After nearly two years of ignoring, scorning, demeaning and lecturing the progressive blogosphere that provided substantial and critical portions of the fuel propelling him into office, President Obama suddenly found time to sit down with five carefully chosen token representatives of the unwashed dirty hippy community five days before the coming mid-term election. An election increasingly looking quite catastrophic to his own Democratic party, and due in large part to his performance and policy selection in office. How thoughtful of Mr. Obama to finally have a dialect with his base now that he is desperate and less than a week out from the electoral tsunami.

Courtesy of Duncan Black (Atrios), one of the participants, here is a transcript of the festivities. You can draw your own conclusions as to how large of a dog and pony show this was, but I would like to focus on the portions of the meeting dealing with LGBT discrimination and the government’s relentless DADT policy.

Asked by Joe Sudbay of Americablog whether he actually had any real plan to accomplish passage of repeal legislation for DADT, Obama responded:

…And my hope is that will culminate in getting this thing overturned before the end of the year.

Now, as usual, I need 60 votes. So I think that, Joe, the folks that you need to be having a really good conversation with — and I had that conversation with them directly yesterday, but you may have more influence than I do — is making sure that all those Log Cabin Republicans who helped to finance this lawsuit and who feel about this issue so passionately are working the handful of Republicans that we need to get this thing done.

….

You’re financing a very successful, very effective legal strategy, and yet the only really thing you need to do is make sure that we get two to five Republican votes in the Senate.

And I said directly to the Log Cabin Republican who was here yesterday, I said, that can’t be that hard. Get me those votes.

Asked to describe his plan to pass critical legislation he has long promised one of his core constituencies, this is the pathetic drivel Barack Obama comes up with? The President of the United States and leader of the entire Democratic party pleads powerlessness to accomplish the goal, but demands the Log Cabin Republicans go forth and deliver him intransigent GOP Senators on a golden platter? Seriously, that is his plan? Perhaps Mr. Obama has mistaken the LCRs for the NRA or something, but if there is any entity with less sway over the entrenched and gilded GOP Senate leadership than Obama, it is the Log Cabin Republicans. Absurd and lame is too kind of a description for such tripe. I honestly don’t know what is worse, that this is Obama’s response or that he has the politically incompetence to state it on the record.

But there was more, oh yes there was more. Asked by Sudbay the straightforward yes or no question as to whether he considered DADT to be unconstitutional, the self proclaimed “Constitutional scholar” President came up with the following bucket of blarney:

And one of the things I’d like to ask you — and I think it’s a simple yes or no question too — is do you think that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unconstitutional?

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not a simple yes or no question, because I’m not sitting on the Supreme Court. And I’ve got to be careful, as President of the United States, to make sure that when I’m making pronouncements about laws that Congress passed I don’t do so just off the top of my head.

I think that — but here’s what I can say. I think “don’t ask, don’t tell” is wrong. I think it doesn’t serve our national security, which is why I want it overturned. I think that the best way to overturn it is for Congress to act. In theory, we should be able to get 60 votes out of the Senate. The House has already passed it. And I’ve gotten the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to say that they think this policy needs to be overturned — something that’s unprecedented.

And so my hope and expectation is, is that we get this law passed. It is not just harmful to the brave men and women who are serving, and in some cases have been discharged unjustly, but it doesn’t serve our interests — and I speak as Commander-in-Chief on that issue.

Let me go to the larger issue, though, Joe, about disillusionment and disappointment. I guess my attitude is that we have been as vocal, as supportive of the LGBT community as any President in history. I’ve appointed more openly gay people to more positions in this government than any President in history. We have moved forward on a whole range of issues that were directly under my control, including, for example, hospital visitation.

On “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I have been as systematic and methodical in trying to move that agenda forward as I could be given my legal constraints, given that Congress had explicitly passed a law designed to tie my hands on the issue.

And so, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think that the disillusionment is justified.

First off, let’s be clear, this is a patently duplicitous and cowardly answer. Whether it is on Equal Protection, Due Process, First Amendment or some combination of the three, you either do or do not consider DADT unconstitutional. It IS a yes or no answer. Irrespective of whether or not you feel there are collateral constraints on your ability to act on it, you should summon the minimal intellectual honesty to state your opinion. But, and I will return to this shortly, this is an answer that Barack Obama and his various spokesmodels, such as Robert Gibbs and Valerie Jarrett, never give; in fact they have consistently demonstrated they will go to any length and contort into any position to refuse to answer the question of whether they believe DADT is unconstitutional.

Secondly, let us put an end to the collateral constraints Obama bleats prevent him from taking a stand or actively impacting the court process on DADT. It is pure horse manure. There are multiple modalities through which President Obama could proceed to eliminate the pernicious DADT policy in the court litigation currently pending.

As Tony Mauro explains in the National Law Journal, directly contrary to Obama’s statements, there is no absolute duty to defend the Constitutionality of DADT in cases such as the Log Cabin Republicans v. USA and Gates decision entered by Judge Virginia Phillips in the Central District of California. Describing the refusal of the Clinton Administration, and its Solicitor General Drew Days III, to defend the constitutionality of a statute in Hornell Brewing Co. v. Brady, Mauro relates:

So much for the vaunted governmental “duty to defend” acts of Congress, which has been invoked often in recent weeks in connection with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law barring gays from the military — a law that the Obama administration opposes but still is poised to defend. In cases much bigger than Crazy Horse — think Buckley v. Valeo and INS v. Chadha — SGs have been throwing provisions of federal laws under the bus for decades. And Senate records show that, 13 times in the past six years, during both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Justice Department has told Congress it is not defending an act of Congress.

So, the vaunted “duty to defend” Mr. Obama so blithely relies on is not nearly the impenetrable constraint he lets on. Yes, there is indeed a presumption the government will defend the statutes passed by Congress; but, directly contra to Mr. Obama, in limited and appropriate circumstances that has always given way to doing the right thing. You have to wonder is LGBT discrimination rises to the level of “being the right thing” to Obama.

