Department of A-Yep

Saw this over at Eschaton this morning:

Morning Thread

To paraphrase a commenter over at Firedoglake:

How’s that plan for putting social security into the hands of Citibank, Merrill Lynch and the other financial ‘wizards’ as President Bush had so strongly urged looking now?

-Attaturk 08:09

Yeah, especially since these wizards would have taken our money and used it Enron-style to paper over the stinkiness of the Big Shitpile they created, and we’d be in even worse shape than we are now.

What Digby Said

The primaries on the Dem side have had tons of people turning out for them, utterly swamping the GOP turnout in most cases. The one primary/caucus where the GOP turnout was higher than the Democratic turnout was Michigan, and that was because 1) Hillary was the only major Dem candidate on the ballot, so she was guaranteed that win, and 2) lots of Dems crossed over to give Mitt Romney the win.

Which is why this piece of Digby’s on the habitual backstabbing of the Democrats — in sharp contrast to the discipline of the Eleventh-Commandment-obeying Republicans, and tying in somewhat with Charles’ earlier and similar piece — makes me heartsick even as I agree with each of her points:

I know, it’s great fun to think about Rahm and Teddy telling Bill to STFU. But everybody ought to take a deep breath and remind themselves that this is also exactly the kind of thing Democrats do to their sitting presidents, whether named Clinton or, I dare say, Obama. They run to the press with the news that they scolded them so they can make sure everyone knows they are the ones running things.(I know everybody’s forgotten how that used to be because the Republicans don’t constantly air dirty laundry in public for their own aggrandizement. They usually work these things out among themselves for the good of the party.)

If the Democrats win the presidency, expect many more of these little dramas. The inflated egos of powerful Democratic Senators and Congressmen require that they consistently step forward to knee-cap their president whenever possible lest anyone get the idea that he (or she) is actually in charge. They’re just practicing with Bubba, kind of a reminiscence of the good old days.

Oh, and don’t worry about congressional prerogatives. They’ll rediscover them with a vengeance when there’s a Democratic president. They’ll investigate his or her every move, calling for special prosecutors and generally behaving like asses, at the smallest provocation by the press if it gives them a chance to pontificate grandly on Tim Russert about their own superiority. They don’t have the guts to do it when the Republicans are institutionalizing torture or lying the nation into an illegal invasion of another country, because well, Republicans are mean. But they’ll find plenty of things about which to get righteously indignant with the executive when its a Democrat. They’ll be in hypervenitlating, bipartisan bliss with their Republican cohorts, elbowing each other to be first to the microphone denouncing the latest shocking presidential failure to dot “i”s and cross “t”s.

The villagers love to get out the pitchforks —- against Democrats. They aren’t scared of them. It’s good fun.

PSA For Drinking Liberally

Most of MR’s readers aren’t from Minnesota, but just in case, I’m passing on this information from Robin Marty of Minnesota Monitor:

Brian Melendez, chairman of the Minnesota DFL, will be at Drinking Liberally
Thursday, January 24th, 7pm
331 Club, 13th and University in NE Minneapolis (next door to the Modern Cafe)
Brian will be discussing the caucus and all things DFL-y

“DFL” is short for “Democratic Farmer Labor”, which is the name of the local branch of the Democratic Party in Minnesota. Now’s your chance to give one of the local party bigwigs a piece of your mind.