Oliver Willis. Remember him? Remember Daily Kos! I did a search and clicked on my favorite headline.

My search was barack obama with kamala harris today and elon musk with trump.

I wanted something to link to for a post about how both presidential candidates are suddenly appearing with their most prominent supporter. Today's a big day and their pulling out their biggest... celebrity.

Here's the headline at Daily Kos that made me laugh: "Obama hits the trail for Harris as Trump teams up with notorious troll."

Obama’s first event for Harris will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday....

Why is he only appearing now? My hypothesis would be that it was thought that he would overshadow Harris, but now there's a new desperation. Something is needed. Will Obama say we should elect her as a way to have continuity with the Obama Administration? But she's said many times "We're not going back." You're supposed to understand that we're not going back to the Trump Administration, but lately it seems to have meant we're not going back to the Biden Administration, which seems incoherent, give that her performance as Vice President is her primary credential. But how can we believe we could go back — without going back — to the Obama Administration? Oh! It's easy, with Obama speaking. He can make these ideas fit together, with his fine rhetoric and mellifluous voice.

Back to Willis:

On the same day Obama’s plans were revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk announced that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Musk is worth an estimated $261 billion, and has a history of anti-union views.... On social media, Musk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in support of Trump and other conservative causes. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the business.

That's the view from Daily Kos. 

I'll watch both rallies. I'm interested in seeing how the 2 great men share the stage with their presidential candidate, and I'll judge them by what they do today. 

The political eye.

It’s been ruined. https://t.co/zHGsR0ognR

— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) August 22, 2020

The Green New Deal — don't ask if it's practical, it's "aspirational," and people are looking for "dreamers."

That's the message Markos Moulitsas (founder of The Daily Kos) delievered — with an assist from WBUR news correspondent Kimberly Atkins — on “Meet the Press" today (transcript).

The moderator Chuck Todd got the conversation going by reading Trump's tweet:

"I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called carbon footprint to permanently eliminate all planes, cars, cows, oil, gas, and the military even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant." 

... and asking Kos if this is "a healthy debate" from the point of view of Democrats.

MARKOS MOULITSAS: Yeah, I think this is aspirational. This is actually popular. And if Trump thinks that this is going to hurt us politically, he's absolutely not really paying attention to the pulse of the country. This is aspirational. Like, like you said, it's not a bill. The details would have to be worked out. And this is so ambitious that these details would have to be worked out over decades. This is a broad, aggressive, bold agenda. And it'll take time to implement. But at least it shows people where the Democratic Party is going on the issue of climate change.

A little while later Atkins sounded like she had absorbed the same talking points:

KIMBERLY ATKINS: It's something that people understand and connect to.... And I think that is an issue that moves. And I think the aspirational aspect of this, I actually think it was pretty brilliant to not put in a bunch of details that people can immediately start taking down...

Chuck Todd wondered if Democrats were worried about making themselves "less electable." And:

CHUCK TODD: So, Markos, this, today, I think is a great framing. You had Amy Klobuchar and yesterday, you had Elizabeth Warren. And we -- Elizabeth Warren -- very, I would call it a clarity of purpose. There was no ambiguity. Amy Klobuchar's going to talk about bragging about getting bills signed by President Trump. That’s two different -- I say this, that’s two different -- she's saying, "I'm a get-things-done person. You can dream all you want." How is that going to play out?

MARKOS MOULITSAS: I think we're looking for dreamers at this point. I mean, Trump is going to accuse us of being socialist no matter what. It doesn't matter what the agenda is. He's going to use the same playbook. It didn't work in 2018. It's not going to work in 2020. And so, I think it's important to really think aspirationally, to give people a sense of where the candidate wants to be. "Yes, we can," is actually a very positive messages as opposed to maybe Klobuchar or Sherrod Brown saying, "No, we can't."

Dónde votar.

The two scariest words, in any language, for Republicans. https://t.co/ycyH8FWinK

— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) November 6, 2018

Treason talk.

Let's look back before this week, to "treason" as it has appeared within the lifetime of this blog. In chronological order:

April 27, 2005: Discussing the "blood" metaphor in constitutional law, I quoted Article III: "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

May 28, 2006: I wrote about the protest singer Phil Ochs declaring the Vietnam War over:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over

July 1, 2006: "The editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times explain how they decide when to publish a secret... Baquet and Keller have written a lengthy defense of their behavior, behavior that they know has been severely criticized, even called 'treason.'"

