We’ve got a great book club conversation going on about Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State over at TPMCafe.
New Ponzi schemer unearthed — this one actually tried to scam the TARP fund.
From the Albany Times-Union …
Schenectady County Assemblyman James Tedisco’s closest staffer used more than $32,500 raised for Assembly Republican campaigns to pay his personal legal bills, according to documents obtained by the Times Union and confirmed Wednesday by newly installed Minority Leader Brian Kolb.
Kolb said he was stunned to learn that William Sherman arranged for a check for $32,536 to be issued from the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee housekeeping account last July, under authorization from Tedisco.
And for the addicts, here’s the latest vote count. (Basically looks like Tedisco is down for the count.)
Would-be Palin son-in-law Levi Johnston makes his historic debut on Larry King Live …
I’m trying to think how this compares to the iconic McCain laying-on-of-hands ceremony with Levi on the tarmac in St. Paul just before the beginning of the Republican convention.
You can relive those powerful memories here.
In what I guess you might call another sign that the GOP is getting back in touch with the grassroots, an outfit called the “Ohio Militia” is calling for a Million Armed Militia Members March on Washington.
The organizers hasten to point out that this will be a “peaceful demonstration. No shooting, no one gets hurt. Just a demonstration. The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.”
This analogy isn’t close to being complete. And it doesn’t match up at every point. But where it does connect, it’s so spot-on that I must share it with you.
In former Banana Republics, in their post-transition- to-democracy phases, you’ll often have a Junta Party. It’s an opposition party whose main goal isn’t to get elected so much as to maintain the legacy of the former junta regime, defend its record of service to the state and most of all keep its former leaders from being put on trial or shipped off to the Hague. Often the party will be headed up by the former Generals themselves. But if they’re dead or otherwise occupied in the slammer or abroad, maybe you’ll have their relatives or the one-time cronies and lickspittles of this or that el jefe of the old regime filling the leadership roles.
And today, as we watched the on-going parade of Cliff Mays on TV or Dan Burton praising waterboarding as essential to the American dream, Eric Kleefeld pointed out to me that that really is pretty much the role the GOP — at least for the moment — has taken in our present politics.
Yes, Republicans have tried to distance themselves from President Bush’s fiscal profligacy. But on the core value issues of militarism and human rights violations and keeping faith with the war criminals of the previous regime they really couldn’t be more unified or on message. If you were plopped down on earth today in front of a TV set in the United States, on the testimony of the party members themselves, you might easily get the idea that state-sanctioned torture was the main policy legacy of the outgoing administration. Sort of like Democrats looked back on late 90s budget surpluses with a proud defiance in the aftermath of the Clinton years.
I can’t be the only one who this resonates with. Who else has some examples?
House GOP trying to peel off industrial state Dems to oppose carbon regulation. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Former FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, writing in an op-ed in the New York Times today, makes this parenthetical point regarding CIA torture:
(It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)
I’m not sure if that puts a different gloss on Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA officers, but it’s a point worth noting.
TPM Reader MM is confused …
Last week, conservatives were complaining Obama was establishing a socialistic fascist dictatorship.
This week, conservatives are complaining Obama does not want to torture his opponents.