It all smells like…

Mr. Fish

‘Nuff said.

See also Griswold and Roe are dead, Joan.

And if you were actually operating under the assumption that that Dems support women’s rights, recall this post from June 2008. The writing was on the wall years ago.

 

Lessons, Losing, and Learning Curves

Don’t let the water lily fool you.  Tranquility is the last word I would use to describe my mental state these days. Aside from the goings on in my life, which has some disheartening twists of its own, watching what passes for political debate in this country makes me just want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. 

Peter Daou lists lessons Democrats should learn from the health care debacle of this summer. Unfortunately, much of what he says is what we unSerious folks been talking about for some time, and I don’t think the Democrats are ever going to get it.

Maven posits that Barack Obama is on a learning curve that none of us would want to be on. Fair enough.

I wouldn’t take on his ‘learning curve’ for all the tea – or money – in China.

Yet, learn he will. This man is a man for the job and the ages. After eight years of a criminal half-wit, that we should be so lucky to have found not only somebody who would take the damn job, not to mention have the chops to excel at it is simply amazing.

We differ on our opinion of Obama’s ability to excel, but the problem as I see it is that we shouldn’t be electing anyone who needs to be on a learning curve. George W. Bush anyone? The job is too big and too vital to allow time for OJT. I wanted someone who had experience (0n day one) and plans and solid internal convictions.  Coulda, shoulda, woulda won’t get me much of anything I know, but it’s all just so damned discouraging.  

I went into Obama’s presidency with my eyes wide open, but I tried to hold out hope. 

I want be wrong about Obama. In my judgement he is an Opportunist with no central core and no burning passion for any issue. But, maybe I’m wrong. I “hope” I am. I sincerely do. The American people have lived through eight years of George W. Bush and the radical neo-con agenda. We are desperate to have “normal’ lives again where words actually mean something. Where “Clear Skies” really are free of pollution, instead of having pollutants no longer considered such, where a “Healthy Forest” does not mean uncontrolled logging, and where Patriot Acts really do protect the patriots rather than subvert western jurisprudence and give untold secret powers to the government to spy on its own citizens and make them afraid to speak in protest.

[...]

I have not seen anything in Obama’s record that would lead me to believe that he will be the transformational and transcendent leader that so many proclaim him to be. Heck, he doesn’t need to be transcendent for me to be happy. He just needs to be a real Democrat.

Obama may be smart, but he’s no progressive. Nor is he a liberal. Many “progressive” Democrats assumed that because Obama had D after his name, and because he could give a good speech, that he was FDR, JFK , and MLK rolled up into one.  I never operated under that misconception. Why? Because I, like many others, looked past his rhetoric and looked at his record.  We listened to what he actually said, and didn’t WORM* his clear and unambiguous statements to fit some faith-based notion of Obama’s almighty progressiveness. We took his words at face value.  What’s happening right now, with health care reform going down in flames,  is a direct consequence of electing someone with no experience and no core convictions and who, like many of his generation, has internalized the Right Wing Noise Machine’s bullshit as having some essence of truth.

By the way, have I mentioned that I really hate the label “progressive?”  From the very beginning of its modern usage amongst the Democratic faithful I understood what that word meant: capitulation to the right wing meme that all things “liberal” were evil. I’ll never run from the Liberal label. Please, don’t ever call me a Progressive. But I digress.

Regardless of the label, be it ”liberal” or “progressive,” when it comes to Obama, there is no there there. When you’ve got White House spokesmen calling people like Maven and me who are calling for Single Payer Health Care or at the very least, a robust public option, the “left of the left” as though we are some kind radical Che Guevara types, determined to take down western democracy, well, I’d say it’s time for all Obama apologists to answer the clue phone.

Greg Sargent parses the WaPo poll on Obama’s declining poll numbers.

Much talk today has focused on Obama’s difficulties with independents. But the drop among Dems and liberals is also a key driving factor in the President’s skid, according to WaPo polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta, who graciously provided the additional data.

This suggests Obama’s conciliatory approach to the GOP, and his lack of clarity around the public option — both of which are presumably alienating Dems and liberals — could be key factors driving his dip.