Mauro’s National Law Journal article goes on to completely eviscerate the Obama White House’s stated rationale for being unable to assist in effecting cessation of the invidiously discriminatory DADT policy through the court challenges and legal system as opposed to mere standing by and saying Congress should change the law. You should read it for the full discussion of the various arguments, it is not long and well worth the time.

One of the points Mauro discusses is the position of Walter Dellinger, President Clinton’s Solicitor General, on the matter. Dellinger in a recent New York Times Op-Ed sagely noted:

However, Mr. Obama may have another option: while appealing the lower court’s decision, he could have the Justice Department tell the appellate court that the executive branch believes the law is unconstitutional.

In other words, the Justice Department would take the formal steps necessary to defend the law, but it would also make substantive arguments about why the law should be struck down. The Supreme Court could still vote to uphold the law, but the president’s position could significantly influence how the court rules.

Doing so wouldn’t unfairly strip the law of adequate defense: if the administration took a stand against the law, the appellate courts would very likely allow lawyers for Congress or outside groups to appear and argue on its behalf.

This approach is not unprecedented. In 1943, Congress passed a law prohibiting the payment of salaries to three particular government employees. Arguing that the law was unconstitutional, the employees sued and won in claims court. The solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision, but he also told the justices that the administration agreed with the original ruling; the court ultimately struck down the law.

That case and others like it provided a precedent for President Bill Clinton in 1996 both to comply with a law requiring the military to discharge service members who had H.I.V., and at the same time inform the courts that he found it to be unconstitutional. Thanks in part to support from the military, Congress repealed the law before litigation ensued.

Exactly. I have argued this precise point in relation to the appeal on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger Prop 8 case; the state can give the nominal cover for the appeal and still strongly weigh in that it believes the proposition unconstitutional. Mr. Obama could, and should, appeal but advise the court of his opinion that DADT is unconstitutional.

Therein lies the rub for Barack Obama, there is no compelling evidence whatsoever that Obama actually believes that LGBT discrimination is unconstitutional. Maybe Mr. Obama and his closest advisors and spokespeople like Jarrett really do NOT believe there is a constitutional nexus for LGBT discrimination; maybe instead they ar aligned with the thoughts expressed by Huffington Post columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson in a deplorable and divisive piece saying Obama and Jarrett owed no apologies because:

The one other stumbling block that the gay rights activists that pound Obama must come to grips with and that is that a majority of blacks still bristle at the notion that the fight to legalize gay marriage is in any way comparable to the fight for black rights.

As disappointing and unenlightened as it is, this is entirely consistent with Mr. Obama’s stated words and positions at his meeting with the liberal bloggers Wednesday afternoon:

I think it’s a fair question to ask. I think that — I am a strong supporter of civil unions. As you say, I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage.

But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents.

Obama clings to the sham of “civil unions” but still cannot bring himself to think in terms of equality. He is trying to “evolve” because he now sees “trendlines”. To Mr. Obama, equality for LGBT citizens is nothing more that a political trendline he is starting to pay ever more attention to; it, however, clearly appears to be something he does not consider to rise to Constitutional protection the way racial civil rights did for his heritage.

It is time to stop the two faced dithering Mr. President. There is a difference between mouthing some self serving cheap political rhetoric that “all people should be able to serve in the military” and recognizing that the reason they cannot is because of unconstitutional discrimination against a protected class of citizens. There is a HUGE difference.

When asked about the court rulings byJudge Virginia Phillips in the LCR DADT case, by Judge Tauro in the DOMA case, or by Judge Vaughn Walker in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the response is always in terms of legislation repealing laws in place. legislation affirmatively protecting something in the future, studies to see what is appropriate or some other mealy mouthed hollow rhetoric. On the other hand, not a lick of that matters if the discrimination at issue is flat out unconstitutional. If it is unconstitutional, and it absolutely is (as held by nearly every Federal judge considering it), then studies are irrelevant. What generals and servicemembers wives think and respond to in answers to opinion surveys is irrelevant. Legislation by Congress is irrelevant. Public opinion, for that matter, is irrelevant. None of that matters because it is a fundamental right for such citizens to be treated equally and not be discriminated against. End of story. Seriously, it either is or it is not. Where do you stand Mr. President?

But Obama never talks about it in those terms does he? No, he does not. And all the other stuff he mouthes is nothing more than code for “I don’t believe this is a Constitutionally guaranteed right and it is nothing more than a political issue for me”. There simply is no other interpretation to Obama’s dithering, statements and position.

The Constitution and its fundamental equality, due process and first amendment protections is not a political issue football to be tossed around, nor is it properly enforced by degree of popularity in the latest Gallup poll trendline.

Todd Purdum has a pretty extensive and in depth article on John Sidney McCain III just up at Vanity Fair. Here are the take away quotes and ethos of the article:

The prevailing question about John McCain this year is: What happened? What happened to that other John McCain, the refreshingly unpredictable figure who stood apart from his colleagues and seemed to promise something better than politics as usual? The question may miss the point. It’s quite possible that nothing at all has changed about John McCain, a ruthless and self-centered survivor who endured five and a half years in captivity in North Vietnam, and who once told Torie Clarke that his favorite animal was the rat, because it is cunning and eats well. It’s possible to see McCain’s entire career as the story of a man who has lived in the moment, who has never stood for any overriding philosophy in any consistent way, and who has been willing to do all that it takes to get whatever it is he wants. He himself said, in the thick of his battle with Hayworth, “I’ve always done whatever’s necessary to win.” Maybe the rest of us just misunderstood.

Yes, no kidding, you certainly did misunderstand. Or were willfully blind because the bloated national media depiction of McCain has always been as fraudulent as he has always been.

