The Shutdown

OK -- it's over. Until January 15. Everybody's claiming victory. Y'know what? Everybody lost. Shutting down the government is a no-win situation, always has been, always will be.

The President's saying it won't happen again. The teabaggers are ready to come right back with more impossible demands. (I mean, how many times does a bill to repeal the ACA have to fail before they get the message?) Every time I see Ted Cruz, he looks creepier, more beady-eyed.

Buncha bullshit, right down the line. We should just throw everyone out and start over again. One new requirement for congresscritters: net worth must be less than $500,000. (And I'm being generous.)

I Am Really Sick of Hearing About Sochi

The Russians are not going to change their anti-gay laws: Putin is finding them too valuable a tool at home. I will be very surprised if the IOC does anything that smacks of having a spine. They're still sitting there with their heads in the clouds -- I mean, really, who thinks that a competition between national teams can possibly be "apolitical"? And the IOC doesn't have a great record of being pro-active on gay equality. More on the order of being dragged kicking and screaming into the fold. No government is going to do anything to precipitate a confrontation. Obama cancelling a summit with Putin is as close as anyone is going to get, and Obama has stronger reasons than the Games. As for the third-world countries, half of them are worse than Russia, this is their moment in the spotlight, and they see Russia (and China) as a useful counterweight to US influence.

And what's more worrisome than official government action if someone does in indulge in "propaganda" are the Russian far-right groups and religious nationalists -- they have no compunctions about violence, they don't care about causing an international incident, and they're operating with the government's tacit approval. (I won't say that they're getting their marching orders from Putin, but I wouldn't be surprised.) If some athlete is killed, then there might be a reaction that justifies the use of the word. More likely, there will be a sacrifice of some low-life street thug.

There will be repercussions for the games if some major sponsor pulls its support. That's what the IOC will notice, and that's all it will notice.

And in the meantime, we're getting breathless reports on the latest posturing by the Russian government, the IOC, and various national leaders and high-profile spokesmen.

You might infer from this that I'm disgusted. You would be right.

The Fiscal Cliff Scam

And other disasters that aren't going to happen. Here's James Galbraith on the reality of the looming "crisis":

Stripped to essentials, the fiscal cliff is a device constructed to force a rollback of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as the price of avoiding tax increases and disruptive cuts in federal civilian programs and in the military. It was policy-making by hostage-taking, timed for the lame duck session, a contrived crisis, the plain idea now unfolding was to force a stampede.

In the nature of stampedes arguments become confused; panic flows from fear, when multiple forces – economic and political in this instance – all appear to push the same way. It is therefore useful to sort through those forces, breaking them down into separate questions, and to ask whether any of them justify the voices of doom.

Read the whole thing -- he goes through point by point and underscores that they are so much horsepucky.

And then he makes a recommendation I can wholeheartedly support:

In short, Members of Congress: if you can, just pass the President's bill on middle-class taxes, and, if you can, eliminate the domestic sequester. Then, please go home. Enjoy the holidays. Come back in January prepared to extend unemployment insurance, to phase out the payroll tax holiday gradually, to restore stable funding to necessary programs and to start dealing with our real problems: jobs, foreclosures, infrastructure and climate change.

I'd take out the "if you can" parts -- just do it, and justify, for a little while at least, the cushy jobs you've got.

Via Digby. Read her post for the lead-in. It seems everyone's on board.

Just for Fun

I love this:

Via BalloonJuice.

S&P Kabuki (Update, Update II)

Because Standard & Poor's downgrade of the US bond rating is part of the kabuki. This note from Steven Benen is instructive:

There are widespread reports this afternoon that Standard & Poor’s, the bond rating agency, will downgrade the United States, despite this week’s debt-reduction agreement. S&P will reportedly cite Republican intransigence on revenue as part of the rationale, drawing a direct connection between GOP policies and a step that will further weaken the economy.

Translation: Wall Street is not happy and the Republican leadership just got its orders: muzzle the teabaggers.

Benen also has a nice post underlining that this is a political action, not an economic decision.

A Treasury staff member noticed the $2 trillion mistake within the hour, according to a department official. The Treasury called the company and explained the problem. About an hour later, the company conceded the problem but did not indicate how it planned to proceed, the official said. Hours later, S.& P. issued a revised release with new numbers but the same conclusion.

Got that? S&P prepared an analysis to justify a specific conclusion. The analysis was off by $2 trillion. Treasury explained to S&P that the analysis wasn’t even close to being accurate, which led the ratings agency to concede they’d made a mistake.

