Time.com: A White House Without Rove?

It’s another article informed by anonymous insiders. This one opines that Rove is about to spend more time with his family. My favorite paragraph:

The expected departures are among a host of new signs suggesting that Bush’s sixth year in office—the last one before midterm elections and a turn in attention toward the 2008 race to succeed him—will be very different from his first five. The sunny optimist who loved to think big is now facing polls in which for the first time a majority of Americans say they do not trust him. “It’s like it’s twilight in America,” says one frustrated conservative.

Perhaps said conservative should be frustrated by the fact that after five years of having it all their way we have a deficit of mythic proportions, a rising poverty rate, a war that the majority of Americans now see as a mistake and not necessarily an honest mistake at that, stagnant wages, a healthcare crises and an increasingly squeezed middle class. Oh, and no international credibility. That can be a problem, too. Maybe if they recognized the real problems that Americans have and addressed them instead of focusing on PR problem they could have stayed out of trouble.

“Twilight in America” is a very good metaphor for the sense of things gone horribly wrong that so many people have right now. And it’s the Bush administration that’s brought it on. People are starting to see that.

Crossposted to zenyenta.blogspot.com

This is one of those moments when I’m deeply glad that my daughter and family moved in here with us. Sure, the apartment upstairs is going to be too small once Joey arrives in February, but with the tax proposals that have been put in front of the president, I’m very happy they didn’t buy a house when they might have been able to. The proposals, among other changes, change deductions for mortage interest into tax credits, with much lower caps. Furthermore they elimate tax deductions for state and local taxes.

The “kids” were pretty broke when they moved in with us, and as I’ve blogged before, they really moved in with us at the time. They were a family of three, plus pets, occupying two bedrooms in our seven room home. In addition to our seven rooms, the house also contains a two bedroom apartment upstairs, but it wasn’t empty when they came to stay. My mother and sister were in it. When circumstances change and we moved people around my daughter and her husband could have chosen to buy a house. They weren’t broke anymore. They both had good jobs, were out of debt and saving money. Mortgages were being given out like candy and with creative financing, they’d have been able to make payments on a modest house, even with the inflated prices that prevail here. And they’d have lost money already. The market is softening a little even now.

If any form of these tax proposals goes through, legions of couples like them won’t be able to afford the payments on the homes that they’ve recently bought. With the mere possibility of it, the market is going to soften right into mush around here in the land of high property taxes and overpriced McMansions. I”m really glad they didn’t pay $400,000 for a cape on an eighth of an acre, which was what they were going for.

There are a lot more implications, which will affect everyone, including us. But at least they’re not on the hook for a huge mortgage on a house that now will have negative equity within weeks if this idea isn’t quashed immediately.

CNN.com
Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats stood up for the American people today when they forced the Senate into a closed door session. The issue is the investigation into the intelligence that lead up to this war. Suddenly I feel so….represented.

Keywords of the day from the GOP: Publicity stunt. Expect to hear it at least once from every talking head on the right.

Personally, I’m just wild about Harry. Reid, that is.

Succession - it’s not just for conservative extremists anymore. It seems that there’s a movement afoot in Vermont to succeed from the union. It was funny to wake up to this article this morning, because it was only yesterday, a co-worker said, “Maybe we just need a total split.” It was the nomination of Alito that sparked the sentiment on the part of my friend. That was just the last straw. It’s an important one, though.

Those of us who believe that a country must take care of the elderly and disabled if they are in need, give those in poverty a helping hand and have policies that bolster a strong and accessible middle class are finding it harder and harder to live under what can only be called a regressive regime. The Alito nomination would make it harder to turn things around. Yes, one more uber-conservative on the Supreme Court threatens reproductive rights, but that’s only the beginning.

So, Vermont, how about giving it until the 2006 elections? Then, if that doesn’t go well, maybe the blue states should all go together after all. I, for one, am very weary of knowing that my state is paying the federal government more than it’s getting back so as to finance tax cuts for the rich, leaving us unable to afford the services most of us think that government should provide.

In the meantime, Political Cortex has a list of anti-Alito petitions to sign. We’re fighting for our lives here. In too many cases, literally fighting for our lives.

Political Cortex, a new collaborative, progressive site opened yesterday. It’s operated on the Scoop platform and it aims to give a voice to all its members. If you sign up now, you can get your desired username. I got my first name. I should be able to remember that.

