expose the media and burn down all the knotty work being done in official Washington, I'll link away!

Note how the weekly column in The Hill is proffered right off the bat. It's also worth noting that FedEx rejected this offer, and right afterwards Keene backed UPS in the dispute. Whether UPS bought off Keene or Keene just got pissy is unclear.

The point is that you simply cannot believe the word of these conservative activists. Or really anyone - the moral here is to always check your sources. But we've seen too many of these kinds of scandals on the conservative side - Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Jeff Gannon, etc. - to give them the benefit of the doubt at all.

Just No Do-Re-Mi In It

I noticed last week a severe pulling back by the conservative elements bashing Sonia Sotomayor, and John Thune lets slip a bit of truth about it:

Nearly a month after President Barack Obama picked her for the Supreme Court, Republican senators say Sonia Sotomayor isn’t serving as the political lightning rod some in their party had hoped she would be.

“She doesn’t have the punch out there in terms of fundraising and recruiting, I think — at least so far,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who most likely will be elected as the No. 4 Republican in Senate leadership this week.

The calculus could certainly change when Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin July 13. But the Republican senators’ initial review of Sotomayor’s record, together with the meetings they’ve had with her, have left them doubting that she’ll be controversial enough to help them or hurt the Democrats heading into the 2010 elections.

That's the key, right, that outrage over her doesn't raise the bug bucks. Republicans are making a business decision by pulling up stakes here. Will Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network have enough money for steak dinners now?

You know the economy is tough when even the wingnut welfare recipients are struggling.

Only Astroturf Front Groups Deserve Handouts

Mark Sanford's getting a lot of heat in his home state. People have set up a tent city in front of the Capitol and called it "Sanfordville," bearing an eerie resemblance to the Bonus Marcher's tent city that bedeviled Herbert Hoover. Maybe Sanford will call in the National Guard to shoot them, too.

For now, he's put up a TV ad explaining himself.

A nonprofit group with close ties to Gov. Mark Sanford will spend $230,000 on television ads defending Sanford’s opposition to some federal stimulus money.

Sanford will appear in the ads, sponsored by Carolinians for Reform. The group was founded by a handful of Sanford campaign donors and aims to educate the public about the governor’s positions. Sanford frequently has appeared in ads by similar groups that support his agenda.

Sanford said the ads, which begin airing today, are meant to clear up “confusion” about his position. Opponents, including lawmakers and the Democratic National Committee, have tried “to frighten a lot of teachers and law enforcement,” Sanford said.

How has this group, Carolinians for Reform, raised the money to put up ads in the past?

The group that is paying for the ads has been the subject of controversy.

Sanford directed more than $100,000 left over from a 2006 national governor’s conference, held in Charleston, to Carolinians for Reform. The convention had received a $150,000 state grant.

After state Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, discovered the transfer, Carolinians for Reform returned the money to the state. Sanford said there was nothing illegal or wrong about sending the money to the group though it did create an image problem.

In other words, Sanford has vowed for months not to give state money to help build schools or increase unemployment insurance, but he has no problem giving state money to a wingnut welfare front group that glorifies him in TV ads. Unbelievable.

So Let's Talk About Spending

Today House Republicans are going to engage in an extended whine about the omnibus federal spending bill, which they claim is being pushed through in the dead of night even though the bills have been written and available for over a year. This is a leftover from FY2009 because George Bush constantly threatened to veto the bills. But be sure to hear plenty of Republicans clamor about "runaway spending" today. They're even planning on calling for a spending freeze in the midst of a recession where government spending is practically the only economic activity available. But if they want to yammer on about waste, they might want to look in the mirror.

Republicans are expected to deliver a daylong rant Wednesday against Democratic spending legislation, yet the bill is loaded with thousands of pet projects that Republican lawmakers inserted.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, included $142,500 for emergency repairs to the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined state colleagues to include $1.425 million for Nevada "statewide bus facilities." The top two Republicans on Congress' money committees also inserted local projects.

In all, an estimated $3.8 billion worth of specific projects, called "earmarks," are in the $410 billion spending bill that the House of Representatives is to vote on Wednesday. Easy passage is expected. The Senate is expected to act soon, too, since federal agencies will run out of money a week from Friday unless new funds are enacted.

It should be noted that the earmarks are less than 1% of the overall spending. And increases for appropriations like the Congressional budget, for example, are a cause of the GOP wanting to keep the same number of staffers despite having 20% less members of Congress, turning the whole concept of welfare on its head.

The strongest part of Obama's speech last night, in my view, was when he identified the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in the federal budget that are entirely a consequence of corporate welfare, contractor fraud and a host of other methods that the GOP has been using for decades to funnel cash out of the Treasury to their contributors. They want to have a conversation about "fiscal responsibility" that slashes any worthwhile investment in people, while keeping intact the flows into executive bank statements and massive trust funds. They have played budget games for years, hiding the true costs of their giveaways to the rich, and this is the reckoning. We don't have a spending problem, we have a priority problem. And President Obama is vowing to fix it.

In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

Our job is to hold the President to this rhetorical flourish, as he'll doubtlessly be under a lot of pressure to do the opposite. But what this said to me is that Republicans and fiscal scolds are being called out. If they want to talk about runaway spending, they have to be willing to talk about where the waste actually is. There's been a class warfare in this country for 30 years and the rich have won. This is the blueprint to turning that around.

World's Tiniest Violin

Seems that ex-Bush officials can't get hired anywhere these days. I am somehow unsympathetic! Krugman nails this:

Show some independence, and you’ll face a lavishly financed primary challenge from the Club for Growth. Be a loyal soldier, and you will be taken care of — through what’s commonly referred to as “wingnut welfare.”

Thus, lose an election, and a think tank with the usual funding sources will create an America’s Enemies program for you to direct. Mess up the occupation of Iraq, and you’ll be appointed to run the World Bank; mess up there, and there’s still a chair waiting for you at AEI.

But it appears that wingnut welfare is breaking down when it comes to former Bush officials. Is this the beginning of the end for movement conservatism?

At one level, the fact that Bush's minions are having trouble looking for work should be the least of their worries, compared to staying out of jail. But Krugman is right - if nobody can finance movement conservatives, it means that nobody can finance movement ideas. And that provides an opportunity for a different kind of Republicanism, one that would be good for the country.

As a side note, it was extremely odd to see Krugman and Nouriel Roubini - who the media insist on calling "Dr. Doom" while acknowledging that he got the whole financial crisis right - on the same ABC Sunday show panel this morning, along with George "I'm a lying sack of crap" Will and Suzy "Jack Welch's wife" Welch. Will was on his best behavior because he knew he'd get beaten down if he wasn't, so the result was a very elevated debate, for Stephanopoulos.

Crying To Keep From Laughing

The Pajamas Media imbroglio is so karmically just that I have to agree with James Wolcott when he says, "Were there a men's cologne on the market called Schadenfreude, I'd be judiciously dabbing some on right now, savoring its woody musk."

Let us part the beaded curtains of time. It was only a few years ago, November of 2005 to be tiresomely precise, that Pajamas Media held a launch event at Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room heralding the arrival of a superstar group blog on steroids that would wipe out the old traditional media like so many thatched huts. The keynote speaker for the opening festivities was Judith Miller and a bevy of online semi-demi-celebrities were there for the free eats and photo ops. Such heady times those were, spiked with romantic fantasies of riches in store for those visionary enough to hitch their wagons to the Yahoo of blogs, copiloted by those crazy dreamers Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson. Those of us unswayed and unimpressed with this bagpipe brigade of B-listers were accused of being threatened, even jealous, of these saucy upstarts with a sound all their own. In a gonzo fantasia written by Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein, I was gooily portrayed as a mincing, porcine sis [some scrolling is required] who was 86'd by hotel security after crashing the festivities in warblogger drag. Too busy having fun at the expense of Pam Geller's thumb fiesta, I took no offence at Goldstein's labored gags (or the acclaim they received from his confederates), letting karma to take its natural course.

And wah-la, as Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster would say.

Ass. Kick. Curb.

I'm sorry, but it's just brilliant to watch these triumphalists fold back on themselves, with all the petty insults and jealousies bubbling to the surface. Roger Simon, unable to get advertisers to pay for the ramblings of Pam Geller and Glenn Reynolds, now thinks he can get viewers to pay $15 to $37 bucks A MONTH for them to watch the above talk to one another.

