Cute Animal Websites Must Be Destroyed, Says Sheriff Joe Biden

The Democrats sure had a point when they complained that the shenanigans of Anthony Weiner were just a distraction from more important stuff.  What with Weinergate, and President Obama's campaign swing through the South, and his delegating the domestic jobs crisis to the CEO of a multinational corporation that pays no taxes, nobody is noticing the important work that Vice President Joe Biden is doing.

Everybody seemed to miss the vice president's big announcement yesterday that he is The New Sheriff in Town! He has his fiscal six shooters out to blast away all the terrible horrible government waste and fraud and abuse to balance the budget and save our country.  Because fiscal weapons of mass destruction and tightening our belts are the only ways we can navigate those bumps in the road and forge ahead through the headwinds and make multinational corporations feel confident enough to provide all those new jobs they are just itching to create if only they didn't feel so taxed and nervous!

In an email sent out Monday called, aptly, "There's a New Sheriff in Town" Biden announced his new gig as Anti-Waste Czar:

Did you know that the government spends millions to maintain buildings that have sat vacant for years? Or that your tax dollars pay to needlessly ship copies of the Federal Register to thousands of government offices across the country even though the same information is available online?

And I bet you didn't know that your tax dollars pay for a website dedicated to the Desert Tortoise. I'm sure it's a wonderful species, but we can't afford to have a standalone site devoted to every member of the animal kingdom. It's just one of hundreds of government websites that should be consolidated or eliminated.

This kind of waste is just unacceptable. Particularly at a time when we’re facing tough decisions about reducing our deficit, it's a no-brainer to stop spending taxpayer dollars on things that benefit nobody.

That’s why President Obama asked me to head up the Campaign to Cut Waste—a new effort to root out wasteful spending at every agency and department in The Federal Government.

No Joe, I sure didn't know there was a website devoted to the Desert Tortoise, so I decided to check it out before it disappears from cyberspace forever.  It is a wonderful website, but I agree that it must cost at least several dollars a year to maintain. It's got full-color graphics, a FAQ feature, and links to other nature sites.  What a disgusting waste.  Plus this turtle is kind of boring.  The only thing it apparently does besides breathing and taking up valuable geographical and cyber space is to pee copiously all over your hand if you pick one up.  Ecch.

Now let's see.... wherever could the idea of a money-hogging desert tortoise destroying our budget have come from?  It's a known fact that governors in western states have been mounting a big campaign to do away with the federal Endangered Species Act altogether.  Just this year, the Gray Wolf was removed from the list thanks to lobbying by Montana ranchers who want to shoot the wolves because they kill a sick old cow once in awhile.  But since the Desert Tortoise lives mainly in the harsh environment of the Mojave Desert, what's the beef there?

I mean, the Tortoise is a perfect metaphor for the slow pace of our economic recovery, so it should be protected forever and ever and its website preserved. "Slow and Steady Wins the Race to the Top" should really replace Winning the Future as the Obama campaign slogan.

Joe Biden says we can't afford to have a stand-alone website devoted to every member of the animal kingdom. But since he's so concerned about austerity (or pretends to be to appease the Republicans) why not take a look at all those Department of Defense websites while we're at it?  Take a look at the $1 million a year it takes to keep one soldier in Afghanistan, take a look at all the billions going to feed the Karzai drug cartel, to build roads and schools and maintain bases overseas -- and then talk to the American people about the deficit and our own crumbling infrastructure and exactly what it is that constitutes waste, fraud and abuse.

And how wasteful is it to have a vice president wasting his time writing harebrained emails that trash-talk tortoises? Maybe we should just trim the waste and get rid of the vice presidency altogether. And leave turtles and the Desert Tortoise website alone!

Say It Ain't So, Joe! (Can I Call You Joe?)

 



The Trashing of Debbie Wasserman Schultz

People complain that Democrats aren't forceful enough.  They accuse the party of being a bunch of capitulating, mealy-mouthed wusses and a lot of the time they would be right. But the new Chair of the DNC is taking hits from all sides for the very outspokenness which makes her such a refreshing change from the Democratic timidity we have to come to know and expect.


