None of Lieberman’s Republican buddies, on or off Capitol Hill, are backing Dennis Kucinich’s probe of Rahm Emanuel. These are the people that went ahead with impeaching Bill Clinton for trying to hide a few blow jobs that were none of their business, yet they won’t go after Obama’s right-hand man? How– curious. Why, you’d think that the Republicans liked seeing Rahm stay right where he is.

A short explanation of why Jane Hamsher and Howard Dean are playing the politics right by attacking Obama from the left.

There has been an unsavory blending of the private interests of corporations and financial institutions with the power and hand of the US government that has created a new breed of robber barons that will prove the downfall of the American society and empire if left unchecked.

The perfect isn’t the enemy of the good. The “good enough” is.

With no place to go for refuge from corporatist entrenchment, populist opposition from the left and right will continue to have no choice but to work together in order to oppose it. No doubt the demonization for doing so from party loyalists on both sides who don’t want their control of the kleptocracy to be challenged will only get more fierce.

The arrogance of power is directly proportional to bad judgment. The more blunders, the more arrogance. That makes me think of Rahm Emanuel, a master at marginalizing others in games of petty politics at the very times the judgments of others are most necessary to success.

Five years ago, Thomas Frank wrote “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”, about how the GOP uses cultural populism to dupe rural working-class Americans into supporting pro-corporate policies that hasten their own economic demise. Today’s Obama/Rahm/Reid Democrats have turned that dynamic on its head, in more ways than one.

Matt Taibbi distills everything wrong with the Obama administration into two pithy sentences.

Though they normally cover climate change, our good friends at DeSmog Blog recently weighed in on the 42 members of Congress who helpfully inserted lobbyist language into the Congressional Record in favor of endless patents on biologic drugs on behalf of the prescription drug industry. Said Brendan Demelle

At least four of the Representatives who inserted Genentech’s script into the Congressional Record have had parties thrown by Genentech lobbyists this year.