Republicans doing the constitutional limbo rock! “We love the constitution and don’t want it interpreted — except when it’s absolutely clear, and then we want it changed!”

Why is E.J. Dionne surprised? I’m not.

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I’ve only known a few people in analysis, because after all, it’s very class restricted because of the expense. (I did know the son of a prominent analyst, though.) I don’t really care what people do to cope, as long as it doesn’t hurt themselves or innocent bystanders — but it should help, right? There should be some kind of progress.

That’s why I don’t get people like this. To spend 40 years in analysis, and the main thing you get out of it is the idea that you haven’t yet found the right analyist? Oy.

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Remember: If at first you don’t succeed, just do it a lot harder (faster, longer) the next time!

Come on, admit it. You’re surprised, aren’t you? I am, too — that during this devastating recession, the Republicans still have the balls to offer these public lap dances to their wealthiest contributors:

After opposing, stalling, stonewalling and filibustering almost every recession-related bill for the past year, Republican lawmakers have finally proposed a jobs plan of their own: a bigger, more expensive version of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.

The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 — introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income.

Republicans say the bill will create jobs where President Obama’s policies have failed to do so.

“The multi-trillion dollar government stimulus programs and taxpayer-funded bailouts have failed,” reads the bill’s official press release. “A growing private sector economy is the only ‘stimulus program’ that will create the jobs needed to restore America’s economic strength.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a conference call on Tuesday that the GOP’s proposal will not only fail to stimulate job growth, but will triple the deficit by 2015 and devastate an already-shrinking American middle class.

“The tax cuts they want to give, as usual under Republican policies, will give 62 percent of the tax cuts to the top 1 percent of Americans,” Hoyer said. “Or said another way, an average $467 tax cut to working Americans in the middle of the income levels, and to the top 1 percent earners, an average of $157,000 tax cut, and to Goldman Sachs, $2.6 billion in tax cuts. When you analyze that, you know what is happening is the same old Bush policies of advantaging the wealthy at the expense of the middle income working people and tax cuts which did not, as they were advertised to, grow the economy and grow jobs. In fact, they did just the opposite.”

Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said the Republican proposal is “unaffordable on a level we’ve never seen before.”

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Got an advance copy of my friend Will Bunch’s new book last night and just love it! It’s about wingnuts and Tea Partiers, and how they were infuriated by Obama’s election.

Now, my own bosses at Crooks and Liars wrote a similar book, and so did Max Blumenthal. Both of those books were great, but have significantly different slants than this one.

The difference, I think, is the same strength Will brings to his work as a reporter. He’s got the rare reporter’s knack of interviewing wacky folks without condescending to them — he really wants to understand them. And the book is written as a sort of detective story: Where would you begin to learn about the Tea Party and what drives them? He takes all those random moments we’ve caught on the teevee or online, and weaves them into a fascinating narrative about where they came from and what it means.

It’s not out yet, but you can pre-order it on Amazon if you’re interested.

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Sly and the family stone:

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I think one of the reasons I’m not as depressed as most people about the insanity in this country is that I directly confront insanity where I find it. If someone standing in line at the supermarket says something misguided, I’ll say, “Why do you believe that?” or “Why would you say such a thing?” I have a conversation.

People don’t always listen to me, but they are a little less likely to feel 100% sure that everything they believe is valid. Imagine if more people did it!

We have many festering carbuncles in this country, disgusting boils of racism, resentment and bile. You have to pop them if we’re going to heal.

For instance, I really don’t want anyone getting away with the assumption that because we both have white skin, I approve of the way they feel about black people or Mexicans. But they won’t know if I don’t tell them.

Confronting this nonsense is the single most useful thing you can do. I’m not saying be belligerent (heavens, no — I’m a double Libra!) but start talking: “Really? No, I don’t feel that way at all, and here’s why.” If they respond with erroneous “facts”, ask them where they got the information. Ask them if they ever verified the information independently, “because you can’t believe what you see on TV.”

Remember what Vaclav Havel wrote: The single most revolutionary thing you can do is refuse the lie.

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Remember when Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil”? You can forget about that:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service.

Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals court decision in April.

This will have huge ripple effects on the netroots, because how are we going to compete with million-dollar astroturf organization when they have to money to push activist blogs into oblivion?

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Jon Stewart.

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As Duncan points out, “Duh!”

The thing that mystifies me is why the administration and the Fed continue to do the exact wrong things to deal with this crisis, which leads me to believe either they’re unbelievably stupid — or have a different agenda than the one they claim to have.

Gee, I wonder.

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If this goes before SCOTUS, Alito will be the one tying himself in knots to rule against it:

But Andrew Koppelman, a professor at Northwestern Law School, said “if the Supreme Court does not want to uphold same-sex marriage, its job has been made harder by this decision.”

The reason, he said, is that while appeals courts often overturn lower-court judges on their findings of law — such as the proper level of scrutiny to apply to Proposition 8 — findings of fact are traditionally given greater deference.

“They are supposed to take as true facts found by the district court, unless they are clearly erroneous,” he said. “This opinion shows why district courts matter, even though the Supreme Court has the last word.”

And to that end, Judge Walker’s 136-page opinion lays a rich factual record, with extensive quotation of expert testimony from the lengthy trial. The 2008 initiative campaign to ban same-sex marriages was suffused, the judge said, with moral comparisons of these unions and heterosexual marriage, with the clear implication that “denial of marriage to same-sex couples protects children” and that “the ideal child-rearing environment” requires marriage between a man and a woman.

Judge Walker wrote, however, that the Supreme Court has stated that government cannot enforce moral or religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose. The judge suggested that the defendants shifted their arguments for the courtroom, with a focus on “statistically optimal” child-rearing households and by arguing that they were abiding by the will of California voters.
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