Here’s an interesting article that’s been making the rounds about “Maverick” :

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.

In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.

Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them.

This bit, if true, paints a good picture of how addicted to publicity Sen. McCain is :

Jeffords pulled the trigger on May 24, 2001, throwing control of the Senate to Democrats. Chafee and McCain then broke off their discussions with Democratic leaders, according to Democrats.

The Mr. Straight Talk didn’t like the direction of his party enough to switch sides, but once he lost the opportunity to be first (and get all the headlines), he changed his mind? Typical.

Kos brings up a very important point in the current fight over war funding :

The reason there is a fight over Iraq funding is because Bush decided not to include such funding in the regular budget.

Why not?

Who knows? Perhaps because his election-year budget presented fictional progress toward a “balanced budget”. If he included his war funding in that budget, he couldn’t pretend a balanced budget was within reach. (A trillion dollar war makes that difficult.)

But let’s not forget, the only reason this fight is being waged, is because Bush chose to underfund our troops in his regular budget.

It’s ludicrous to keep pretending that these appropriations are “emergencies” as Bush and his allies like to suggest. These are wholly predictable requests that the Administration refused to ask for in their annual budget. If they want extra money for their war, they should be willing to defend it through actual budget cuts elsewhere, rolling back the tax cuts for the rich, or additional oversight. The fact that the President is willing to risk not providing funding for our troops while he plays petty political games says all you need to know about his priorities.

While I’m on the subject, I can’t help but agree with the Republican leadership that the amount of pork in the House and Senate versions of the funding bill is pretty pathetic :

In addition to money and equipment for overseas troops, there is $100 million for state and local law enforcement agencies in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul to provide security for next year’s presidential nominating conventions.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., won renewal of an income subsidy program for small-operation dairy farmers that promises to cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over the next five years.

And while the Senate bill has no money earmarked for spinach and peanut farmers – as there is in a House companion bill – sugar beet growers in the Red River Valley stand to get $24 million to cover crop losses from flooding two years ago.

The very next sentence, however, pretty much deflates any moral high ground the GOP may be wanting to exhibit (as if the last six years weren’t enough).

But there’s a problem facing conservatives striving to knock out what the White House calls “excessive and extraneous” spending: Many Republicans support the extras.

It’s a sad fact that getting this bill through the Senate and House required some unrelated concessions a few fence-sitting Republicans (and Democrats). What’s worse? The fact that Democrats are willing to throw pork into an appropriations bill or that the votes of moderates are so easy to buy? Since this whole appropriations bill (with the withdrawal language) is veto-bait anyways, here’s hoping all that pork doesn’t make it into the final bill.

Y’know, if I were George Bush and I had just had my ass handed to me in the elections last November, I would revert into “preserve my legacy” mode. Bush needs a signature achievement to hang his Presidency on besides a shaky economy, divided public, and Middle Eastern country transformed into Hell on Earth. He should figure out a way to declare victory and bring the troops home, work with Democrats to pass (and claim credit for) some major piece of legislation, throw the divisive members of his Administration to the wolves (Rove/Cheney), and try to reinvent himself as a moderate in an attempt to make everyone forget why they hate him. Turn back into the “guy you’d want to have a beer with” and get something done.

But that would require a level of self-awareness that George Bush has never exhibited. With the cocky demeanor that the President has adopted, he still seems to think his post-9/11 attitude will fly with a post-Iraq, post-Katrina American public. If the Bush Administration looks like a chaotic mess, it’s because George Bush has no idea that people can’t stand him. At this rate, things will only get worse for Bush and co.

Give it up, dude. You aren’t getting any more tax cuts. You aren’t going to “reform” social security. You aren’t going to overhaul the tax code. You’re losing ground on abortion, stem cells, gay marriage, and every other issue that you ran on. Your presidency is over. You can either accept that fact and try to turn lemons into lemonade or you can just sit around the Oval Office and act like a petulant little boy.