And a few hours later, S&P decided to reach the same conclusion anyway. The agency wanted to proceed with a downgrade; whether its numbers added up was irrelevant.

As far as S&P's credibility, note that Moody's and Fitch have not downgraded US debt, and -- well, there's that little matter of the mortgage-backed securities a while back:

The credit rating agencies have been trying to restore their credibility after missteps leading to the financial crisis. A Congressional panel called them “essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction” after their wildly optimistic models led them to give top-flight reviews to complex mortgage securities that later collapsed.

The point being, they knew those securities were junk. Joe Klein had a note back in April, when S&P first started making downgrade noises, that Benen uses to good effect, but there's another part of it that caught my attention:

S&P is not only a de facto subsidiary of the big banks, it also reflects their politics. Big bankers don’t want to be taxed or regulated. President Obama said last week that they will be taxed, at the moral equivalent of the Clinton rates, in any given budget deal; he has also proposed stiffer financial regulations, and the banks are having spend a lot in campaign contributions to wriggle free of that, which is a tax of a different sort. By issuing this warning, S&P seems to be trying to curry favor with its key constituents while overplaying a real, but long-term problem–the need to make structural changes to the way we take in and spend public revenues.

I'm not sure how much oomph to give this one, particularly since S&P specifically cited Republicans' intransigence on revenue increases as a reason for its conclusions. Maybe the plutocracy is realizing that banana republics aren't free. And maybe they're realizing that if they trash everyone's economy, they won't have anything left to play with.

Paul Krugman has a brief little post on this aspect that I'm not going to quote -- go read it. I will say, though, that what we're seeing now is the aftermath of our "businessman" president.

Update: Paul Krugman has a good column on what the real problem is, and what the real reactions should be. Don't expect anyone in Washington to pay attention -- I mean, Krugman's only been consistently right about all this.

Update II:

Here's a piece from Dean Baker with some good perspective on the whole S&P sideshow.

What Does It Take?

Via C&L:



This is another one that should be a no-brainer, and I think Weiner's tirade on the floor of the House was perfectly justified (we've lost Alan Grayson, but at least we still have Anthony Weiner, for which we can be thankful). Here's a key point:

We figured out a way to pay for it. It's completely paid for now. And we have the votes and so for John McCain to say this is some kind of a game or a stunt... no.

John McCain is a disgrace to the Senate. (This is the same John McCain who's talked to "thousands" of enlisted personnel who oppose DADT repeal. Yeah, right.) That, at this point, is too obvious to need repeating. Sadly, it's at the point where the Senate is a disgrace to America. They've forgotten why they're there. And yes, it's largely the Republicans, but not entirely. There are enough Rahm Emanuel Democrats on board with the whole kabuki thing that the Senate is a waste of time -- they can't even manage basics, like voting on bills.

UPDATE:

Well, it seems there was another player in the defeat of the first responders bill -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

I was surprised to find out that the Chamber put the full court press on the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 ”because it was funded by ending a special tax loophole exploited by foreign corporations doing business in the United States.”

Here's the story from ThinkProgress.

And when the Senate does manage to pass something, it's a stopgap or a maybe -- like DADT "repeal," which is not repeal. The Pentagon will slow-walk that one until they manage to make a mess of it, I suspect because, like the Senate, there are no leaders left there, just kabuki actors and politicians -- which have become pretty much the same thing.

It's kind of appalling to have two failed presidencies in a row. (Yes, I've written off Obama as someone who can actually get anything done without bastardizing it enough to make it useless -- except, for some reason, budget-busting tax cuts for the rich.)

Footnote:

This is what John McCain does for a living:



If he had any integrity left, he'd retire.

I'm So Sick of This

From Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room, a list of military priorities the lockstep brigade in the Senate managed to stall.

What’s happening here is that the very same Republicans who were blasting Democrats for voting against military funding to protest the Iraq war are now using their objection to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell — which the majority of the military actually supports — to obstruct and delay the above benefits and pay increases. In fact, they’re even prioritizing extending tax cuts for the richest Americans to the provisions in the defense bill. And, they’re somehow getting away with it all.

Of course they're getting away with it -- the Democrats and the MSM are working overtime to make sure they do.