The more Obama panders to the right and ignores his own party, the worse the chances of turning back the conservative damage of the last 30+ years.  Worse, it may set up a resurgence of the very ideology the voters so soundly renounced in the last two elections.  Harry Truman had it right when he said:

Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.

Ian Welsh:

…I warned that Republicans could use their skill at being in the opposition and Obama’s manifest failings  could lead to a Republican rebound in 2010 and 2012.  His failings were clearly visible back then and indeed in the primary campaign. He didn’t turn into a compromising milquetoast when he got to the White House, he was always one.  He didn’t turn into a conservative Democrat in the White House, he was always one. Likewise, we knew the Repubicans weren’t going to play ball with Obama’s delusional ideas of bipartisanship and the stimulus package told us he wasn’t interesting in passing effective policy.

[...]

He later made his fundamentally (sic) agreement with basic [B]ush principles of civil rights by voting for warrantless wiretapping after promising to vote against it, then made clear that he’d serve financial interests before ordinary Americans when he forced through TARP.

And yet people believed he was going to be some sort of progressive president?  Granted, even I have been shocked at just how much his administration has violated progressive and liberal principles, but I was only surprised in degree, not kind, because I knew he didn’t believe in them.  This isn’t because I’m brilliant, I’m not.  It’s because I looked at the evidence and didn’t let “hope” and soaring rhetoric distract me from his actions and, to a large extent, what he was actually saying.  Certainly he lied about some things, but he was very honest about his fundamental governing philosophy.  Likewise, who his key advisers were, the fact that he had the right-most policy prescriptions of the late Democratic primary field, the way he fetishized tax cuts and so on, told anyone who was listening without “hope” clogging their ears who he was.

Violet Socks:

Back in May I did a quick rundown of Obama’s major betrayals up to that point, and I really need to do an update. There’s so much, I lose track. Afghanistan, Blackwater contracts, the Justice Department-DOMA clusterfuck, anti-contraception godbags appointed to Health and Human Services, the appalling Cairo speech (which bravely asserted women’s fundamental right to wear the headscarves that they have to wear so men don’t throw acid on them), and on and on. Just this past week, Obama played footsie with the “faith community” and vowed that public health wouldn’t pay for abortions. I’m surprised he doesn’t just buy a pig farm in Crawford and start clearing brush.

The only people who still believe are the believers, that hard-core 20% or so who never give up. Remember how there was always a rump group of Republican voters who continued to believe that Bush was President Jesus, no matter what? We have those on the left, too; they’re the hardcore Obamabots. The two groups actually have a lot in common: pseudo-religious fervor, resistance to what the rest of us call “reality,” . . .

For a trip down memory lane, who recalls this bit of tripe from Mark Morford?

Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Hmmm. I wonder what Mark is writing these days?

Update: from the comments in Ian’s post, Lambert links to a little something he wrote in December 2007. Take the time to click and read.

*What Obama Really Meant

 

Shorter Pfaff: “Leave Barack alone! It’s not his fault!”

“He can’t help it that the doody-heads he picked as his advisors are a bunch of losers! And don’t forget those meanie Republicans!”

What a piece of condescending pap. Obama is “too decent?”  Give me a break.  William Pfaff, by inferring that Obama’s advisors are mediocre and mainstream, completely ignores who actually picked these advisors. Hint: It wasn’t the tooth fairy. Pfaff makes one concession … sort of:

. . . I would say that if his economic counselors are mediocre, then it is a judgment on the American economic profession as a whole. There are distinguished dissident economists whose advice Obama seems to have ignored, such as Joseph Stiglitz and James K. Galbraith, but the people he has used in Washington are mainstream leaders of the profession.

However, the economy aside, I would make the same criticism of the president’s foreign policy. He is doing what the mainstream analysts and the Pentagon are telling him to do about his war—the top people. Regrettably they are wrong, as will eventually be discovered.

Um, William, they’re his advisors, not his parents. He can stay out after midnight, if he wishes. He is, after all, the President of the United States.