Politico has a particularly snide little attempt at a hit job running today, characterizing the blunt rhetoric of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as an outbreak of gaffe-itis and pettily dissecting each of her passionate remarks. The Republican War on Women?  No such thing, says Politico's Molly Ball -- everybody knows the GOP has not literally declared a war on women!  No metaphors allowed, apparently.  Particularly odious was Ball's false equivalence between the provocative weapon metaphors of Sarah Palin -- urging her followers to put Democrats in the crosshairs -- with Wasserman Schultz's withering critiques of the Social Darwinism of Republicans:

 "Wasserman Schultz’s sharpest rhetoric — such as insisting that Republicans’ move to defund Planned Parenthood and restrict abortion constitutes a “war on women” or that the Ryan plan would be a “death trap for some seniors” — may please her party’s base. But it doesn’t square with her role as a leading voice decrying that kind of over-the-top language in the wake of the January shooting in Tucson that injured her good friend, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords".


Over-the-top language, blunders, gaffes?  No way, Jose!  Wasserman Schultz is not only a breath of fresh air, she is a  tornado descending on the Democratic doldrums and blowing everybody else out of the water. She did walk back her characterization of states requiring voters to show ID at the polls as a return to the days of Jim Crow, but she really didn't have to. She was right about that.  She's also totally right about Paul Ryan's Medikill Plan being nothing more than a Medikill Plan. 


The only thing "rocky" about Wasserman Schultz's start is that she's not only throwing stones at the whining, mendacious conservative Social Darwinists -- she is heaving boulders at them and pulverizing them in the process. Bravissima!

Selling the Endless Wars: Michelle Goes to Hollywood

First Lady Michelle Obama is bringing her "Joining Forces" campaign to Hollywood next week, with the goal of pursuading the movers and shakers of the entertainment industry to make more feel-good, heartstring-pulling movies and TV shows about the military families of America.  After more than a decade of endless war on at least three fronts (Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and now Libya), the American public is losing its appetite for the terrible human and monetary costs of war.  What better way for the government to numb our minds than joining forces with the corporate entertainment industry to churn out some of that good old wartime propaganda?  Nothing will make us stop bitching about war and stun us into a shamed silence like a movie about how, for example, an Iraq War amputee runs in a marathon.  Watching stuff like this will make the masses forget about their own paltry domestic problems back here in the Homeland.


Lost a job lately?  Hey, it could be worse.  At least you're not losing a leg.  Lost your home to foreclosure, getting evicted, and being forced to move?  Stop the kvetching -- military families have to move all the time and live in horrible, overcrowded barracks!  Military children are having to grow up fatherless and motherless, not necessarily because of the death of a parent, but because the wars and the deployments are forever.


Part of the appeal of Michelle Obama's propaganda campaign rests in parading the most heart-rending military families before the cameras and giving them a big famous Michelle hug and maybe a plaque.  There was one  recent event showcasing a military child battling cancer.  Now, that would make a great made-for-TV movie and it would also make big bucks for the advertisers, the cable companies and -- maybe best of all -- inspire thousands more unemployed 20-somethings to join up and be all that they can be.


According to The White House,  the First Lady will be sharing these stories with the writers and directors and producers, who presumably will also be donating big-time to her husband's re-election campaign during her foray into Tinseltown.


As I wrote in an earlier post, the Joining Forces initiative is largely funded by a neoliberal think tank called Center for a New American Security, with a staff composed of  titans of the Military-Industrial Complex - including executives from Lockheed Martin, retired military brass and the most recent addition, Citigroup Chairman Richard D. Parsons, who also serves on the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (this Administration's sole answer to our unemployment crisis).  The inclusion of deposed Afghanistan War General Stanley McChrystal in the PR  effort has sparked outrage, mainly due to his coverup of the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. 


Michelle Obama last month became the first-ever president's wife to speak to the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, right before she and her husband departed for Europe. Parts of the speech I found kind of creepy, but maybe I've watched one too many History Channel documentaries of 1930s Germany and I am overreacting. You can read the transcript and see the video here.  From her speech:


As I look around at the cadets in this room, it is very clear to me that you all reflect everything we hope to see in ourselves and our country – firmness of character and strength of heart, a strong body and a ferocious mind, a devotion to country and to family. (that patriotic firmness of body and ferociousness of mind in that brand spanking- new uniform is quite titillating).


  For all of you, I know this has been a magnificent journey, a journey full of academic and athletic victories, a journey that has taken you across the country and around the world.
You’ve learned new skills and immersed yourself in new cultures, which will serve you well on today’s battlefields. (learn about new cultures the better to kill people on those global battlefields -- why else study how people live?  Also helps with those Psy-Ops propaganda campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the countries you plunder!).