Dear (Sucker),

As you know, last September Pajamas Media began a new initiative in Internet television called Pajamas TV. When we started with our RNC coverage from Minneapolis, we noted that we would be in a Beta Phase through the first quarter of 2009. In the last few months we have strengthened the PJTV lineup with shows covering Media Bias, Education Bias, Middle East Update, Sharia and Jihad, Powerline Report, Ask Dr. Helen, Hugh News, Poliwood, Conservatism 2.0, Economy and Finance, National Security, and others.

As the end of the first quarter approaches and we near the production phase of Pajamas TV, we will continue to build our emphasis in this area. As a result we have decided to wind down the Pajamas Media Blogger and advertising network effective March 31, 2009. The PJM portal and the XPressBlogs will continue as is.

Since our ad relationship continues for the time being, you should note that in order to be paid for the 1st quarter of 2009, you must leave the current Pajamas ads up until 12:01AM April 1. We will be sending you information in mid-March on removing the ads. As of April 1, 2009, you will be free to arrange syndication or re-sale deals.

We thank you very much for participating during the formative years of Pajamas Media and we look forward to working with you in other ways. One of those is, of course, Pajamas TV. If you have any ideas in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our best wishes in the new year and again our deepest gratitude for your participation in Pajamas Media.

Sincerely,

Roger L. Simon
CEO, Pajamas Media

Money line: "PJM’s new hope is PJTV, a pay video site. Where you can pay to watch Glenn and Helen Reynolds. This is not unlike asking people to pay to be punched in the face."

Seeing certifiably crazy people react to the news that they won't be getting their wingnut welfare checks anymore is just pure blogger bliss. But even more hilarious is how Simon tried to set it right:

Actually that part of our business has been losing money from the beginning, so the people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn’t happen. No wonder those people are kicking and screaming now that they are off the dole. I might too. [What's their beef? I thought most of them were free marketeer libertarians or something.-ed. Go figure.]

Good people skills.

This demise was inevitable, but it's beyond fun seeing these self-important maniacs take out the claws on each other in the process. Which continues to the end:

50. Sissy Willis:
Good night, sweet prince. Don’t let the bitter ones get you down.

Yes, good night, sweet prince. Good night.

Enforcers of the Iron Law

It was pretty obvious that the Yacht Party here in California was intellectually bankrupt when they let right-wing radio talk show hosts John and Ken sign on to the official lawsuit against the legislature for trying to pass a work-around budget that increased fees but not taxes. Talk show hosts like John and Ken are the low-level enforcers of conservative dogma in the state, whipping their charges into a frenzy if anyone strays from the party line. They were on a roll yesterday.

"Immediately head to your battle stations," blared John and Ken on their hugely popular Southern California conservative radio show on Thursday.

The conservative duo -- blasting on the powerful KFI station -- had put the Republican lawmakers quoted in The Bee's story about potentially raising taxes in their crosshairs.

Their targets were GOP Assemblymen Anthony Adams, Mike Duvall and Roger Niello. (And, later in the show, Sen. Abel Maldonado, who was quoted in a MediaNews story saying he could potentially vote for tax hikes to balance the budget.)

Pictures and phone numbers for all four lawmakers were posted on their Web site at various points.

"Then start calling these bastards. This is war. War!" John and Ken shouted [...]

"We're going to get these heads on a stick!" John and Ken pledged at one point. "Heads on a stick!"

Two of the lawmakers, Mike Duvall and Anthony Adams, actually showed up later in the show. Duvall claimed he was just describing the state of things in Sacramento, while Adams committed the cardinal sin of trying to use reaason on a radio talk show.

Adams, R-Hesperia, went on to defend the possibility of tax hikes. "I think taxes stink," he said. "They suck."

But Adams said raising taxes may be necessary given the political and economic climate.

"I dare with the full knowledge that this will probably be the end of a political career for me. But the fact of the matter is California is in a place where they need people who are willing to sacrifice their own personal agenda for what's right," Adams said.

He was raked over by the radio hosts for his stance.

Said one host: "You guys always talked a tough game, but you always rolled over for the Democrats when it came down to the final vote, so I don't have any sympathy for you. You guys talked, but you didn't act. You always voted with the Democrats, at least enough of you did every single freaking year. And now you're going to come to us for money?"