I don’t know how much I’ll contribute, but I read one of its writers, S.M. Dixon, on a regular basis and find his site an invaluable source of news and information, especially on busy days when there’s not much time to check everything out.

Anyway, welcome to blogtopia (yes, skippy coined that term), Political Cortex. And best of luck in your mission.

The Realist Who Got It Wrong
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post

Talk about living in a world of one’s own.

Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the antiwar movement — most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire — a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft.

Well, Brent Scowcroft isn’t chopped liver and his New Yorker article was a welcome addition to the volumes being written as to how, why and when this administration got things so very wrong. But Cindy Sheehan a disaster? Well, yes, but not for the anti-war movement. More for Bush. She got attention. The press actually covered her for a while. Getting the press to cover anti-war anything has been a near impossibility since the whole debacle started.

Krauthammer really doesn’t admire Scowcroft, though. Scowcroft, it seems, is a mean guy, whereas Krauthammer is all heart.

This coldbloodedness is a trademark of this nation’s most doctrinaire foreign policy “realist.” Realism is the billiard ball theory of foreign policy: The only thing that counts is how countries interact, not what’s happening inside. You care not a whit about who is running a country. Whether it is Mother Teresa or the Assad family gangsters in Syria, you care only about their external actions, not how they treat their own people.

He must draw his own line as to where tyranny ends and authoritarianism begins. Our best buddies, the Saudis, for instance, are regarded as rather harsh by some. Not by the Bush administration, however. We don’t want to be spreading freedom and democracy there. And never mind that we were contributing players in some of the worst atrocities of Saddam’s regime in one way or another. We’re not supposed to dwell on that.

It’s safe to say that Krauthammer is not a member of the reality based community and doesn’t want to be. Thing is, reality might bite, but it is the dimension we have to live in.

Ronni Bennett wrote a great post yesterday about The Economic War on the Have-Nots. It’s a good, if depressing, read. The policies of the last twenty-five years are coming together to create an increasing class of have-nots in this country and a lot of us could wind up in that sinking boat.

What strikes me is the great PR job the rightwing has done to sell it to vulnerable Americans. In pre-Reagan America you could be poor, but you could pretty much have a roof over your head, food of some sort on the table and medical care, almost no matter what. The right fed the resentment of the middle class against those people receiving public benefits and welfare was a controversial issue. If you were poor, you were lazy and unwilling to work. The fact that most people receiving assistance were either children or disabled was ignored and the righteous outrage over supporting those “welfare queens” grew.

Meanwhile, life was getting just a little bit harder for the middle class. Not much. Just a little. Housing prices were up. The cost of higher education was harder to manage and there was a lot less free money around to help with it. Emergency medical assistance was cut so that the middle class no longer had access to the system in the event of a catastrophic situation. The middle class was even less willing to pay for things for strangers that they couldn’t afford for their own families.

So, during the Clinton administration we ended “welfare as we knew it”. Everyone has to work now. And they do. Most adults in homeless shelters work. Most welfare recipients work. Most poor people are the working poor. And now the rightwing talking points include the disparagement of people who don’t make a lot of money even if they work hard their entire lives. Also, people who have earned a decent income but who have not managed to amass sufficient wealth to weather any storm that might come along are subject to derision.

There is no more concept of the “poor but honest” character in the stories of our youth. No more sympathy for the widowed octagenarian who finds herself impoverished. Only disdain for anyone who hasn’t got a respectable portfolio. Work isn’t valued any longer, unless it produces considerable financial success.

Today’s fiscal conservatives like to say that everyone has the same opportunity and if you don’t make the most of it, then you don’t deserve a decent life, let alone retirement. You know, there was some opportunity even in feudal times. An enterprising and exceptional villein could make it into the merchant class once in a while - especially after the Black Death. Most, however, lived a very hard life until the system ended. Is that the standard the United States aspires to? Both political parties need to be put on notice that we’re mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.

A woman that I work with came in looking like she had had a very rough night. She was pale and drawn and almost haggard, which is not her usual look. Her son is in Iraq. She never wanted that. Her family is very much like so many families of the troops in Iraq. They’re a generation away from poverty, working hard to acheive the increasingly elusive American dream. Her son was recruited when he was still in high school and this war was just a twinkle in George Bush’s eye. Maria is a young mother. The only war she’d be likely to remember is the Gulf War. She’s neither uneducated nor naive, but she’d never in her life really seen our government send its children off to kill and die for no real reason.