There is a difference between facing a changed and shrunken external reality (which McCain surely now does) and changing one’s essential nature (which McCain almost certainly has not). He has always had a reckless streak, and he has repeatedly skated by after conduct that would have doomed others less resourceful, resilient, or privileged. As a navy pilot, he crashed three planes before being shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Hanoi. He spent harrowing years in captivity in North Vietnam, and parlayed that fame into a high-profile job as the navy’s liaison to the Senate, and then parlayed that—with the help of his second wife’s family fortune—into a political career in his adopted state of Arizona, first winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1982, and then taking Barry Goldwater’s Senate seat upon his retirement, in 1986.

Yes, indeed. Put more simply, McCain is a dilettante who has always relied on his blue blood and family history, and then his POW status and wife and family’s largesse, to get everywhere he has gone; he has never been a man of accomplishment of his own accord. Nice of you to finally catch on.

After surviving his brush with shame during the Keating Five influence-peddling scandal in 1989, McCain embraced the cause of campaign-finance reform, which endeared him to good-government types and the press but to almost no one else in either party. Like other senators, McCain had taken campaign contributions and favors from savings-and-loan entrepreneur Charles Keating, and had then intervened with government regulators on Keating’s behalf. McCain’s zeal for campaign reform was an act of public atonement—ballsy, yes, but driven as much by Realpolitik as by principle.

“[D]riven as much by Realpolitik as by principle”?? What Todd, couldn’t you think of a softer sell? Jeebus, it was a freaking hollow fraud by McCain; have the guts to call it what it was, and still is.

McCain and his wife, Cindy, have been living essentially separate lives for years. She has spent most of her time in Arizona while he has spent the workweek in a Virginia condominium where, he once told me, he sometimes went months at a time without ever entering the living room, simply coming home to the kitchen and bedroom late at night and leaving again early the next morning. In 2008, McCain was deeply stung by a long New York Times article about his working relationship with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and its assertion that certain McCain aides feared the relationship had some years earlier morphed into an affair. To this day, McCain declines to give interviews to the paper, which was once one of his favorite outlets. While associates say the McCains are companionable, one former aide allows, “I’m not going to tell you that they have a conventionally close marriage, but I’m just not going to get into it.”

Again, a pretty soft sell of the bitter truth. But, no complaints here on this part, Cindy is actually a very decent human and very good mother and, if you were her, would you want to live anywhere near John McCain on much more than a show basis? No.

All in all, considering the mainline media hacktacular vein Todd Purdum travels, this is a pretty brutal and pleasingly mainstream takedown of the horse’s ass John Sidney McCain III is and, more importantly ALWAYS has been. This may be shocking news to a lot of people who will read Vanity Fair and Purdum’s article in it. But it is not news to me, or the readers of Emptywheel and Firedoglake; because you have all, over the years, seen the following articles that make every single point Purdum does; well, with the exception that the work found here at Emptywheel and Firedoglake is much more forthright, and far better supported by links and foundational support for its conclusions. So, there is a bit of a difference I guess:

Tired McCain a Foundering Gluehorse Without Weaver

McCain Is A Clunker, Can I Trade Him In?

The Iseman Cometh, The Iseman Goeth

McCain Was The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five And He Hasn’t Changed

Ronald Reagan Endorses Obama, McCain Still Fraudulently Glomming Off Of Goldwater

John McCain The Narcissistic Carpetbagger

John McCain Still Living The Keating Five Lush Highlife

McCain Proves Cactus Is Not The Biggest Prick In The Desert

McCain: Is He Addled And Confused Or A Dishonorable Man?

For anybody that read those posts right here, there would not be a single word that would be either new or shocking in Purdum’s article on McCain. Especially the five core posts during the heat of the election: McCain Was The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five And He Hasn’t Changed, Ronald Reagan Endorses Obama, McCain Still Fraudulently Glomming Off Of Goldwater, John McCain The Narcissistic Carpetbagger, John McCain Still Living The Keating Five Lush Highlife and McCain Proves Cactus Is Not The Biggest Prick In The Desert.

In fact, the entire tenor of Purdum’s article seems eerily familiar; I wonder why that is? Since Purdum and Vanity Fair did not have the courtesy or journalistic chivalry to provide links, footnotes and attributions, I guess we will never know where Purdum formed his thoughts for the McCain article.

Whatever; my hat is actually off to Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair for getting the truth about The Old Gluehorse, John Sidney McCain III, out. Now, if only the rest of the national media would cop to the fact they have been played by this carpetbagging fraud from the outset, the record would finally be straight. The press owes the public that truth, and its explanation of how the malignant cancer that is Sarah Palin was planted in the mainline of the American body politic. Narcissism, fraud and Palin; that is the legacy of John Sidney McCain III.

Via Digby comes this unsettling article by David Wood in Politics Daily about the growing militant contempt among military leadership for civilian authority and control.

The military officer corps is rumbling with dissatisfaction and dissent, and there are suggestions from some that if officers disagree with policy decisions by Congress and the White House, they should vigorously resist.

Officers have a moral responsibility, some argue, to sway a policy debate by going public with their objections or leaking information to the media, and even to sabotage policy decisions by deliberate foot-dragging.

This could spell trouble ahead as Washington grapples with at least two highly contentious issues: changing the policy on gays and lesbians in the military, and extricating U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In both cases, senior officers already have disagreed sharply and publicly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Barack Obama, and in some cases officers have leaked documents to bolster their case.

…..

“The military officer belongs to a profession upon whose members are conferred great responsibility, a code of ethics, and an oath of office. These grant him moral autonomy and obligate him to disobey an order he deems immoral,” writes Marine Lt. Col. Andrew R. Milburn in Joint Forces Quarterly, an official journal published by the National Defense University under the aegis of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That is especially true if his civilian leaders are incompetent, writes Milburn, who currently is assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

….

“When the results of bad decision-making are wasted lives and damage to the Nation; when the customary checks laid down in the Constitution — the electoral voice of the people, Congress, or the Supreme Court — are powerless to act in time; and when the military professional alone is in a position to prevent calamity, it makes little sense to argue that he should not exercise his discretion,” Milburn writes.

