Kevin’s great a good post about why it’s pointless for Democrats to even pretend we’ve got a chance of courting libertarian voters :

Libertarians may say they favor liberal social policies — and they do — but when push comes to shove most of them will toss the social stuff overboard in a heartbeat in favor of a dedication to economic libertarianism. What really gets their hearts pounding is big government and regulation of the free market. They’re against ‘em.

And let’s face it: Democrats just can’t credibly claim to be on their side. We like labor unions, we support environmental regulation and consumer safety laws, we think anti-poverty programs are great, we favor safety net programs like Social Security and national healthcare, and we’re not allergic to imposing the taxes to pay for all this stuff. You can try all day long to find a few grains of libertarian economic doctrine in the Democratic Party platform, but why bother? You’re not going to convince anyone, least of all the libertarians themselves, that we’re on their side.

Kevin goes on to break libertarians into two camps. The economic libertarians and the social libertarians, but it seems to me the more obvious split is between real libertarians and fake libertarians.

On the fake side, you’ve got wankers like Glenn Reynolds and Bruce Tinsley, who are clearly conservatives but adopt a “I didn’t leave them, they left me” attitude when the public starts to figure out that the thieves and assholes that they voted for turn out to be…thieves and assholes. These fake libertarians like to pretend that they have the moral and intellectual high ground when, in fact, they’re falling for transparent rhetorical bullshit like the rest of the more gullible 51% of Americans. Voting for George W. Bush twice doesn’t make you a genius, it makes you a fool.

As far as the real libertarians are concerned, I think Kevin gives them too much credit. Yes, the 200-300 principled libertarians out there actually have a consistent worldview, but all the high-minded talk about free markets and deregulation hides an even simpler truth. Libertarians just don’t want to pay for shit. They’re like the annoying friend that you go out to dinner with who doesn’t believe in tipping. That’s why, even though most libertarians will throw caveats into their arguments that of course we need police departments and a military, they still embrace loony ideas like abolishing the IRS. Anything that lowers their taxes and gives them more freedom will be openly embraced by the libertarian movement. Everybody else can go fend for themselves.

Either way, both camps of libertarianism reek of selfishness. If Republicans want to appeal to the egomania of voters who are willing to throw away personal freedom to have lower taxes and the corporate-crafted illusion of freer markets, then screw ‘em both. As far as I’m concerned, libertarians were wrong in the past, they’re wrong now, and pretending they could be right in the future only feeds their self-importance. Let the jerks and the people too dumb to realize they’re getting played run off into their own self-important playground of unproven economic and political science theories. The Democrats should just write off that pseudo-intellectual portion of the electorate the way they wrote off southern racists in the sixties (and, no, I’m not equating libertarianism with racism). I don’t want to be part of the “looking out for number one” party, I want to be part of the “looking out for everyone” party.

Posted By Ross

I’m a little late commenting on this, but in honor of my Tardiness, perhaps a better name for this post could have been “Not So fast, guys…”

I didn’t use to be as cynical as I am now. Where once I used to give the benefit of the doubt or at least, where once I tended towards the most mundane explanation of any event, now my BS detector goes off during episodes of Robot Chicken. Naturally, I know that part of this is a normal side effect of living, for a prolonged period of time, under a government that makes me feel like an alien in my own country. To be honest, 6 years of having to avoid political conversations with my family really grates. Hell, I can even feel slightly sympathetic to those loony, black-helicopter, militia-sympathising, Billary-r-teh-communism conservatives who saw threats to the very foundations of American liberty every time Bill Clinton even looked crossways at a camera.

No, I don’t agree with them or consider them reasonable, I merely understand how feeling alien in your own country, and being embittered by constant political defeat, can lead to a kind of political causal loop wherein you become more and more paranoid.

Of course, in the years since Billary left office, you may have noticed the critical difference between conservative conspiracy theorists and liberal ones: Liberals tend to be suspicious even when their guys are in charge. Conservatives tend to continue suspecting liberals even when their guys are doing exactly what they accused us of doing. Where, oh where are those “Get U.S. out of UN” guys now that their boy is turning the bill of rights into a bill of suggestions? But I digress.