I'm about to fire off an e-mail to my freshman senator, Mark Kirk, who made such capital of his military service (or tried to -- it turns out he was lying through his teeth) during the campaign. It's quite obvious that the Republicans think that somehow national security is dependent on making the rich richer, hence hanging everything off the Bush tax cuts -- which, as it happens, were the single biggest factor in our current deficit, give or take a war of choice and the war that Bush didn't want to fight -- at least, not once we were actually there.

The House is on top of it, though:

To be sure, some (but not all) of these pieces will be transferred into the continuing resolution (CR) and several are already included in the House CR, which passed last night. For instance, the CR “Provides DoD broad authority to realign funding to accommodate programs and projects planned for FY 2011″ and “Extends several authorities required for military pay and bonuses and compensation for civilian employees serving in theater, and authorities needed for overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.” The House CR also includes including “funds for a 1.4% military pay raise” — which was part of the Senate defense bill.

But only in the Senate are two pages in a bill and a completely unrelated priority reason enough to vote against even starting debate on the issue.

The left blogosphere seems convinced it's all because of DADT, but I'm not so sure: we're still in "sink the president" mode, and he's not been doing much to fight that. I think DADT is just this week's excuse.

However, we'll see on that one. Lieberman, Collins and by some reports Mark Udall are preparing to introduce a stand-alone DADT bill. Reid has promised a floor vote.

Pelosi has promised to push it through the House if it passes in the Senate.

But then, when's the last time anything actually passed in the Senate?

This Is Getting Tired

Via AmericaBlog, this post at Daily Kos on the real "changes" in implementation of DADT -- not much.

Yesterday news came out from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network(SLDN) that contrary to popularly reports, the ban on third party outings of LGB servicemembers was not entirely a thing of the past.

This is the latest in an oddly familiar pattern of big happy news announcements on DADT, followed by small—but critical—corrections. If you're not playing close attention, beyond the sweep of headlines, you've probably missed a lot. Some of us are paying close attention though, and there is an awful truth: repeal is far from the sure bet many people seem to think it is.

The pattern is: we stage a nice little dog and pony show to make a thrilling announcement about some gay issue or other, and then we don't do much. Joe Solmonese goes home happy and no one is asking the hard questions.

Take it tandem with this post from Queerty:

From the Pentagon saying it's going to poll the families of military personnel about their thoughts on repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, to actually holding a forum to invite ostensibly soldiers' feedback on a repeal, the military is making clear its strategy on repealing the discriminatory policy: let's have everyone weigh in and see what they think and make this a democratic decision! The premise is certainly a bizarre one, since military leaders don't have much of a history asking what subordinates — or their husbands and wives — think about their policy making.

Read both these posts. They're scathing, and they should be. Also take a look at John Aravosis' comments on the "family friendly" approach -- for once, I don't think he's over the top -- this certainly deserves all the ridicule anyone cares to heap on it.

They're stalling, hoping they can kill it.

"Finally" Revisited

They caved.

Idiots.
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Finally

The Democrats are starting to show some smarts. They should have done this long ago:

Retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) late Thursday launched a one-man crusade to block an extension of unemployment and COBRA insurance benefits, vowing to allow the benefit programs to expire Sunday unless Democrats agreed to pay for them with unused stimulus funds.

Bunning’s quixotic pursuit of deficit offsets at the potential expense of payments to unemployed or uninsured citizens enraged Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other Democrats, who vowed to keep the chamber in session until Bunning relents or collapses.

A senior Democratic leadership aide said Durbin would ask for unanimous consent to pass the extensions without Bunning’s payment scheme every half hour for the foreseeable future. “We’re going to keep doing it until we break him,” the aide said.

It's a strategy that could pay off big-time for the Democrats, but there's one misstep in the article:

If Bunning is successful, it could prove to be a significant blow to the GOP. Unemployment and COBRA health insurance benefits are popular, and with the unemployment rate soaring, lawmakers have been keen to ensure there are no interruptions in payments.

Should the programs lapse, Democrats could use the episode to tar Republicans as unconcerned with the poor.

Not the poor, but middle-class Americans who can't find jobs. This is not about the poor, it's about Republicans once again trying to screw the middle class.

Pajamas, Cheetos, and Other Distinguishing Marks

Full disclosure: I haven't worn pajamas since I was fifteen years old. Shocked the hell out of my father the first time he realized it -- but after that, he always knocked before he came into my room.

I used to like Cheetos (one of my favorite why the hell not? pig-out foods), but I can't eat them any more. Ditto chicharones and potato chips -- my stomach rebels. I've gotten too thoroughly conditioned to fresh fruit and vegetables as snacks.