First it was Newsweek, and now Time Magazine is getting into the dumbed-down cover for the American edition game. On the left is the cover here in the U.S., on the right is the cover of the Europe, Asia, and South Pacific editions. (Larger versions here and here) :

Replacing the more-newsworthy story about a Taliban resurgence with a human interest story that you’d expect to find in Reader’s Digest is pretty egregious, but the stories at the top are even more revealing. Last week’s Keane-inspired Reagan cover story that’s finding its way into the international editions is nicely balanced out by a Rudy Giuliani puff piece. But that’s not as bad as the juxtaposition on the opposite corner. While the rest of the world is presented an interview about “Africa’s Moment of Need”, Americans are patronized with a Desperate Housewives reference. It’s as if the editors of Time magazine think we Americans are too stupid and shallow to care about “real news”. Ugghh..

Dude…just….whoah. If I didn’t know somebody who met this guy (he introduced himself as someone who “kills people for a living”) I’d think it was fake. These second amendment zealots who insist being armed is a “moral and ethical and civic duty” freak me the hell out.

As depressing as it is to hear that Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer has returned, it sounds like this is as good a scenario as we could hope for. I’m not surprised in the least that the Edwards campaign “goes on”. From everything I’ve seen and read about Elizabeth, she’s seems to be even more into politics that John, so it’s nice to hear that they’ve still got the energy and motivation to continue.

I liked these comments over at The Carpetbagger Report :

In politics, it’s inevitable that public figures will have supporters and detractors. It’s just the nature of political interaction — people will react to high-profile figures in different ways.

Elizabeth Edwards doesn’t fit into this mold at all. Everyone — literally, everyone — who knows her, speaks with her, or has any kind of interaction with her almost instantly loves her. She is so widely adored, I know people who went to work for the former senator’s campaign only after having been impressed with his wife.

To underscore this point, here’s a reaction to the Edwards new from The Corner :

The most endearing moment of this Edwards press conference: As Elizabeth Edwards was describing how she managed to break a rib — the cause of the pain that lead her to get medical treatment which ultimately revealed the cancer — Mrs. Edwards recounted her husband hugging her, the point at which she noticed something wrong with her..

After she went through the details, John Edwards jumped in and said, “actually, I was beating her,” as he made a ridiculous arm and hand motion, looking clearly like a guy who wouldn’t even know how to hit his wife. It was a playful, endearing moment, the kind that one imagines helps a couple that has some real love between them get through yet another painful family time. The Edwards family has had more than their share of those hard times.

It’s nice to see some empathy and kindness cross partisan lines. I hope it lasts.

This photo from the Washington Post’s homepage yesterday says it all :

…and the message coming out of Washington D.C.?

It’s funny that an article about how everything the Republican party touches turns to shit could somehow be a hidden gift to conservatives everywhere, but Time magazine has somehow accomplished it with their cover story “How The Right Went Wrong”. The first sign that the article would be a thinly-disguised love letter to a conservative Never Never Land is the cover itself which sports a Photoshopped Reagan portrait that’s just begging to be turned into a velvet painting.

Good question, Time. What would Ronnie do? My guess is he’d probably thank you for making him a martyr with unvarnished praise like this :

Reagan restored a sense of America’s mission as the “city on a hill” that would be a light to the world and helped bring about the defeat of what he very undiplomatically christened “the evil empire.”
. . .
Conservatives are in many ways victims of their successes, and there have indeed been big ones. At 35%, the top tax rate is about half what it was when Reagan took office; the Soviet Union broke up; inflation is barely a nuisance; crime is down; and welfare is reformed.

You can almost hear John Ashcroft singing in the distance as Time breathlessly exhorts “the Reagan legacy”. Jeez, guys, why don’t you just skip the middleman and just write the entire 2008 GOP campaign script for them? The one time when the article actually tells the truth about the Reagan years, it’s done as an aside.

The principles that propelled the movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan’s legatees. Government is not only bigger and more expensive than it was when George W. Bush took office, but its reach is also longer, thanks to the broad new powers it has claimed as necessary to protect the homeland. It’s true that Reagan didn’t live up to everything he promised: he campaigned on smaller government, fiscal discipline and religious values, while his presidency brought us a larger government and a soaring deficit. But Bush’s apostasies are more extravagant by just about any measure you pick.