There. Caveat dutifully applied. I admit my suspicious cynicism. And now that I’ve got that out the way, I can disregard it because, and I know I’m alone on this one, I’m definitely not taking any of the hype about how the Republicans secretly despise their Funduhmentalist base, at face value, or any value for that matter. I don’t buy it.

For those of you who don’t know, what I’m referring to is Tucker Carlson’s appearance on Chris Matthews last weekend, where he came right out and said (via atrios):

The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power.

Oh no you di-int Tucker, you did not just go there!

Ah but he did. And soon after this “astounding” revelation, the plot thickens like thighs on thanksgiving. Via the Poorman, here’s the latest permutation of the sudden startling willingness of Republicans to shit all over their base:

…MSNBC’s Olbermann had a preview of a new book from the former No. 2 man in Pres. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. David Kuo’s “Tempting Faith” will be out 10/16.

Olbermann: “Kuo cites one example after another of a White House that repeatedly uses Evangelical Christians for their votes while consistently giving them nothing in return… According to Kuo, Karl Rove’s office referred to Evangelical leaders as the ‘nuts.’ … When cufflinks were not enough, the White House played the Jesus card, reminding Christian leaders that ‘The knew the president’s faith’ and begging for patience. …

The Poorman comments, in a post called “Chumps,” thusly:

Blah-blah no respect blah blah abuse of power blah blah unconstitutional blah blah useful idiots … Ooooooooooo! Free cufflinks!

But are they Chumps? Let’s think about it for a moment. If Tucker and Former White House douchebag are telling the truth, then of course this is terribly shocking news (ews ews ews). Why, it would mean that the Religious Right, long acknowledged as the rock-solid, endlessly loyal base of the Republican party and, if Barak Obama is to believed, the single most strategically important voting block (and the real-est of All Americans!) are a bunch of Mark Ass Bitches. Suckaz! Well obviously it has to be true because it makes perfect sense that, with mere weeks to go before an election, both a former Bush White House official, and a well known Republican Talking Points Ventriloquist Dummy like Tucker Carlson, would rush to make sure that this information is as widely distributed as is humanly possible. Because as we all know, the one thing that two well known, ardent Republicans would want to do just before an election is to fuck over the last bastion of true right wing loyalty.

Sure. That makes perfect sense.

I know a lot of bloggers o’ the left are having a blast right now, gloating about the foot-in-mouth hilarity of not one, but two fairly prominent Republicans telling us what we want so desperately in our hearts to believe. Hell, I think the Religionic Crowd are hilariously idiotic too. They believe nonsense and they’re doing everything they can to make sure their nonsense is law. But disregarded by God’s Own Party? Ninja please. Don’t believe it for a second. Here’s the juice: Contrary to what Thomas Frank argues in “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” and contrary to what Tucker says, in fact, the Religious right might just be one of the most consistently rewarded interest groups in Modern American politics.

Don’t believe me?

Ask Chief Justice Roberts about his views on Abortion.

Ask public school officials how Abstinence only education is going?

Hell, ask every single outspoken Atheist or Secular Humanist about their chances of getting elected anywhere east of Los Angeles and South of Chicago.

Oh, while we’re at it, anyone out there read anything about how Americans finally kicked Intelligent Design Charlatans out of American Schools, en masse, and returned learning to the people who know something about science? Or about how the FCC stopped disproportionately responding to the complaints of a tiny minority of Religious Funduhmentalists? Ah, I didn’t think so.

Yes, it must really suck to be right wing and religious right now. Because no one in government does anything for you except, you know*, giving you two Supreme Court justices, Abstinence Only education, support for intelligent design and a ban on Stem Cell research, national prayer day, a compliant FCC and constant (and I argue, sincere) attempts to make gay marriage against the law constitutionally. Wow. How I wish the democrats would disregard my wishes on such a massive, insulting level.

I’m not saying that Fundies are controlling the whole country yet. But if anyone here can name another interest group (aside from the Credit Card companies and the oil industry) who exercises a similar amount of cultural and actual political influence, while at the same time enjoying the benefit of a strange sort of political correctness that demands you cannot actually argue with them, because you would be disrespecting their beliefs (thus rendering any meaningful debate impotent), I’ll buy you a coke.