With that out of the way, I'd like to address a couple of reactions to the reactions to the "internet leftist fringe" remark, since stoutly disavowed by the White House, both of the "why'nt you all grow up?" variety.

First, from Jim Burroway, this comment:

An NBC reporter quoted an anonymous source with an axe to grind — who is it? Chief of staff? Press Secretary? Electrician? — and bloggers go off the deep end fulfilling every blogging stereotype. Take a deep breath. I know people are frustrated with the slow pace of change with this president. I am too. But if an anonymous minion complains that bloggers are acting like cry-babies throwing temper tantrums, one doesn’t exactly counter that image by throwing a temper tantrum. We’ve all been called names before on the playground. Sheesh!

I think Burroway's overstating his case just a bit -- he starts off his post by noting "Aravosis shrieks" before quoting him, and frankly, Aravosis was no more over the top than he usually is -- in fact, a little less. As I pointed out in my update to the previous post on this, there are some questions I have about this whole thing, starting with "Did Harwood actually have a source?" (It wouldn't be the first time that a story got legs based on nothing.) And the White House has been coming out with statements disavowing previous statements (or not, depending on their mood, I guess) almost since day one.

There are also a couple of commentaries from John Cole that build to an interesting climax. The first is about the stump speech:

I understand that may not be as cathartic as knee-capping your own guy while chanting “just words,” but it might be more productive. And it isn’t settling. It isn’t telling you to shut up or relax or be patient. It is telling you that working to change the status quo is more productive than hurting your own team, even though throwing eggs and making farty sounds with your armpit is more fun.

I have to point out one thing here: there is a split in the gay movement, and it is a deep and serious difference, and that is between the people who are out there working to change the status quo and those who have steadfastly counseled "wait" -- and it's this latter group that the president is willing to speak to. The rest of us are, I think, getting quite justifiably impatient. We're not looking for catharsis, we're looking for action.

The second stems from the furor surrounding the "fringe leftist" remark:

I doubt it, but hopefully this will stop the insanity:

“That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all, we’ve held easily a dozen calls with the progressive online community because we believe the online communities can often keep the focus on how policy will affect the American people rather than just the political back-and-forth.”

You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you. Now that we have our daily affirmations out of the way, can we stop lobbing grenades at each other? Hug it out, bitches.

I'm going to point out one thing I think these two commentaries have in common, whch is actually something that disturbs me a little: as in the Village, every item inhabits its own universe, and has no contact with any other.

(I'd also like to point out something that relates to the original comments by Harwood, but not directly to these comments by Cole and Burroway, but still serves to fuzz the issue: did anyone else notice how the LGBT and allied demonstrators yesterday have suddenly become the "internet fringe left"? Not to mention those of us who have been critical of Obama and the "establishment" gay rights groups. Somehow, I can't really think of John Aravosis, Andrew Sullivan, Pam Spaulding, or even Jane Hamsher (not to mention myself) as "fringe left.")

Unfortunately for that doctrine, there are some of us who do connect the dots, and who remember previous and too similar situations, starting with the infamous motion for dismissal, known in blogger shorthand as "the DOMA brief." (Word is that the president had not seen the brief before it was filed and was not happy. I have to ask -- doesn't anyone in the DoJ have any idea what's acceptable to this president? Were they all asleep?) This was supposed to be assuaged by inviting a select group to the signing of an executive memorandum (not, mind you, an executive order, which remains in force until specifically rescinded, but an executive memorandum, which expires when this presidency does) guaranteeing some benefits for gay government employees and their partners that were already available -- but not including anything that might even remotely be construed as a benefit of marriage, like health insurance or pension benefits. And meanwhile, we've seen action in Congress when we've been able to find someone -- interestingly enough, usually someone fairly new to the Village -- to go to bat for us.

I'm going to hold up one glaring example of what I think has been typical of this administration on gay issues. Here's a bit from Jim Burroway on repeal of DADT:

This is David Morgan characterizing CBS News Chief Political Correspondent John Dickerson’s description of the administration’s prioritization of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

John Dickerson says the message from the administration is: Don’t hold your breath.

The indication from the White House is they want to show the president is still committed to this, but that it’s further down on the list of priorities,” Dickerson told “Early Show” anchor Harry Smith. “He’s got a lot in front of him, and the big question is how much political capital he’ll put behind this. Will he pressure Congress? Will he pressure the Pentagon?

“There’s just no indication right now that he’s going to spend his political capital in that way.”