When her son said he wanted to join up, she might have hesitated, but she didn’t want to stand in his way. They told him they’d send him to college. The said he could go to law school on their dime, maybe become a JAG officer. Once he got out of high school and the Marines came to collect on his pledge, she had long talks with him. She’d have helped if he’d wanted to change his mind, but she didn’t want to stand in the way of something he wanted. They told her they were sending him to college and probably not to Iraq, which was well underway by then.

So now he’s in Iraq, on street patrol. His mother supports him utterly, but she opposes the war. And most of all she lives in fear every day of her life. She doesn’t get a lot of sleep. She’s joined Military Families Speak Out and surfs sites like Operation Truth every chance she gets. It would be so much easier if she could just convince herself that the war is necessary and the cause is noble, but like Cindy Sheehan, she will not accept those ideas for the sake of a bit of comfort.

Today was so bad because her son told her he had killed someone. He was a mess. She was a mess for him. Now there’s more to keep her up at night. She’ll wonder what this will do to him. He’ll get through it for now. There’ll be people in his unit who’ve been through it and they’ll understand what he’s feeling and help him deal with it. For now. In the longterm, it could be a different story. One thing is certain, if he makes it home, he’ll be a different person and he’ll be bringing some demons home with him.

So to Scooter Libby and any future indictees as well as those architects and salemen of this war who may go unscathed, I have a wish for you. I wish nothing more than that you could walk for a few days in Maria’s shoes. I wish upon you the thoughts that keep her up at night and the nightmares that make up her dreams. Maybe then you’d understand what you’ve done.

Will they? Won’t they? If they will, then when will they? Those are the questions on every political junkie’s mind tonight. And on the minds of some notable political operatives, too. The rumors were flying last night, but nothing so far. Tomorrow is, of course, another day. I wonder what the betting line is on all this. There are betting lines on everything.

I does bring a person back, though, doesn’t it? Watergate was an exciting time, too. Of course, the burning question is usually which co-conspirators will get book deals and which ones will get TV shows. This bunch is a little different than the usual run. Personal success seems to be spelled “world domination” for them. Not for the United States. For themselves. I can’t see any of them being happy with a spot on Fox. Well, if there’s any frogmarching on the horizon, I’m making popcorn.

I’ve been neglecting this blog. I’ve been posting pretty much daily on the other one. Posting has been confined to political rants inspired by the criminally inept response to Katrina by our administration. Time Goes By has been covering similar territory, possibly in a more organized way.

There have been other distractions, too.

Techno distractions

While the big things were happening, the revamped Opera Community opened up. Opera now offers full featured blogs, photo albums and a lot of other community features. After resisting for a day or so, I gave in and started a blog there just to see what it was like. It’s a nice inferface, but with a lot of limitations for the moment. One thing that’s a bit off-putting is that it seems that you have to be registered with Opera Community to post comments on the blogs. That’s a big limitation. Of course it’ll stop comment spam. I don’t seem to be able to find a balance with this blog on that issue. I really don’t want to make comments subject to moderation before they’re posted. I tried that and didn’t like it. Sometimes it’s hours before I get back to the blog and sometimes I miss them altogether. There’s a spam filter plug-in but I’ve gotten false positives with that. On the other hand, I have had to delete quite a few spam comments and trackbacks and close a couple of old posts to comments and pings.

Personal distractons

It’s been a medical kind of week. Nothing unusual about that, these days. I went to the dermatologist for another follow-up. He increased the Targretin to the full dose of 300 mg. That meant going to Bay Shore to get it. Targretin is hell on one’s triglycerides so the doctor increased my Lipitor prescription to 40 mg a day. That’s a lot. I started getting more pronounced pains and when I stopped at my primary care doctor’s office to get orders for bloodwork in a form the insurance company would accept he expressed a lot of concern about the pains. If it’s the Lipitor that’s doing it then it’s a serious thing and I have to stop taking it right away. Now it’s Sunday and I woke up with severe pain all up and down my left leg. I’m not entirely sure what to do. I have to call a doctor tomorrow. I’m not sure which one. And I’m not sure what I should take or not take today. On top of that, I’ve developed a stubborn itchy rash in the last few days. A couple of years ago that wouldn’t be worth noting, but now it kind of freaks me out.

In other personal concerns, Rudy the bassett hound, who is a granddog of mine, is at the vet and under the weather. We’re all hoping that Rudy has a swift and complete recovery. He’s a lovely dog.