Which brings me back to my deep and admittedly entrenched cynicism. I admit I’m very embittered, but I find it very odd that, just before a crucial election, news would emerge that suddenly paints Bush in a less than fanatically christian light. It seems suspicious, in the same way the recent sharp drop in gas prices (similar to the drop that occurred about this time in 2004) does. I’m not saying it’s deliberate, but it is rather fortunate that, just when Bush is in danger of losing a significant number of voters who aren’t crazy, he-is-coming-soon freaks, suddenly word comes out that makes it clear he isn’t actually on their side.

So, will this news keep them home? Maybe a few but for the most part, I doubt it. Their eyes are on the prize. They know that as long as Republicans keep winning, they’ll get the only prize that matters - Supreme Court Justices who hate Abortion, Feminism, Secularism, sexual liberty and birth control.

My apologies, because I don’t have much of a conclusion. Just let me ask you all reading this - What’s your take on this news? Do you think it fits? Do you think I’m being stupid and paranoid (I’ll gladly accept that. I’m rather embarrassed at my skepticism). Are the religious right really just a bunch of dupes?

And here’s a couple of more serious questions:

1) I think Barak needs to STFU about how we need to court these people. We’re liberal. They’re not. They will never vote for us. Am I wrong? What should the left do about the religious divide, and political ramifications of that divide?

2) Does it matter if the religious right stays home? Is it short sighted to hope to win an election based upon diminished turnout? Is there anything that can be done to cultivate our own rock solid interest groups? And if so, what are those groups?

*I thought greg would enjoy my using this expression.

I know people tend to set their expectations of the leader of the free world a little high, but you’d think somebody whose job mainly consists of public speaking would be able to rid themselves of, you know, annoying verbal tics. From Bushie’s press conference :

“The — you know, I — obviously I’m listening very carefully to this debate.”

“And now all of a sudden, people are saying, you know, ‘The Bush administration ought to be going it alone with North Korea.’”

“Somebody said he said, ‘Well, you know, cut-and-run isn’t working.’ That’s not our policy.”

“My point was: Bilateral negotiations didn’t work. you know, I appreciate the efforts of previous administrations. It just didn’t work.”

“What ends up happening is that, you know, we say to a country such as North Korea, ‘Here’s a reasonable way forward.’”

“They could — you know, they say the world is about to fall apart because of the United States’s problem.”

“If North Korea decides that, you know, they don’t like what’s being said, they’re not just stiffing the United States”

“This isn’t, you know: Oh, please stand up and say something. ”

“I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”

“And it’s now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods so people can feel — can feel, you know, at peace.”

“But I, you know, talk to people like General Casey. ”

“I, you know, I stand by the figure a lot of innocent people have lost their life.”

“You know, I haven’t seen Baker’s report yet. ”

“I believe that, you know, you empower your generals to make the decisions — the recommendations on what we do to win.”

“And I think the characterization of, you know, ‘Stay the course,’ is about a quarter right.”

“It’s important for the folks to understand that we don’t continually shift our goals based upon, you know, polls or whatever.”

“And I believe the diplomacy is, you know, we’re making progress when we’ve got others at the table, you know?”

“It’s a joint statement that talked about economics and that, you know, we won’t attack North Korea.”

“You know, one of the most meaningful moments of my presidency came when a Japanese mother came to the Oval Office to talk about what it was like to have her daughter kidnapped by North Korea.”

“You know, we want to make sure what we understand what Republicans knew and what Democrats knew in order to find the facts.”

“And I believe yesterday he said that if somebody on his staff, you know, didn’t tell him the truth, they’re gone.”

“But I think when they get in that booth, they’re going to be thinking about, you know, how best to secure the country from attack and, you know, how best to keep the economy growing.”

“And, you know, there’s just a kind of law enforcement mentality that says: Well, we’ll respond after attack.”

“I think it’s very important that no one question the patriotism or, you know, the loyalty to the country.”

“And so I wouldn’t necessarily characterize these countries’ positions as, you know, locked-in positions.”

