[originally at DKOS]

Is this site dedicated to electing Democrats, or Democrats in Name Only (DINOs)?  If the latter, congratulations.  Mission accomplished.

Apparently, The Great Satan himself is incredulous at his own handiwork:

If Reid and Pelosi stand firm [insert laughs] they will finally fulfill one of their key 2006 campaign promises, proving they have the courage to stand tough for what they believe, while giving the vast majority of the American people what they want.

   If they yield [more laughter] they will reinforce perceptions of Democratic weakness. Worse, they will be siding with an unpopular president and an unpopular Republican Party over an unpopular war, and their own popularity will suffer as a result.

   The options to those of us outside of the Beltway are so obvious it’s truly unfathomable that we are still left wondering which path the Democrats will take.

Mukasey Confirmed

by emptywheel

From which we can take the following lessons:

It’s unclear that our political system has the fortitude to save itself anymore.

Rather than continue the quote with the additional lessons, let’s just stop right there and think about that.

It’s unclear that our political system has the fortitude to save itself anymore.

Anyone familiar with TheNextHurrah knows well that emptywheel, while sometimes explicitly conjectural, is neither hyperbolic nor shrill in her musings, but rather has an almost prophetic command of facts.

How many times are you gonna get punked?

Seriously.  How much can you take?  I got punked again too when I lined up behind Chris Dodd after he put a hold on telecom amnesty and promised to filibuster-it seemed so principled to LEAD NOW!-then he failed to show up for the vote on Mukasey.  So much for the “gravitas appeal.”  Punked again.  Dodd’s dad, the Nuremburg prosecutor, must be especially proud that his own son can’t take a stand on torture.  I guess that leaves me with flying saucer boy.  Dodd wasn’t alone, of course.  Most of the rest of you fuckers got punked too. 

K-Lo says:

It’s not every day that National Review has editorial openings. At the moment, however, we have a few – for both NR and NRO. (They have come up because of natural transition and expansion afoot.)

It’s not every day that the conservative movement implodes, and the rats naturally transit away from the gurgling sounds of a sinking ship of state.  The major expansion afoot currently at NRO is Jonah Goldberg’s Doughy Pantload.

http://corner.nation…

If you have 18 minutes, check out this video link below (sorry, no permalink).  It is Carolyn Porco, lead scientist on the Cassini Saturn mission, talking about one of the greatest human achievements in exploration that has barely raised eyebrows in our terminally dull population.  She is the awesome, and she knows how to talk about science to stupid people like me. 

In an article in Salon.com on September 19, Steven Clemons describes a debate at a recent Washington dinner party attended by eighteen people at which “Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran”.

Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to President Carter, Clemons writes, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was National Security Adviser to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire, and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.

Memo to Netroots: Now do you understand?

Democrats are caving on Mukasey, and they will next cave on telecom amnesty.  This comes on the heels of several other colossal capitulations.  I hope you get it now: Democrats are no longer on your side.  They no longer cooperate.

If Nancy Pelosi were poor and sleeping on my sidewalk, she’d be arrested for loitering.  But because she has  $125 million bucks in the bank, and a sign on the door of her office reading “Speaker of the House,” it’s called “government.”

–Compound F

Nancy Pelosi’s statement about war protestors being arrested for loitering exhibited frustration at her base’s desire to end the evil in Iraq and also struck a rather authoritarian chord.  While she voted against funding, she is obviously deeply conflicted about her commitments to the Constitution, oversight, and basic ethics.  The same can be said of Congress as a whole.  I hope we can agree that lying one’s way into an aggressive war in which a million people have been killed for the purposes of resource theft can be easily categorized as “evil.”

Evil is a loaded concept, so let me pare it down. Evil is not “out there” as a mythic, religious, or supernatural force.  While I insist on looking inward to find evil, I also don’t care for the “empirical” notion that Good and Evil can be adequately represented by a continuum of pleasure and pain.  I prefer the more philosophical or moral version in which evil is related to the intent to do harm. 

The UN just published their 2007 Global Environment Outlook.

In a phrase, it is “beyond depressing.”  All 567 pages, or so, which I only uncritically and rapidly previewed.  I already know it.  So does everyone else.  Let’s face it: Population size has surpassed Earth’s carrying capacity several times over.  The atmosphere, oceans, rivers, and lands are all collapsing.  Rising demand meets failing supplies.  In the best of all possible scenarios, millions if not billions must die.  Perhaps we will all die.  Problem solved.  In the meantime, population growth drives extraction and economic growth.  Economic growth drives consumption, as well as our politics.  Globalization simply accelerates the process.  The oil is collapsing, so we start wars over the commodity that is killing us most.  What can we do about it?

We live in an age of hypertrophic indecency and immodesty.  This is perhaps best symbolized the Presidency of George W. Bush and his aggressive wars, rendition torture, illegal search and seizure, and absolute disregard for human suffering.  A fundamental indecency and immodesty suffuses us.  We have suffered a collapse of the sense of “enoughness.”

I doan know why, but dey’s sumfn bout dem aging white scientists-one er dem chuckleheads–dey alwuz love dem to scuttle deir reputations right befo’ dey die.  It happmd to Richard Herrnstein when he published Da Bell Curve with Charles Murray.  What wuz he thinkin’?  He wrote it, den up’n died.  I reckon James Watson will up’n die soon too.  I’s a-gwyne to tell ya bout it below da fold.

http://news.independ…

(Originally posted at the Great Orange Satan)

There is no doubt that the policies of BushCo have gotten us lost deep in the wilderness, a desperate feeling apparently intensified by middle age.  The majority, or at least plurality, of this site’s users is middle-aged, the mean age being around 45 or so.  (I arbitrarily, and some would argue, ruthlessly, divide life evenly into three parts: Youth: 0-30 years; Middle Age: 31-60; and Old Age: 61-90).  Being middle-aged and lost in some Medieval wilderness rings an old bell, doesn’t it? 

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che’ la dirritta via era smarritta

In the middle of this walk of our life
I came to myself in a dark wilderness
Where the straight way was lost.