  You’ve also created a Bionic Foot, an Exoskeleton, and other robotics and cyber defense projects that will help troops in the field.  (for sheer awesomeness, check out the bionic foot.  What an inspiration when a group of college students invents a prosthetic foot because they know the chances are very good they will lose at least one of their own feet.  But as President George Bush told some amputees at Walter Reed one time, "we'll just get you some new legs."  The Exoskeleton, also known as the "Hulc" sounds neat too.  It's some kind of gizmo invented by Lockheed Martin that lets you become a virtual robot and carry upwards of 200 pounds for ten miles.  Hollywood definitely can make a movie out of this concept.  The Incredible Hulc.  Terminator meets Rambo.)


During the 2008 presidential campaign, Michelle Obama urged us to elect her husband "because our souls are broken in this nation."and that "dreams and inspiration are everything." Now that the luster of that promise has worn off, and we are still one big collection of soul holes, her new shtick is uniting us all as a country through the double mantra of Family Values and Militarism.  Here's an excerpt from a Parade magazine interview with Michelle and her JF partner, Second Lady Jill Biden this past April (designated Month of the Military Child) --

PARADE: If Americans rally around our military families, what do you think this new connectiveness could do for us as a country?
JILL BIDEN: It would create a lot of patriotism, you know, that feeling I had as a child. We just need to say to America, “Wake up. You need to support these families and we need to lift them up and really value them.”
MICHELLE OBAMA: And the truth is, I think that’s how most Americans feel.

Yes indeed, use the suffering military families to form a  power movement to give the concept of Empire a much-needed boost in the minds and holey souls of the public,  and instill in us a sense of that lost patriotism for The Homeland.  That is just what we need to make us forget about the Second Great Depression.  It worked in 1930s Europe, so why not in neofascist USA?

Meanwhile.... while I am sure many military families are appreciative of the Joining Forces initiative, some are not.  One group called Military Families Speak Out is demanding that Michelle Obama use her influence to end the wars entirely rather than simply call for more people to support the troops. According to their policy statement: "Mrs. Obama is telling Americans to volunteer to support military families, but what we really need is policy change.... The burdens affecting military families, veterans, and service members are the results of government policies and practices, and need to be addressed by those responsible, rather than placing the burden on schools, non-profits, churches and local communities who are struggling themselves with funding cuts and affects of the ongoing recession.  Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Biden need to use their influence to change the policies that are hurting us."

Elmo Say Me Want Troops Come Home!

The 16 Democratic Senators Who Sided with the Banks Today

A move to delay implementation of the part of the Dodd Frank Act which would have capped the amount the big banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions was narrowly defeated today, but no thanks to the Democratic majority.  A surprising 16 Democrats sided with the banking lobby, which cried to Congress that it should be able to charge whatever fees it wants, because that's how the free market is supposed to work.  The unlimited fees charged to merchants would have inevitably raised the prices charged to us, the consumers.  The final tally, crossing party lines, went like this: (60 votes required for passage).

Grouped By Vote PositionYEAs ---54  ---  For the Banks:

Akaka (D-HI)

Alexander (R-TN)

Ayotte (R-NH)

Baucus (D-MT)

Begich (D-AK)

Bennet (D-CO)

Blunt (R-MO)

Boozman (R-AR)

Carper (D-DE)

Coats (R-IN)

Coburn (R-OK)

Cochran (R-MS)

Coons (D-DE)

Corker (R-TN)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Crapo (R-ID)

DeMint (R-SC)

Gillibrand (D-NY)

 Hagan (D-NC)

Hatch (R-UT)

Heller (R-NV)

Hoeven (R-ND)

Hutchison (R-TX)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Johanns (R-NE)

Johnson (D-SD)

Johnson (R-WI)

Kirk (R-IL)

Kyl (R-AZ)

Lee (R-UT)

Manchin (D-WV)

McCain (R-AZ)

McCaskill (D-MO)

McConnell (R-KY)

Mikulski (D-MD)

Moran (R-KS)

 Murkowski (R-AK)

Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE)

Paul (R-KY)

Portman (R-OH)

Risch (R-ID)

Roberts (R-KS)

Rubio (R-FL)

Schumer (D-NY)

Sessions (R-AL)

Shelby (R-AL)

Stabenow (D-MI)

Tester (D-MT)

Thune (R-SD)

Toomey (R-PA)

Warner (D-VA)

Webb (D-VA)

Wicker (R-MS)

NAYs ---45  --  For the Consumer:

Barrasso (R-WY)

Bingaman (D-NM)

Blumenthal (D-CT)

Boxer (D-CA)