Read the entire article; please.

Now, there is no sense of any direct coup type of trend afoot in all this so much as an accelerating trend to the militarization of government and resigned acceptance by the proletariat. Digby touched on this:

This coincides with our new fetish for everything military, including the president of the United States announcing over and over again that he would “listen to the commanders on the ground” which likely gave more than a few of them the idea that they were the ones in charge. When you add that to the canonizing of the The Man Called Petraeus during the Bush years, this seems like a logical outcome. (I would also add that more than a few of them may be part of the religious “crusade” that some of the evangelical military brass are involved with.)

But the paradigm goes much deeper than the relative autonomy granted Petraeus in Afghanistan and the lionization of the US military. That is now; the question is where the trend heads in the future, and that is the even more troublesome thought. The concern is not so much one man such as David Petraeus (although I remain convinced he is the strongest and most worrisome politician the political right could coalesce around, not Sarah Palin). To me, the bigger problem is the militarization of the civilian government itself; the merging of military thought with command and control of civilian modalities.

One of the movies and books that has always stuck deep with me since my days as a child in the 60s was Fletcher Knebel’s Seven Days In May. The story takes place in a deeply divided country, after a stalemated war in Iran that has left the country depleted financially and devastated economically, causing despair, frustration, sense of powerlessness and unrest in the citizenry. The President is seen as weak and increasingly feckless. Into this dynamic steps a military establishment that surreptitiously built up the ability to exercise complete command and control of the communications and electronic media distribution capabilities via a program known as ECOMCON. And a larger than life narcissistic hero General named James Mattoon Scott decides he is the one to lead.

Hey, wait a minute, actually there is at least some similarity between Petraeus and Gen. James Mattoon Scott. The only difference is in reality, the civilian government has authorized the communications and surveillance capability that makes ECOMCON look quaint. And a disillusioned public may be close to being ripe for a daddy figure like The Man Called Petraeus. Leave it to a Brit paper, the Telegraph, to point out the obvious while the craven Yank press twiddles with Palin and O’Donnell:

In this toxic climate, perhaps the only public institution that has increased in prestige in recent years is the American military. Its officers are looked upon, as General George Patton once noted, as “the modern representatives of the demi-gods and heroes of antiquity”.

Where better to look for Obama’s successor, therefore, than in the uniformed ranks? Not since 1952, when a certain Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War, was elected President, have the chances of a military man winning the White House been more propitious.

Within those ranks, no one stands out like General David Petraeus, head of United States Central Command, leader of 230,000 troops and commander of United States forces in two wars. Having masterminded the Iraq surge, the stunning military gambit that seized victory from the jaws of defeat, he is now directing an equally daunting undertaking in Afghanistan.

Petraeus, 57, has survived the collapse of his parachute 60 feet above the ground. After he was shot in the chest during a training exercise and endured five hours surgery, the then battalion commander refused to lie in hospital recuperating. Demanding that the tubes be removed from his arm, he declared: “I am not the norm.”

The Constitution has been systematically hollowed out by the unitary executive power grab geared up in full by the Republican Bush/Cheney regime and ingrained and, in many regards not just ratified, but accelerated by the supposedly more enlightened Democratic Administration of Barack Obama. There is economic desperation in the streets with more and more homeless and unemployed citizens. It all adds to a toxic, stewing unease and detachment from governance, preached by the noisy Tea Partiers and long bought by the ill educated rural “real Americans”. The conditions are ripe for a military hero daddy to “save us”.

Think corporations and the capitalists on Wall Street will object to a military savior? Heck no, not so long as they are left free by the new paradigm to run free and pillage as they have grown accustomed to. And that is not in the least inconsistent with a more militarized rule. Not at all. In fact, the military and corporations are aligned and both worried about the populists, egalitarians and environmentalists, so they are a natural fit.

If the public malaise from tepid and ineffectual governance is not remedied by the Democratic leaders in charge, the electoral upshot may not be the cackling ineptness of Sarah Palin, but the polished narcissism of Gen. James Mattoon Scott Gen. David Petraeus.

Yes, that is Sparky the Sun Devil and the small turd next to him is John McCain (no, it is not a photoshop; is a real picture McCain himself put out on Twitter). As you may have heard, the Arizona primary was last Tuesday and McCain squeaked by the “serious challenge” of gasbag extraordinaire J.D. Hayworth. McCain beat Hayworth by 25 points. But for months, going back even well before Hayworth finally was forced to quit campaigning on his radio show and admit he was actually running, the national media clucking heads were yammering relentlessly about how McCain was “vulnerable” and “in the fight of his political life”. It was, as just about everything with McCain is, a complete gin job and fabrication by the national media.

Here is what I said in an email discussion with a number of colleagues back on February 24 after one of them started talking about McCain being in trouble:

I am telling you, I just do not, at least yet, see any giant tidal wave here for Hayworth. … It may change, but so far in Arizona, the Hayworth bandwagon is far overrated by the national chattering classes.

….

Again, the problem is there is a very established Republican party and attendant power and money machine here and they do not like JD Hayworth for shit and never did; they did not give a rat’s ass about him losing to Harry Mitchell, in fact if they had, he would not have lost. Quite frankly, McCain is not their favorite either in some regards; but he sure is compared to Hayworth historically. Plus McCain has Grant Woods behind the scenes again, and he is very good and pretty ruthless. Hayworth’s sound bites make for dandy fodder for FoxNews, MSNBC and, to a lesser extent CNN, but they do not mean diddly shit here. This is not a national election, it is an Arizona Republican primary.

I tried to correct the record with any number of places and people when I saw this meme, right up to the election; mostly to little avail. I am a native here and have been around a long time, there was just never a chance in hell that Hayworth could even get close to McCain; but you just could not stop the national political horserace chattering chowderheads like Chuck Todd, Chris Matthews, Chris Cillizza, the Politico boys etc. from perpetrating this pile of dung.