September 20, 2006: "To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," said Alice Cooper, indicting rock stars who were telling people to vote for John Kerry.

August 3, 2007: Markos Moulitsas says that in 2002, "Dissent against the president was considered treason."

August 11, 2007: A 9/11 truther criticizes me for declining to debate him, which he took to mean that I know I'm "complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason."

May 12, 2008: A scholar assures us that the Muslim world would view Obama, the son of a Muslim father, as guilty of apostasy, which has "connotations of rebellion and treason," which is considered "worse than murder."

September 12, 2011: I'm live-blogging a debate in which "treason" is thrown around casually: "Perry stands by his 'almost treasonous' remark, referring to the use of the Federal Reserve for political purposes... Huntsman accuses Perry of treason for saying we can't secure the border."

May 8, 2012: "Isn't it funny, this 'treason' incident?" Mitt Romney, running for President, failed to chide a woman who asked whether Obama should be tried for treason. I brought up (as I did today), the 1964 book "None Dare Call It Treason." I also quoted the casual use of "treason" by Chief Justice John Marshall  Cohens v. Virginia to refer to doing something unconstitutional. ("We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution.") And a commenter brought up an even more venerable use of the word, Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it." That made me say: "The country was founded on treason. We celebrate the treason we like."

Also on May 8, 2012: "Obama supporters who express outrage over the use of the word 'treason' seem to think the word means nothing but to the crime defined in law — as if the woman Romney talked to wanted Obama tried and executed. It's as if people who say 'property is theft' are freakishly insisting that property owners be prosecuted for larceny. Think of all the words we use that have more specific legal meanings that do not apply: This job is murder... The rape of the land... Slave to love..."

June 17, 2013: Edward Snowden explains why he left the country: " [T]he US Government... immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

July 26, 2013: From a post about the death penalty: "Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment 'for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason.'"

April 22, 2014 : Above the Law had hyperventilated, "Justice Scalia Literally Encourages People To Commit Treason," and I punctured it, saying Scalia was just giving his usual speech about the Constitution, which is always subject to the right of revolution explained in the Declaration of Independence. I bring up Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it."

February 23, 2015: "'Edward Snowden couldn't be here for some treason,' said Neil Patrick Harris, the Oscars host, when the documentary about him won an award." I said: "I liked the joke, because of its language precision and because it seemed at least a tad risky in the context of Hollywood celebrating itself."

February 29, 2016: Trump hesitated to "unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election" after Duke it would be "treason to your heritage" for a white person not to vote for Trump.

October 14, 2016: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," said Ezra Pound, who was charged with treason in WWII. He was disaffected after WWI, moved to Italy, felt inspired by Mussolini, and went on the radio criticizing the U.S., FDR, and the Jews.

December 21, 2016: I quoted the official course description for "The Problem of Whiteness," a course offered in the African Cultural Studies department of my university, the University of Wisconsin–Madison: "In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'"

January 16, 2017: I quote someone talking about Chelsea Manning: "He is a member of the military who knowingly committed treason. His, or her, gender status has nothing to do with his conviction for treason."

February 10, 2017: I quoted Trump (before his election) talking about Edward Snowden: "I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," "And if I were president, Putin would give him over," and "Snowden is a spy who should be executed." I wondered: "But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason."

February 7, 2018: Trump had used the word "treasonous" to describe the Democrats who didn't applaud during his State of the Union Address. Yeah, it was a joke, but: "He's President and in the position of enforcing the law, and from that position punching down. He really should not be joking about treason. And I get that he's punching back, and that's his style. But people aren't just idiots if they feel afraid of a President who isn't continually assuring us that he's aware of his profound responsibilities."

April 17, 2018: I quoted Neil Gorsuch, concurring — and voting with the liberals ‚ in a case about immigration: "Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of 'pretended' crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21."

May 4, 2018: A conservative commentator sarcastically said he was "waiting for the Left to scream treason" over John Kerry's "quiet play to save Iran deal with foreign leaders."

July 17, 2017: I quoted Byron York: "Would it have been appropriate for the Trump campaign to try to find the [Clinton] emails?... What if an intelligence operative from a friendly country got them and offered them? And what about an unfriendly country? Would there be a scale, from standard oppo research on one end to treason on the other, depending on how the emails were acquired?"

"It was classy of Trump..."

It was classy of Trump not to ask Romney for a blowjob. https://t.co/pbGgLdPFfa

— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) March 3, 2016

Trump on 2012: “I could have said ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’” | WATCH LIVE: https://t.co/KBge7Rcc7j pic.twitter.com/espSdjzcVg

— The Hill (@thehill) March 3, 2016

"Supreme Court respects Fourth Amendment, protecting meth heads."