“You know, speaking about books, somebody ought to add up the number of pages that have been written about my administration.”

“And this is the — this is about the fifth time I’ve been asked this type of question and, as you know, there are some things that I wish had happened differently.”

“If somebody’s not trying to sneak in to work — in other words, coming through in a way where they’re showing a temporary worker, you know, pass, where they’re not using coyotes to smuggle across, where they’re not, you know, going through tunnels — it’s going to make it much easier for us to do our job.”

“And you’ve got urban areas like El Paso or, you know, Southern California where people have been able to sneak in and — by use of urban corridors.”

“I went down to Arizona, the Arizona sector, and saw a place where there’s literally neighbors abutting the border, and people would come — you know, a hundred of them would rush across the border into a little subdivision and the Border Patrol would catch two or three and 97 would get in.”

“It will certainly help stamp out all these illegal characters that are exploiting human beings; you know, these coyotes that stuff people in the back of 18-wheelers for money.”

Saving the best for last…

“You know, nobody’s accused me of having a real sophisticated vocabulary; I understand that.”

Yeah…I know.

Like I said previously, the Republicans have lost their political mojo and it’s a beautiful thing to watch. Yesterday Denny Hastert tried to defend his role in the Folygate scandal by holding a press conference in a cemetery and repeatedly dropping the phrase “cover up”. Remind me to send him a “thank you” card. Just as funny was the part of the President’s press conference that I caught in which he tried to bash Nancy Pelosi.

BUSH: I still think — believe the economy’s an important issue. And I believe, on this issue, there is a huge difference of opinion.

The other day — by the way, I did bring up the words of the leader of the House when she said, “I love tax cuts.”

And then I reminded everybody that if you loved them so much, how come she voted against a lot of tax cuts?

In other words, again, back to your question about whether it’s fair to use people’s words, I think to say, “I love tax cuts,” and then vote against tax cuts is just — it’s worthy — it’s worthy of people’s consideration in the political process.

Yeah! If you love tax cuts so much, why don’t you marry them?

In. Your. Face.

By “hack” in the title of this post, I don’t mean to imply the standard political usage (eg. “The conservative bias at Fox News makes it clear that the network is run by political hacks”), although that’s definitely part of it. When I say “hack” in regards to Joe Lieberman’s campaign blog, I mean it more in the stand-up comedy usage of the term (eg. “Larry the Cable Guy’s exhortation for his audience to ‘Git-R-Done’ is the work of an unfunny hack”). But using either definition, this post from the “Blog of Joe” is definite hackery (via FDL) :

If you have not had a chance to check out Ned’s new ad, please do (Quicktime). It’s a scream.

Howard Dean would be proud.

I know the Liberman campaign is having a hard time finding supporters in the blogosphere, but…really? A Howard Dean screaming joke? Dude, that happened two and a half years ago. Even Gipper the Talking Points Duck has beaten that joke to death. Politics aside, somebody needs to pull Joe’s astroturf crew aside and tell them that they really suck at this whole “blogging” thing.

The only thing more offensive than watching Joe’s campaign staff make cheap shots at the party he claims to support is their groan-inducing lack of humor. Their comic timing is just as bad as Joe’s political judgement. What’s next? Jokes about how much Ted Kennedy likes to drink or Bill Clinton loves the ladies? No wonder people keep confusing Lieberman with Republicans. Both are reliant on the same trite, hackneyed jokes.

How can the voters of Connecticut expect Joe Lieberman to represent them effectively when he can’t even do something as simple as making fun of a Democrat?

I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and the rest of the right wing shock-pundits decry this ad :

How long do you think it will be before a liberal writes “I have never seen anyone enjoying his son’s death so much”? Oh yeah, I forgot. Right-wingers are the only ones who get mainstream cred for saying crazy bullshit.

Well….North Korea tested a nuke. As Josh Marshall says, this is further proof that the Bush Administration’s foreign policy is a complete failure :

President Bush came to office believing that Clinton’s policy amounted to appeasement. Force and strength were the way to deal with North Korea, not a mix of force, diplomacy and aide. And with that premise, President Bush went about scuttling the 1994 agreement, using evidence that the North Koreans were pursuing uranium enrichment (another path to the bomb) as the final straw.
. . .
Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But he wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.