They were full of it as the vote total demonstrated. Now they have blithely moved on to compensating for their ignorance and/or incompetence by clucking about “yes, yes, McCain won big, but he had to sell out and be someone he wasn’t to do it”. See for instance USA Today, NPR, Reuters, and Dan Balz of the Washington Post.

It is all pure unadulterated rubbish. A con. McCain has always been a completely self serving grifter con who has never been dedicated to any principle or cause other than John McCain. McCain walked out on his first wife and family after returning from Vietnam, after she had waited for him the entire time and while she was crippled and laid up bedridden from a tragic car accident. Left her while they were still married and brought his flim flam carpetbag to Arizona because it provided what he thought was his best shot of anywhere in the country to get a seat in Congress and because there was a very cute and very rich beer heiress here whose family could provide him with the juice and credibility to get elected.

That is the kind of man McCain is and what he stands for. Always has been, always will be. John McCain is a supremely narcissistic self serving belligerent lout that cares about one thing, and one thing only, and that is John McCain. So, when senile political nitwits like Matlock David Broder blather baloney like this:

But now, as the 73-year-old senator prepares for what may well be his final term in a congressional career that began in 1982, the time has come for McCain to look to his legacy — and conditions are right.

In a Congress in which Democrats have pitiful approval ratings and Republicans even worse, McCain is one of the few names that does not draw instant contempt from the voters. The reputation he established for independence — for being his own man, no matter what the pressures — has survived the vagaries of an exceptionally long career.

choke back the appropriate gag reflex to puke and remember just who and what John McCain really is, the belligerent narcissistic turd of a Devil. McCain didn’t change to win this election, doing and saying whatever benefits John McCain at the moment has always been his calling card.

In other news and notes from the Arizona primary last Tuesday, it will be Jan Brewer versus current Attorney General and former Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard in the general election for governor. It is kind of amusing watching the same chattering media class described above talk about Jan Brewer like she is some political force to be reckoned with. Brewer has been around for decades, mostly as a harmless but batty state legislator. Locals called her “Kooky Jan” as far back as the 1980s because she was, well, kind of kooky.

Brewer’s newfound notoriety and prominence is accidental, not the mark of political shrewdness. She was basically the puppet template that a local right wing political strongman operative by the name of Chuck Coughlin ran for Secretary of State and fell into the governorship when Janet Napolitano was named DHS Secretary. Brewer also stumbled into the SB 1070 Immigration law issue and she and Coughlin were smart enough to know it was her ticket to fend off Joe Arpaio’s thoughts of primarying her and to get her name out as a power player who was capable of actually being reelected (which was not particularly the case before). Brewer is actually personally very nice and not particularly mean spirited, but she saw her ticket to staying in office and ran with it.

Terry Goddard is a good guy and a decent politician, but has little charisma and has been hanging around for so long that he just kind of has the patina of stale. Unless something changes, Kooky Jan is going to be comfortably reelected, which is more than a little mind blowing.

Another very important race is for Attorney General. The uber right wing political climber, and Joe Arpaio acolyte, Andrew Thomas thankfully was defeated in the primary. Unfortunately, the guy who squeaked out the win over Thomas by a few hundred votes, Tom Horne, is not all that much better. And Horne will have a solid advantage over the Democratic nominee Felicia Rotellini. This is a critical post because the Arizona AG decides how to handle the batshit crazy legislation that comes out of the Arizona state legislature. If you have any pull in Arizona, or friends there, give Rotellini some help.

Last, but not least, there is the matter of young Ben Quayle. Also known as Brock Landers. Quayle is an aggressive and incredibly duplicitous punk who needs to be stopped. Quayle at first denied he was party boy Brock Landers, then admitted he had lied. Word on the street here is that a LOT more about Quayle/Landers’ Caligula past will be forthcoming; it already is in multiple forums.

Doug Kahn and Howie Klein have been pounding on the absolutely horrid Blue Dog Gabby Giffords over at Down With Tyranny and supporting progressive Raul Grijalva from the shameless attacks by Giffords and the DNCC.

So that is an update on political life in wingnut hell, otherwise known as Arizona.

Remember when Rod Blagojevich was making all kinds of noise about calling Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Durbin and Reid, Valerie Jarrett and taking the witness grand stand himself to tell his side of the story in his defense to the criminal prosecution by Pat Fitzgerald and his NDIL team of prosecutors?

Well all the Blago fireworks were duds, most precluded by a strict trial judge, James Zagel, through granting prosecution motions to preclude. And then, a little over a week ago, came the crushing blow that even Hot Rod himself would not take the stand in his own defense.

Standing before a crush of reporters, cameras and microphones, Rod Blagojevich said he wanted to take the stand in his defense but instead took the advice of his attorney Sam Adam Sr., who convinced him the prosecution hadn’t proved its corruption case.

“I felt all along and believed all along that I was going to testify,” he said in the lobby of the federal courthouse.

The former governor said the government’s case wasn’t as they presented it, noting prosecutors didn’t call witnesses Antoin “Tony” Rezko and Stuart Levine, both convicted in the federal probe.

With Adam disagreeing with his son Sam Adam Jr. over his testimony, Blagojevich said he picked the elder attorney’s advice.

“Sam Junior still at this moment wanted me to testify and, frankly, so did I,” Blagojevich said.

He said the decision was discussed late into Monday night.

“Sam Adam Sr.’s most compelling argument — and ultimately the one that swayed me — was that the government in their case proved my innocence,” he said. “They proved I did nothing illegal and that there was nothing further for us to add.

The anticipated Blago fireworks fizzled so badly that the media have taken to calling it a “victory” for Democrats just in order to find something – anything – to talk about for their coverage:

“They dodged a bullet because it would have been weeks of dragging in these high-level people and talking about the schemes and all that,” Illinois GOP chairman Pat Brady said.

