Today’s news that the Obama administration is scrapping the Missile Defense system that the Bush administration had planned to build in Eastern Europe doesn’t have the political charge of health care reform for a mass political audience. But it’s a very big deal to neoconservative intellectuals and agitprop-meisters as well as a big deal on the far right.
To summarize the US planned to build a missile defense system notionally tied to the threat of Iranian missile strikes again Europe, particularly Eastern Europe but, to basically anyone who was paying attention (including the Russians) focused on Russia and deterring any Russian plans to overawe and intimidate its former client states in Eastern Europe.
I noticed on Drudge today that the headline was Obama ‘abandoning Europe.’ But of course this would be abandoning in the essence of taking away the missile defense the Europeans have mainly been asking us for years not to build. So it’s ‘abandon’ in a very specialized sense.
In any case, look for a lot of appearances from John Bolton on Fox and other such outlets explaining that we’re letting down our guard against the Russians just as the Russian threat is declining to virtual non-existence. And watch for this to become a big ‘soft on defense’ cudgel for the right, particularly for folks with 2012 ambitions.
Pelosi: 2010 will be toughest midterm elections ever for Democrats.
Jeb Bush was a special guest at a Chris Christie fundraiser last night. Only Christie says he had no idea Bush would be there with him at the event. No one told him.
More health care Kabuki from the new health care gang on the street — this one with four members: Nelson of Nebraska, Snowe, Lieberman and McCaskill. More shortly.
New CNN article. Obama as Loin Cloth Wearing Witch Doctor: Racism or powerful satire about the Public Option.
The long-standing ethics rules that bar lawyers from disparaging the integrity of judges and the courts are increasingly breached and rarely enforced. But in an interview yesterday with TPM birther queen Orly Taitz went so far over the line — calling a federal district court judge a “puppet” of the Obama regime who should be tried for treason — that a complaint has now been filed against her with the California bar by a fellow lawyer.
Ellen Sauerbrey, an assistant Secretary of State in the last Bush administration, tells TPMDC that Obama’s economic policies are fascist and comparable to the policies of Adolph Hitler and Juan Peron but that she has not — as a local newspaper reported — compared Obama himself to Hitler or Peron. Glad we cleared that up.
TPM Reader ND is pulling her hair out:
Is former Asst. Secretary Sauerbrey representative of the historical ignorance now pervasive in former Republican policy hands?
Obama is a moderate liberal committed to the democratic institutions of this country, so nothing could be more ludicrous than he being accused by these historically unaware poseurs of being both an economic fascist and a communist. I guess us academics — the learned elites and therefore unreal Americans — have dedicated our lives to studying tyranny and dictatorship world wide erroneously thinking that there were actual ideological differences between Communism and Fascism. Was WWII just one big ooops of ideological confusion? Stop the presses and notify the British, French, Italians, Russian and Germans. I am sure they will want to know about it so they can alter the historical record to reflect au courant Republican thinking.
Hopping around Twitter I just noticed that Lauren Bacall has a Twitter page. How can you top that? Alas.
Democrats are clambering over each other in a mad dash away from ACORN. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.