After putting the blame everywhere but squarely on Obama’s shoulders, Pfaff throws up his hands and ends with this little nugget:

Can anything be done about this? I doubt it. The combination of prejudices concerning socialism and the supremacy of the American system that Americans seem to acquire in the womb, with Republican electoral nihilism, is probably impossible to overcome. Thank you, Barack Obama, for trying.

Wow, I must’ve missed something, because all I’ve seen Barack do is make speeches and cave to the corporate powers-that-be at every turn. I’ve seen him carry on Bush’s wars, and escalate them, defend and expand Bush’s shredding of the Constitution. He has broken campaign promise after campaign promise. That’s what Plaff calls trying?

Puh-leeze.

 

From the department of New Boss Same as the Old Boss

Tell me why the voters elected a Democratic majority if the Dems are going to keep letting the Republicans run the show? 

Senate legislation to overhaul the U.S. health-care system will likely drop a proposed mandate that all employers offer medical benefits to their workers or pay a penalty, a senior Democratic lawmaker said. The move may make it easier to reach a compromise with Senate Republicans o a bill.

[...]

Conrad and committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, also said a bill being drafted by the panel will tax employer-provided health benefits to help offset the cost of legislation they say will total about $1 trillion. Senators have discussed applying a tax on benefits valued at more than $15,000 to $17,000 for a family of four, but Baucus said the level is still under discussion.

[...]

The issue that has sparked the most partisan division is the call by some Democrats for a new government insurance program that would compete against private insurers. Most Republicans oppose that approach, and Conrad has been floating an alternative that utilizes non-profit cooperatives rather than a government program to spark more competition.

President Barack Obama this week continued to push for a public option, but indicated he will listen to lawmakers’ ideas. When asked today whether the public program is “off the table,” Baucus declined to answer definitively while indicating that the panel will center what it does on “more robust, beefed up” co-operatives.

“The goal here to keep the insurance industry’s feet to the fire,” he said.

Really? ‘Cause they seem to be winning. This is what happens when you have no inner principles, no line in the sand that you will not cross. There is no leadership on the part of Obama, just passing the buck and making nice-sounding speeches.

Members of the panel today spoke by phone with Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf to help whittle down costs that Conrad said still total around $1.2 trillion. One possible way to curb the expense is reducing subsidies to lower-income Americans, he said.

Conrad also said the committee is considering tax ideas that Obama promoted earlier this year. Obama suggested limiting deductions for expenses such as charitable gifts, mortgage interest, and investment-advisory fees.

Baucus earlier indicated he wasn’t giving Obama’s proposal much consideration.

Hey Max, why aren’t you riding the Party Unity Pony?

 By dropping the employer mandate, Senate Democrats would raise their chances of having bipartisan legislation. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the finance committee, says most Republicans oppose that mandate. Draft legislation in the House would impose a tax on employers who don’t provide benefits, equal to 8 percent of their payrolls, a proposal that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is campaigning against.

In case you haven’t figured it out, the American people’s needs are nowhere to be seen in this discussion. The only goal is to pass a piece of shit bill so all the fat cats on the Hill can pat themselves on the back and Obama can preen about how he got ‘both sides’ to work together. And the fat cats? They still have health care.

The alternative under consideration would force employers to pay a pay a share of the cost if their workers receive Medicaid or qualify for a tax credit to buy coverage at group rates through a proposed new online “insurance exchange.”

If their employees get Medicaid, they would pay half of the national average Medicaid costs for their workers enrolled in the government program. They would pay 100 percent of the cost of the tax credit for workers that utilize that tax benefit.

Wow, was this buried deep into the article. If their employees get Medicaid, then the employees aren’t being paid enough!

Baucus said it will take time to get a bipartisan deal.

“Senators want to get to yes, but to get to yes they have to feel more comfortable.”

So, to review: No Single Payer, No Public Option, taxing employer-provided benefits, reducing Medicaid benefits to the poor. How is this better than what we’ve got now?  In short, it’s not. In fact it’s worse. At least now I don’t have to pay taxes on my benefits.

Who kidnapped all the Democrats?