Blagojevich’s attorneys had plastered Washington and Illinois with subpoenas. Besides Emanuel, Reid and Giannoulias, his lawyers also initially wanted Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin to appear. They even wanted to subpoena Obama, but weren’t allowed to by a judge.

That none of them ended up testifying doesn’t mean Republicans will let voters forget that Blagojevich is a Democrat as they try to pry loose the party’s grip on the Senate seat and Illinois state government.

And other issues, like Illinois’ $13 billion deficit, help mitigate the damage of the Blagojevich trial, said DePaul University political science professor Michael Mezey.

“It’s going to be yesterday’s news by the time election season starts Labor Day,” he said.

I am not sure this is any big “victory” for Democrats, but there is some merit to the thought that Blago is just such a goofball that he will not be that much of a drain on Illinois Dems in the upcoming election. Especially when one of the top of the ticket candidates there, Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias has his own issues to keep the Chitown media hopping.

The fascinating thing here is how hollow the entire Blago defense turned out to be. When I use the term “defense” that would be rather loosely because there was no defense case presented. At all. Now it is never easy for a defense attorney to put his client on the stand, and it is rarely a good idea. That logic probably maintains here; actually it almost undoubtedly maintains here with a wildcard like Blagojevich.

But to have left the jurors with no defense case whatsoever after all the bluster, sturm and drang? That is brutal, and no matter how Blago and his attorneys paint it, it is throwing in the towel and moving the focus to an appeal. There is simply no other way to look at it. Despite all the noise and antics, Blago has gone quietly into the night.

The only thing left is to receive the verdict. Today, Judge Zagel denied the obligatory defense motion for a mistrial that is made when the defense knows they are sunk. Zagel also denied a request from the jury for transcripts of the closing argument by the prosecution. Probably not a good sign for the defendant when the jury wants more of the prosecution’s closing.

There is little, if any, reason to expect anything but a guilty verdict on most, if not all, counts. The only question is when the verdict will come down. Today is Friday and the jury has been out since Wednesday. Juries like to wrap things up and not have to come back after weekends, so there is a very decent chance we will have a verdict today. If and when it comes down, this post will be updated with the verdict.

Being away to San Francisco to cover the Prop 8 Closing Arguments this week, I am just catching up on a few things. One I would like to point out is the contemptible and disingenuous op-ed Lanny Davis deposited at The Hill:

Two events last week involving elements of the Democratic Party who call themselves the “true progressives” show a danger they represent to the progressive change they say they want to effect. Together they offer President Barack Obama an opportunity for a “Sister Souljah moment” — perhaps to save the Democratic Party majority in both houses of Congress, as well as his progressive agenda in the last two years of his administration.

First was the success of Sen. Blanche Lincoln in June 8’s Arkansas Democratic primary, despite a campaign organized by these self-described progressives, along with certain labor unions.
……
The second event was a conference on that June 8 primary day, held in Washington and organized by the Campaign for America’s Future, a self-described “progressive” organization, which cheered denunciations of Obama for “retreat on Guantánamo [and] no movement on worker rights or comprehensive immigration reform,” according to The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, and shouted down and nearly prevented liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from speaking.
……
President Obama can confirm that the Democratic Party still stands for the centrist, Clintonian combination of fiscal conservatism, cultural moderation and progressive social programs that favor the middle class over the extremely wealthy — the best chance the Democrats have to hold their majorities in both houses of Congress and to enact the progressive changes that the critics on the left say they truly want.

The holier than thou arrogance and self entitled belligerence of Davis is simply stunning. As if Obama has not scorned the progressives and netroots enough already. Davis apparently feels he is the one who gets to decide who is, and who is not, a “true Progressive” and those he deems unfit are due the “Sister Souljah” execution hit. Nice. In the process of whining about progressive activism destroying Democratic party unity, he wants to divide, marginalize and destroy a significant sector of the Democratic party. Clearly Davis’ clarity of thought has been so addled by the toxic brine of the inbred Washington Beltway elitism he cannot see he is committing the very sins he complains of. Either that or he is so cravenly duplicitous he does not care. Davis has a history of such duplicity.

Davis similarly accuses the netroots of being “long on innuendo and personal attacks and short on substance”, which is hilarious for a man lobbing unlinked, uncited and unsupported screed in such a deceptive manner. For instance Davis directly intimates that if/when Blanche Lincoln loses in the general election it will because of the netroot and labor supported primary challenge of Bill Halter in Arkansas. This bit of self serving dishonesty of course neglects the fact that if Davis and his fellow centrist corporate shills really cared about retaining the seat in the general election, they should have supported Halter who arguably was a stronger candidate in the general than Lincoln. Not to mention that, in the general, Lincoln will be the only, and unified, Democratic candidate and thus will be judged on her record by the voters of Arkansas. Apparently Mr. Davis does not approve of the democratic concept of voters being able to express their choice in a primary and thinks only the wise sages of the Washington Beltway get to say who the party choice is.

As to his specific arguments in relation to Lincoln, Davis neglects to mention that the majority of Arkansas voters supported the public option, it is just that he and his corporatist doppelganger Blanche Lincoln who did not. Mr. Davis also failed to admit the only version of “health reform” Lincoln would grudgingly vote for was one that gave her constituents expensive health insurance but little in the way of more or usable health care. Par for Davis’ disingenuous course.

The other manufactured poutrage Davis throws down from his grandiose high horse related to the CAF presser where Nancy Pelosi was heckled by a noisy group of protesters on June 8th. Davis dishonestly intimates in his op-ed that the subject hecklers were the progressive netroots and CAF members he so despises protesting over the public option.