This didn’t come from a White House Staffer, named or unnamed. It’s Morgan’s summation of Dickerson’s observations, which is consistent with what we’ve seen so far. No political capital.

I'd like to ask what political capital has to be expended on legislation that is supported by clear majorities in every demographic you can think of -- except retired right-wing generals. I mean, FTLOP, 58% of Republicans support repeal of DADT.

Burroway quotes an AP item in the last post he links to above:

President Barack Obama will focus “at the right time” on how to overturn the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.

When is the "right time"? Does he think Elaine Donnelley is going to have a hissy fit? WTF?

OK -- now can I connect a few more dots? Think about the clear majority of Americans supporting health-care reform legislation with a good, strong public option. This has been a fairly stable number all along. And guess what's likely to be stripped from any bill that passes. Yes, you're right.

Which leads to the not-so-startling conclusion that it's been a while since anyone in the Village (and this includes the government, first and foremost) gave a shit what anyone outside the Village thinks.

I guess we don't go to the right cocktail parties.

Update:

Glenn Greenwald tackles this one as only he can do it. One point that had occurred to me:

Greg Sargent reports that the White House, on the record, is denying that the anonymous comment reflects their view of blogs and the gay protesters. Did anyone expect them to do anything else? Greg also says that the White House has taken steps which show that they recognize the importance of blogs. That's true; they're willing to harness the power of blogs to help advance the President's agenda, and that's smart. But the issue is how they view criticisms from Democrats and the left of the President, not whether they're willing to use blogs to support Obama.

I was thinking of doing an addendum myself this morning pointing out that, like everyone else in Washington, Obama wants to control the Internet. He, however, doesn't want to regulate it -- he just wants to use his "bully pulpit" to enforce his message on the blogosphere. Got news for ya -- the Internet isn't like that. That's its value.

Backtracking aa bit, Greenwald also starts connecting some dots, in more detail than I did:

In the updates to her post about all of this last night, Pam Spaulding notes with exasperation the excuses and denials flying around everywhere, with all sorts of people expressing doubt that anyone in the Obama White House could possibly be capable of such an ugly sentiment, particularly in light of the President's eloquent, on-the-record commitment to gay equality (other than marriage). As is true for all instances of reckless and petty uses of anonymity like this, it's impossible to know how reflective it is of administration sentiment generally -- was this a senior White House official or some obscure low-level aide? -- but how could anyone who has paid any attention at all to the way Washington functions be doubtful that this sentiment is pervasive or find this at all unusual?

Just this weekend, a "top gay Democrat close to Obama" was granted anonymity by Politico to dismiss administration critics on gay issues as "naive." Just six weeks ago, an equally cowardly "senior White House adviser" hiding behind anonymity told told The Washington Post that the only people who cared about the public option in health care were "the left of the left" -- those same fringe, irrational extremists. In June, an anonymous "friend of John Brennan's" told Jane Mayer in The New Yorker that the people who prevented Brennan's nomination as CIA Director (because of his support for some of the most radical Bush Terrorism policies) were nothing more than "a few Cheeto-eating people in the basement working in their underwear who write blogs." Last year, "Democrats on the Hill" anonymously dismissed opposition to telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping as nothing more than a fringe issue being exploited by Chris Dodd for his presidential campaign, and then anonymously warned Dodd to abandon his left-wing obstructionism if he wanted to resume good standing in the Democratic caucus. Can anyone miss the pattern?

So we have a contingent that's criticizing "The Left" for criticizing Obama based on one incident while refusing to see the pattern that is quite obvious to anyone with a memory reaching back farther than fifteen minutes.

FISA, Again

Here's Digby on Harry Reid's determination to ram Bush's FISA bill through the Senate. Here's the post by Glenn Greenwald that she's working from, with the money quote:

To do so, Reid announced that, unlike for the multiple filibusters from Republican colleagues, he would actually force Dodd and company to engage in a real filibuster. This is what Reid said:

[I]f people think they are going to talk this to death, we are going to be in here all night. This is not something we are going to have a silent filibuster on. If someone wants to filibuster this bill, they are going to do it in the openness of the Senate.

That is what Democrats have been urging Reid to do to the filibustering Republicans all year -- in order to dramatize their obstructionism -- but he has refused to make them actually filibuster anything, generously agreeing instead that every bill requires 60 votes. Instead, he reserves such punishment only for the members of his own caucus trying to take a stand for the rule of law and the Constitution, those who are trying finally to bring some accountability to this administration.


