A Stars Hollow Gazette

Recently I’ve had a lot of people ask me what course of action I would take.

Most of them are hopelessly compromised sellouts looking to justify craven capitulation because, frankly, they can’t stand to look at their own cowardly face in the morning mirror.

You do what you need to do to eat and provide for your family.  Please don’t bother trying to convince me your shit sandwich is anything but two slices of bread wrapped around a turd.

I’m not Navin Johnson.  I know a hole in the ground when I see one.

“But that’s not constructive criticism ek”, you whine.

Why do you care for my approval anyway?

Oh, I get it.  You want something from me.  My money.  My vote.  The ability to walk among decent people without having them spit on you like the soul-whore liar you are.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being an honest sex worker.  Most of them are decent people who provide the service they sell.  They should have a union.

But there is something different about being a confidence man, a professional betrayer.

One of the reasons I got out of journalism at a young age is professors at J-school telling me that any lie was acceptable to get a source to talk.

Yet I am a proud and successful politician because I deliver what I promise and I’m not afraid of fights because I know what’s right and have the people behind me.

In a local way of course, but it’s all the Village Number Six.

Are you a Number or a Free Man?

^{Previously on Health Care Reform…}

The Senate Will Not Change Without A Crisis

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Friday December 4, 2009 5:15 pm

This is the perfect moment for the progressives to force the crisis needed to change how the Senate works.

Health care is a huge party issue with massive support among the base. The public option is extremely popular and has become a rallying call. It can’t pass the completely made-up 60-vote threshold, but it can get the constitutionally required simple majority.

If we can’t break the unconstitutional and disfucntional Senate rules on this issue, I don’t see how progressives will ever be able to.

Failing to create the crisis now, will pretty much guarantee not a single piece of really progressive legislation is passed during Obama’s presidency.

Given the broken state of the Senate and the massive increase in filibuster use, it is not a matter of if there will be a crisis, but simply when. If progressives can’t force a Democratically controlled Senate to fix this nonsense, I can promise you when the Republicans take back the Senate, the right-wing base will.

Capitulating now for bread crumbs would be admitting progressive change is impossible. You don’t get change by saying, “pretty please, but if don’t, that is ok.” You only will see change if you demand it.

You all remember Blackwater (now Xe) don’t you?  And Erik Prince, Soldier of God?

Well, there’s been some web commentary on this Vanity Fair piece that is certainly worth looking at (not that it isn’t always worth stopping by emptywheel’s place).

Spy Versus Spy with Erik Prince

By: emptywheel Wednesday December 2, 2009 4:00 pm

Among the revelations emptywheel enumerates-

• He was tasked by the CIA to create a “small, focused capability”
• The CIA’s original assassination squad trained at his personal estate outside of DC
• Prince integrated third-party nationals into the assassination squad who did not know of the CIA connection
• He (personally) and a team of foreign nationals targeted someone in 2008
• He did the targeting on al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah in Syria
• The CIA referred the stories on Blackwater to the DOJ for criminal investigation

This in addition to the ‘old’ news that Blackwater was given operational control of CIA Predator Drones and fired Hellfire Missiles at targets and that Blackwater was the Cheney assassination squad that Leon Panetta (Director of the CIA) and the Congress were lied to about by the CIA.

I’ll ask you to give her your eyeballs for a moment or two and if you like it you might also be interested in dday’s take.

Don’t Confuse Capitulation With Compromise

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Wednesday December 2, 2009 3:28 pm

The progressives have said a public option is a must-have. A majority of both the House and Senate would vote for bill with a public option. If progressives are forced to surrender the public option, to try to “trade” it for something better, then they must officially admit that Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, and Joe Lieberman are the infinitely more powerful bloc. If progressives give up on the public option, they will cede power and influence in Washington for a very long time. Even bigger than health care, if the entire Democratic party exists only to give Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu sole power to design every peice of legislation, the progressive grassroots needs to reevaluate why they even vote for Democrats.