"Yes," Adam replied.

"No," said the host, as the other laughed. "How about no."

He added, "You may be right about your career."

John and Ken quite literally live in an alternate universe, one where conservatives are under siege and always capitulating to fearsome Democrats rather than the actual one where they have a working majority inside the legislature. Of course, they make millions, and whatever happens to the budget will never affect them personally. They'll go back to their gated communities and never see the poor person who can't get health care, the teacher who is laid off at the school, the construction worker who can't find work because all the public works projects are shut down.

But it's more insidious than that. John and Ken are well-compensated fronts for the Big Money Boyz who want to keep their taxes low and impede the state from providing any services whatsoever. They are close to the masses and can fix them on a target. They can find the Republicans who step out of line and make sure they end their careers. And they take the heat instead of the powerful interests using them as dupes. It's in the same way that Jon Coupal is paid big money to make the Overton Window-shattering claim that there is no budget crisis; that Jon Fleischman is provided with plenty of wingnut welfare to pen anti-union screeds and the like, which are then passed around at the highest levels, even by the supposedly post-partisan governor. By having all these enforcers out there ranting and raving, conservative lawmakers feel empowered to ask for even more in exchange for modest, regressive tax hikes, more than even the state spending cap (which would lead to the strangling of state government) they've already proposed.

Folks like John and Ken are useful idiots, bodyguards for conservative dogma. They mobilize other useful idiots, and in the background the Big Money Boyz rub their hands together and count their coins.

New Entrants To The "No On 8" Team: Dianne Feinstein, Mary Cheney (!)

Yesterday, the Bay Area Reporter ran a story that raised some eyebrows about Dianne Feinstein's reticence on Proposition 8, the Hate Amendment. It must have certainly raised eyebrows inside Feinstein's headquarters, because today she released this statement:

"Proposition 8 would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. I oppose it as a matter of equality and fairness.

The right to marry is fundamental. It provides social stability, economic equality, and the ability to make decisions for a spouse in a time of crisis.

If Proposition 8 were to pass, not only would it eliminate the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples, but it would also create a complicated legal quagmire for those who have exercised this right under the California Constitution, as adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the State.

The views of Californians on this issue have changed over time, and as a State, I believe we should uphold the ability of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers who are gay and lesbian to enter into the contract of
marriage.

I urge Californians to oppose Proposition 8."

It shouldn't have taken this long, and it shouldn't have taken a newspaper story to set it in motion, but I'm glad she released this. Now we'll she if she'll do anything more.

Of far more interest to me is this (h/t Think Progress):

Though she long sat on the sidelines as her father served as second in command over the past eight years, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary is flexing her political muscle and joining the fight to stop Prop. 8.

According to the website RepublicansAgainst8.com, Cheney pledged $3,000 back in July to the campaign to stop the ballot measure attempting to re-ban gay marriage in California.

It's quite a coalition that can include all of these disparate elements of the political spectrum. Meanwhile, Ron Prentice of the "California Family Council," running the Yes on 8 side of things, is funneling donations into his own pocket:

Since 2003, the public has given the Riverside, Calif.-based California Family Council (CFC) nearly $3 million to support charitable work that the organizations says "protects and fosters judeo-Christian principles in California's laws." But, according to its federal tax returns, little more than $500,000 of that money has gone to "program services," or expenses directly related to that charitable work.

In contrast, the CFC's top two employees, including its founder and executive director, Ron Prentice, were paid a total of $1.1 million over four years. The CFC's other employees earned a total of $900,000 in compensation -- bringing the total spent on employees at the Council to about $2 million since it began in 2003.

(More on that sordidness here)

This is just a wingnut welfare scheme to the pro side. On the other side are those who believe in equality and fairness.

The Art Of War

What was so great about Team Obama springing to action yesterday was that it stood in contrast to the usual difference in campaign fighting styles between Democrats and Republicans. There was worry that Obama wouldn't be likely to attack in the same fashion as McCain, and would resort to "shame on you" entreaties. In actuality, he has been offering lots of contrast in local spots, but yesterday's action was swift, to the point, and overwhelming. McCain's rebuttals were scattershot, and if he's resorting to going back to the well of Rezko and William Ayers (the second ad made by an "independent" group managed by McCain's own paid consultant), well, that's good for muddying waters but it doesn't answer the major point.