Brown (D-OH)

Brown (R-MA)

Burr (R-NC)

Cantwell (D-WA)

Cardin (D-MD)

Casey (D-PA)

Chambliss (R-GA)

Collins (R-ME)

Conrad (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL)

Enzi (R-WY)

 Feinstein (D-CA)

Franken (D-MN)

Graham (R-SC)

Grassley (R-IA)

Harkin (D-IA)

Inouye (D-HI)

Isakson (R-GA)

Kerry (D-MA)

Klobuchar (D-MN)

Kohl (D-WI)

Landrieu (D-LA)

Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Leahy (D-VT)

Levin (D-MI)

Lugar (R-IN)

 Menendez (D-NJ)

Merkley (D-OR)

Murray (D-WA)

Pryor (D-AR)

Reed (D-RI)

Reid (D-NV)

Rockefeller (D-WV)

Sanders (I-VT)

Shaheen (D-NH)

Snowe (R-ME)

Udall (D-CO)

Udall (D-NM)

Vitter (R-LA)

Whitehouse (D-RI)

Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 1  (Lieberman)

It wasn't surprising that my own two Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, essentially thumbed their noses at their constituents.  They are from New York and in the thrall of Wall Street.  Gillibrand, who often pays lip service to a progressive agenda and manages to get herself on TV a lot to promote the latest liberal cause, was the biggest single recipient of campaign contributions from the mega-banks during her first election campaign. (She had been appointed by Gov. David Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton in 2009.)  Were your senators on the list you didn't want them to be on? Were you shocked that your senator voted in your interests for a change?

The Republicans siding against the banks were the biggest surprise, and a pleasant one at that.  Did you ever think Saxby Chambliss would be pro-consumer? 

Hey -- here's an idea.  President Obama can now appoint Elizabeth Warren head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and she can go through a Senate confirmation after all!  The Senate is just a great big happy family, with some Republicans having values and some Democrats having none.  Who would not love to see Chuck the Two-Faced squirm as he has to pretend to be nice to Warren and pro-middle class while stuffing his pockets with Wall Street largesse?

From ProPublica, here is a really detailed explanation of what today's vote was all about.

Don't Vouch For Me, Paulie Ryan

According to Paul Krugman, the Republicans are not well pleased to have their defeated Medicare Voucher Program being called a voucher program. I agree -- it just sounds so coupon-y and tacky.  So let's just stop with the damn demagoguing and help the fine folks of the GOP come up with a more apt term for their plan to kill save Medicare, shall we?  It's got to be easy to remember, and meaningful, so an acronym might work best. Some suggestions:

MediPRIC (Paul Ryan's Insurance Cabal).

MediPOP (Profits Over People).

MediCRAP (Conservative Republicans Against Patients).

MediKIL (Kleptocratic Insurance Limited).

MediSCAM (Social Conservatives Against Mankind).

MediCHEAT (Conservatives Hiding Eugenics Agenda Totally).

But not to worry. The Democrats have a plan too. It's called MediTLOTE (The Lesser of Two Evils). Commenter Jay from Ottawa invented it.  Thanks Jay!

Or, Obama might compromise unnecessarily and come up with these Medicare cuts improvements. (Remember, the Democrats will always give you choices.  They are pro-choice).

MediBUT (Bipartisanship Under Table).

MediPUNT (Pragmatism Until New Term).

MediSTRIP (Surrender to Republicans in Peace).

They Just Can't Stand a Bare Table

_

Those Pesky Headwinds and Their Blowing Spin

It's Hard Out There for a Windy Presidential Candidate

Last fall, it was the car driven into the ditch by Republicans that President Obama blamed for the lousy pace of the recovery.  He has finally picked a new metaphor to show just how much he personally distances himself from the ongoing crisis: "headwinds".

At a speech Friday to workers in a Jeep plant, Obama said: "We're facing some tough headwinds. Lately, it's high gas prices, the earthquake in Japan and unease about the European fiscal situation. That will happen from time to time."

(Yeah, every once in awhile those breezy conditions pop up and just blow away all those jobs -- poof!).

And from his weekly radio address Saturday:  "Even though our economy has created more than two million private sector jobs over the past 15 months and continues to grow, we're facing some tough headwinds. Lately, it's high gas prices, the earthquake in Japan and unease about the European fiscal situation."

(Uh-huh. Wall Street and tax-dodging corporations are all a-tremble that a big quake will strike Lower Manhattan.  And oh, that market unease.  If only the global plutocracy could just get confident, everything would be A-OK!.  The cost of filling up their Hummers and armed Mercedes has left them reeling and unable to hire even a part-time janitor to scrub out their gold plated toilets).