 

I’m not sure this is the kind of “bipartisanship” Obama has in mind

From my WaPo morning email:

Democrats Among Stimulus Skeptics: Some See Long-Term Goals Going Unmet (By Alec MacGillis)

The Republicans Are Smiling, but They’re Not Buying (By Dana Milbank)

 

Low-hanging fruit – Update

I reviewed my checklist today. From my November 3rd post, I Want to be Wrong I listed some things Obama could do to begin to gain my confidence.  Let’s check in on his performance so far. My list with notations of current action in italicized brackets:

 

Not a dime’s worth of difference – Update

I guess Ralph Nader was right all along.

From Not Your Sweetie:

Cornyn tactics [to oppose seating Franken] are identical with those of Reid in his planned opposition to Burris

[...]

So now, with both parties prepared to use petty bureaucracy to block a member on the other side*, looks like they are in check

What is this? Junior High? Puts a whole new shine on “bipartisanship” doesn’t it?

Susan at Random Thoughts from Reno weighs in.

This is stupid, completely and utterly stupid. Reid needs to stay far, far away from the Illinois situation, which is nothing more than a trap against the Democrats anyway.

Roland Burris is qualified for the Senate job, and he should be allowed to take the Senate seat. Blago has not been convicted, he has not been impeached, and he has every right to appoint a person to the seat vacated by Barack Obama.

Last I heard, though it seems a long time ago, in this country one is considered innocent until found guilty in a court of law. Blago is still the governor of Illinois, and is allowed to fill Obama’s seat. End of discussion. Sorry folks, that’s how it works.

*Update: Actually, it’s worse than using  “petty bureaucracy to block a member on the other side.”  For in this instance we have Democrats not trying to block seating a Republican, but pledging to refuse to seat, and are planning to bar the Senate chambers doors with guards to prevent entry,  one of their own who has done absolutely nothing wrong except to be appointed by someone who has embarrased Barack Obama.  Isn’t that really what this all boils down to?

 

More on the bailout, and it ain’t pretty

Any of you catch this? WKW at William K. Wolfrum Chronicles:

From Section 8 of the Treasury’s Financial-Bailout Proposal to Congress:

“Decisions by the Secretary [Henry Paulson] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

If this bail out passes, everything U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry “We need this to be clean and to be quick” Paulson says and does goes, without question or review.

Anglachel quotes Krugman and riffs on Mother of All No-Docs

So, Hank Paulson wants the US taxpayers to make a loan to Wall Street. It seems that the big financial firms are underwater on the investments they made.

They don’t want to provide actual balance sheets, just self-reported assets which may or may not exist. They want borrow the full value with no collateral down. Oh, and none of that pesky insurance against their defaults. They don’t have any proof of income, and their employers can’t really be reached. In fact, it’s not clear they have any employment at the moment.
We’re talking major league NINJA loans here. Oh, and it appears to be a 0% interest loan, too.

In short, the Wall Street banks are asking to be excused from the kind of underwriting of their credit-worthiness and ability to repay that typifies the toxic loans (subprime, ALt-A, prime, whatever) that got us into this mess in the first place. And Paulson wants to give them exactly that.

For a “real life” perspective on this, go read The Red Queen’s letter to her congress critters and the presidential candidates.

The government’s first and most important job is to provide security for the people. For the Republicans, this has always been interpreted to mean strictly military security. But the current economy is inflicting a kind of violence on the populace that only strong governmental measures can stop. It is your job to protect us. The current plan from the treasury department will only strengthen the case for continued economic violence against the American people. It might be a better idea to just take the 700 billion and directly pay off as many sub-prime mortgages as possible. At least then we’d know the money was going to the people who need it. What difference does it make that they are paying income taxes instead of mortgages? Households first, then banks and brokers and insurance companies. This country is made up of households and the people that create them. And we are suffering. Please do you job and stop this continued assault on the American people. Don’t pass the bailout bill without remembering who is paying for it, and how little we will benefit from it.

Anglachel again:

As bad as the publically stated objectives for Paulson’s plan may be, they are a misrepresentation to cover up the even more egregious truth of what Paulson actually intends. And the Democratic leadership is 100% in the know about what Paulson intends. Read this excerpt from naked capitalism’s post Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal

Go read her whole post and click over to naked capitalism while you’re at it.

While reading it dawned on me. Damn! They couldn’t get our SS money, so they are doing it this way. The numbers are about the same!