However, there's another aspect that Democratic Presidential candidates must learn - the power of SUSTAINED attacks aimed at defining the opponent. The GOP does not make this a one-day affair. They continue to mock their opponent in any way possible to cut into them and make them a ridiculous figure. Peter Daou has the blueprint:

Expanding the theme, it's worth noting that the rightwing attack machine has been effective in the past because it serves a singular purpose: diminishing opponents through mockery and marginalization. Bloggers have referred to recent presidential campaigns as "genital-swinging contests" (we're using the clean version). That crude image underlines the strategy: make your opponent look small - or smaller. Shrinkage, for Seinfeld buffs. Think of how Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and their cohorts operate - it's all about the laughter, the joking, the snide remarks, the scoffing. It's about cutting someone down to size, making them look meek and meager.

Democrats have been stumped by the technique, missing the underlying purpose and getting sidetracked by the minutiae of the attacks. 'Rovian' is an overused adjective, but it is mistaken as a strategy of attacking an opponent's strength as an end in itself, when that's just one tactic in the larger mission of systematically belittling the opponent. Going after their strength is a logical part of reducing their stature.

Democratic/progressive attacks generally run the gamut from negative character association (X is just like Y) to policy contrasts (we can handle the economy better than X) to one-off hits and 'Macaca moments' (X flubbed the name of a country) to impugning the attacker (look how nasty my opponent is). These can be effective, particularly the latter, but they are qualitatively different from the rightwing machine's diminishment of an opponent's character. That's something that Democrats don't do as well. It's less about negative frames, contrasts, rapid response, and all the other mainstays of political strategy and more about making your opponent the butt of a joke.

And this has flipped with the "doesn't know how many houses he has" comment. But it must be sustained. It's not like there aren't additional facts to add into the stew. McCain's net worth is $36 million dollars, almost 40 times that of Obama. McCain has butlers. BUTLERS! There's still the matter of getting McCain on the record about the exact number, and detailing - in excruciating detail - all the homes. There are potential events like ringing keys at the DNC and visits to all the compounds. If McCain does indeed pick rich venture capitalist Mitt Romney, then the whole thing is amplified.

The important thing is that the attack is SUSTAINED. The best example of this is the right's war on George Soros, where they clamped down and simply didn't let go:

Soros himself is now cautious about who he funds, refusing to act as lead donor in controversial initiatives where his presence could endanger the project's credibility. Similarly, various programs and groups are now more cautious about taking Soros's money because they're worried about the association. Thus, these projects don't get funded, and good work doesn't get done.

It's been a remarkable coup for the Right, who realized, in 2004, that Soros was readying to step up as an aggressive liberal donor and politicized his money so effectively that he couldn't fully inhabit his role in the liberal fundraising universe. It's been an extraordinarily effective effort to starve edgy initiatives of funding. Conversely, liberals have never put much energy into marginalizing conservative donors. If you called something Olin-funded, or Coors-funded, people would scratch their heads. Sheldon Adelson, the gambling tycoon who's pumping tens of millions into the right wing advocacy group Freedom's Watch, isn't even a household name among liberal political professionals. Yet Soros, who spent most of his life funding democratization efforts in the post-Soviet bloc, is somehow radioactive. It's nuts.

That's because, even after they've destroyed the guy, they're still going after him, like in this Michelle Malkin piece claiming that there's some clause in the DNC platform that will open up the money gates for him in an Obama White House. One, what does a billionaire like Soros need with more money? Two, if anyone ought to know about corporate welfare programs, it'd be conservatives, particularly those like Malkin who might as well get a paycheck directly from Scaife or Olin.

It's real simple; you choose your target, find a line of attack, and relentlessly hammer it in various ways, with total message discipline from surrogates (I'm looking at you, Russ Feingold). And you do it every day for about 3 months.

That's how you fight fire with fire. I would love a high-minded battle of ideals, but I'm not going to sit around waiting for it to happen.

Trolling For Fun And Profit

You knew somehow it would come to this. John McCain's campaign is offering their supporters redeemable points to troll websites and write pro-McCain comments. It's the professionalization of astroturfing. Because it's a conservative effort, they give them the exact words and invite them to cut and paste them onto the sites.