The conservative movement of Ronald Reagan was never about fiscal discipline or shrinking the size of the government, but to make sure all that money went to the “right” people. You’d think the fact that the Reagan presidency didn’t actually accomplish the things his acolytes insist he did would be worthy of more than a footnote. The more damning part about the article is the insistence that the actions of Bush and the rest of the GOP leadership over the last six years have somehow been at odds with what the Gipper would have done (WWRD?).

George Bush isn’t some conservative poseur, he’s the proverbial student that’s become the master. On just about every level, George Bush has improved upon Reagan. Bush has presided over political patronage that reaches every level of the government (and even into the realm of war profiteering). The Administration has had deficits that not only dwarf the gargantuan debt of their spiritual leader, but serve as a tribute to their spendthrift leader (“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter….this is our due.”) And as the ultimate act of one-upsmanship, not only has the President pissed away every penny that comes into the treasury and buried the country under a mountain of red ink, but Bush was able to do so while continuing to cut taxes for the super rich. Beat that, Bonzo!

There are better ways to get Bush impeached than dressing up like a pink-shirted clown and trying to get on TV. Like, for example, letting Democratic leaders conduct investigative and oversight hearings without turning it into a goddamn circus. You aren’t convincing anyone that Bush should be impeached, you’re being a self-righteous moron who makes people on the left look like lunatics.

New post next door at This Modern World in which I try to answer the question “Why does Fox News throw temper tantrums whenever someone points out their conservative bias?” Also, thought it has nothing to do with the previous post and I don’t have much to add, you should really read this article and then go watch The Passion of the Christ.

Is Ben Stein a closet liberal or is he one of those Nixon-style conservatives who wouldn’t even recognize the modern Republican party? Either way, after all I’ve heard from him over the years, I was shocked to read this in response to a call for essays about what’s “new, hot and exciting — or terrible — in business today.”

The average wage of the American worker adjusted for inflation is lower than it was in 1973. The only way that Americans have been able to maintain their standard of living at the middle and lower ends has been to send more family members to work and to draw down savings or go into debt or both.
. . .

Starting MBA’s at hedge funds, which are basically gaming enterprises, get paid multi-six figure sums. Starting teachers in the state of Florida get paid $28,000 a year.

Here’s what else is new and exciting (or terrible) in money: there is real poverty among the soldiers who fight our wars. There are fist fights to get children into $30,000 a year kindergartens and pre-schools in the right neighborhoods in Manhattan. There are 40 million Americans without health care insurance. There are almost 40 million baby boomers with no savings for retirement. There is a long waiting list for Bentleys at the dealership in Beverly Hills.

There are soldiers’ wives selling blood to buy toys for their kids. There is a man selling non-functioning body armor who threw a $10 million Bat Mitzvah for his daughter.

While on the subject of business, Robert Reich had a great commentary on Marketplace last month about taxing windfall profits in the oil industry. It was a fairly standard liberal argument about reigning in corporate excess, but the kicker comes at the end :

Market fundamentalists who holler that oil companies should be allowed to reinvest their profits in new oil exploration aren’t paying attention to the environmental costs. But the windfall tax should be designed so that, to the extent oil companies do wish to invest in non-fossil based fuels, such profits are exempt from the windfall tax.

It’s a no-brainer. Oil companies are in the money. We consumers gave it to them because there are no competitive non-fossil alternatives. So doesn’t it make sense to use those extra profits to create those alternatives?

And that’s where you’d start to see the “magic” of the free market start to work. Traditionally, these kinds of solutions haven’t really accomplished much. The nearest example I can think of is the money demanded of tobacco companies to fund anti-smoking campaigns. When businesses are forced to work against their own self-interest, the results are typically toothless campaigns that follow the letter of the law, but never really accomplish much.

But the key difference here is that forcing oil companies to invest money into researching alternative energy will force those companies to compete with each other. After all, this isn’t just a fine, but a search for a technological breakthrough that has the potential to reward the company that finds the best alternative to fossil fuels trillions of dollars in profits. This is the search for the goose that laid the golden egg, I just hope Congress had the balls to force short-sighted oil companies to join the hunt.

Blogging will resume shortly. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to…