Of course, the obedient little stenographers of the mainstream media are marching right in lockstep with Leader.  Here is what Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg wrote in The New York Times Saturday:

"The campaign is shaping up as a test of whether the much-vaunted organizing abilities of Mr. Obama and his team can offset the headwinds he faces. In battleground states, volunteers are fanning out by the thousands to reach out to neighbors who helped Mr. Obama in his first presidential campaign and persuade them to re-up."

Of course, the press is making Friday's dismal jobs report all about how it will effect the 2012 presidential race -  not about how it is affecting the actual people who don't have jobs. At least it's a switch from the totally made-up Debt Ceiling Showdown bringing us to financial Zero Hour. It can't be all that bad: after all, good buddies Obama and John Boehner have a golf date next weekend.

But getting back to that Times article.  It was nothing more than a thinly disguised piece of White House boosterism.  Zeleny and Rutenberg uncritically reported that "several thousand times a week, still-committed volunteers knock on the doors of potential new recruits and neighbors involved four years ago to see if they will join in."  These two supposedly seasoned reporters were in Chicago for a campaign pep rally and obviously are swallowing the Messina gospel hook, line and sinker.  They did not provide locations or names or photos to prove claims that thousands of Obamabots are annoying their neighbors in "battleground" states a year and a half before Election Day.

But back to what Obama is not doing about jobs -- his campaign has a thrilling answer. Again, according to the Times article:  

"While Mr. Obama will not fully engage in campaign activity until next year, aides said, he is embarking on weekly economic-focused trips throughout the summer. Doing so will allow him to use his bully pulpit to show that he is focused on addressing joblessness, the issue that more than any other could shape his electoral prospects and that Republicans are using to assert that his policies have failed."

Nothing like using the bully pulpit in a new factory every week, speaking in that g-droppin' folksy campaign rhetoric, surrounded by the 250 blue collar workers of America who still have $10 an hour jobs, to show how much he is addressing unemployment.  It's like the family sittin around the table.  You lose a job, what do you do?  You tighten your belts, you don't go on vacation, you don't go out to eat as much.  But what you don't do is you don't stop savin for college to win the future.  The guy doesn't even need a teleprompter for this kind of soarin oratory.

That's it.  Just campaign talk, buying time till he gets that second term.  We really should be hoping that either Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman get the nomination, because among the three of these men, there is little difference.  All three, for example, have espoused the same kind of health care "reform" we really got.  All three are traditional, conservative Republicans and none is really admitting it.  Obama must pretend to be somewhat progressive, while the other two are forced to pander to the right wing Tea Party.  All three are pro-corporate, status quo kind of guys. Choice we can believe in.

NYT Slow on the Censorship Uptake

The comments I submit to The New York Times get dumped or buried much of the time, but today I reached a milestone.  I had a comment (#12) get published under the "Playing With Matches on the Debt" editorial at about 1:30 a.m. today, got over 100 readers' recommendations with a ranking of fourth or fifth in popularity -- but when I went back to check it some twelve hours later, the comment was replaced with the "This comment has been removed" message.  No more comment!  No more readers' recommendations!  No more turkey soup, turkey hash, turkey sandwiches.  The Times Bumpus Hound moderators done struck!

So I am reprinting it here, because I can, dammit!

And the silence from The White House is deafening.  The debt ceiling "crisis" is a wholly manufactured theatrical trick to give both parties cover as they fail to conduct the business of the American people.  On a daily basis we get TV soundbites of these politicians crossing the street, meeting behind closed doors, and then somberly reappearing before the microphones with their usual message: "Everything is on the table."

For all we know, these hacks are having a game of pinochle as the world waits with baited breath.  It will play out as it always does:  a new Crisis Zero Hour will approach, President Obama will pretend-capitulate to the Republicans and call it a victory, and the slow and steady dismantling of the New Deal will continue its preordained course.

And the corporate media are playing along, deflecting our attention with Sarah's mystery bus tour and Anthony's Weiner, while unemployment reaches critical mass and both Democrats and Republicans do the bidding of their Wall Street masters.  We know it, they know we know it, and they do it anyway.  One of these days, their cynicism and corruption will backfire on them.... one of these days, right in the kisser! 

Okay, on second thought, I am really surprised this got past the censors at all.  Anyway, thanks to all the readers who recommended it.  I shall never forget.