Activists and political operatives have used volunteers or paid staff to seed radio call-in shows or letters-to-the-editor pages for years, typically without disclosing the caller or letter writer's connection to a candidate or cause. Like the fake grass for which the practice is named, such AstroTurf messages look as though they come from the grass roots but are ersatz.

McCain's campaign has taken the same idea and given it an Internet-era twist. It also has taken the concept one step further.

People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain's webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

Just because I'm hoping they have some of those spare tire gauges, let me give this a shot.

"John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan which rewards personal responsibility and entrepreneurship! Juice!"

OK, where's my prize?

This is just an evolution of the Bush Administration paying Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher to carry water for their policies. It's wingnut welfare at the micro-level. And it's kind of sad that you can't find a conservative who is legitimately excited enough about John McCain to promote him online for free. I think the accurate response to any McCain supporter at this point is "how many buttons did you just win for that comment?"

Who's The Cult Leader, Now?

This "Obama is a cult" thing is starting to fly around in the media, and yet things like this go virtually unnoticed:

Few visitors will venture far from the usual sites to see a spectacular exhibit -- just a short walk from the Mall -- that so very much captures the spirit, the essence, the greatness of this shining city on a hill.

Yes, it's the beautifully designed photo homage to one of our nation's leaders, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson. The photo exhibit is boldly and proudly displayed in the lobby of HUD's headquarters building, itself a dreadful gray relic of Great Society architecture.

Tour groups need not even go through the inviting metal detectors to admire 20 large, color photographs of the secretary, each about 2 feet by 3 feet. No fewer than five of them feature Jackson with President Bush-- in the Rose Garden, in the Oval Office, chatting together, coming down the steps at the Capitol.

The photographs cover an entire wall of the lobby as you enter, passing two other photos, the smaller official ones, of Bush and his old buddy from Texas days, side by side to greet you.

I mean, we have a White House Chief of Staff who has a wall collection of pictures of Bush's HANDS at key moments in his life.

And we're talking about some OTHER politician leading a cult?

This, of course, is an example of the attacks we're going to start seeing with regularity if Obama, as presumed, becomes the nominee. We'll see more baseless insanity masquerading as analysis like this:

Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics.

Shorter National Review writer - I knew someone who knew someone who was part black and part Jewish, therefore Obama is a Communist!!!1! Almost as good as there was a poet from Hawaii named Frank who joined the Communist Party at some point, therefore...

These stories aren't meant to convince anybody, they serve as a backdrop. It manifests itself when the right finds a bill or some policy paper that they can elevate into a full-fledged hissy fit, as they are now doing in a very off-the-radar-screen kind of way:

It isn't a high-profile bill, but the Global Poverty Act has lit up the conservative blogosphere, and even Rush Limbaugh has gotten into the act.

Quietly approved by the House of Representatives last fall with bipartisan support, the bill, sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would require the president to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to help reduce extreme global poverty.

Conservative critics, including Limbaugh, Tony Perkins — who heads the Family Research Council — and others, claim that the measure would cost U.S. taxpayers $845 billion over the next dozen or so years. They also charge that it would tie the United States to the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which, among others things, calls for banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying the Kyoto global-warming treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty and the Convention on Biological Diversity [...]

Smith says there's no link and points out that there's no additional spending mandated in his bill.

He said the attacks weren't aimed at him but at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom he recruited last year to be the bill's chief Senate sponsor. Smith is the chairman of the Obama campaign in Washington state.

Limbaugh, according to a transcript of his radio show, last week called the bill an effort to "soak U.S. taxpayers again to fund global, liberal feel-good garbage."

So it's not enough that (insert liberal here) will steal our hard-earned money and give it to the undeserving poor in this country, it's now that (insert liberal here) will steal our hard-earned money and give it to the undeserving poor all over the world. And with the background of "Obama is a Communist" from the far right, and probably worse from various email forwards and other sludge, the pieces fit together. Obama wants to realize Che's vision and install one world government to destroy the American way of life and make us all wear burqas, even the men, while the lucky duckies in Benin live it up with our cash.