The headline at Kos.

Yes, this one breaks down mostly as you'd expect, if you follow the Court on these matters.  Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion of the Court, including the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Yes, they acknowledge, officers can do additional tasks which are required for their safety, or which don't prolong the stop, but that's where the line is drawn:

Traffic stops are “especially fraught with danger to police officers,” so an officer may need to take certain negligibly burdensome precautions in order to complete his mission safely. On-scene investigation into other crimes, however, detours from that mission. So too do safety precautions taken in order to facilitate such detours. Thus, even assuming that the imposition here was no more intrusive than the exit order in Mimms, the dog sniff could not be justified on the same basis. Highway and officer safety are interests different in kind from the Government’s endeavor to detect crime in general or drug trafficking in particular.

But what if they do that search really really quickly, asks Eric Holder? No!, responds the Court....

There are 3 dissenters: Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito.

"But wait a minute... there's nothing inconsistent about being a libertarian and collecting Social Security."

"If you believe the government is wrongfully taking your money (in the form of taxes), naturally you should want to take as much of it back as possible (in the form of benefits). You can still complain that this was inefficient because you would've spent the money better if you had kept it all along; some of your money was siphoned off by government workers; etc. By analogy, if a thief stole your wallet and spent half of the cash that was in it, then offered you the wallet back, you'd take it back, simply to recover most of what you had lost. That wouldn't be an admission that what the thief did was good."

Jaltcoh, reacting to a "Zing!" by Daily Kos over a tweet that says "Rand Paul is running from Libertarianism faster than Ayn Rand ran to the mailbox for her Social Security checks."

Ludicrous umbrage taken at Scott Walker's "I've got a master's degree in taking on the big government special interests..."

I had to laugh at Daily Kos writer Mark E. Anderson's "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker claims to have a master's degree":

Everyone is almost certainly aware by now that Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin does not have a bachelor’s degree. He left the University of Marquette, and in his words, "I'm someone who went to college, had the opportunity in my senior year to go and take a job full-time job (…)like a lot of folks in America, you know, your family and your job take the time away from you finishing it up."

In that same recent interview, Walker stated, "I've got a master's degree in taking on the big government special interests, and I think that is worth more than anything else that anybody can point to."

Gov. Walker was unable to finish college. There are plenty of websites and blogs out there full of accusations about why he left Marquette, but we're not exploring that today. This is about how he has the audacity to suggest that he has a master’s degree when he does not even have a bachelor’s degree....

Walker was using a hoary old trope. On my list of old-man expressions that no one uses anymore is: I graduated from the School of Hard Knocks.

Now, maybe Anderson does understand the old trope but he's just weirdly bugged by the specification of a master's degree. Since Walker — last I heard — has no bachelor's degree, he ought to have limited himself to saying "I've got a bachelor's degree in taking on the big government special interests." That's some strange umbrage Anderson is taking. I had to laugh.

By the way, I said "last I heard," because my prediction — made here last April — is that Walker will at some dramatic point reveal that he has acquired a degree:

What should Scott Walker — if he's a presidential candidate — say when they ask him whether a President needs to have a college degree?

Megan Silberberger "heard the gunshots first and she came in running... She just grabbed his arm...."

Silberberger is the heroic young teacher who began to stop the Seattle school shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, and then came the shot that killed him.

At the Daily Kos, there's this headline: "Young, petite, UNARMED, female teacher stopped today's school shooter."

Fryberg shot himself in the end. That's what stopped him. It sounds as though Silberberger even tried to prevent that.

CORRECTION: Originally, I referred to Silberberger as "first-grade" teacher. I misread "first-year" to mean first-grade. In law school, "first-year" means the first year of school for the students, but I can see that the linked article was referring to the teacher's level of experience.

Why should Ron Klain be the Ebola czar?

Seriously, what are the qualifications for this job... and what exactly does the job consist of?

Klain is highly regarded at the White House as a good manager with excellent relationships both in the administration and on Capitol Hill. His supervision of the allocation of funds in the stimulus act -- at the time and incredible and complicated government undertaking -- is respected in Washington. He does not have any extensive background in health care but the job is regarded as a managerial challenge...

A former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and also to then-Vice President Al Gore, Klain is currently President of Case Holdings and General Counsel of Revolution, an investment group. He has clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court and headed up Gore's effort during the 2000 Florida recount and was portrayed in the HBO movie Recount by Kevin Spacey.