But if Davis had possessed any intellectual integrity or journalistic professionalism, he would have researched and realized the hecklers were not the netroots/CAF crowd, but instead were a separate and limited single issue group of nursing home professionals from an unrelated association known as ADAPT who were concerned about the Community Choice Act relating to long term care provisions for the elderly. Instead, Davis relied on an emailed report from a friend who was not at the event, but sent Davis a missive after reading about the conference from an unknown source. Oh, and a terminally shallow Washington Post column by the supposed humorist Dana Milbank. What a paragon of reportage Lanny Davis is.

Davis closes out his fine whine with this sage wisdom:

President Obama can confirm that the Democratic Party still stands for the centrist, Clintonian combination of fiscal conservatism, cultural moderation and progressive social programs that favor the middle class over the extremely wealthy — the best chance the Democrats have to hold their majorities in both houses of Congress and to enact the progressive changes that the critics on the left say they truly want.

Well, yeah, I guess. Or Mr. Obama could, alternatively, pull out of his hazy downward spiral and demonstrate he is the leader of the whole party, and entire country, and not just the centrist corporatist hacks like Lanny Davis.

Go “Sister Souljah” yourself Lanny Davis, you plutocratic Beltway corporatist huckster.

[The attached video is from a December 17, 2009 encounter Jane Hamsher had with Lanny Davis on MSNBC]

There has been some speculation and gossip spurred by Dan Nowicki’s report in the Arizona Republic that John McCain is shaking up his campaign staff:

Sen. John McCain is shaking up his campaign leadership team as the Arizona Republican readies for an all-out ground fight in his closely watched GOP primary battle against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

Campaign manager Shiree Verdone is moving to a 2010 “Republican Victory” fundraising operation. Mike Hellon, a former Arizona Republican Party chairman who had a part-time role as deputy campaign manager, will join her there.

Neither Verdone nor Hellon was fired, said Brian Rogers, McCain’s campaign spokesman, who confirmed the staff changes Friday in a statement to The Arizona Republic.

Gossip magnet The Politico has picked up the deck chair rearranging too, as have the cable cluckers. Thing is, if you know McCain, there is no real “shake up” since the core of his election organization, which has been around him a long time, is almost completely intact and in charge. As Nowicki noted further down in his article:

McCain’s strategy and decision-making brain trust of longtime advisers Rick Davis, Charlie Black, Mark Salter, Carla Eudy and Mark Buse remains intact.

So, the term “shake up” is pretty much hyperbole; McCain’s posse is quite intact. In fact, you almost have to wonder whether this “shakeup” is about some kind of money cost laundering – shifting expenses somehow – since these staffers are just joining the RNC AZ staff.

The above being said, McCain has been publicly revealing the inner tired old gluehorse he really is an awful lot lately. McCain has always been the supreme narcissist whose only concern at any given time or situation is limited to what he thinks helps John McCain. His willingness to wildly say anything, no matter how inconsistent or absurd, has really been on full display lately, most notably with his craven about face on immigration and the “dang fence” (which even had fellow Arizona Republican John Shaddegg laughing).

So, what is missing for Old Gluehorse McCain? Why is McCain’s hypocritical narcissism more glaring than usual? No John Weaver that is why; and Weaver’s absence is why I said above that McCain’s team is “almost completely intact”. John Weaver was the smarts of the outfit who made the “McCain the Trusted Maverick” gloss up out of whole cloth and had the good sense to keep the real McCain on a short leash and away from the hypocritical stupidity he is naturally prone to. For a really excellent look at how Weaver made the McCain the press fell in love with, take a look at this Texas Monthly article (simple registration may be required, but it is quite good).

The Old Gluehorse should have been put out to pasture long ago; it is just more obvious now without John Weaver.

[graphic by Neil Alderney]

As DDay reported, the Reid-Schumer-Menendez draft on Immigration Reform calls for a national ID card (which they call a “biometric” or “fraud proof” social security card). Perhaps in a move to placate civil libertarians, the draft insists the card will only be used for employment.

It will be unlawful for any person, corporation; organization local, state, or federal law enforcement officer; local or state government; or any other entity to require or even ask an individual cardholder to produce their social security card for any purpose other than electronic verification of employment eligibility and verification of identity for Social Security Administration purposes.

Now, let’s pretend for a moment that this national ID program would actually fix the problem of employers trying to hire cheap, vulnerable labor rather than paying market rate wages. Let’s pretend for a moment that this national ID program would avoid all of the security and privacy issues that such a program will be bound to have.

Why in fuck’s name would anyone with a “D” next to their name advocate for a national card–of any sort–without at the same time attaching it to automatic voter registration, also tied to the card? Why would the Democratic party propose any national program that did not, at the same time, insist on getting rid of our byzantine voter registration system that leaves large chunks of the population exposed to disenfranchisement? Even if this is just a stunt designed to prove Democrats are “serious” about compromise so they can embarrass the bigots even more for their refusal to accept the compromise, why would you ever miss the opportunity to tie a universal registration card to a potential fix to the problems in our election system?

The stunning and decisive loss by Martha Coakley to Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate special election has already caused a tsunami of fear among Democrats, and corresponding joy among Republicans, heading toward next fall’s midterm elections. If you think this is cause for concern for Democrats looking forward to the 2010 midterm elections, picture the scene if the Republican party were also able to benefit from removal of restrictions on corporate and financial industry cash infused into their electoral coffers heading into the midterms and 2012 Presidential election.

As I wrote back last August, the Supreme Court took very unusual steps in a case by the name of Citizens United v. FEC to craft a case – originally argued on separate grounds – into a vehicle to make a Supreme Court declaration on the constitutionality of campaign finance restrictions and regulations. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times put it:

If the ban is struck down, corporations may soon be writing large checks to the same elected officials whom they are asking to give them bailouts or to remove health-and-safety regulations from their factories or to insert customized loopholes into the tax code.

Citizens United v. FEC was originally argued on March 24, 2009; but subsequently noticed for re-argument on the new grounds involving the opening of corporate campaign contributions on September 9, 2009. The general consensus among the cognoscenti is that the Justices were leaning heavily toward blowing up the regulations and restrictions on corporate campaign contributions. For a complete blow by blow procedural and substantive history leading up to the decision, see Lyle Denniston’s SCOTUSWiki on this case.

