Headlines - Monday November 1

There's no question that Frank Rich fully gets the Billionaires' Coup. Here he is again on the rich complexity that is:

(a) Tea Party hubris; (b) the billionaires who fund it; and (c) the acknowledged (by both sides) "country club" split between the Roves and the Rubes (Mike Huckabee and the "lesser" ilk).

This will have to be just a taste, with less than the usual commentary — I'm soon to embark on trains, planes, and strangely-named buses again. Your taste (the first one is free; click for more):

But whatever Tuesday's results, this much is certain: The Tea Party's hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after. The ordinary Americans in this movement lack the numbers and financial clout to muscle their way into the back rooms of Republican power no matter how well their candidates perform.

Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," he said, referring to the South Carolina senator who is the Tea Party's Capitol Hill patron saint. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." It's the players who wrote the checks for the G.O.P. surge, not those earnest folk in tri-corner hats, who plan to run the table in the next corporate takeover of Washington. Though Tom DeLay may now be on trial for corruption in Texas, the spirit of his K Street lives on in a Lott client list that includes Northrop Grumman and Goldman Sachs.

There really is more, and that more is sweet (or bitter, depending on your mood):

What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it needed

both to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday. ... The more the Tea Party looks as if it's calling the shots in the G.O.P., the easier it is to distract attention from those who are actually calling them — namely, those who've cashed in and cashed out as ordinary Americans lost their jobs, homes and 401(k)'s.

At least someone with New York Times inches (and Sunday inches at that) is onto them in print. Read on.

 

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h/t Pat: Michael Moore: A Boot to the Head.

 

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People who don't have jobs don't give a shit about the deficit. They care about staying in their houses, keeping the lights on and the water running, and not going broke if somebody in the family gets sick. It'd be nice if the talking heads could wrap their brains around that fact.

 

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Good rant at TPJMagazine.

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The Nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting a Christian Fundamentalist Theocracy and Pooping on the First Amendment are: http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/?p=39438

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Nine years of torture and 40 years of imprisonment for a 15-year-old defending himself. Shameful. "A US military tribunal has sentenced a self-confessed Islamist militant to 40 years in jail on charges that include murdering a US soldier and conspiring to commit terrorist acts. Canadian Omar Khadr, now 24, pleaded guilty to the charges at the Guantanamo Bay tribunal last week. However, Khadr's plea deal limited his sentence to eight years. Caught in 2002 at the age of 15, he is the fifth Guantanamo inmate to be convicted at the military tribunals."

 

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The late Molly Ivins: because classics like this cannot be improved upon.

 

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Study: Boozing Bad For Society, Eat Mushrooms Instead

A new study published by Limey scientist-types suggests that alcohol is more dangerous and destructive than heroin! Ha ha, so next time you are drinking alone in your room and mutter "at least I don't inject opiates between my toes or in my eyeballs," an Englishman will parachute through your window and then explain — using science — how you are a hopeless wreck. The study ranked each substance for "harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities." So yeah, that's booze, alright! The study also found that Magical Mushrooms are not very destructive/husbands who gobble them up usually do not beat their wives. Ergo, you should eat those poop-shrooms by the bushel. [BBC]

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Jesus' General: The Power of the Priesthood.

 

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Futility

Krugman on beating one's head against a wall of tea bags:

And if you point out that their arguments don't add up, they fly into a rage. Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli.

History will remember this as a counter-factual era highlighted by unfocused, contradictory rage. And how it won the day.

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Daily Kos: Four questions for Republicans...and four answers for undecided voters.