Oh, well, then, that makes perfect sense. Which Supreme Court Justice did he clerk for? And why not hire Kevin Spacey? I'm sure he'd do a convincing job of assuring us that everything is under control. He was excellent delivering lines like "The plural of 'chad' is 'chad'?" and Chad — coincidence?! — is a country in Africa.

And by the way, I thought we'd stopped using the job title "czar." We're back to the retrograde messaging implicit in the title of a long-ago Russian autocrat?

ADDED: It seems that Klain is called a "czar" because Republicans were calling out for a "czar." From The Daily Kos a few days ago:

Thus McCain, as usual, follows in the footsteps of the House crazy person caucus, but now the Republicans demand that Obama institute an "Ebola czar" even after those selfsame Republicans were muttering about abuse of power and tyranny and impeachment over the "czars" the gubbermint already had has been catapulted into the Sunday show orbits of Serious Debate, by mere virtue of Sunday John saying it. We don't have enough czars. We demand more czars! Why isn't Obama leading by appointing czars?

And now, here comes Obama, leading by following, appointing a czar. Or a guy to do whatever it is Ron Klain is good at doing who will be titled "czar." What the hell does a czar do? We'll find out when we see what Klain does. He's certainly good for something, like the way he allocated the funds of the stimulus act. We'll find out how that kind of expertise and orientation plays out in the ebola context.

AND:  The (unlinkable) OED defines "czar" only as: 1. "The title of the autocrat or emperor of Russia; historically, borne also by Serbian rulers of the 14th c." and 2. "transf. A person having great authority or absolute power; a tyrant, 'boss.'’" But there is a "Draft addition," lingering in "draft" status since 2001: "orig. U.S. A person appointed by a government to recommend and coordinate policy in a particular area and to oversee its implementation." The oldest use is, interestingly enough, beer czar:

1933   S. Walker Night Club Era 167   There are several versions of why Mulrooney quit the job to become the state beer 'Czar.'

The most prominent use of "czar" — where the term really took off — was "Drug Czar," applied to Bill Bennett in early 1989, as George H.W. Bush was about to take over the presidency. But it wasn't Bush the Elder who created the position. Congress did that, over the objections of President Reagan. As for the choice of Bennett, the biggest critic, amusingly enough, was Joe Biden:

''What concerns me most is his total lack of background in law enforcement,'' said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss says the Kevin we need to assure us that everything is under control, that all is well, is not Kevin Spacey but Kevin Bacon:

"Elliot Rodger, Gunman in California Mass Shooting, was influenced by the 'Men's Rights Movement.'"

Writes OllieGarkey in a post at Daily Kos (that is getting a lot of attention). The post actually begins with "Trigger Warning: Violence against Women." That's after the headline, quoted in my post title, so anyone already knows the subject. The "Trigger Warning" isn't so much a way of warning readers that there's something triggering in the post content as it is a way of asserting that the writer is part of a movement that purports to care about the sensitivities of women.

Myself, I'm the kind of writer who would like to assert that I'm against giving publicity to murderers. I'm afraid we're showing other angry losers the murder path to celebrity. But I'm going to write about this anyway, because I'm interested in the way other writers appropriate the latest violent incident to explain the ideology they already have. Why blog anything? It fits your template.

Rodger's pre-murder rant criticizes women for having sex with "obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentleman" and conceptualizes the murders as a demonstrating to women "that I am in truth the superior one. The true Alpha Male." OllieGarkey says:

The true Alpha Male. What those who call themselves the Mens [sic] Rights Movement aspire to be.

The Men's Rights Movement as they call themselves is a nebulous group of pickup artists and misogynists who've found each other on line, and are attempting to create a movement based around their hatred, disdain, and fear of women.

OllieGarkey bolsters his argument by listing (and linking) various YouTube channels that Rodger subscribed to, for example "'The Player Supreme Show' which rails against the feminization of men and talks about how to pick up women."

Rather than seeking mental help for some obvious issues, he sought out the Men's Rights Movement. He watched their propaganda. He internalized their hatred of women. (There's no shortage of anti-woman rhetoric and nonsense...)

He listened to these guys talk about being hard, and tough, and true alpha men. 

This is interesting evidence to analyze, but OllieGarkey handles it hackishly. Subscribing to channels makes it somewhat likely that Rodger "watched" and "listened," but we don't know that he did. To what extent did the language used on those channels correspond to the language in Rodger's rant? And is "Men's Rights Movement" the right umbrella term for the "pickup artist" genre? The goal of lots of sex is different from the goal of getting rights. These men want sex from women — I take it — not rights, which are something you get from the government.

A movement for "men's rights" has to do with men wanting the government to protect their interests that arise from their various interactions with women. That's quite a different enterprise from luring women into wanting to have sex with you, which I understand those websites attempt to help men do. That was the enterprise at which Rodger seems to have failed. Or are you going to tell me there are men who — as a group — want sex from women and have conceptualized this goal as a rights movement. How would it even work to form a movement seeking sex from women? The men are in competition with each other. What's the value of grouping together?

So this kid who needed some serious mental help sought out the destructive, BS views coming from the men's rights movement. He felt entitled to sex with women. 

OllieGarkey seems to be spouting off the top of his head. Could he provide me with specific material from the channels Rodger subscribed to that posit a right to have sex with women? I thought these "pickup artist" sites taunted males who have bad technique and offered to show them how to up their game so they can win. Games that require skill and have winners and losers are not about entitlement. They are exactly the opposite. Rodger seems to have come up on his own with the idea that he could move from his loser status to alpha status not by ever figuring out how to make a woman sexually desire him, but through the delusion that murder — which he did figure out — somehow equated with sex and that he could become "the true Alpha Male" through murder.

How does that delusion fit with what's on those "pickup artist" sites? Those "alpha males" — if that's what they call themselves — are claiming there is an elaborate manipulation of the female mind that can be accomplished by skillful, savvy males. They purport to be artists, and the art involves acquiring the willing participation of the woman. Using a gun is not using your mind, and killing a woman isn't drawing her into your game. What's the correspondence?

OllieGarkey tries to glue his theory together with the vague abstraction "misogyny." He ends by saying that Rodger "exposed himself to hateful rhetoric about women... [a]nd... he acted on that hatred": "when hateful rhetoric is trained on any group,  lone wolves like this guy get triggered."

So in OllieGarkey's fuzzy head, the pickup artists who want to bed scores of women using some fine "game" they've worked out are supposed to "hate" women, and a murderer who's been rejected by women hates women. And I guess men who've been stung by women and want some legal rights "hate" women.

It all fits together with a sloppy, gloppy mess of glue like that.

"In a remarkable post yesterday, Moulitsas, founder and publisher of the progressive community site DailyKos, celebrates the departure from the Senate..."

"... of 10 moderate Democrats over the last decade, and makes clear his hope that Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) lose their tough reelection battles this year. He doesn’t name some other moderates in tight races, like Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), but his logic suggests that he’d be only too happy to say goodbye to them as well."

Chuck Schumer says both left- and right-wing blogs are too vicious and negative but the difference is: Left-wing blogs "have less credibility and less clout."

Excerpts from his interview with TNR's Isaac Chotiner:

CS: [One] thing the Tea Party does is threaten their fellow Republicans. They actually threaten them. If you punched in—I used to do this—“Marco Rubio” when we were doing immigration reform, nine out of ten hard-right blogs were negative on him: attack after attack after attack....

[T]here are some on the far left who just have a visceral hatred of Wall Street. It’s counterproductive.

IC: ... Is this a problem for your party?

CS: You don’t want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti–Wall Street. It’s not the right way to be.

IC: So are the left-wing blogs as bad as the Tea Party ones in this case?

CS: Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout.

ADDED: Kos bites back:

Left-wing blogs had credibility when they were helping Schumer's DSCC win control of the Senate. Now that we're criticizing Wall Street? No credibility! And we're just like the Tea Party, having cost Democrats a half-dozen seats and the Senate majority in the last couple of years.

Oh, you mean we haven't pushed the Democratic Party outside of the national mainstream? Weird, then. On the other hand, it wasn't bloggers trying to save Sen. Scott Brown's hide in 2012, like good ol' Chuck:

There is a good little story. [Looks to aide] I can tell this. I went to Scott Brown and said, “If you give us the sixtieth vote for the Citizens United rollback, we won’t go after you.”

If it was up to Schumer, he would've traded an entire Senate seat for one meaningless cloture vote on a bill that would've died a quick death in the House. God knows his Wall Street benefactors would've been thrilled at that!

From my perspective, intra-party relations have never been better. It seems odd that Schumer is trying to start an internecine war at this very moment, particularly with a tough 2014 up ahead. And as the number three Democrat in the Senate, his words carry outsized weight. But it's clear that the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party is feeling the heat from its resurgent populist wing: the Warrens, Baldwins, Browns and Merkleys.