Anglachel concludes:

This really is little more than a scam to make the taxpayers provide the money to cover the losses for all the bad debt issued by the financial industry. What the Democrats have to do is refuse to get on board and put forward their own legislation that actually addresses the problem, send that to Bush and dare the bastard to veto it. Hang this around Bush’s neck and stop letting the High Broderists shame the Dems into backing down. Barney Frank and Hillary are showing them how it’s done.

Yes, Harry & Nancy, it IS class warfare, there is no “bipartisan” option, and you have a world historic moment in which to redefine both your party and your nation for the better. 

 

Disturbing

Obama Unmasked & Gamed (MyDD)

The pattern is so widespread that one has to wonder what is going on?

Obama, via his now obvious campaign strategy outlined above, would have us believe that his cross party appeal is bringing in tons of new voters. Men and women, he asserts, who are abandoning their party to vote for him. And some Democratic Party officials and activists are supporting Obama based on this assertion. Who doesn’t want a candidate who can bring in masses of new voters? Nancy Pelosi it has been rumored, impressed by this vote-getting ability, is considering endorsing Obama.

But what if Obama is not actually bringing in tons of new voters? What if Republicans have organized to cross party lines or vote independent with one goal in mind: to defeat Senator Clinton. And what if this strategy was developed by top level Republican party functionaries– including Karl Rove– who believe Clinton will be the more formidable opponent in the general election?

Anecdotal evidence in support of a Republican manipulation is everywhere. Remember the recent Obama win in Maryland? Nicole Price, the Maryland political director of Obama’s campaign told the Washington Times that when she arrived in the state to ramp up the campaign. She found “a home-grown campaign already thriving.” Republicans backing Obama had put more yard signs in Maryland than in South Carolina and they had paid for the signs “themselves.” The Times also noted that in Louisiana, where he won by a wide margin, exit polls showed that Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary favored Mr. Obama 3-1 over Clinton. About 5 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary said they were Republicans.

According to the Washington Times story, Daniel B., Chance, a retired oil man, voted for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Maryland Republican primary in the morning. He then spent the afternoon making calls from the phone bank at the Obama campaign’s Baltimore County Headquarters in Towson.

The critical point here is this: what is a loyal Huckabee supporter doing making calls for Obama?

Moreover, the Huckabee supporter joined a large mix of either Republicans like himself or Democrat for-a-day Republican converts who were also making calls on behalf of Obama.

Besides this anecdotal evidence, are there any hard facts which support a widespread Republican manipulation of the Democratic primaries? Time magazine reports,

“Rank and file Republicans in red states have switched their party registrations to vote in Democratic primaries.”

In Nebraska, the mayor of Omaha publicly rallied Republicans to caucus for Obama on February 9th. And according to CNN in Iowa 44 percent of those voting for Obama were Republican.

Joe Conason in Salon in late December wrote,

“In the weeks since Karl Rove offered his unsolicited advice on how to defeat Hillary Clinton in the pages of the Financial Times, right wing expressions of support for Obama have become increasingly conspicuous and voluble.”

These include opinion makers like the Weekly Standard, William Kristol who endorsed Obama in a NY Times editorial and George Will. Three major fundraisers for the President have now given money to Obama. The Weekly Standard ran a cover story in early December that according to Conason “literally swooned” over Obama. This story was written by Stephen Hays, Dick Cheney’s admiring biographer and according to Conason “the last journalist on earth who still believes that Saddam Hussein was allied with al_Qaida.”

On a personal note, Democratic caucus goers here in Nevada have told me of Republicans literally leaving their caucuses (that began at 9am) and heading over to ours that began at 11am. We know of at least one Obama supporter distributing “Be a Democrat for a Day” flyers in Reno, specifically targeting the Hillary-haters that lived in his precinct.

The Obama campaign tried to wave this off as an over-enthusiastic volunteer, but the evidence is starting to mount that that the Obama campaign may be encouraging these “Democrats for a Day” strategies. And the GOP is happily playing along.

