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The world's nuclear wannabes, starting with Iran, should send a thank you note to Senator Jon Kyl. After months of negotiations with the White House, he has decided to try to block the lame-duck Senate from ratifying the New Start arms control treaty.
The treaty is so central to this country's national security, and the objections from Mr. Kyl - and apparently the whole Republican leadership - are so absurd that the only explanation is their limitless desire to deny President Obama any legislative success.
What's a little global destabilization if it means it might give the GOP a chance to put Sarah Palin into the White House? And Democrats, clearly the problem here is that you're not being bi-partisan enough.
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Adding: I got my start blogging in the height of Republican control of everything, when the excellence of George Bush and his great and glorious War in Iraq were not to be questioned. Unchecked radical right-wingerism sure has a way of getting folks' attention. It's going to be an interesting two years in Concord.
Conservative Republicans have added your despicable name to the list of TRAITORS in our stench-producing Senate dominated by those on the Radical Left and representing your ilk. Your refusal to be swayed by either reason or eloquence indicates your leftist orientation. HEMISPHERIC SECURITY AND DEFENSE will be threatened by Castro's Communistic allies and your ideological cohorts. An awesomely large mass of information can be mobilized to invalidate your fuzzy left-wing thinking. TRAITORS of your gutter orientation abound in our corrupt Senate dominated by the scum and vermin of the Marxist Democrats. Rest assured, Commissar McIntyre, that you will be classified as insidious and corrupt. Americans who care to stand up in your Marxist behalf are to be sledge-hammered as QUISLINGS and odious incendiaries. We will concentrate on your vicious leftist VOTING RECORD and your excessive loyalty to the liberal pig in the tainted WHITE HOUSE. My qualifications: Washington University postgraduate and honor student. You are unquestionably on of the most dishonest and VICIOUSLY CORRUPT hucksters and charlatans in our thieving Senate controlled by vermin of your FAR-LEFT views. We will work assiduously to damn you in scathing terms. YOUR ARE AIDING AND ABETTING your beloved COMMUNIST CAUSE. CONSERVATIVES are being enlisted to stomp our way through your Communizing Senate which dares to stand up to its CONSERVATIVE BETTERS. Rest assured that we deem you to be on the same plane as COMMUNISTS. You are vermin."
- Letter I received following Senate vote on Panama Canal treaties.
That's from Chapter 9, "The Psyche of the Radical Right," of The Fear Brokers, US Senator from New Hampshire Thomas McIntyre's detailed expose of the 1970's version of what is today's Dick Armey, Citizens United, digitally enhanced model.
Cut and paste Shea-Porter for McIntyre, Death Panels for the Panama Canal, Socialist for Communist, and Rupert Murdoch for William Loeb, and presto! - you've traveled 35 years in the blink of a paradigm.
The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation's pretax income in 2007 - up from less than 9 percent in 1976. During the boom years of 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent's pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose.
I think the most important thing right now is making sure that 1% continues to have the tax giveaways they enjoyed under Decision Points George. They clearly need more time to turn that bonanza into jobs for the rest of us.
But we're America, gosh darn it. I want to go further. Do we, the Other 99%, have the can-do spirit in us needed to get the One Percenters to enjoy a full one-quarter of all American wealth?
I for one will not rest until 1% of our population earns 1 of every 4 dollars. If it means some of the money I've been putting into Social Security for decades not coming back to me on the other end, if it means skyrocketing deficits for my children and grandchildren, so be it. I know Judd's with me on this - who else?
(Bumped, because I voted and BOY did it feel good to vote! - promoted by Dean Barker)
Granny D, shortly before she was arrested at the Capitol:
Dear friends, we would never seek to abolish now what has become our dear United States. But it is our constant intention that it should be a government of, by and for the people, not the special interests. Our right to alter our government must be used to sweep these halls clean of greedy interests so that people may use this government in service to each other's needs and to protect the condition of our earth. This we declare.
In the end, that's what election after election in this country comes down to: You and I and the Rest of Us against the powerful interests of the super-wealthy. They will always have a bigger and more expensive megaphone. But whether or not that megaphone drowns us out from time to time, there will always be more of us than them.
This is an Election Day Open Thread. Please leave your thoughts, observations, last-minute info, etc... in the thread.
And VOTE!
Adding: Until voting results come in, this is one of the least active days in political news, despite being our biggest traffic day on the site. So if you are new here, please enjoy on the following links on our highest-profile races: NH-Gov, NH-Sen, NH-01, NH-02.
A reminder: every penny spent by the Guinta campaign during these last two weeks of the campaign is from a cash-on-hand total that is less than the amount of almost certainly illegal money he infused into his campaign.
It's our job to show that Getting Out the Vote for Integrity is a higher and nobler and better activity than a campaign fueled on a potential crime. It doesn't get any more Good v. Evil than that.
So basically, in what should structurally be a year favoring the GOP, and with untold anonymous outsourcers assisting Ayotte and Co. with post-Citizens United attack ad money, the electorate is where it always is:
Despite record political spending and months of frenzied campaigning, one-third of likely voters remain steadfastly undecided or favor a candidate but say they could change their mind, according to the survey.
Some in the LGBT community aren't happy with this, no doubt influenced in part by the quick-as-mud pace of repealing DADT, DOMA, et al.
I'll say this: when I was the same age as the audience President Obama is addressing here, and bullied not because I was gay but because my friends were, President Reagan refused to speak the word "AIDS." The subsequent inattention to the epidemic played a key role in causing tremendous suffering.
Truly, it gets better. This is a Weekend Open Thread.
Use this to post random observations on the primaries, which may not fit another category.
First, if Kelly Ayotte prevails: to paraphrase Darryl Hammond from this parody of "Hardball" that he used to do on Saturday Night Live while portraying Tweety:
Wow! An impressive display of insanity from Christine O'Donnell! Kelly Ayotte, keep this crazy train rolling!
(Bumped... what are you seeing out there? - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
Will Kelly Ayotte stumble across the finish line?
Will Bill O'Brien make it onto the Democratic fall ticket?
Will Jim Bender pick up his signs and leave us alone?
Just three of the many questions that will be answered today.
This is a Primary Day Open Thread.
p.s. Go Annie!
Adding: To be very serious for a minute. I think perhaps the most important thing you can do today, besides voting, of course, is to let your friends and fmaily and colleagues know you are voting, and remind them of the election in the fall. Waking up the presidential drop-off voters is in my opinion the single biggest challenge from now until November.
The real question is whether we spent enough. But that is a debate that will never see the light of day in our dominant media culture.
Instead, the FAUX News/Hate Radio echo chamber and Very Serious Austerity Economists have joined forces to create the new conventional wisdom that what we really need right now is for the little people to suffer for the sake of the deficit. For example, the best way forward for those withdrawing early from or borrowing from their retirement accounts is to raise the Social Security retirement age.
Granny D, shortly before she was arrested at the Capitol:
