AS I WAS SAYING A YEAR AGO ("Best of Gatey" from 9/20/09):
"Charlie Rangel is a great American patriot. He has been heroic in crusading for a fairer tax system and a better health system. He has told unpleasant truths time and again about the impact of fighting wars with a force made up predominately of folks who needs the money and benefits. He’s been indispensable in helping to elect a Democratic majority in Congress.
But, at the very least, Charlie Rangel’s carelessness, if that is indeed what it is, in handling his personal affairs has become a national embarrassment. Perhaps, if he chaired the committee on Foreign Affairs, it would be an embarrassment we could endure. But, at a time when Democrats hope to greatly expand the services provided through our public sector, to have a Chair of the tax-writing committee who has a casual attitude about his own taxes is highly and dangerously problematic and a serious impediment to the enactment of the programs to which Mr. Rangel has dedicated his career.
It is an embarrassment which makes everything Rangel touches look dubious.
Every Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means raises shameful amounts of money in a shameful manner to pass onto his party’s candidates. The shamefulness of the protection/access game which attracts this money is so bi-partisan and time-honored that the press largely ignores the very legal scandal which it is.
But there is nothing in Charlie Rangel’s manner of raising such money which should attract any special attention. In fact, by and large, Rangel’s contributors get far less for their money than they did when they gave it to his Republican predecessor.
But now such money attracts special and unwelcome attention to those Democrats to whom Rangel forwards it to, because it came though Rangel. And this is even though the “scandal” which has attached to Rangel has virtually zero to do with the real scandal attached to such money.
There is no doubt in my mind that the public exposure of Rangel’s personal problems probably derives almost entirely from the vast right-wing conspiracy, but that does not make those problems any less real.
Since holding his House seat is a right conveyed to him by the voters, calls for Rangel’s resignation from Congress are premature until voters, or a Judge and Jury, decide otherwise.
However, Congressional Committee Chairmanships are not a right, but a privilege conveyed by a party conference entitled to consider questions of political expediency. Rangel should do his Party and his President a favor and step aside as Chair until his issues are resolved." Validating Right-Wing Frames? | Room Eight www.r8ny.com
Kevin Powell Makes The Rangel-Towns Connection | The New York Observer (www.observer.com) but Gatemouth made the Powell-Powell connection months ago. Kevin likes to pull out knives and lay fists upon young women while Adam prefers to pull out a different blunt object and lay them after getting them too drunk to function. The question remains: is Adam Powell’s unpretentious booze laden misogynism really all that different from the pretentious, crazed violent delusional psychotic behavior favored by Kevin Powell (who is apparently not a relative, except in spirit)?
One wonders why Tasini would be so bothered by the prospect of a Boehner Speakership, since it would provide him with a partner to accomplish his goal of repealing the Health Care Reform he so vociferously opposed. Charles Rangel, Your Legacy Should Not Be Speaker John Boehner Petition www.petitiononline.com
SMIKLE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING: Basil Smikle is the spokesman for change in the same manner Phil Spector is a spokesman for gun control. Smikle Rallies Around Rangel | The New York Observer www.observer.com
FRIED RICE (18 year gap–why am I thinking of Rosemary Woods?):
“I chose, late in life, to get involved in politics because I wanted to try and make neighborhoods and families safer,” said the women who hopes to be our Attorney General. “While some career politicians may be different, my voting record earlier in life is further proof that I’m not someone who ever set out… on some flawless lifelong political plan to run for office.”
Funny that she could not come up with any other reason why one might bother to vote. 18-Year Gap in Voting for Attorney General Hopeful – NYTimes.com www.nytimes.com
SCHEIDERMAN SUPPORTERS CONDEMN HIT AND RUN VOTING: Rice deserves all the abuse she is getting, and more, but Brad Lander who once published an article about how elated he was that his kid couldn't be a return Jew, because Israel was an oppresive militaristic state, is hardly in a position to criticize people for doing stupid thing when they were in their 30s, and then making lame excuses for them when they are caught. Pro-Schneiderman NYC Council Members Hit Rice On Voting capitaltonight.com .
G-d I wish this man were a liberal; he is so much better than 90% of our pundits. James Taranto is Sillier | FrumForum www.frumforum.com
NOT VANITIES, INANITIES:
BAI: If Tom Wolfe had set out to write a “Bonfire of the Vanities” on modern Washington, a farce about lives and races colliding, he couldn’t have done much better than to invent the unlikely story of Shirley Sherrod.
GATEMOUTH: Wrong, Matt–if Wolfe wrote it, the innocent victim would have been white, and Reverand Bacon would have been the villain. Political Times – Race – Still Too Hot to Touch – NYTimes.com www.nytimes.com
Kinsley uses Sherrod to go off on a tangent on which she and most of the right are on the same (wrong) side. Shirley Sherrod and Rural America | The Atlantic Wire www.theatlanticwire.com
Fact Check Time (I think Obama would be justified in treating this as a non-story, but he'll probably find a way to fire the guy from the Department of Agriculture):
As I reported on 11/2/08: "Obama is portrayed as an associate of anti-Semites for having a cordial relationship with an Arab academic at the school where he once taught, whose views he claims not to share. This is notable for the fact that, since Obama taught at the conservative University of Chicago, virtually all of his contacts with his colleagues involve cordial relationships with those whose views he decidedly does not share. Moreover, the Arab academic unsurprisingly shares with Obama the trait of getting along with those he decidedly disagrees with, to the point where he maintains a cordial relationship with publisher Marty Peretz (a leading American Zionist not known to have particularly dovish tendencies), and received funding from the International Republican Institute, which required the personal approval of its Chair (as he was then), John McCain." Obama's friend raising funds for new Gaza aid ship www.haaretz.com
If Obama is really the new Wilson, will Michelle end up running the country (and would we be better off?)? Actually this quote outlines the difference, and is a rebuke to liberals who think Obama could have gotten more by going over Congress' heads than by negotiation:
"Against this backdrop…the story of Wilson’s bungling of the peace assumes its full tragic proportions. Unable to wrest from the Allies all that he wanted, unwilling to concede anything to an obstreperous Senate, Wilson forsook the bargaining skills that had made him a masterful first-term president and tried instead to rally public opinion to his cause. But the political scientist should have realized that his problem lay not so much with the masses, who were generally willing to support the treaty even with the controversial League of Nations provision, as with the Constitution’s stricture that two-thirds of the Senate ratify the treaty. Hitting the hustings, he traveled eight thousand miles, to isolationist strongholds in the far West, winning plaudits but gaining few if any Senate votes and so exhausting his body that he capitulated to a cerebral thrombosis. Though he recovered enough to walk with a cane, he could not see straight, literally or figuratively, and when supporters of the League tried to pass a modified bill to appease those senators with mild reservations, Wilson himself refused to compromise, killing his own cherished vision. America, and the world, were worse for the defeat." The Do-Gooder | The New Republic www.tnr.com
Only the Observer could cover The Holy Mother Coat Factory Story from the angle of whether the building is actually worthy of landmarking on the architectural merits. 45 Park Place’s Place | The New York Observer www.observer.com
Gingrich: Cuomo lacks the courage to pander to bigots and the ignorant Gingrich: Cuomo Lacks ‘Courage’ To Investigate Mosque capitaltonight.com
Money quote:
"The stronger case against the cultural boycott of Israel is based on principles of consistency and proportionality—and on history. Supporters of boycotting Israel seldom focus on China, or Syria, or Zimbabwe, or other genuinely illegitimate regimes that violate human rights not in deviation from their own principles but systematically. This underscores their bad faith. Boycotters are not trying to send a specific message, such as "We object to your settlement policy in the West Bank" or "We think you need to be willing to give up more for peace." What they're saying instead is: "We consider your country so intrinsically reprehensible that we are gong to treat all of your citizens as pariahs." Instead of warning that Israel risks becoming an apartheid society if it fails to make peace, boycotters have concluded that Israel already is an irredeemable apartheid society. Like the older Arab economic boycott of Israel, which dates back to the 1940s, the cultural boycott is a weapon designed not to bring peace but to undermine the country.
Because Israel is a refuge for persecuted Jews, this kind of existential challenge is hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism—even if people like Meg Ryan and Elvis Costello intend nothing of the kind. It is for this reason that unlike in South Africa, where the internal opposition supported sanctions, none but the most extreme voices in Israel are likely to come around to the idea that their country deserves to be boycotted, divested from, or punished with sanctions. When people are trying to murder you because of your religion, it is difficult to credit the bona fides of those who merely want to shun you because of your nationality." Shame on the entertainers boycotting Israel this summer. – By Jacob Weisberg www.slate.com
BORN ON THE FIRST OF KRISTALLNACHT: It was my Grandpa Sol behind the grassy knoll with an UZI. Oliver Stone: Hitler Treated Unfairly by Jewish-Controlled Media – International – The Atlantic www.theatlantic.com
Least surprising story of the day:
"Hitler was his thriller. Michael Jackson had an unquenchable thirst for Nazi documentaries as well as Judy Garland TV specials and dramas depicting troubled boys in dysfunctional families." Jacko kicked backo with Nazi vids – NYPOST.com
The Democratic strategy on the Bush Tax Cuts: "Please, please please don't thrown me into the briar patch." How To Fight The Tax Cut Wars | The New Republic www.tnr.com
A prominent conservative debates himself and loses Matthew Yglesias » Niall Ferguson Debates Himself yglesias.thinkprogress.org
If you shake up a tree in the forest, and no one is there, does it make a sound? Shake-Up In Malpass Campaign capitaltonight.com
Forgotten but not gone, Igor Oberman squanders what little credibility he has left. Kruger Challenger: I'll Be Back | The New York Observer www.observer.com