That’s why “Democrat for a Day” was launched this spring by ObamaFlorida2008. Using the official forms provided by all Supervisors of Elections offices, you may re-register as a Democrat for that one day — when the primary is likely to be held — on February 5, 2008. You must do so before the end of 2007, to make sure it is done 30 days before the primary.

But this is not about some “hard sell” to recruit voters to become permanent Democrats. Not at all. After the primary, you may re-register back to the
Republican or Libertarian parties, or revert to your previous status as an Independent! There will be plenty of time before the general election in November 2008.

We are being gamed and there are enough people in my party who so want Obama to win that they are willingly deluding themselves that these “new” Democrats will be standing with us in November.

More to the point, shouldn’t Democrats be determining their Democratic nominee? This is one of the few topics where I and the Lyon County Republican Party chair see eye to eye. Political parties are about partisanship, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Democrats and Republicans have unique world views and beliefs in the best use of government, its responsibilities to the people it serves, the best use of our military, our resources, regulation, etc, and we need to be able to draw upon those distinctions when selecting our party’s nominees.

We need to be able to sell our unique points of view to the voters, not mush it up into some non-palatable bipartisan mush. Yes, there are places where we can work together, but there are places where we have to draw our lines in the sand and make our case. As Anglachel puts it, there are “Fights worth having.”

These are the battles that are fought when it seems we are just doing some policy wonkishness. The details matter. The concessions matter. There are points on which there cannot be compromise, where unity is not just undesireable but a mark of failure.

This is why I am supporting Hillary Clinton. She’s not unwilling to work across the aisle, and in fact, has effectively done so. She just isn’t willing to give away the store.

Other Disturbing News.

I am stunned. Talk about race baiting and extortion. I think I am going to be sick.

I would NEVER tell a woman that she should support Hillary just because she’s a woman, but here we have the national co-chair of Obama’s campaign doing just that with Black super delegates.

One black supporter of Clinton, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, said he remains committed to her. “There’s nothing going on right now that would cause me to” change, he said.

He said any suggestion that elected leaders should follow their voters “raises the age old political question. Are we elected to monitor where our constituents are … or are we to use our best judgment to do what’s in the best interests of our constituents.”

In an interview, Cleaver offered a glimpse of private conversations.

He said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him “if it comes down to the last day and you’re the only superdelegate. … Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?

“I told him I’d think about it,” Cleaver concluded.

Jackson, an Obama supporter, confirmed the conversation, and said the dilemma may pose a career risk for some black politicians. “Many of these guys have offered their support to Mrs. Clinton, but Obama has won their districts. So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position” in the future, he added.

Black Superdelegates Threatened, Pressured (No Quarter)

Black Commenter, Criticizing Obama, Causes Firestorm (WaPo)

Tavis Smiley, the bestselling author of the “Covenant With Black America,” is in a world turned upside down. He said he’s being “hammered,” “barbecued,” and is “catching hell” from black Americans for suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made a major mistake by declining to speak at the State of the Black Union event that Smiley plans to host next week in New Orleans.

“There’s all this talk of hater, sellout and traitor,” Smiley said to me in a telephone interview. Smiley even mentioned getting death threats, but wouldn’t elaborate. He said his office has been flooded with angry e-mails. “I have family in Indianapolis. They are harassing my momma, harassing my brother. It’s getting to be crazy,” Smiley said.

On another note: Is Obama the Messiah?

 

ACTION NEEDED TODAY – Stamp out the rate hike

You may not be aware, but the US Postal Service is considering a rate change that will make rates for small, independent publications higher than those from media giants. This will affect ALL publications such as The Nation (on the left), and The National Review (on the right). This is not a Red or Blue, liberal or conservative issue. This is, once again, big business dictating federal policy for their benefit and to the detriment of the smaller contenders in the marketplace. From the NRO blog:

Postal-rate hikes make strange bedfellows: NR has joined an alliance of opinion magazines, including The American Spectator, The Nation, and Mother Jones, to battle these new rates. There’s a congressional hearing coming up to investigate them, and that’s good news, but what is truly needed to stave off disaster is for citizens to contact the USPS governors and let them know that this proposed increase will have — to use a favorite term of our friends on the left — a “chilling effect” on political debate in print.

Please sign the petition today. And pass this along to your friends.