Reid's leadership in the Senate has been nonexistent, and I'm really tired of his pandering to the Republican minority -- did you hear that, Harry? MINORITY. I really wonder how many contributions his campaign fund has gotten from telecoms and their lobbyists and employees. It would be interesting to see those figures.

There Is a Leader in the Senate

And it's not Harry Reid. Via AmericaBlog, this story from AP:

The Senate late Monday delayed its consideration of a vote on a new government eavesdropping bill until January.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the bill because there were more than a dozen amendments planned, and not enough time left on the legislative calendar to manage them.

"Everyone feels it would be to the best interests of the Senate that we take a look at this when we come back after the first of the year," said Reid, D-Nev. . . .

"For the last six years, our largest telecom companies have been spying on their own American customers," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Dodd spoke for several hours and threatened a filibuster, vowing to use "all the tools" at his disposal to prevent the bill's passage. After Democratic leaders pulled the bill, he issued a statement saying, "Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy."

I think Dodd just got my vote. If he's not on the primary ballot in Illinois, I'm going to write him in.

The Democrats made a miserable showing on this. Here is the vote tally on cloture. I think my senators, Durbin and Obama, are going to get a nasty letter.

In fact, here's the letter I just sent Dick Durbin:

Dear Sen. Durbin:

I am very disturbed at finding that you voted for cloture on S. 2248, the new FISA bill that contains provisions for retroactive immunity for telecom companies. I find any bill that contains this provision completely unacceptable, and I am extremely disappointed that you did not support Sen. Dodd's filibuster of this atrocious piece of legislation.

Perhaps you or someone on your staff -- or perhaps Sen. Reid's -- can answer a question for me: Given the results of the 2006 general election, why is Congress still a rubber stamp for the White House?

I look forward to your response.

Obama got a similar letter, with an additional paragraph about his lack of leadership on this issue in light of his presidential aspirations.

I can be a real bitch, sometimes.

I have to confess, I'm not real enthusiastic about my senators, and I think I've just turned over a new leaf. I'm like most Americans, I think -- I sit here and read the news and get pissed off but never say anything except to bitch at work (a toally liberal/progressive environment). I have now set up a bookmarks folder for congressional contacts, -- my senators, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky (who votes right on everything) -- with contact information. They will be hearing from me more regularly, I think.

I urge you all to do the same.

Update: Here's Ted Kennedy's speech, enumerating the faults of the Senate bill.

Petraeus, MoveOn, Kabuki

Ian Welsh comments at The Agonist on the MoveOn censure motion in the Senate, which is about the best commentary that I've seen.

I've been largely out of commission this week, so I'm catching up on this. There has been a certain amount of posting to the effect that "The MoveOn ad was stupid but. . . ." which, as I recall, all seems to come from the Beltway insiders -- Sullivan, Yglesias, and the like, which is just buying into the right-wing talking points while pretending to support MoveOn. I haven't seen the ad, so I don't know if it was stupid or not. In concept, it certainly was not -- Petraeus is a liar, if I may be so unvarnished, who has a reputation for cooking the books on his activities to make himself look good, with in this case the added luster of having been groomed as a poster boy for Bush's War. I won't go into Bush's unbelievable remarks on the issue in any detail -- Keith Olberman did much too good a job on that -- except to point out that he's adding to the major new mantra: the generals are beyond criticism.

Bullshit. There is nothing and no one in this country beyond criticism. Period

John Cornyn (R-Neverneverland) introduced the resolution, which is a transparent political ploy and, although the article in the Baltimore Sun cites "genuine outrage," I'm not buying it. Republican outrage is a political tactic, and there's seldom anything genuine about it. Cornyn is a tool, pure and simple. What's appalling is that 22 Democrats went along with it because it put them in a "difficult political sitution." By all means, let the minority party dictate the rules of the game. Morons.
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Petraeus' testimony, as far as I can tell, was a set-up from the get-go. The White House wrote his report. He met with the president before testifying. He's testifying on what is essentially his own policy.

What the hell did anyone expect?

Read Welsh's analysis. It seems to cover all the bases. And then read this post by Digby, which starts off with a quote from Paul Kkrugman that wraps it all up:

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed.

There's a reason we're seeing more and more the word "kabuki" in relation to Congress. I'd be willing to extend the term to public discourse as a whole -- it's not about the substance any more -- in fact, that's pretty much forbidden territory. It's all about the costumes.