Republicans are locked in their own bloody civil war. Schumer (and his Third Way allies) may have just signaled that we may be in for some bloodshed of our own. In fact, he appears eager to lead Wall Street's counter attack.

Lefty cartoonist Ted Rall criticized at Daily Kos for drawing Barack Obama in a racist way.

He cries out against what he calls "censorship" even as he links to the supposedly offensive drawings as they are still displayed at Daily Kos. Clue to Rall: criticism ≠ censorship.

The funniest part of this is that the problem is that he made Obama look apelike, but that's just his drawing style:

FireDogLake calls out Kos: "Markos Moulitsas’ Ugly, Reverse-Racist Smear."

Kos: "NSA spying is bad! So is stop and frisk. So is splitting up families by deporting children to countries they’ve never been to and don’t speak the language. So is harassing American muslims. Government overreach is bad. But to act like having the government track who you call is the height of government abuse is a very white privileged view of the privacy issue. But as for Greenwald and Snowden? Seriously, I don’t give two shits."

FDL: "Please, Mr. Moulitsas, tell us, what is the proper, non-privileged, multi-cultural view of the 'privacy issue'? Is it one that stays within the confines of what’s allowed by the Democratic Party? Is it one that is relevant to the war on women, or voting rights, or immigration, but ignores the collapse of the rule of law and the justice system (which is far from a 'white privileged' issue)?"

FDL supplements its posting with a word from our leader, from the days when he was free of the burdens of leadership and leveraging our antagonism for the previous leader:

Who will the Democrats run against Scott Walker in 2014 for Wisconsin Governor?

This is funny, from Downstate Democrat at Daily Kos:

Wisconsin Democrats appear to be set to run Mary Burke, a former executive of Trek Bicycles....

Despite the fact that Wisconsin Republicans are already trying to paint Burke as an "out-of-touch Madison activist", in reality, she's the Democratic Party's version of Mitt Romney....

I think the interest in Burke is that she has her own money. Walker has lots of money raised during the recall, and so that makes Democrats seem hopeless. They couldn't wait for the next election, had to do the recall, and now they are practically giving up on the next election. 

"Mr. Pickup Truck-Driving Everyman has a home in New Hampshire..."

"... in addition to his primary home and three rental condos in Massachusetts and the timeshare in Aruba. And since the Boston media market—where Brown, of course, has had a lot of coverage, since Boston is in Massachusetts, where he's been a state and United States senator—extends into New Hampshire, residents of the state are very familiar with him."

Carpetbagging alert from Kos.

PPP poll for Daily Kos/SEIU: Romney 49%, Obama 47%.

Kos says:

That's a pretty disastrous six-point net swing in just a week, and the first time we've ever had Romney in the lead. It is inline [sic] with all other national polling showing Romney making gains in the wake of his debate performance last week....

Among women, Obama went from a 15-point lead to a slimmer 51-45 edge. Meanwhile, Romney went from winning independents 44-41 to winning them 48-42. And just like the Ipsos poll showed last week, Romney further consolidated his base. They went from supporting him 85-13 last week, to 87-11 this week while Obama lost some Democrats, going from 88-9 last week, to 87-11 this week....

... Obama's debate performance was an epic blunder. Romney gave his partisans a reason to get excited about him and they've responded. It should come as no surprise that people like to fight for people who are fighting for them.

That last sentence hints of anger that might be paraphrased as: We gave you a billion dollars and you didn't even bother to engage for 90 minutes.

What's one billion divided by 90? Obama threw away his supporters' money at the rate of over $11 million a minute. (And he wants to be in charge of spending all our money and much, much more for the next 4 years. Do the math!)

"Yes it could be a hanky. But it falls kind of heavy, and stays uniform in it's [sic] fold."

"Plus it is flat.  I have never seen a man's hanky be so uniform and flat coming from a front pant's pocket.  Back pocket, yes, breast pocket in a jacket, yes.. but not the front pant pocket."

Daily Kos, theorizing that Romney had a "cheat sheet" during the debate, during which no notes were permitted.

It was a hanky. So Obama's would-be helpers — attempting to besmirch Romney — succeeded only calling attention, once again, to what nearly everybody thought they saw on Thursday: Romney's superior preparation, ability to think on his feet, and eloquence.

ADDED: Gawker gives the history of debate conspiracy theories, and in one of them I — of all people — am the conspiracy theorist.