Well, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission is in and attached hereto. As you can see, it is a 5-4 split decision with Justice Kennedy writing the majority opinion. The decision below is reversed in part and affirmed in part, and the seminal case of Austin v, Michigan is hereby overruled as is that part of McConnell v. FEC which upheld the resitrictions on independent corporate expenditures. In dissent, and/or partial dissent is Justice Stevens, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Breyer. Justice Thomas also filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Today’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC abolishes the previously settled distinction between corporate and individual expenditures in American elections and would appear to apply to state and local elections as well as Federal ones given that the Court recognizes such a First Amendment right. This is literally an earth shattering change in the lay of the land in campaign finance, and it will have ramifications in every way imaginable for the foreseeable future.

Quoting a very interested observer, Senator Russ Feingold, he of McCain-Feingold fame, John Nichols had this to say in The Nation:

But U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who has been in the forefront of campaign-finance reform efforts for the better part of two decades, is worried.

“This would be in my view, a lawless decision from the Supreme Court,” says the senator who gave his name to the McCain-Feingold law. “Part of me says I can’t believe they’ll do it, but there’s some indication they might, and that means the whole idea of respecting the previous decisions of the Supreme Court won’t mean anything anymore.”

A lawyer who chairs the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feingold notes with regard to controls on corporate campaigning: “These things were argued in 1907, when they passed the ban on corporate treasuries. It was argued in 1947, Taft-Hartley did this. The Supreme Court has affirmed over and over again that it’s not part of free speech that corporations and unions can use their treasuries (to buy elections).”

If the court does overturn both law and precedent to advance a corporate agenda, Feingold says, “It’s just an example of activism, and legislating by a court, if they do this.”

It is, as well, dangerous for democracy.

Says Feingold: “If they overturn a hundred years of laws, it means that corporations or unions can just open their treasuries (and) just completely buy up all the television time, and drown out everyone else’s voices.”

Looks like we will be swimming in danger just like Russ Feingold feared. And when you couple the newly unleashed and unfettered corporate cash with the resurgent masters of corporate symbiosis and subservience, the Republican party, you have a recipe for the Democratic party heading into the perfect storm.

I wasn’t going to post on this–I was going to let John Conyers and Barack Obama to have their public spat in peace.

According to [John Conyers], the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to  find out why  Conyers was “demeaning” him.
Obama’s decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left.

Conyers’s critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor.

Conyers, the second-longest-serving member of the House, said, “[Obama] called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’”

[snip]

“I’ve been saying I don’t agree with him on Afghanistan, I think he screwed up on healthcare reform, on Guantánamo and kicking Greg off,” Conyers said, referring to the departure of former White House counsel Greg Craig.

[snip]

The liberal Conyers has been an outspoken proponent of a single-payer healthcare system and a critic of U.S. involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has also been at odds with White House policy on extending expiring  provisions of the Patriot Act, crafting legislation that is to the left of the Senate’s version.

But I thought it worthwhile to elaborate on what the Hill said about Conyers’ support for Obama–which reminds that Conyers was the first CBC member to endorse Obama.

Conyers played a pretty important role in the way Michigan’s Clusterfuck of a primary worked out. Recall that Jennifer Granholm–a very active Hillary supporter–pushed the primary, knowing it would cause all sorts of headache for Edwards and Obama. Leading up to the Clusterfuck, there were really just two main sources of ads: a bunch of Hillary supporters doing what was primarily direct mail in support of Hillary. And Conyers, with very little assistance, doing radio and robocalls in Detroit. (I think there as also some union support for Edwards/uncommitted, though it was not as public.)

Now, Conyers’ ads were a tough ask: unlike the Hillary supporters (who, after all, only had to ask people to vote for one of the only people on the ballot), he was working to convince a population that is not always reliable to not only come out to the Clusterfuck to vote, but to vote for this crazy-ass “Uncommitted” category.

When the votes were counted, “Uncommitted” won in only three parts of the state: a teeny county up north, Washtenaw (Ann Arbor), and Detroit (this never showed on national stories bc the results got reported for Wayne County, not Detroit).

The fact that Hillary lost in the Clusterfuck against “other” in Detroit, an area whose turnout can make or break Democrats in state-wide elections, was pretty significant to the urgency behind trying to find an equitable solution to the Clusterfuck.

So yeah, Conyers was the first to insist that African Americans might elect an African American President. And he was also instrumental (as far as Conyers can be without a machine) in making sure that Hillary’s efforts to game the primary here didn’t succeed. Conyers is far more than a disgruntled progressive falling out of love with Obama.

That said, he is in many ways the archetypal disgruntled progressive. The issues the Hill cites–Afghanistan, health care, Gitmo, and PATRIOT–are many of those that progressive everywhere split with Obama on.

Obama was always a hawk on Afghanistan. He was always a moderate on health care reform–though he did campaign on a public option. It’s the latter two issues the Hill cites–Gitmo and PATRIOT–that violate Obama’s campaign stance that “no one is above the law” and that he would revisit FISA immediately (the Administration has rejected such efforts now, including the HJC bill aiming to do just that). Conyers’ complaints with Obama are the complaints we all have.

Then again, unlike the rest of us, Conyers is Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which just so happens to be the committee that oversees these “rule of law” issues.

And it’s on that level where the accusations of “demeaning” seem most important. Obama has asked Congress to roll over on issues and, in SJC at least, succeeded in getting top people (like Pat Leahy) to do so. On PATRIOT and Gitmo, Conyers has thus far refused to do so.

So who is demeaning whom? If the President demands that a Democrat who has served in Congress since Obama was four years old, one who paved the way on civil rights issues to make it possible to elect an African American man President, and one who played a key role in Obama winning the primary, just roll over on legislative issues, who is demeaning whom?