So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.

I wouldn’t use the word “nothing”. At least one member of the Administration has been doing something, though it would probably be described as too much carrot, not enough stick :

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the “axis of evil” and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.
. . .
Many members of the Bush administration are on record as opposing Mr Clinton’s plans, saying that weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from the type of light water reactors that ABB sold. Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the state department’s number two diplomat, Richard Armitage, both opposed the deal as did the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, whose campaign Mr Rumsfeld ran and where he also acted as defence adviser.

One unnamed ABB board director told Fortune magazine that Mr Rumsfeld was involved in lobbying his hawkish friends on behalf of ABB.
. . .
The type of reactors involved in the ABB deal produce plutonium which needs refining before it can be weaponised. One US congressman and critic of the North Korean regime described the reactors as “nuclear bomb factories”.

North Korea expelled the inspectors last year and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in January at about the same time that the Bush administration authorised $3.5m to keep ABB’s reactor project going.

Give it a second for those last few paragraphs to sink in. One of the biggest enemies of the United States just joined the nuclear club over the weekend and our secretary of defense was involved in selling them the technology to do it. I won’t even bother to speculate about the ulterior motives that have surely shaped our policies towards North Korean non-proliferation, but I’d love to know how much money Donald Rumsfeld has made helping Kim Jong-il make a nuclear bomb. Between Rummy and North Korea, the Bush family’s close ties to the Saudis, and our nuke-selling, Bin Laden-harboring “close allies” Pakistan, I can’t help but look forward to 2008 when our country has another chance to choose a leader who isn’t all chummy with the bad guys.

UPDATE : As commenters and emailers have pointed out, Rumsfeld’s chumminess with the North Koreans is a little more complicated than I let on. The nuclear reactors that Rumsfeld helped sell Kim Jong-il likely weren’t the source of this weekend’s nuclear test. So Rummy isn’t arming rogue leaders, he was just doing business with them. Or as it was put in the Guardian article :

Critics of the administration’s bellicose language on North Korea say that the problem was not that Mr Rumsfeld supported the Clinton-inspired diplomacy and the ABB deal but that he did not “speak up against it”. “One could draw the conclusion that economic and personal interests took precedent over non-proliferation,” said Steve LaMontagne, an analyst with the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.

Sounds like the kinda guy you want running the Pentagon, huh?

I turned on the local news this evening to see a brief clip of Newt Gingrich making the following outrageous claim :

GINGRICH: What if it does turn out that, in fact, this entire thing was rigged by liberals and Democrats, that this entire thing was done deliberately and methodically, and in fact, it is the equivalent of a large dirty trick.

Notice the telltale “if” as in “IF the Republican leaders of the House have been covering up for a sexual predator, it would prove that they care more about winning elections than protecting children”. Of course the big difference is that what I wrote was true and what Gingrich said is complete bullshit. Kinda fitting that he’s popping back up though, since Newt is the one who started the recent trend of GOP House Speakers who’ve been forced to resign in disgrace. Kinda sad to think that for all of his years in public service, the greatest contribution Newt Gingrich has given to this country is a bunch of book reviews he’s written for Amazon.com.

You will never, ever believe who wrote this :

For the past two days, a conservative blogger has ginned up publicity for his work outing a 21-year-old young man–a former congressional page and current deputy campaign manager for a heartland Republican congressman–who received sexually explicit instant messages from disgraced Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley when he was 17 and 18 years old. I have received several e-mails from the blogger and readers flogging the post.

I refused to link to the blogger then and even though the Drudge Report has plastered screaming headlines about the blogger’s scoop, I refuse to link to it now. There was absolutely no good reason to expose the former congressional page’s name and identity. Seizing on ABC News’ redaction failure and reporting errors (more on that in a moment) to play gotcha in a feeble attempt to avenge Foley is not a sufficient reason to obliterate the young man’s privacy. The young man was the prey, not the predator.

It seems with each passing day the political world becomes a little less sane….

This week’s “cheer up liberals” post is up at TMW. Go check it out. Tom picked a good one.