(By the way, isn't Bush spending a week in Africa, the last place where he can show his face, to tout these kind of "handouts" like investment in decent medical care to stop the spread of AIDS and malaria?)

The progenitor of this "Obama is the Communist Robin Hood" attack that ties it up all in a bow is the same guy who's been pushing many of the far-right attacks on Obama, including the one that he knew some Communist named Frank in Hawaii.

The dustup began last week when Cliff Kincaid, a columnist for Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org), a conservative news-media watchdog organization, dismissed the bill and linked it to an effort by Democrats to burnish Obama's legislative credentials. His original column was widely distributed on Web sites ranging from www.fishingbuddy.com to www.capitolhillcoffeehouse.com.

On Wednesday, Kincaid ratcheted up his criticism.

"This is how the Washington game of spending more of your money works," he wrote. "This is a budget buster that siphons your hard-earned tax dollars to the U.N. and the rest of the world."

This guy is paid, and probably very well, by the wingnut noise machine to put these things out there into the ether and then find something to make the ridiculous sound plausible.

In fact, if there's any group that characterizes the behavior of a cult - moving in lockstep, making up wild fantasy stories that they will themselves and others into believing, ignoring mountains of evidence to arrive at their conclusions - it's the wingnut welfare crowd. Of course, that's the cult of the "I-Know-Where-My-Bread-Is-Buttered."

Whither McCain?

I've collected a bunch of articles over the past few days about John McCain and whether he will be able to reconcile the conservative coalition and unite the party. Generally, I think that in the end, hard-core Republicans will go to the polls to vote against Obama or Clinton. However, there is a concern that they won't be happy about it, won't work to get occasional voters out, and won't do what's necessary to get McCain elected.

I mean, despite the media's fluffing of McCain, the conservative media actively hates him (Bill Bennett and his disclosure problem excepted). There are so many news items that can be dug up to "prove" McCain's liberalism, in particular his flirtation with the Democrats after losing to Bush in 2000. Never mind McCain's actually flip-flopped back to the conservative position on practically all of his "maverick" legislation, and even on his signature issue of campaign finance reform, McCain has made liberal use of soft money, in addition to trying to get out of the Presidential public financing system. Here's Joe Conason.

Created after his failed presidential run in 2000, the Reform Institute is a hybrid between a domestic issues think tank and a tasty sugar teat for campaign staffers. Among its senior fellows is former Mexican Cabinet member Juan Hernandez, who also heads the McCain campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters. Other Reform Institute employees have included lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, long a member of the McCain inner circle and now his campaign manager.

The sweetest aspect of the Reform Institute -- aside from its commitment to research on immigration reform, campaign finance and other liberal concerns that the senator no longer finds so relevant -- is that its own financing is not subject to the regulations and disclosures of federal election law. In practice, that has meant not only that the McCain crowd could sop up subsidies from foundations run by liberal Democrats but that corporate donors with issues before the Commerce Committee could chip in a few bucks, too. Or a few thousand bucks, or even 50,000 bucks or more, like the executives of Cablevision (under the name CSC Holdings) and Echostar, communications firms with substantial issues at stake before McCain's committee.

Then there was that contribution from American International Group, whose executives had been quite concerned in 2000 about McCain's vow to stop AIG from profiting illicitly on insurance overcharges ripped off from the Boston "Big Dig" project. Sen. John Kerry got most of the blame for the demise of McCain's reform bill, which would have banned insurance giants like AIG from overcharging federal projects and reaping windfalls from investing that money. But it was actually McCain who killed his own bill -- and nobody seems to have checked back to discover that AIG later donated more than $50,000 to the Reform Institute. How much more? That might be a relevant question now, notably because Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the McCain backer who ran AIG in those days, has since been forced to relinquish the company under threat of criminal prosecution.

But this has proven cold comfort for the haters from the right on John McCain. James Dobson is now on record saying that he'll never support the Arizona Senator, and crackpot Richard Viguerie is asking for a NEW candidate to come in, Fred Thompson 2.0 as Josh Marshall calls in, to take McCain down.

I think the media-hungry conservatives want to hold on to their own power, and a McCain win in November is almost more debilitating to them than a McCain loss. They don't want to spread the "myth" that Republicans can win without their support; it would break the stranglehold they think they have on the party. Only they don't; McCain's Senate colleagues, who don't even like him all that much, are reassessing him, and certainly they'd fall in line behind him when he becomes the nominee. Establishment organs like the Wall Street Journal are twisting themselves in knots to argue for a McCain candidacy, arguing that he is needed because a lot of Supreme Court justices are old and will need to be replaced... um, isn't John 72 going on 100? Is that the argument you really want to make?

Conservative James Joyner took a look at this the other day, and came to some interesting conclusions:

Perhaps “conservatives” are now a minority, even among Republican primary voters? If so, given that there are virtually no conservatives remaining in the Democratic Party these days and that voters who aren’t aligned with either party are almost by definition non-ideological, that would mean that conservatives are a small minority, indeed, among the American electorate.

Alternatively, perhaps the definition of “conservative” has become so narrow and esoteric that it’s become virtually meaningless? [...]

The Conservative Movement has morphed from a handful of intellectual true believers trying to shape the debate into something approaching a civil religion with loyalty tests and a clericy that has the power to excommunicate.

John McCain was part of the 1980 wave that rolled into Congress on Ronald Reagan’s coattails. Indeed, McCain was among those Reagan was honored to stand with at 1974’s CPAC convention. But someone with an 82 percent lifetime ACU rating is considered a traitor to the cause. Much better, apparently, to flip 180 degrees on election eve and spout the right Party Line talking points.

As I wrote last year from CPAC, when throngs of so-called conservatives lined up for Ann Coulter’s autograph moments after she referred to John Edwards as a “faggot,” “Somehow, I can’t imagine Ronald Reagan being pleased.” Yet, the modern Conservative Moment seems to be dominated by the shrill nonsense of Coulter and Jonah Goldberg[*] and Michael Savage and Neil Boortz. In short, the Conservative Movement is no longer particularly “conservative” at all.

Yep. And they have a powerful need not to be marginalized. If so, the entire house of cards that is the wingnut welfare system comes crashing down. I have to conclude that the movement will actively work to stop John McCain in November, just as the establishment of the Democratic party worked to stop George McGovern in 1972, and once again, the derailment will come from the ideological right. Their ideas discredited, their movement endangered, they must resort to sabotage to save themselves.

I Can Has Job Mom

That's maybe the funniest thing ever. These are the top 5 reader tags for Jonah Goldberg's tome Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temp- Hey, Gimme Back My Funyuns!

• doughy pantload (140)
• propaganda (117)
• wingnut welfare (115)
• editor promised cake (95)
• i can has job mom (94)

Anyone who not only believes that the real goals of conservatism should be hidden from voters and lied about publicly, but says it out loud:

Jonah Goldberg: The benefit of Bush’s compassionate conservatism [in 2000] was that it was majorly a marketing slogan…

Alex Chadwick: You mean you’re worried Mike Huckabee might actually mean it?

Goldberg: Yes, that’s what I’m terrified of.

Is a very serious person who's never made an argument in such detail or such care.

A Liberal Is A Conservative Who's Seen Their Royalties Stolen By Corporate Conglomerates

Oh, is this funny.

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

These frivolous lawsuits are what's undermining American capitalism, I tell you! Constraining private enterprise with all these silly regulations will destroy our markets! But that's what libs like the guys who wrote the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth book want! They want us to live in some Marxist dystopia!!!1!

The authors argue that in reducing royalty payments, the publisher is maximizing its profits and the profits of its parent company at their expense.

What, do you guys have a problem with PROFIT?

The hilarious thing is that this is actually an outgrowth of the wingnut publishing scheme which artificially increases sales by pawning them off on book clubs where they're probably converted back into pulp:

Traditionally, authors receive a 15 percent royalty based on the cover price of a hardcover title after they have sold enough copies to cover the cost of the advance they receive upon signing a contract with a publisher. (Authors whose books are sold at steep discounts or to companies that handle remaindered copies receive lower royalties.)

In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.

Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

Because nobody wants to buy your shitty books in a bookstore, is why. They're sent out to nonprofits so it looks like you have a platform, raising your profile and your rank on the bestseller list and your speaking fees. And further, corporate Marxism of this type exists in practically every American industry. You're only discovering this one because it impacts you.

Why do conservative book authors hate capitalism?